Church of the Churchless

I just made this comment

I just made this comment to someone who tried to justify the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas' unfeeling response toward people with suicidal tendencies. See here and here. 

I'm curious if anyone disagrees with what I said. It sure makes sense to me.

Dungeness, you're presuming that being "spiritual" is something different from being a decent human being. I heartily disagree. Being a decent human being is the foundation of spirituality.

Absent that, it's possible to justify lies, deceit, abuse, and other things that gurus sometimes engage in.

When someone shares a serious personal problem and seeks support/advice, I've never heard a decent human being say, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself" or "That's a sin."

Yet Gurinder Singh Dhillon said those things.

This shows that at least when it comes to talking about mental health issues, including suicide, the RSSB guru doesn't act like a decent human being.

Like I said, spirituality should enhance the qualities of a decent human being, not negate or lessen them.

If the RSSB teachings negate/lessen those supports of positive qualities, obviously someone should run from those teachings as rapidly as possible.

How many people has Gurinder Singh Dhillon indirectly killed?

Yesterday a commenter called "BlackRose" asked the question that I made the title of this blog post.

It's impossible to know the answer.

All we can be sure of is that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, lacks both normal human compassion and the most basic understanding of how to talk with someone who was, or is, suicidal. 

UPDATE: I just made this comment to someone who tried to justify the guru's unfeeling response toward people with suicidal tendencies. I'm curious if anyone disagrees with it. It sure makes sense to me.

Dungeness, you're presuming that being "spiritual" is something different from being a decent human being. I heartily disagree. Being a decent human being is the foundation of spirituality. Absent that, it's possible to justify lies, deceit, abuse, and other things that gurus sometimes engage in.

When someone shares a serious personal problem and seeks support/advice, I've never heard a decent human being say, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself" or "That's a sin."

Yet Gurinder Singh Dhillon said those things. This shows that at least when it comes to talking about mental health issues, including suicide, the RSSB guru doesn't act like a decent human being.

Like I said, spirituality should enhance the qualities of a decent human being, not negate or lessen them. If the RSSB teachings negate/lessen those supports of positive qualities, obviously someone should run from those teachings as rapidly as possible.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the uncaring guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas

BlackRose commented on a post I wrote a few days ago, "Why a guru shouldn't give mental health advice." In it I shared a tale from a woman, Sonya, who told Dhillon about her attempts to commit suicide and got a response from the guru that included these unfeeling words:

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

Below you can read about another instance in which the RSSB guru turned a blind eye toward someone who told Dhillon that she was thinking about suicide. 

His reported response: suicide is a sin.

A few years later, this person killed herself. Neither her mother, who accompanied her to the interview with the guru, nor Dhillon, did anything to help the woman.

This is beyond shameful.

It borders on criminal negligence, failing to take the most basic steps to help someone who is thinking of taking their life. If a counselor or teacher had behaved the way the guru did, dismissing someone's cry for help with a curt "suicide is a sin," they'd be guilty of professional malpractice.

A guru should manifest the best of human qualities, not the worst. Rightly or wrongly  (I'd say wrongly), many people trust what a guru says.

After all, why did this woman and her mother ask for an interview with Dhillon? Almost certainly, because they believed the RSSB guru would offer some wise words.

Instead, the suicidal woman got worse than nothing.

Compassion, understanding, empathy -- that's what she needed, along with being told that it was imperative she get professional psychological help as soon as possible. The Mayo Clinic describes what should be done if someone is suicidal.

Dhillon did the exact opposite. He didn't tell the woman to get help. He wasn't compassionate. Instead, he was judgmental. Read on for what BlackRose said:

I really resonate with this post. A few years ago my cousin committed suicide. At first it came as a huge shock as it was very sudden and I thought no one knew she was suffering. Turns out I was wrong.

Both her mother and Gurinder Singh knew and did nothing. After the suicide my cousin's mother revealed that two years prior to the death she had gone with her daughter for a private interview with him where my cousin confessed to him that she was thinking about suicide.

I did not hear this story first hand but he apparently told her that suicide was a sin and her mother yelled at her for saying such things. I do know that no action was taken.

Neither Gurinder nor my aunt told a single soul about this at the time and so no one took action to get my cousin the help she needed. If Gurinder Singh, who my cousin believed was god incarnate, was compassionate to her and encouraged her to get help she may still be alive today.

The surprising thing is that there is another satsangi young person tangentially related to the same family who I have heard is suicidal. I don't know her name or know her personally but I sincerely doubt she is being given the help she needs either because of Gurinder's denial of depression as a real thing people all over the world of any class experience.

How many people has he indirectly killed because of this? I feel deeply sad for my cousin and the other girl.

What's also disgusting is how another commenter, "Grateful one," tried to make it seem like Gurinder Singh Dhillon was blameless in the woman's death. 

Below you can read a confirmation that the RSSB guru said suicide was a sin -- a horrible thing to say to someone contemplating taking their own life. 

The uncaring attitude shown by "Grateful one" makes me exceedingly grateful that I no longer put any faith in gurus. True believers like "Grateful one" are unable to recognize how blind they are to a guru's shortcomings, instead going to great lengths to excuse inexcusable behavior. 

As you can read below, "Grateful one" is deluded enough to argue that a suicidal person wasn't depressed or had any problems. That is flat out insane. Because devotees of the guru believe he is God in human form, they consider that the guru can do no wrong. 

But he did.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon did nothing to help a suicidal woman. Yet somehow "Grateful one" believes he wasn't involved in the situation at all. That's a lie. In a personal interview he told the woman suicide is a sin, and did nothing to help her. So it is entirely appropriate to ask, how many other people has the RSSB guru indirectly killed?

Here's the comment from "Grateful one."

Blackrose, I’m sorry but I know your cousin she was a very good friend of mine and I know the entire family as well. Yes she may have mentioned to her mother that she had these thoughts but her mother did not take it seriously as she never thought she would do it and I also know for a fact that Babaji was very sympathetic to her situation and told her clearly that suicide is the biggest sin and one should not do it.

She even asked this in a q and a and I heard his response myself as I was there. Your cousin(my good friend) was neither depressed nor had any problems. I find it’s very easy to blame someone else(in this case the master) for what she chose to do to herself.

That is very wrong as he was not involved in this situation at all. Your cousin wasn’t initiated or followed the path or any vows so how can this be related to the Master or his teachings? I know first hand because my friend stayed with me and we talked about it. This is the problem with these kind of comments where people write whatever they want which is non factual and only hearsay and many people tend to believe.

Our ordinary life is way more important than our religious life

Looking at the title of this blog post after I wrote it, at first I wondered if "ordinary" is the right word for what I'm talking about here. 

Namely, our everyday life. What we do that's personal, intimate, immediate, direct, experiential. How we spend most of our hours. What we honestly describe when someone close to us asks, "How was your day?" 

On further reflection, ordinary seems like the right word. 

Sure, often people have the notion that being ordinary isn't good enough. But this seems crazy. What's wrong with having an ordinary life that's mostly meaningful, satisfying, pleasurable? 

And when that life entails some suffering, pain, despair -- that too is perfectly fine. An ordinary life is going to have ups and downs, smooth running and rough spots. 

I got to thinking along these lines after sharing a wonderfully honest comment from Sonya in the form of a blog post, "Why a guru shouldn't give mental health advice," because the comment deserved more attention than it would have gotten otherwise.

What struck me about Sonya's description of her suicide attempts, panic attacks, and sorrow at how badly the guru (Gurinder Singh Dhillon) treated her was that it seemed way more important and real than the spiritual teachings the guru represented -- which are largely conceptual, not being grounded in everyday reality.

So it makes much more sense to say of someone -- not just Sonya, anyone -- "in addition to being a [fill in the ordinary life details], they also believe in [fill in the religious, spiritual, or philosophical details]."

After all, few people outside of monasteries elevate their religious life above their ordinary life.

When I think about the 35 years I was associated with Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the organization now led by Gurinder Singh Dhillon, what comes mainly to mind is getting married, the birth of my daughter, going to graduate school, getting my first jobs, moving to Oregon, buying houses, some memorable family vacations, surviving my child's teenage years, seeing her mature and form a family of her own, spending time with my granddaughter, getting divorced and then remarried, settling down on ten acres in rural south Salem with Laurel, writing books, becoming an avid blogger, involving myself with Salem politics, dealing with the deaths of my mother and the father I barely knew, and so on.

Yes, during that time I also was very active in RSSB. I meditated every day, as I still do. I went to India twice to the headquarters of RSSB. I served as secretary of our local RSSB group for many years. However, all this wasn't the most important part of my life. 

My ordinary life was.

People engage in some strenuous disagreements on this blog, via comments. Being active on Facebook, I've often wondered what a difference it would make if everyone had to leave comments under their real name. 

Likely it would improve communication, because anonymity tends to lead people to say things that they wouldn't say to someone face to face. 

What Sonya did with her comment -- and I'm deeply grateful to her for this -- was illustrate how what binds us together is ordinary life, not religious life. I've enjoyed reading the reactions to what she shared, which almost universally are supportive. We all know what it is like to suffer, to feel terrible, to face crushing disappointment. 

In comparison, religious dogma seems distant, abstract, detached, unimportant. Sure, I realize some people are willing to die for their religion. But I'm confident hugely more people are willing to die for their child, spouse, or other loved one. 

I'll end by sharing a comment on Sonya's post from Spence Tepper. In it he shared some personal details that gave me a broader perspective on him. Before, I knew what Tepper thought about various spiritual subjects. After reading his personal comment, I had at least a glimpse of what really matters to him in his "ordinary" life.

Depression is a first world problem like obscene greed and corruption are third world Guru problems. Maybe he has something there?

I'm at the Boston Anime Con right now waiting in a line surrounded by a sea of cosplayers (my special needs son and I went yesterday; he was Dante from Devil May Cry 2 and I was Dante from Devil May Cry 4...( I made the props including the guns, and the sword with skulls, it was fun) and for the third year in a row there are transgender bathrooms.

How much pain, real trauma, have people had to go through to first accept themselves, and secondly, to assert their basic human right to be respected?

It is all around me today. The free right to be whatever role they wish to play, in whatever clothes and makeup. The sheer joy of each hand made costume, and the laughter of friends, the selfies of cosplayers, and the mythic anime stories of coming of age, and triumph over ignorance and stupidity, we have all come to see and to hear the journey of the creators to bring their worthy stories to creation, are all around.

You see women dressed as male heroes, men dressed as beautiful Geisha girls, and beautifully indeterminate but happy faces.

This happiness was won. It was earned. It was fought for. This is their heaven.

Gurinder's problems are his world. And no one's fault but his own. We offer to help any way we can. But we are not obliged to live there. We live in our own magical place of our creation.

Sonya, depression is a powerful event. Own it. Be proud of it. Your heart feels deeply, your mind sees something others would rather ignore. You have triumphed.

But if you have been able to establish by your own standards that you, alone, are a world, a worthy place carefully grown by time, nature and circumstance more valuable than anyone else, then, welcome.

You've graduated. You have your super powers. On to the next school.

Religare is committed to getting its money back. Bad news for RSSB guru.

Given my goal of bringing readers of this blog all the news in the Indian financial press about the Singh brothers'/RSSB guru's misdeeds that's worth sharing, here's a mildly interesting story in The Economic Times, "New management committed to ensure good governance, says Religare Enterprises."

Below are a few excerpts relating to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Dhillon orchestrated the installation of Sunil Godhwani as CEO of Religare, after which Godhwani proceeded to illegally funnel money from Religare into shell companies controlled at the time by the Dhillon family and close associates.

Since most of the money reportedly ended up in Dhillon real estate ventures that went bad, it isn't good news for the RSSB guru and his family that Religare is committed to finding out how the fraud took place and getting its money back. The story says:

Religare Enterprises Friday said the new management team is committed to ensure that good governance and accountability are the hallmarks of the group as it dubbed allegations made by its former chief Sunil Godhwani as an attempt to divert attention from fraudulent transactions.

..."The company has the full support of its shareholders to bring to justice the erstwhile promoters and management and recover all the monies siphoned away by them," it added.

It also said that the new management team is committed to ensure that going forward the ethos of good governance, ethics and accountability become the hallmark of the Religare Group.

"Religare Enterprises has suffered over the years on account of unbridled mismanagement and misappropriation of funds orchestrated under the erstwhile promoters (Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh) and Sunil Godhwani," the statement said.

Why a guru shouldn't give mental health advice

There are many reasons to be wary of gurus.

An overarching reason is that often, if not usually, devotees of a guru trust them way more than is justified -- since gurus obviously are human beings, flawed and imperfect like we all are.

Below you can read the experience of "Sonya," a regular commenter on this blog who shared a comment today that I felt deserved to be featured in a blog post. 

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Sonya describes how Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (an Indian religious organization), responded after she courageously asked him about suicide. His response was uncaring, factually wrong, and distasteful.

Gurus shouldn't give mental health advice. If you wouldn't trust a guru with no medical expertise with telling you how to deal with a physical health problem, why would you trust what they say about a mental health problem?

I say this as someone who has been married for 29 years to a woman who was a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice for quite a few years. My wife counseled people with a wide range of problems. Previously she worked as a school counselor, and before that, at a mental hospital.

(I have a Master's Degree in Social Work also, but I never actually worked as a social worker after graduate school, going into health services research instead.)

Reading Sonya's comment made me simultaneously sad and angry.

Sad, because she was treated so badly by Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Angry, because no one should make light of suicide or depression, especially someone in a position of authority -- like a guru.

The good news is that the experience led to Sonya losing faith in the RSSB guru. I enjoy hearing "deconversion" stories about how people come to the realization that spirituality is best practiced independently, rather than within the confines of a religious organization.

Here's Sonya's story. I've corrected some typos and added some paragraph breaks, but didn't change her comment otherwise. "Satsangi" means an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. "Dera" refers to the RSSB headquarters. "Sant Mat" is the RSSB philosophy.

Hi Arjuna and Jen, OK, I'm going to attempt to respond to both of you with one very long answer. :)

At the Dera during a Q&A session I asked Gurinder what happens to a soul when it commits suicide because I had tried to commit suicide twice in a 6 month period when I was 26.

I asked him this because I thought maybe my thoughts and actions of self harm during that period of my life and my continual self loathing that existed after that event might be at the root cause of my panic attacks which I had been suffering from for 15 years. They started about a year before I became a satsangi.

I was diagnosed with severe panic disorder because the attacks would last longer than an hour. One attack lasted 8 hours and I had to go to the hospital. It took me 6 months after that to feel like a normal human being again.

It felt like one day I was a normal person, then I had an 8 hour panic attack and the next day I was paraplegic. I wasn't really paraplegic, it's just that's how much my life had changed and permanently changed. I guess having a really long panic attack is like going through battle and then you have PTSD from the panic attack.

BTW, It was a miracle that I lived both times because I was truly very happy that I would never wake up again. I didn't leave a note... it wasn't a cry for help. I tried to make sure no one would find me till it was over.

And if you ask me why I tried to commit suicide (looking back it seems really dumb), I was really depressed after my boyfriend and I broke up. We had a very serious relationship... I was madly in love... He asked me to marry him and then I found out he was seeing someone else.

You know, the usual.

Anyway, yes I am fairly blunt and outspoken and the only reason I shared something this personal was because there was no way for me to get an interview with him [Gurinder Singh Dhillon] and I wasn't sure I'd ever be back at the Dera.

He said "Nothing happens to the soul. It's just the mind. Depression is a first world problem. You don't see poor people getting depressed because they're too busy working. Stop feeling sorry for yourself." That's what he said. Just like that.

The weird thing is that I had really been starting to question Sant Mat and him. However, even then I was very much in awe of him and somewhat "in-love" in a Master/disciple kind of way. I thought he would be the last person on earth that would ever hurt me.

My heart was absolutely broken and if my husband hadn't been with me I guarantee you I would have taken the 3 months supply of sleeping pills that I happened to bring with me. I would have taken them all at once right after that happened.

So, I went from the memory of one betrayal and broken heart to the realization that there isn't really anyone you can totally trust in this world. So, maybe I deserved it.

The reason I think he was so harsh was because I had been talking with some ladies after one meeting about how inappropriate he had behaved. They brought it up and I joined in because we all witnessed the same thing. Basically he was just being super flirtatious with some young women but it's not like he "took them home or anything". It just seemed a bit off-color.

And I think the word got back to him that some people were concerned about it.

Of course, that may not be it at all. He may never have even heard about it. Maybe I just needed someone to tell me that I was a selfish fool for trying to commit suicide twice over some stupid guy (I didn't tell him about the guy - I didn't say exactly why I did it--just told him I had been depressed).

And maybe I needed to realize that a guru isn't going to be there for you either to comfort you. Maybe he wanted me to learn that it's a mean, mean world, and that only the god inside of me can ever comfort me. Maybe he also wanted me to understand that love is bullshit.

He also told me that mental health problems are a first world problem. He made that very clear over and over. During that session someone asked him about people with serious mental health problems (like it was their family member or something) and he just shook his head and said you don't want to know what I think about mental illness.

He said that. Exactly like that.

So, I would never ask him about depression or anxiety if I were you. And God forbid you mention anything more serious like bipolar or schizophrenia. I think besides being born blind at birth, having a serious mental health problem like bipolar or schizophrenia are the only other things that will keep you from being able to be initiated today.

Now all that is very dark. It's hard for me to see how I could have been in such a dark place like that at one time in my life when I'm usually really happy these days. I also don't have panic attacks anymore.

After that experience I left Sant Mat for good and when I left Sant Mat I stopped having panic attacks. The panic attacks were horrific and I no longer have them, nor do I have depression.

So, yes Jen, I think you're right. He gave me exactly what I needed. And what I need is not him.

I shared some other comments by Sonya in another post, "Being worshipped leads Gurinder Singh Dhillon to behave badly." Here's how that post starts out:

I no longer believe that any person deserves to be worshipped. Respected, yes. Everybody is deserving of respect. But worship, no. 

For a long time, though -- some 35 years -- I was a member of an Indian religious organization (Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB) headed by a guru who is considered to be God in human form.

Just imagine how Christians would act around Jesus if he appeared on Earth. Worshipful, right? Well, that's how RSSB devotees act around Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current guru. 

Recently Dhillon was accused of criminal conduct by his cousin, Malvinder Singh. Defenders of the guru are fond of saying that the death threats and massive financial fraud are just allegations. That's true, but they're believable allegations, given what's been previously reported on this blog about Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

To put it charitably, Dhillon doesn't act like the traditional RSSB guru. Less charitably, Dhillon acts very much like many other powerful men: full of ego, greedy, controlling, using women in less than admirable ways. (The Me Too movement has done a lot to raise awareness of this.)

Below is a comment left by Sonya on a recent post.

She does a good job of explaining why Gurinder Singh Dhillon behaves the way he does, given that he's worshipped everywhere he goes. Of course, other men are worshipped who don't end up behaving badly: the Pope, Dalai Lama, many others. 

The RSSB guru, though, is treated like the god he is believed to be by his devotees, while the Pope and Dalai Lama are just considered to be holy men. Of course, this doesn't excuse Dhillon's behavior -- it just helps to explain it.

Here's the first comment from Sonya. I'll share another one also.

Deepak Chopra quote generator shows ridiculousness of New Age'ism

Religions are absurd by definition.

They make confident proclamations about God, heaven, life after death, and such, even though there is zero convincing evidence that God, heaven, life after death, or other supernatural phenomena even exist.

But there's plenty of absurdity floating around in the sphere of "spiritual but not religious," which includes New Age ideas.

Deepak Chopra is a notable purveyor of this sort of crap. I've written about Chopra here, here, here, and here. The blog post linked to in the last "here" is called Deepak Chopra's inanity makes my head explode.

OK, not literally. Otherwise I couldn't be writing this post. Figuratively, for sure.

Thanks to regular commenter Jesse, I've been turned on to a Deepak Chopra quote generator that allows me, or anyone, to produce Chopra inanities on demand that sound very much like the real thing in Chopra's books.

Here's what Jesse said in an email:

Hey Brian, not sure if you've ever seen this thing, but it's one of those quote generators like hundreds of others, but this one is made up only of words from Deepak Chopra's tweets. http://wisdomofchopra.com

 

"Perceptual reality compliments the light of space time events" 

 

So many of the quotes it makes are indistinguishable from much of the "wisdom" coming out of the Guru scene that it really raises the question about what these guys are even talking about.

 

I've long suspected that many of the adherents of these philosophies and religions hear a lot of words over and over and begin using them without having a firm grasp on the concepts either because they don't have the capacity, or because their teachers are repeating jargon that sounds fancy but never actually forms a coherent point.

 

The newness and exoticness of the terminology is very attractive and can make people feel like they're part of something very secret and special.

 

I wish I could remember more and better examples, but for example Jehovahs Witnesses refer to people as 'ones' quite often, Hare Krishnas often say 'demoniac' or even things like 'plenary expansions' which I think they struggle to translate into a useful concept. There are a bunch of words I remember using a lot when I was in RSSB but I'm not thinking of any now.

 

Anyway, check out that quote generator. Maybe slip one of them into an article some time and see if anyone notices.

Jesse

 

Well, I'll consider doing that, Jesse.

However, I need to remember that the unexplainable fears a symbolic representation of miracles. And it's common knowledge that eternal stillness transforms the door of knowledge. In the end, though, perception quiets exponential self-knowledge.

So likely I'll use the Deepak Chopra quote generator. Just did, in fact. Three times.

It's hard to tell fake Chopra quotes from genuine ones. The one below likely is genuine, because it makes such little sense. I'll keep looking for that place inside myself, though. I really want to be able to run a mile in under four minutes to show people that us 70 year-olds can do anything.

Just need to find the nothing-is-impossible place within me.

RSSB You Tube channel has exactly zero content from Gurinder Singh

I usually don't publicize social media of religious organizations, but since I used to be a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas before I saw the clear light of atheism, and quite a few visitors to this blog either have been or still are associated with RSSB, here's a link to the organization's recently unveiled Official You Tube Channel.

You Tube says the RSSB channel has 882 videos. Clicking on the "Videos" tab, I was curious to see how many videos were from the last four gurus of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

It wasn't possible to tell exactly, since the titles of many of the videos are truncated online, so the person in the video isn't always shown.

Still, this is what resulted from a search of the first names of Gurinder Singh (current guru), Charan Singh (previous guru), Jagat Singh (guru prior to Charan), and Sawan Singh (guru prior to Jagat).

Gurinder... zero
Charan...162
Jagat...12
Sawan...30

It's decidedly weird that Gurinder Singh, who has been the RSSB guru for 29 years, has never, to my knowledge, written anything public, been in any public videos, and does his best to prevent photographs from being taken of him. 

Yet his name is all over the Indian financial press, since he and other members of the Dhillon family reportedly are the recipients of almost a billion dollars in loans that were either fraudulent, or at least decidedly suspicious. Plus, he's been accused of making a death threat against one of his cousins, Malvinder Singh.

So I can understand why Gurinder Singh doesn't want to speak publicly about his financial and legal troubles. It just seems very strange that a guru whose job supposedly is to guide people to knowledge of the highest spiritual realities is so unwilling to say anything on the record.

Maybe it is because Gurinder knows that he doesn't really any possess any special spiritual knowledge. Another theory is that since he appears to have been markedly changing the RSSB teachings, at least in talks to non-Indian audiences, he doesn't want to make it obvious how what he says differs from what is in the RSSB books.

Shabnam Dhillon, RSSB guru's wife, implicated in financial fraud

Well, today there was another story in the Indian financial press about the Singh brothers' fall from riches and how their involvement with Gurinder Singh Dhillon, guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, has contributed a lot to the legal trouble they're in.
Download Malvinder and Shivinder Singh and the ‘missing’ funds of a billion-dollar empire | Business News

The Indian Express story contains intriguing details about the involvement of the guru's wife, Shabnam Dhillon, in financial dealings that a criminal complaint filed by Malvinder Singh says were fraudulent.

Here's an image from the story that shows her connection to several shell companies that allegedly engaged in illegal transfers of money.

As you can read in the following excerpt from the story, Malvinder says that Prius Real Estate and Prius Commercial Projects engaged in a "wrongful loss" to RHC Holding. 

In the image above, the blue boxes indicate companies where Shabnam Dhillon was a director until August 2016. Those include Prius Real Estate and Prius Commercial Projects.

It's hard for me to believe that she was the mastermind behind the shady financial transactions. But she could be held legally responsible, unless her husband, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, breaks his silence and admits that he helped orchestrate the fraudulent transfer of funds.

Here's the excerpt from the Indian Express story. I've boldfaced parts for emphasis. Rs 6,000 crore is about $863 million.

The ‘Baba’ Factor

Earlier this year, Malvinder filed a complaint with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW), pointing fingers at his younger brother and RSSB spiritual head, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, for causing “wrongful loss” to him and shareholders of RHC Holding.

Malvinder’s affidavit filed in the Supreme Court this year claims over Rs 6,000 crore in loans and advances are to be recovered from “various individuals and entities belonging/controlled/linked to a few major companies and individuals, not a party to the arbitral award”. These include companies like Prius Real Estate and Prius Commercial Projects, Sunil Godhwani as well as the RSSB head himself, it alleged.

Shabnam Dhillon, Gurinder Singh Dhillon’s wife, was a director in Prius Real Estate and Prius Commercial Projects until August 2016, shows the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).

“I say that these loans and advances have become due, however, due to the differences within the family, the recovery process for the same has been blocked… In order to further strengthen the recovery process, I have even initiated criminal proceedings against some of the borrowers who owe money to the judgment debtors before the Economic Offences Wing,” read Malvinder’s affidavit.

His EOW complaint alleges that Shivinder, along with Sunil Godhwani and Dhillon, conspired to “siphon” money from RHC and settle the Dhillon family’s debts and dues by absorbing them in RHC. This includes an alleged plan by the younger Singh to take over six companies, including Modland Wears, Best Healthcare and Fern Healthcare, “without initiating any financials and legal due diligence”. The EoW complaint further alleged that the six companies in question had extended loans exceeding Rs 1,000 crore to the Dhillon and Godhwani family.

Modland, Fern and Best — in which the MCA says Shivinder is a director — were involved in “fictitious and fraudulent” transactions of over Rs 400 crore withdrawn from Fortis through ICDs, according to the Sebi.

Malvinder claimed his younger brother signed a “family settlement” with Dhillon agreeing to “absolve” him of “any wrongdoing whatsoever and agreeing that no liabilities or legal proceedings or criminality would be attributable” to the RSSB chief under any circumstances.

Furthermore, Daiichi in 2018 alleged that the brothers had siphoned funds through a complex “web of companies”, to render its award, now valued over Rs 3,500 crore, a “mere paper decree”.

Summary of Singh brothers saga features misdeeds by Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Today someone sent me a link to a The Week story about the saga of the Singh brothers' financial downfall that contains several mentions of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas who has been accused of criminal wrongdoing in this unholy mess.
Download Malvinder Shivinder Singh: The boom-to-doom saga of the brothers

You can read the entire story below. I've added some comments of my own after several sections in red italics. 

One thing I learned from the story is that seemingly Malvinder and Shivinder Singh aren't nephews of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, because the story says that their mother, Nimmi, is the guru's cousin.

I'm terrible at genealogy, but a person who is more knowledgeable than me emailed me last year, saying that the relationship of the Singh brothers and Dhillon is first cousins once removed. Some news stories say Dhillon is their uncle, and I've gone back and forth between "uncle" and "cousin" in my blog posts.

Now, though, I'm going to stick with cousin. Here's the story. I've boldfaced parts that relate to Dhillon.

LOVE AND VIOLENCE. Faith and betrayal. Goons and gurus. The boom-to-doom saga of brothers Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh is peppered with all these in good measure.

Once the poster boys of India Inc (their pharma company Ranbaxy Laboratories and later ventures Fortis Hospitals and Religare Enterprises had all crossed billion-dollar valuations under their watch), they messed it up big time, as their businesses collapsed in just about a decade.

Yet, as the drama plays out at the highest court of the land, it is clearly symptomatic of the many lacunae in India’s corporate regulatory framework.

It all started with money, lots of it. And greed.

On the face of it, the amount that is making the headlines—Rs 3,500 crore the brothers are ordered by the court to pay Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo—is grave enough. But it is loose change in comparison to the Rs 22,500 crore the brothers are said to have blown up since they sold Ranbaxy to Daiichi Sankyo in 2008 and ventured into a blitzkrieg of business expansion into multifarious areas.

They lost control of their businesses—some sold to the highest bidder, while some were taken over by lenders. Even their sprawling bungalow in Lutyens Delhi was sold to pay the dues.

“We would now like to fight for our justice and pride... and not for economics,” the brothers said in a joint statement a few months ago. But that was before they turned on each other, even coming to fisticuffs. “He assaulted me. He injured me,” Malvinder alleged in a video he posted online, showing his injuries, last December.

A few months earlier, Shivinder had alleged that Malvinder forged his wife Aditi’s signature in some documents, but they kissed and made up after their mother, Nimmi Singh, intervened.

The seeds of disaster were sown right at the time the brothers sold their family business, Ranbaxy, to Daiichi Sankyo. Ranbaxy had made a killing in the generic drug business to become India’s most valuable pharmaceutical company. At that time, Japan was modifying its drug laws to facilitate generic drugs, and acquiring a company specialising in it seemed like a fast way in for Daiichi Sankyo. Also, Daiichi got a drug maker with access to the lucrative American market.

The brothers got solid cash, nearly Rs 10,000 crore, and they promptly ploughed a chunk of it into their new businesses, Fortis (Rs 2,230 crore) and Religare (Rs 1,750 crore), which then kicked off an ambitious acquisition and expansion spree.

A similar amount of money (one report puts it at Rs 2,700 crore) was transferred to companies owned by the family of Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon, head of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a Punjab-based spiritual sect that commands lakhs of followers in northern India and abroad.

It was only the beginning of a stream of cash flow from the Singhs to Dhillon, who is Nimmi’s cousin. The brothers say Dhillon was like a father to them, especially after the death of their own, Parvinder Singh, in 1999. On Dhillon’s advice, they appointed Sunil Godhwani as the head of Religare Enterprises.

Along with the Singh brothers, Godhwani has been booked by the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police on charges of cheating, criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust. So Gurinder Singh Dhillon's advice hasn't worked out very well, legally and ethically. 

At first, all seemed hunky-dory. Fortis grew rapidly—once even crossing Apollo to become India’s biggest hospital chain—and Religare’s multiple wings performed well. Dhillon, on his part, invested in real estate, cashing in on the spiralling land rates in Delhi’s satellite towns in 2010 and 2011. More money flowed in to the many companies floated by him from the Singhs or through a complex maze of their companies and subsidiaries.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India has found that the "complex maze" alluded to above resulted in fraudulent loans made to shell companies controlled at the time by members of the Dhillon family and close associates. A Business Today story gives some details about this.

Then, disaster struck.

As the real estate bubble burst in 2011, Dhillon’s investments came a cropper, leaving him with huge debt. The rapid expansion of Fortis and Religare, all funded by massive loans, suddenly came back to bite the Singhs as the slowdown took hold.

“Appropriate risk, appropriate growth, transparency in financial dealings and having an independent board which could question their actions were all steps that could have contained their greed,” said N. Chandramouli, CEO of the business consultancy TRA Research. A vicious cycle of mortgaging assets and shares to pay off initial debt plunged them deeper into the debt hole. According to information with the Registrar of Companies, assets worth more than Rs 15,000 crore were pledged, many of them possibly to pay off earlier debts.

To make matters worse, Daiichi Sankyo alleged that the brothers did not disclose that the US government was investigating Ranbaxy when it acquired the company in 2008.

A few months after the deal, the Federal Drug Administration, America’s powerful drug regulator, banned medicines from two Ranbaxy plants in India and launched an investigation into the company’s practices. In 2014, Daiichi sold Ranbaxy to Sun Pharma.

In 2016, a Singapore tribunal directed the Singhs to pay about Rs 2,500 crore to Daiichi Sankyo (the total amount now is around Rs 3,500 crore, including interest and legal fees). The brothers, however, delayed the payment, prolonging the wrangling and setting the stage for the denouement at the Supreme Court.

In between, the Singhs lost control of both Religare (taken over by equity investors) and Fortis (bought by Malaysia’s IHH Healthcare last year).

Religare now is seeking to get its money back, which involves tracing the flow of money that ended up in the hands of the Dhillon family.

A month ago, in a complaint to the economic offences wing of the Delhi Police, Malvinder accused his brother, Dhillon and Godhwani of criminal conspiracy, cheating and fraud. He claimed the outstanding from Dhillon was Rs 8,646 crore as of 2016, and that he was threatened by Shivinder every time he asked for it.

Malvinder also has accused Dhillon of making death threats against him.

“Shivinder initiated these actions and permitted siphoning and malfeasance of funds with the ulterior motive of gaining control of the seat of the spiritual head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which was promised to him by Dhillon in lieu of the financial gains,” he said. Shivinder, however, said the fraud happened while Malvinder was running the company. Shivinder had renounced his corporate posts to join the ashram. He returned in 2015.

This appears to be a lie by Shivinder, though it is possible that Shivinder did join the Radha Soami Satsang Beas ashram at some point prior to when documents show he was actively involved in corporate affairs.

“It is not about individual honour... it doesn’t look good for the country’s honour,” said the Supreme Court while hearing the case against the Singhs. Corporate India’s recent track record when it comes to payments has not been very good.

It begets the question, what needs to be done? “Corporate laws are well formed, but poorly implemented,” said Chandramouli. “It is difficult for those erred against to get justice. In a world which works solely on trust, it is important that transgressors of trust be taken to task.”

Sam Harris shows my meditation is on the right spiritual track

There's many forms of meditation. They all have strengths and weaknesses, pluses and minuses. But only a few forms of meditation lead to an increased knowledge of reality, since most are based on unfounded religious dogma.

I'm confident that the meditation I've been practicing for about fifteen years -- after I wisely gave up a religiously-based form of meditation -- has me on the right spiritual track.

I explained why in "Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self." Here's how that 2014 post starts out.

Just as predicted, I'm really enjoying reading Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion."

I'm about a third of the way through. Which is far enough to have discovered the central theme. Harris writes:

My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion -- and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment.

...Most of us feel that our experience of the world refers back to a self -- not to our bodies precisely but to a center of consciousness that exists somehow interior to the body behind the eyes, inside the head.

The feeling that we call "I" seems to define our point of view in every moment, and it also provides an anchor for popular beliefs about souls and freedom of will.

And yet this feeling, however imperturbable it may appear at present, can be altered, interrupted, or entirely abolished. 

...Subjectively speaking, the only thing that actually exists is consciousness and its contents.

Wow. 

Now, I realize that some people would say "Yeah, makes sense, no big surprise" to the above scientifically- and experientially-persuasive truths.

But I spent decades as a devotee of a mystical philosophy that, like many others, taught that we humans have, or are, an eternal soul. The soul supposedly could return to God through meditation at the "eye center" -- that place behind the eyes and inside the head Harris, a neuroscientist and Buddhist practitioner, says doesn't house a self or soul.

So it sure seems like those who claim that this world is an illusion, with soul-realms being true reality, are the ones who have gotten it wrong. 

There is no enduring soul or self to be liberated. As Harris says in his book, genuine spirituality is realizing this. Thus a belief in the existence of soul leads one farther away from the truth, not closer. This is basic Buddhism, yet even many Buddhists still harbor fantasies of living on after death as... something or other.

Other posts I wrote about my first reading of Harris' "Waking Up" are here, here, and here. I re-read the book in 2016 and wrote another post about it. I had some quibbles about how Harris views consciousness, but upon a closer reading of certain sections I was able to better grasp his viewpoint.

The past few days I've been reading "Waking Up" a third time. I switch highlighter colors with every reading. By now some pages are almost completely highlighted.

This book is my favorite in the spiritual but not religious genre. Harris is famously down on religion, yet decidedly up on understanding the nature of ourselves through Buddhist Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation that's aimed at dissolving the illusion that we are, or have, a self/soul.

Harris writes:

Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y.

Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism present him as an ordinary  human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind.

Buddha means "swakened one" -- and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self. 

Compare this with the Christian view of Jesus, who is imagined to be the son of the creator of the universe. This is a very different proposition, and it renders Christianity, no matter how fully divested of metaphysical baggage, all but irrelevant to a scientific discussion about the human condition.

...Although the experience of self-transcendence is, in principle, available to everyone, this possibility is only weakly attested to in the religious and philosophical literature of the West.

Only Buddhists and students of Advaita Vedanta (which appears to have been heavily influenced by Buddhism) have been absolutely clear in asserting that spiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment.

Beautiful. 

What I love about this approach to spirituality is that it's solidly founded in modern neuroscience, which also says that our sense of being a "self" is almost certainly an illusion, so meditation needs to be aimed at realizing what we are not by paying close attention to what we actually are.

Namely, thoughts without a thinker; perceptions without a perceiver; emotions without an emoter; and so on.

Sam Harris writes:

The claim that we can experience consciousness without a conventional sense of self -- that there is no rider on the horse -- seems to be on firm ground neurologically. Whatever causes the brain to produce the false notion that there is a thinker living somewhere inside the head, it makes sense that it could stop doing this. And once it does, our inner lives become more faithful to the facts.

How can we know that the conventional sense of self is an illusion? When we look closely, it vanishes. This is compelling in the same way that the disappearance of any illusion is: You thought something was there, but upon closer inspection, you see that it isn't. What doesn't survive scrutiny cannot be real.

Harris uses this visual illusion as an analogy.

There appears to be a white box in the center of the figure. But, Harris says, "when we study the image, it becomes clear that there are only four partial circles. The square has been imposed by our visual system, whose edge detectors have been fooled."

Try blanking out all but one of the black figures with your hand. That makes it easier to see that what appears to be a white square actually is an absence, not a presence. 

Just like the self, or soul. It appears to be there, but this is an illusion. Look for it, and it's nowhere to be found. If that feeling of nowhere'ness persists, congratulations. You're enlightened! Or, awake.