Spirituality: following fences or bursting barriers?

I just got the September issue of the Western USA Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) newsletter. It made me sort of sad to see that soon I won't be getting it any more.

(Starting in 2008 it'll only be available at the RSSB equivalent of "church," satsangs, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the inspiration and information in the newsletter can be conveyed directly at satsang, while many "churchless" RSSB initiates stay in touch with organizational goings-on only through the newsletter).

I like to read it, even though I'm no longer a RSSB true believer, because I enjoy the sensations of ah yes! and oh no! that course through my mind as I come across sentiments that either still resonate with me, or now turn me off.

In the "turn me off" category, I question whether this definition of an ideal satsangi by RSSB representative Vince Savarese really captures the essence of what spirituality is all about for satsangis (RSSB initiates).

Get up at 3:00 AM; that is, rise and shine and sit somewhere other than your bed, fully awake and alert with a straight spine, unmoving for two to three hours or more every day, including Sundays and holidays.

While sitting do not fall asleep, do not lie down, do not think of anything but the Lord and your Master and his instruction.

Next eat only enough to satisfy hunger, not to satiety. While working, whatever you do to earn your livelihood or maintain your home and family obligations, remember God and your Master throughout the entire day as your main preoccupation.

And it goes on from there, the basic message being to "spend the bulk of your life cultivating spiritual desires and meditation practice and spend some time fulfilling your worldly obligations and needs."

Now, this advice leaves a lot to comment on. For now I'll limit myself to a general question. Is spirituality really about following rigid rules such as these?

What if, God forbid, you were to meditate with an unstraight spine? Or eat until you felt your stomach would burst? Or threw yourself into an educational, professional, or child-raising pursuit that consumed most of your time every day?

Would you be a bad satsangi? Would God be displeased if you had to work twelve hours a day to make ends meet and needed to spend your remaining free hours with your family rather than meditating?

Rules. Some people need them, some don't. I've got nothing against rules. I follow many pretty rigidly myself (such as "Thou shalt browse the World Wide Web and write a blog post daily").

But rules also are made to be broken (when I'm on vacation, sometimes I don't blog). And when it comes to spiritual rules, they have to be left behind at some point – in my unhumble opinion.

I'm speaking about the mystical side of spirituality here, not the religious side. Mystics seek wide open spaces, boundless horizons, oceans without shores. For ultimate reality is viewed as Oneness. Unity isn't divided into pieces by nice neat fences, which religions love to put up.

For many years, more than thirty, I stayed within the confines of the RSSB rules. When I bumped up against a thou shalt or thou shalt not barrier I followed it, making sure that I never, or rarely, strayed from the straight and narrow path enjoined by the organization's (and guru's) dictates.

However, the goal of all this fence-respecting supposedly was freedom. Breaking out of habitual ways of perceiving, thinking, acting, believing. RSSB's Enlightenment Stockyard was billed as a holding pen that prepared you for finding the gate that led to endless green pastures where the soul roamed freely.

Not in my experience, which is the one and only experience I can rely on when it comes to the inner side of my life.

Eventually I came to recognize what probably should have been obvious much earlier: you can't leave a fence behind if you're still holding onto it.

In the passage above RSSB initiates are told to think of "the Lord and your Master and his instruction" during meditation. Well, if you keep on thinking of these things. when are you ever going to reach a realm beyond thought, beyond instructions, beyond distinctions of this person and that person?

In every deep mystic practice that I'm aware of, there's this notion that what you're looking for is right here, right now. It isn't at the end of a long white fence plastered with rules. It isn't reached by following confining chutes constructed by religious leaders.

That nameless, featureless, mysterious Whatever is realized by dissolving all the barriers that keep you from recognizing what you really are and the universe truly is.

That's the theory, at least. And I can point to countless instances of it in the world's great mystical traditions: Christian, Sufi, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Neoplatonic.

None of them say that rule-fences are to be stayed within forever. If they serve any purpose at all, they're to lead you to look over them and say, "Wow, there's so much more beyond."

Then, to hop over and not look back.

Comments

[sapient]

RSSB news letter does make sense only to people who have blind faith for RSSB sect. So far RSSB was not scared of any ex-satsangi analyzing and also criticizing news letters publicly in blogs, but the moment they felt it, they are stopping the distribution and now it will be available to only who will be attending satsangs. It is another proof that RSSB is a cult cause they can't stand any criticism.
1. No internet for satsangis
2. Can't write anything against RSSB in wikipedia.
3. If the blog or site is owned by non follower then thousands of satsangis with a black tape on their eyes will keep visiting these sites defending their blind faith.

Also I can only pity the followers who have representative like Vince Savarese telling them what their Guru is advising. This guy is a pyscho. I haven't met him personally but during my relatives' psychiatric problems, I wrote quite a few letters and emails to him asking for advice which he never replied. My relative was reluctant to take medicine as being a blind follower he was thinking that since these medicine will alter his brain chemistry, they are equivalent to any drugs which are prohibited in RSSB vows. Though I never got any reply from Vince, but during those days my relative received a newsletter in which he wrote "Instead of relying on the medicines, rely on the grace of Master" and Bang! there goes another blind follower, following a representative of the so called holy master and my relative spent another year in delusions and anxieties. I have also heard the similar misguiding from Vince from other followers. People talk to him with great faith, thinking that he is the closest disciple of their guru but this phycho guy keeps on giving his deluded ideas far away from reality and thus keeps on spoiling other's life. Even a teaching assistant in a school behaves in a responsible manner but these representative are completely irresponsible.

[Bob]

With such lofty (or not so lofty - depending on your values) ideals, no wonder most satsangis feel inadequate and undeserving.

Such ideals, as those mentioned in the newsletter, are just more of the anti-life rhetoric that sums up much of the RS teachings. IMO, such a life style is both unnatural and very unhealthy.

Personally, I don't think descriptions of the "ideal Satsangi" serve much good at all. In fact, I'd be surprised if such a satsangi even exists.

Let us not forget that even Charan Singh barely meditated an hour a day during his youth before striking a deal with Sawan Singh to get out of an arranged marriage proposal (See Call of the Great Master).

Basically, I don't just buy the concept that the Creator or Divine Presence expects us to live a life of self-denial and rigidity in order to awaken spiritually.

Bob

[albert]

Yeah. Darn right. No power there, just tradition. The past is dead. Find He in whom Nij Dhar is present - such a One has no rules like you mentioned.

[Tucson Bob]

BOB WROTE: "Basically, I don't just buy the concept that the Creator or Divine Presence expects us to live a life of self-denial and rigidity in order to awaken spiritually."

I agree with your comments. Regarding the above I would add that "spiritual" insight can come of its own, but usually some process or stimulus appears to bring it about. So, while I don't think we need to live a life of self-denial and blind adherence to a set of vows, we often need something to take us out of our habitual patterns of perception...

Meditation, rituals, vision quests, psychotropic substances, fasting, personal crisis, chanting, retreats, etc. all have helped to 'set the stage', so to speak.

[Bob]

I understand the need for some sort of stimulus that helps a person break free from habitual ways of being. It appears that this becomes essential for connecting with one's authentic nature.

In my case, Sant Mat provided me with a sort of "safe haven" - a comfortable place to park my spiritual rear end. Unfortunately, the meditation and vows became a religious practice, no different than attending Mass or going to confession.

Once I left Sant Mat, I felt completely empty and alone - nothing to grasp on to, no philosophy to cling to. It was a ride into an "uncertainty zone" that I had never experienced before.

Oddly, when ever thing was stripped away, my spiritual life came alive.

Bob

[Tucson Bob]

BOB,

When I dropped the burden of Sant Mat vows, the relief was intense, the biggest "spiritual" experience I had in many years. I was was once again just an average 'Joe' like everyone else, free of the burden and behavioral obligations of being this 'satsangi' who are the chosen few to return to God in the arms of the exalted perfect savior/master. I was no longer separate. I was one. I was free.

[Rakesh Bhasin]

Tucson Bob,
You wrote that "When I dropped the burden of Sant Mat vows, the relief was intense, the biggest "spiritual" experience I had in many years." You are absolutely correct. This can be shared with a large number of persons who have identical experience by dropping sant Mat or any other vow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vow
Vow by definition does not provide a comfortable position . It is more of a binding. If one is relieved of it, naturally one feels free. You must learn to feel cool about it. Otherwise this feeling will continue to haunt you. You must enjoy your present being and do not look for a shelter here or there.

In any case, I am not trying to preach you but I also had a similar experience by dropping Sant mat vows in my life.

with love,

[Bob]

Tuscon Bob

Hey, I get what you mean about just being an "average joe". I can understand your sense of relief!

Bob

[Jeremy]

Thanks for all these comments. I have recently left Sant mat after 25 years. It was coming for a long time but this Blog crystalized all my doubts and nagging concerns. It is so nice to be free and alive again and just a normal person. I still retain affection for Charan Singh, and will remain a vegetarian, but that is about it. What a relief.

[Tucson Bob]

Jeremy,

There comes a time for many of us to move on. Perspectives change and mature. Rather than a loss or failure, this is an awakening, an opportunity, your initiation into a new life. Welcome to the Church of the Churchless with no walls or boundaries to confine your infinite self.

[Esteban]

Can I join? After 34 years with nagging doubts all along, I've finally tossed the ticket that I've been holding for so long in clenched fist. Like Jeremy, I do still retain affection for Charan Singh, and like Brian, I was a vegetarian before and will remain so. I'm not interested in alcohol or drugs, and of course I don't want to cheat people or anything. And this meditation thing that I've been doing for 2 1/2 hours a day, well, difficult or not, I've kind of gotten attached to it, especially the last hour or so. So other than those 4 or 5 small points, my RS days are behind me.

What a relief! ;)

[tao]

To manjit fagura,

Some sincere advice: You are a still youngster but you will be a young man soon enough. So begin now and gain true wisdom. Don't waste your valuable time and precious human life on bogus cult-gurus like Gurinder S. Dhillon who will give you nothing and lead you nowhere.

[firebrow]

you ask:
"Is spirituality really about following rigid rules such as these?"

You are absolutely right to ask this. One might also have asked Shakespeare why in his poetry he so often ascribed to the rigid forms of the sonnet and iambic pentameter.

An argument can be made that these constrictions propelled his artistic inspiration even further, forcing him, even by way their limitations, to master language more fantastically.

It's true and obvious, if I may extend this metaphor, that minimalists and the beats reacted strongly against these conventions and were able to express themselves just as brilliantly.

My question is: is one more brilliant than the other? Or is this a matter of simple inclination?

Another point: the beats and others never truly abandoned those forms and formalities, and in fact spent a good chunk of their creative lives reacting against them.

In the same way when we take the spiritual rules = good vs spiritual rules = bad debate: we in any case must concede that it is the rules from which we draw the very emotional vocabulary of the discussion.

I will add in the same vein that there is tremendous difference between you, a novitiate who may have graduated from these constrictions, and a man/woman who simply lives a diffuse, dissolute unreflective and self-indulgent life. Your actions through the course of a day may be identical to his, but the difference unavoidably remains; and the difference remains thanks to your contact and submission to those rules in the past.

Heidegger writes of a farm boy eager to leave the farm, who does so, rejects his father and all the rural life, and studies and strains and wanders the city and stays up nights to find access to true Being. As he approaches, somehow, authenticity as a man, that same boy finds that he has returned to the Farm of his father and the rural life that once so infuriated him. But he and the world around him are transformed.

My point in all this?
1) That although you have returned to be a normal Joe, you are and are not that. Your world has been transformed.
2) That the rules of your sangat were a womb, not a mistake.
3) that that womb may be worth preserving for others to find. I can even imagine a true master needing none of it, finding it tedious, and yet consenting to the strictures simply to set an example for those who may need the crucible.

I am not that master, and as a matter of inclination am more like you than some worried little monk, and for that matter am quite sure I would prefer your company to his. All the same I see no profit in comparing one style of being to another, simply because they are really impossible to compare, and in any case any style of being may in the end share a common possibility within it that the practitioner may lose perspective.

Who knows what changes are in store? You and I may one day still find a moment in which it will feel more beautiful to sit straight daily before dawn for a few hours than not to. For now I'd rather walk my dog.

I have no truth nor answer, only a willingness to see, and to be and let be.

cheers, btw, and thanks for the website.