Church of the Churchless

Wise observations about spiritual experiences and religious craziness

One of the pleasures of having this blog is being able to read comments from blog visitors that make me think, "Wow! That was beautifully and wisely said."

Sometimes when this happens I share a comment in a blog post so it will be more visible. Such is the case with two comments from "JB" that you can read below. Each was left on a recent post, "Meaning comes from us, not God."

This comment by JB relates to the supposed truthfulness of spiritual/mystical experiences. I agree with what JB says, though these experiences often have more to them than simply emotionality. JB does address this in an interesting way, saying that an impression of cosmic unity, for example, derives from the emotional state, rather than the other way around.

Spence wrote: "Whatever it is it is built into the human frame, the healthy and functioning human frame, at least for some of us. The fact that the details are found in spiritual writings of the Word and the Light down through the ages give confirmation to those of us who have experienced these things repeatedly since early childhood that they are truthful..."

I think you are right that these experiences are "built in". The capacity for "mystical" experiences are "built into the human frame" as much as the capacity for any psychological experience is built into the human frame.

I don't think anyone is disputing that these experiences occur. It is true that they occur, yet one must question whether they are truthful in terms of the interpretations typically ascribed to them.

All manner of human emotional experiences have repeatedly occurred throughout the ages and all have been documented since the birth of written language. That they have repeatedly occurred and have been written about cannot be construed as constituting evidence attesting to their truthfulness.

I think these experiences certainly can be healthy, yet they can also be unhealthy as evidenced by all of the mystic-gurus that become abusive and exploitative. The experience of seemingly becoming "one" with the universe apparently has different effects on different people. For some, the ego apparently expands to the size of the universe.

Speaking more about mystical experience: these consist of intensely positive emotions coupled with a sense of ultimate existential unity, the "rightness" of everything, and an underlying impression of love and benevolence embracing everything. I think that the impressions are secondary to and derive from the immediate emotional state.

Simply put, the world appears perfect because you feel so damn good.

This is analogous to the experience of falling in love with a person, where the world itself seems to become brighter and more beautiful. This is a well-known and documented experience of people falling in love. The positive emotion seems to generate an attendant change in perception. Of course the world hasn't changed from what it was before, it just feels different.

If you have ever read any case histories of people experiencing extreme negative emotions, there is often an attendant alteration of their perception. The world becomes disjointed, everything seems "wrong", and everything seems imbued with doom or malevolence. For some, these experiences repeatedly occur.

The point is, the emotional state seems to inform the perception. I think it would be as wrong to assert that mystical experience provides a true window into the essence of existence any more than the diametrically opposed emotional state. The positive experience is certainly healthier, as it is conducive to survival, but I think it would be wrong to call it truthful.

And this JB comment briefly discusses something I've also wondered about: how religious tales (I'd call them fables) would be viewed if they emanated from a single human mind, rather than being embraced by a collection of people that often numbers in the many millions, or even billions.

Brian wrote: "Wouldn't it be bizarre if, say, someone dressed in a Wonder Woman costume kept proclaiming, 'You've got to believe in Wonder Woman! She's real, not a fantasy!' Likely this person would be viewed as having some sort of mental illness."

I've often asked believers to take a particular religion and imagine what it would be like if these beliefs had not been institutionalized and spread like a contagion throughout civilization, but rather were proclaimed by one single person.

Take Christianity as an example. Imagine none of the teachings of Christianity existed and one person started uttering statements like:

"There is a male creator God who has a son, whom he sent down to be killed by being nailed to a piece of wood so that humanity could be forgiven for a disease passed down from a woman who listened to a talking snake with wings and ate a piece of fruit from the wrong magical tree."

This person would be considered to have a mental illness with psychotic features. Yet there are literally millions of people that believe this. Thus, beliefs that would clearly be categorized as mental illness when exhibited by one person, are categorized as religion when they are embraced by millions.

It's just a numbers game. Religion is culturally sanctioned mental illness. Fill in the blank with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, or any of the sub-cults (Kabbalah, Sufism, Gnosticism, Vedanta, etc). The result is the same.

Absolutely. One of my favorite crazy stories from the Sikh/Sant Mat tradition is that of Kal, the ruler of the lower realms of creation, earning his exalted position from God after standing on one leg, and one foot, for many yugas -- which is a really long time. Who knew that lower gods have legs and feet just like us?

Forbes story about Singh brothers and RSSB guru shows danger of "honor cultures"

Someone sent me another story about the long-running Indian financial drama involving the Singh brothers and the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB)  guru -- Gurinder Singh Dhillon, a relative of Shivinder and Malvinder Singh.

Malvinder and Shivinder Singh

What's interesting about this Forbes story, "How To Lose a $2 Billion Family Inheritance: The Tale of the Singh Brothers of India," is that it is written by an American, Dennis Jaffe.
Download How To Lose A $2 Billion Family Inheritance: The Tale Of The Singh Brothers Of India

So Jaffe looks upon the tangled web of the Singh brothers' business dealings from a different perspective than the numerous stories on this subject that have appeared in Indian business publications. Plus, Jaffe specializes in "family enterprise consulting" that aims at helping families manage multi-generational businesses.

Before sharing some quotes from the story, and my own take on it, here's what the person who emailed me a link to the Forbes piece said about it. "Satsangis" means initiates of RSSB.

Hi Brian,

Yes, the $2B question has been covered numerous times already, but this one is my favorite. I could highlight so many observations made in this new coverage... points 1, 2, and 3 at the end of this article are excellent.

Another thing I really like is that this is an Editor’s pick from Forbes (about as credible and reputable as we’re going to get) focusing on the ethics of what transpired.

I really hope you’ll be able to share this in a post at some point on your blog. People need to see this from a Western business perspective. That alone shows how incredibly unethical this whole mess was.

 

Seems that a lot of Satsangis and non-Satsangis are disputing facts when from an American perspective it’s beyond just individual facts—it’s a story of gross unethical conduct leading to the point of criminal investigations.

 

Today’s “gurus” need to start adhering to the principals of transparency, especially if they’re going to be getting involved with other people’s money (unfortunately not likely to happen as most view themselves above the law).
Does Dhillon view himself as above the law since he’s “GIHF”? [GIHF means God In Human Form]

Sadly, a lot of his followers do. One of GSD’s favorite sayings is “it’s my way or the highway”. Wow. Glad I’m not on that road anymore.

Not enough has been said about how much damage has been done to the non Singh/Dhillon shareholders of the public companies in question. GSD’s lack of good business practices, secrecy and poor advice cheated many people invested in these companies. That should alarm everyone. The lack of transparency and the honor system among India’s gurus make them the perfect “offshore-banking-system-for-greed”, so to speak.

If you haven’t read this piece yet I think you’ll really appreciate it.

Yes, I did appreciate it. I invite you to read the entire story. Here's some excerpts regarding the RSSB guru and the notion of "honor cultures."

In just a few years since inheriting a fortune from a company founded by their grandfather, brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have managed to lose almost everything — including control over two public companies. Their story seems to affirm the axiom of “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” a curse that plagues too many inherited family businesses.

Reflecting on their recent history (and recognizing the lack of public information available), there are lessons to deduce on how to avoid this sad, but common, occurrence.

The Singh brothers were heirs to Ranbaxy Laboratories, which was then India’s foremost pharmaceutical company, founded by their grandfather Bhai Mohan Singh and stewarded by their father, Dr. Parvinder Singh, who died in 1999. The brothers, who each inherited one-third of the company, engineered its sale in 2008.

After that, they heavily invested the proceeds into the fast expansion of Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises, two other public companies they owned.

They also loaned vast amounts of money to companies owned by a family headed by a spiritual leader whom they followed and who was a relative of theirs — Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Dhillon was a businessman as well, and he and members of his sect were central to investments made with loans from the brothers, including investments in a wide-ranging real-estate portfolio.

...The story of their decline and their web of investments is very complex and very opaque. What seems clear is that the brothers made loans and commitments to many different entities. What is also clear is that their spiritual and personal relationships led them to make business decisions that in hindsight appear to be extremely ill advised.

...While many aspects of this story are uniquely Indian — such as the deep connection to a family spiritual leader, moving funds among family ventures, and opaque business structures — similar situations can be seen in many cultures when family enterprises pass to the third generation.

India is an example of a type of culture that has been called an “honor culture.” Such cultures, common in South Asia, South America, Africa and southern Europe, are characterized by a strong family hierarchy with a single family leader, intense loyalty within the family and to a close network of long-term allies, and little trust of anyone outside the family and its network.

These cultures are oriented around power, loyalty, secrecy and distrust of external powers. They take root in societies where there is little long-term stability and limited or developing rule of law.

...Honor cultures emphasize secrecy and reliance on a strong — and often unquestioned — leader. Today, this time-honored secrecy and lack of transparency is giving way to global agreements that emphasize transparency. Secret agreements with governments are being questioned, and businesses, even those owned and controlled by a single family, are becoming regulated.

But it seems that the Singh family businesses were caught midstream in this evolution. The Singh brothers’ trust of the Dhillon family that led to their no-interest loans with little accountability have little place in an arena of more open dealings with greater accountability. And while family members tend to be satisfied with secrecy when they receive predictable profits and wealth, when things go south, conflict erupts.

What's particularly interesting here is that the Singh brothers' family relationships were intimately mingled with their spiritual relationship with the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Dhillon, who is the Singh brothers cousin (I used to think he was their uncle, but I've been corrected about this).

Thus Malvinder and Shivinder Singh both respected Gurinder Singh's authority as a familial father figure, but also looked upon him in the guru's God In Human Form guise -- someone with divine wisdom and mystical powers. So it's no wonder they went along with questionable business decisions involving the Dhillon family and Sunil Godhwani, who reportedly was the guru's "right hand man."

Bottom line: question authority. Especially when the authority is a single person, or just a few people. As Jaffe points out in his Forbes piece, it is vitally important to have an independent board of directors overseeing the decisions of a CEO. 

As a family enterprise passes across generations and becomes truly immense, its governance and oversight cannot be limited to the skills of a single leader, especially one who only trusts old alliances and does not seek new talent.

I can't resist pointing out that while Radha Soami Satsang Beas is a charitable spiritual organization, not a profit-making business, it's my understanding that RSSB is basically under the control of a single person, the guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. RSSB is secretive and mistrustful of outsiders, so it also operates much like an "honor culture." 

Which is dangerous. Both for family businesses, and for spiritual groups.

Meaning comes from us, not God

Many religious people wrongly believe that atheists, secular humanists, and others who don't believe in a personal God (most Buddhists and Taoists fit this category) lack meaning in their lives. Actually, we do.

Most of my friends and relatives are atheists. They live deeply meaningful lives. 

In his book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World," psychiatrist Ralph Lewis explains how an unguided universe contains people who lives caring, loving, purpose-driven lives. Below is a summary of key themes in his book from the final chapter.

I've written a couple of other blog posts about Lewis' book:
"Why God is an illusion, along with other supernatural stuff"
"Why God is a psychological illusion"

Here's the excerpt from Finding Purpose in a Godless World. I want to point out that while Lewis calls our world "random," "unguided" is a better term for the world. Obviously laws of nature aren't random, or they wouldn't be laws. They just don't proceed from the guidance of a God.

A random world -- which according to all the scientific evidence and despite our intuitions is the actual world we live in -- is too often misconstrued as nihilistic, demotivating, or devoid of morality and meaning. My hope is that this book will help people to see the scientific worldview of an unguided, spontaneous universe as awe-inspiring and foundational to building a more compassionate society.

Nonbelievers and doubters of religion, as well as those who remain believers, can be reassured that the increasing trend toward loss of religious faith that is occurring in modern societies is not leading to a generalized loss of morality or to an alienated feeling of purposelessness and meaninglessness.

Far from being nihilistic, the fully naturalist worldview of secular humanism empowers us and liberates us from our irrational fears. With its emphasis on humans having to rely on ourselves and each other, it motivates us to live with a sense of interdependent humanistic purpose. This deepens our feelings of value, engagement, and relatedness.

The secular humanist worldview reminds us that while the universe doesn't care, people do.

We have seen in this book that biological, evolutionary factors can explain how it is that we are inclined toward generally prosocial, cooperative, and motivated behavior. Biological evolution enabled morality and purposive, meaning-oriented human behavior; cultural evolution refined it. We will need to continue to work actively toward this collective goal of more caring societies in order to further strengthen the progress of our species.

If, like me, you started out on this journey with a vague sense that our lives and the universe are somehow directed, then I hope you have experienced this book as a gentle invitation to move beyond the naive, soothing stories we have been telling ourselves about a purposeful universe. I truth you have encountered in its place a solidly science-based, yet deeply humanistic worldview, freed by rationality from neurotic torment.

In countering fears of societal nihilism, this book has walked a fine line, just as I try to do every day with my patients -- a line between cautious optimism and realism.

Societal progress in our increasingly secular modern era has been uneven and faltering; catastrophic derailments have occurred along the way and will always be a risk. But the long-term positive trend toward more compassionate, purpose-driven societies has been strong and unmistakable. Developing more caring societies is a realistic, far from naive project for humanity.

Those who have embraced science, not only as a profession but also as a worldview, tend to be among the most inspired and purpose-driven members of society. It is my hope that the worldview presented in this book might motivate you, valued reader, to become just such a person.

Here's a message from Sheena for RSSB devotees

Sheena (a pen name) wrote a compelling book, "Memoirs of a Seeker."

Though Sheena describes the guru to whom she was once devoted only as "Guruji," and doesn't name the center headed up by Guruji, it is clear that the guru is Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organization headquartered in India at a place commonly known as the Dera.

I've written several blog posts about Sheena's book. I liked how she wrote so honestly about losing faith in Gurinder Singh after coming to the Dera and doing volunteer work that brought her into close contact with the guru. You can read excerpts from her book, and my defense of Sheena, in these posts:

"Sheena's 'Memoirs of a Seeker' throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon"
"My response to someone who doubts 'Sheena's' stories about Gurinder Singh Dhillon"

Sheena has been reading the posts and related comments on this blog. Today she sent me this message. I'll share some thoughts about what Sheena says after the message. "Satsangis" refers to RSSB initiates. "Hukm" means command or divine order.

Hello Brian

I deeply appreciate your mature, fair reviews and comments, for respecting others need for anonymity and staying with the subject instead of playing Sherlock Holmes as some are doing.  Makes you a trustworthy and honourable man!   My comments/questions to satsangis who constantly have debates on your blog:

1.  Who Sheena is, is inconsequential.  If Sheena wants to remain anonymous, she must have good reason and the constitutional right to stay anonymous.
   
   
2. Why do they spend time reading your blogs and then spend even more energy and time arguing when their faith and belief are supposedly intact?  Sense of insecurity, doubts?
   
   
3. Why do they react to criticism so ferociously when RSSB declares "Critics are our best friends?"  Is their faithlessness coupled with lack of following Master's 'hukm'?  Doesn't reflect well on both the disciple or teacher.
   
   
4. They claim that the teachings are important.  Yes, teachings are important when following a religion or a spiritual path.  But isn't it equally important for the teacher to follow 'his' teachings too? Or are the teachings only for disciples?

           Sheena

I agree with everything Sheena says.

Regarding her first point, the message of her book is indeed much more important than the messenger. So far I haven't heard any commenter take issue with the accuracy of her disturbing stories about Gurinder Singh, including that he ignored a report of sexual molestation at the Dera.

Regarding her second point, I also find it strange, and amusing, that many RSSB devotees spend a lot of time reading my churchless posts and commenting on them.

I've become an atheist after belonging to RSSB for 35 years. I spend zero time on blogs, websites, or discussion groups praising the glory of the RSSB guru and the RSSB teachings, because I'm confident in what I believe and don't believe. So I think Sheena is right. Arguing on this blog does seem to show a sense of insecurity and doubts among RSSB initiates.

Regarding her third point, I've heard that the critics quote is indeed what Gurinder Singh has said to his audiences. Yet the attacks, insults, and threats I get regularly from supposedly "spiritual" RSSB devotees does go against their guru's words about viewing critics as our best friends.

Regarding her fourth point, Sheena directs our attention to a crucial difference between the teachings of RSSB (a branch of Sant Mat), and traditional religions like Catholicism. Here's how Wikipedia describes Sant Mat:

The expression Sant Mat literally means "Teachings of the Saints" – the "Path of Sants (Saints)", "Path of Truth", "Right or Positive Path". As "point of view of the Sants", the term Sant is pivotal. Derived from the Sanskrit sat (सत) and has overlapping usages (true, real, honest, right). Its root meaning is "one who knows(is) the truth" or "one who has experienced (merged into) Ultimate Reality." The term sant has taken on the general meaning of "a good person" but is properly assigned to the poet-sants of medieval India.

According to the RSSB teachings, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, like previous RSSB gurus, is considered to be a modern living saint. As such, supposedly he has taken on the godly qualities of someone who has directly experienced, or merged with, an ultimate divine reality.

So if the guru acts like a normal flawed human being, which includes being desirous of making lots of money, enjoying the company of pretty women, and ignoring reports of sexual misconduct at the organization he oversees, this is a much bigger deal than if Catholic priests, or even the Pope himself, exhibit immoral behavior.

Jesus is a long-dead "saint" to Catholic believers. Nothing a living Catholic can do affects their belief that Jesus is the Son of God who came to earth to redeem a sinful humanity. 

On the other hand, Gurinder Singh Dhillon is a living "saint," so his actions do reflect on the validity of the RSSB teachings. As Sheena aptly said, "Yes, teachings are important when following a religion or a spiritual path. But isn't it equally important for the teacher to follow 'his' teachings too? Or are the teachings only for disciples?"

This goes a long way toward explaining why so many RSSB devotees are unwilling to face unwelcome facts about Gurinder Singh's business dealings and the stories about him that Sheena relates in her book. They attack the messengers -- such as the Indian business press, Sheena, and me -- rather than admit that the guru they believe in is a flawed human being, just as we all are.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon 

Update on reported September 17 meeting of Indian RSSB secretaries

UPDATE: Well, now I've heard from somebody in India that the meeting did happen on September 17, and that it happens every year around this time. It's strange that, if I recall correctly, only one commenter on this blog said it was an annual meeting. Just goes to show that when it comes to RSSB, it's difficult to get straight answers about what is happening with this rather secretive spiritual organization. Anyway, it's good to have a confirmation that my original blog post on this subject wasn't "fake news."

-----------------------

Juan just left the comment below, indicating that the September 17 meeting of 1500-2000 Indian RSSB secretaries I reported on in this post was indeed scheduled, then cancelled.

I've also heard that Gurinder Singh Dhillon's scheduled initiation ceremony in New Delhi, which was last weekend, I believe, was cancelled. So it still seems to me that something is up. We just don't know what.

In line with what Juan said in his comment, I feel that if a notice of a meeting, along with a churchless blogger's guesses about what the meeting might be about, shake up someone's spiritual faith, then that faith is resting on a very insubstantial foundation. 

A pleasing message about me, and honesty about RSSB

Some people like this blog. Some people don't like it. After 14 years of regularly writing here on the Church of the Churchless, I've come to expect both praise and criticism. 

Not surprisingly, I prefer hearing good things about me and this blog. So when I got the following email message today from someone in India I've been corresponding with, it made me feel good. 

I'll explain why after the message.

I've corrected some typos and made the formatting easier to read. Otherwise the message is as written. "Sewa" means service, or volunteer work. The Dera is the Indian headquarters of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organization I was a member of for 35 years. 

Here's the message, minus an introductory part related to a subject this person and I have been discussing.

And I would like to mention and please mention the following in your blog too (of course only if you wish to ) :  

 

I have been reading your blog since last year Feb, after I was of course suggested by an important member of RSSB committee and I was still doing sewa in Dera. And I must admit after reading each of your blog I thought you must be a very arrogant man. Or you didn't make much efforts in meditation and are a coward to quit early.

 

But knowing that people living in Dera in fact people running that place as incharges are equally unsure of the path as the people who criticise it, my thinking changed and then of course seeing the condition there by my own eyes, a place lacking love, the very foundation it was supposed to be built on.

 

I don't know if the path is true or not. I haven't really made complete effort in meditation to comment. But talking to you personally on emails and listening to your reply it is my understanding that you are a very humble and an understanding man.

 

You have a blog, there are many things i told you personally and you know my real name, you could have written those things on your blog if you had to be aggressive towards your critics. You kept your word, a quality that is rarely found today. Your view point comes from experience and logic and deep thinking.

 

At the end of the day you might  be wrong or the people who criticise you might be, in reference to this path. But the truth is none of us are aware for sure. But at least you support logic and see what's written on the wall.

 

And for the people coming to your blog and trying to defend RSSB, if they were enlightened they wouldn't care for your blog or try to protect the image. They wouldn't waste energy on that. What I have learned from the limited conversation we have had is whether you are right or not but you are a man with right intentions. 

Like the person who wrote this message, I also can't be sure about what the ultimate truth regarding reality is. None of us can be. We all make educated guesses, or assumptions, that are founded in our experience, upbringing, culture, education, and so on. 

All we can do is keep facing toward the truth as we have come to understand it, while being open to fresh ideas, new facts, different ways of looking upon the world. 

It is difficult to admit, "I don't know." So I liked this person's willingness to say about the RSSB teachings, "I don't know if the path is true or not." 

But what this person does know is how they were treated while doing "sewa" (again, volunteering) at the Dera. Just as I've heard from other people, this person says that the Dera lacks love -- which is a sad commentary on a spiritual community. 

I liked how this person said that my viewpoint comes from "experience and logic and deep thinking." That's what I aspire to, though sometimes I fall short. Now, I realize that some spiritually-minded people believe that love and devotion is all that counts.

I disagree -- strongly. 

History is full of examples of individuals, or masses of people, who were fervently devoted to destructive causes and leaders. It makes no sense to be devoted to some unworthy person or entity. Going down that route leads to authoritarianism, being taken advantage of, dangerous blind obedience.

My wife was a psychotherapist in private practice for quite a few years. One of her specialities was domestic violence. Most of her clients were women being abused by men. Without giving their names, she'd explain to me how many women stay in an abusive relationship, even when they're being hit, yelled at, threatened. 

Why? Many reasons.

Some are that the women didn't know what to do if they left the relationship, or they were afraid of what the man would do if they stood up for themselves. So my wife would give them options, and help the women recognize that they had more strength than they thought they possessed.

Likewise, one of the reasons I started this blog in 2004 was to encourage people to realize that when it comes to religion, spirituality, mysticism, and philosophy, independence is a virtue, not a vice. I haven't changed this blog's slogan over all those years: Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. 

Sometimes it makes sense to stay in a relationship with another person "til death do us part," as wedding vows in the United States often say. Yet sometimes it doesn't. 

And sometimes it makes sense to remain a member of a religion or spiritual path for the rest of your life. Yet sometimes it doesn't. Think for yourself. Nobody else can do that for you. Nor should they.

My death is prematurely celebrated

This is one of the pleasures of blogging -- being celebrated.

Since I'm writing a blog post about this comment, obviously the commenter was celebrating prematurely. Naturally I was curious about where my fan lives, so I looked up the IP address of the commenter. It came from the Punjab, in India. 

Nice! I'm being celebrated from halfway around the world!

The meaning of this pithy comment is open to discussion, of course. Another commenter was a bit generous in this regard, given the historical comparisons, but I did agree with the remark about the need for us to connect with reality.

My response to someone who doubts "Sheena's" stories about Gurinder Singh Dhillon

It's fitting that yesterday I heard from someone who had skeptical questions about a book I wrote about last month, "Memoirs of a Seeker," by Sheena (a pen name, not her real name).

Fitting, because the United States, where I live, currently is embroiled in a fierce debate about a reported sexual assault by a Supreme Court nominee, whose female victim has said she is willing to testify at an open hearing next week. 

Christine Blasey Ford kept silent about the attack for many years. Now she's being criticized for waiting so long to speak out. But it is widely recognized that women have excellent reasons for remaining silent, especially when there is a large power imbalance between the woman and the man involved.

In Sheena's case, the man she refers to as "Guruji" was Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). In her book Sheena speaks about several sexual-related encounters involving Gurinder Singh. They weren't anything close to sexual assault, but they disturbed her nonetheless. 

And Sheena also describes a case of sexual molestation at the Dera, which is the RSSB headquarters in India. She told Gurinder Singh about this, but then realized he already knew about it and had ignored the molestation. She also realized that this wasn't a one-off incident.

You can read excerpt's from Sheena's book in my blog post, "Sheena's 'Memoirs of a Seeker' throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon." Because I applaud her courage in writing the book, I'm pleased to defend Sheena against the questions raised by Catherine Muller in an email to me.

As you can read below, Muller invited me to post her message on my blog, which I've done. Muller's message is shown in red, and my interspersed responses are in black. (Sorry for the italics; seems to be related to me copying Muller's message from her email; couldn't find a way to undo the italics in HTML, which I'm not expert in).

Brian,

 

Having read your review on Amazon of Memoirs of a Seeker, I have three comments:

 

1. You say in your review that you haven't read all of 'Memoirs of a Seeker.' Do you usually write reviews for books that you have not engaged with in their entirety? (If it was such a good read, as you claim it was, why did you not finish it?)

Yes, I've written Amazon reader reviews before finishing a book. Can't remember how many, but at least one other. Here's a link to that review. 

Regarding Sheena's book, I was told about it in an email from someone who knows Sheena and thought I'd enjoy her book. I paid $9.95 for the Kindle edition. I looked through it fairly quickly, zeroing in on the parts of the book that describe her interactions with a guru, and the "seva" (volunteer work) she did for the guru.

 

I'd heard that the guru was Gurinder Singh Dhillon, and the seva was done at the Dera. However, I didn't see any mentions of the guru's name in the book, so at first this perplexed me. Which gets us to Muller's next question.

 

2. Secondly, you write in your review: "From what I have been told, the guru Sheena writes about is..."  Who told you this exactly? Or are you repeating hearsay? Why don't you acknowledge who your unattributed source is? (Or sources are?) As a man who purports to love science and truth, are you aware that under many legal systems around the world hearsay is inadmissible as evidence in a court proceeding?

After I looked through all of Sheena's book, and read closely the portions that were of most interest to me, I had several email communications with the person who knew Sheena and could forward questions to her. This was my first way of confirming that the guru in her book was indeed Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

 

After I published my blog post about the book, and defended Sheena against commenters who were challenging her truthfulness, I got a relayed message from Sheena saying, "Hi again .... just heard from her and she wants me to thank you for fiercely defending her!" That made me feel really good.

It also was another confirmation that the guru in her book is Gurinder Singh, since I had said this in the blog post, and one would expect that if I'd gotten the guru's identity wrong, Sheena would have corrected me. Finally, I've also heard from a RSSB insider who knows Sheena's real name, and is familiar with who she is, and what she did at the Dera. 

So there's plenty of confirmation that the guru Sheena writes about is Gurinder Singh, and that Sheena is a real person who did seva at the Dera. This isn't at all hearsay.

 

3. Thirdly, you praise Sheena for 'displaying that brave commitment to the truth'. Well, how brave is it to write under a book under a moniker? Need I remind you of a contemporary example - a man like Edward Snowden who was truly heroic enough to take on the NSA and flee into exile when he exposed his story? And should I remind you of the whistleblower who broke the Cambridge Analytica story, Chris Wylie? Pick any social justice hero of significance in recent times, Brian. Nobody of any real credibility and clout does anything radically brave by writing under a moniker. 

 

As noted above, there are good reasons why women are reluctant to reveal their true identity when they are speaking "truth to power," as a familiar saying goes in my country. And in general, anonymous sources often are used by journalists in the United States and elsewhere.

"Deep Throat" in the Watergate scandal is a good example. It took many years before this person's identify was exposed. So I don't agree with you that speaking anonymously under an assumed name shows that a person lacks credibility. 

Over the 14 years I've been blogging on the Church of the Churchless, I've received many emails from people who wanted to share information about RSSB or some other religious entity, but didn't want their name revealed. I've always honored their request, because I know from personal experience how vicious true believers can be when their beliefs are challenged.

 

If you doubt this, check out my recent post, "Nasty criticisms of me from some 'spiritual' RSSB defenders."

 

Unlike those folks on 'Church of the Churchless' who seems to be 'inside experts' on RSSB and the goings on of the guru, I can't comment about the voracity of what 'Sheena-who-will-not-be-named' writes in her book. I'm no maven. 

 

Then you should pay more attention to, and trust more, people who have direct knowledge of Gurinder Singh, his business dealings, and goings-on at the Dera. I frequently hear from people who have such knowledge, and relate disturbing stories to me, but aren't willing to go public with what they know, even anonymously.

 

There's no doubt that there is a largely unreported dark side to Radha Soami Satsang Beas, along with the public reports of this dark side. People in the know who live in India are justifiably worried about what could happen to them if RSSB zealots learn their identity and seek retribution for their truth-telling. 

 

Believe me, RSSB is no longer the warm, fuzzy, loving spiritual organization that I remember from most of my 35 years as a RSSB devotee. Of course, maybe it never was such, and RSSB officials were just more adept at covering up the bad stuff. Regardless, it's good that the truth now is coming out, thanks in part to people like Sheena.

(Also, to journalists with Indian business publications.)

 

All I will say is that as a member of the book buying public your Amazon review read as trading in gossip. And that's really unfortunate.  

Again, a book written by a real person, whose true identity is known to quite a few people, about her experience with Gurinder Singh Dhillon and the Dera is absolutely NOT "trading in gossip." Those words are insulting to Sheena and to truth-tellers everywhere. 

 

Feel free to post this to your site/blog.

Hey, I've been pleased to do this, because it gives me another opportunity to speak the truth.

 

Regards, 

Catherine Muller

Now, Muller sent me some additional emails where she questioned why Sheena's book was selling for $9.95 (Kindle edition) and  $17.25 (paperback edition) on the U.S. Amazon site.

Having written several books that are for sale on Amazon, all I can say is that these prices aren't unusual. And I can confidently say that almost certainly, Sheena isn't even getting paid minimum wage for all the hours she spent writing her book, and then finding a way to get it published in both paperback and Kindle formats.

For almost every author, writing and publishing a book is a labor of love, not of money. 

Lastly, I'll note that I asked Catherine Muller if she had bought and read Sheena's book. This was Muller's response:

Yes, I have indeed bought the book - I got the Kindle edition for $11.49. I’ll get around to reading it one day. It’s not high priority. 

To which I thought, "Wow! You're criticizing the veracity of a book you haven't read, and you're criticizing the motivation of a woman who you know nothing about." 

Believable "gossip" about RSSB, Singh brothers, and Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Gossip can be interesting. Also, it can be true. Here's a comment that was left today on a Church of the Churchless post. GSD stands for Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

I have a bit of “gossip” – I was talking to a relative, in India, earlier today, regarding RSSB/Singh Brother controversy. His boss is the ex-Director of the Board of Directors for Fortis hospitals.

Here is what he had to share –

1) There is truth about the deal between GSD and Singh Brothers. GSD’s son gets the money and RSSB guruship goes to Shivinder Singh.

2) Money was siphoned off to Singapore where GSD’s son lives.

3) In February 2017, GSD was sick and was given 3 months to live.

Here is what was reported at that time – “Babaji Don Gurinder Singh Dhillon was admitted in Fortis Hospital, Mohali because of Food Poisoning. The doctors have advised him One week rest, so his programme of satsang of 12th Feb. 2017 is cancelled. There are rumors that he will be leaving for Singapore. Posted by: Juan | February 10, 2017 at 07:39 AM”

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2013/12/when-a-supposedly-godly-guru-gets-sick-what-does-this-mean.html

http://punjabnewsexpress.com/punjab/news/radha-soami-sect-chief-gurinder-singh-dhillon-returns-from-singapore-hale-and-hearty-58108.aspx

4) He nominated Shivinder Singh to succeed [They probably prepared/updated the “will” to ensure a smooth succession]. They were quite close to announcing it publicly.

5) Obviously, GSD survived [Divine Intervention? GSD is God?]

6) When Singh Brothers were in charge of the Fortis hospitals and GSD was getting treated regularly for his medical conditions at Fortis Mohali, GSD was charged a token amount (Rs 5K/10K) for treatments that would cost around Rs 200K for a normal patient at the same hospital.

7) After Singh Brothers were out of the picture, GSD was treated again at the same Fortis hospital in Mohali and was charged the normal patient bill of Rs 200k. He was quite upset about it. Take it for what it’s worth. It comes from a reliable source.

On a different note – “Dhillon has been given Z-Plus Security Cover and his security was enhanced significantly when ADGP Security of Punjab Government visited the Dera Radha Soami Beas town to review the security arrangements. “

http://punjabnewsexpress.com/punjab/news/radha-soami-sect-chief-gurinder-singh-dhillon-returns-from-singapore-hale-and-hearty-58108.aspx

I wonder if such a situation existed in the US, would FBI provide special security to a Guru.

Reality requires a broad scientific look, not narrow mystic visions

Put on your philosophical wading boots. I'm about to jump into the deep end of some interesting, but sort of complex, questions about the nature of reality as seen through the eyes of quantum physics.

But rest assured that, in accord with the focus of this Church of the Churchless blog, I'll be drawing some inferences about what makes sense, and what doesn't, when it comes to religious, mystical, and spiritual claims about reality.

This might take a few blog posts, so I'll do my best to keep this initial post as short and simple as possible.

(Which means, it is going to seem lengthy and complex to many readers; sorry about that, it's the nature of the philosophical beast we're trying to come to grips with.)

I'm about two-thirds of the way through a fascinating book, "What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics," by Adam Becker. Becker is a science writer with a Ph.D. in astrophysics.

The key word in the title is meaning. Here's why.

Historically, the prevailing view of quantum physics is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, which often is pithily summed up as "shut up and calculate!" In other words, most physicists don't worry about the underlying meaning of what is known about the quantum world.

They're content with the fact that the mathematics of quantum mechanics are amazingly accurate and precise, which is why we've experienced such fantastic accomplishments in fields such as computer technology, lasers, medical imaging, and so much else.

Now, I'm going to quickly jump into the religious/mystical side of life, to avoid readers of this post heading off to another corner of the World Wide Web. 

In Becker's "More Things in Heaven and Earth" chapter, he discusses a useful analogy to illustrate the core philosophical debate between the "shut up and calculate" folks, and the "let's dig deeper for underlying meaning" folks. This is basically the distinction between logical positivism and realism.

Before we get into that analogy, I need to say that I'm not arguing for a simplistic direct connection between logical positivism and mystical ways of thinking, versus realism and scientific ways of thinking, because the situation is murkier than that. Here's some quotes from Becker:

The logical positivists were understandably opposed to philosophical castles in the sky and the tortuous prose they were often defended with. But the logical positivists weren't merely against metaphysics -- they believed they could actually dismiss metaphysical claims as meaningless.

Meaning, they held, was a matter of verification: knowing what a statement means is equivalent to knowing how to specify it using your senses. According to the positivists, when you say "it's hotter outside that it is in here," you really mean "if you go outside you will feel hotter than you do in here."

The statement's meaning is the method of verifying it empirically -- and if there's no way of verifying a statement against your senses, then that statement has no meaning.

...But idealist and theological claims aren't the only kinds of statements that make no contact with the senses.

There are also more straightforward claims like "the couch is in the living room even when nobody's there," that can't be confirmed directly. Statements like these about the existence and persistence of material objects independent of perception are realist claims -- they're statements about a real world that exists whether or not there are any humans around,

These statements are fundamental to science. Yet some of the positivists, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, dismissed realist claims as meaningless too, because they can't be verified by experience. All that is meaningful, on the positivists' account, are statements about perceptions, along with the purely logical statements of mathematics. 

Obviously mysticism isn't a mathematical enterprise. But leaving that aside, over the fourteen years I've been writing on this blog I've heard countless (more or less) stories of how someone had a vision of God, or of Jesus, or of a guru, or of divine light and sound, or whatever. 

When I and other skeptics would ask for evidence that those mystical experiences were real, typically the response would be along this line: "I know what I experienced, and it felt genuine to me, so you should believe that it was real."

This is basically a positivist argument.

Of course, unlike scientific positivism, there really isn't any way for other people to reproduce that experience -- though believers in mystic visions like to say things like, "You just need to meditate in this fashion for a long time, and have faith in God/guru/angelic beings/whatever."

I'm going to turn now to Becker's analogy, which hopefully will make my point more clear. He uses something most of us are familiar with, a TV remote control that has stopped working, to illustrate the distinction between positivism and realism.

Quine's paper, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," took aim at the core of the positivist program, the verification theory of meaning. Quine pointed out that there was no way to verify single statements -- all attempts to verify a statement inevitably involve the assumed truth of other statements, which are themselves subject to the same problem.

For example, say the remote control for your TV isn't working, and you can't turn the TV on. You suspect that the batteries in the remote are dead. You can verify this by replacing the batteries and trying to turn on the TV with the remote again. You do this, and the TV turns on.

Does that mean you were right? No.

It's entirely possible that the batteries in the remote control weren't dead at all. Maybe the remote had a short and will only work intermittently, no matter what batteries you use. Or maybe the old batteries were in backward, and you didn't notice; you just popped them out and put in new ones pointing the right way.

Or maybe something more exotic is going on: maybe the remote always worked, but when you tried it before, the TV mysteriously shifted its picture to the infrared and its sound to the ultrasonic, so you couldn't see or hear it; the TV happened to go back to normal after you changed the batteries, but not because you changed them. 

The last idea is clearly preposterous -- how could that happen? -- but the point remains that in testing out the new batteries in the remote, you've assumed a wide variety of basic facts about the world, all based on previous experience, and any of which could, in principle, be wrong.

This isn't merely true of suppositions about batteries in remote controls; verification of any statement behaves this way 

Looking out the window and saying, "It's raining outside," assumes that your view through the window's glass gives you an accurate picture of the outside world, and that your eyes are functioning property, and that the dimmed light and falling droplets  are in fact caused by a rain cloud and not an alien spaceship blotting out the Sun and dropping some exotic substance onto your front lawn.

So you can never verify a single statement: you're always stuck verifying the entirety of your knowledge about the world, or at least a very large fraction of it. As Quine put it, "Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body."

With the verification theory of meaning left gasping for air, Quine dismissed the idea that it's meaningless to talk about unobservable things. Unverifiable statements must have meaning, because no individual statement is verifiable.

Thus the "metaphysics" so dreaded by the positivists came roaring  back: rather than speaking simply of sensations, Quine contended that it was perfectly intelligible to speak of physical objects with existence independent of the speaker.

So this gets me back to the title of this post: reality requires a broad scientific look, not narrow mystic visions.

I'll talk about this more in another blog post, because this one is plenty long already. For now I'll simply observe that without using these terms, for quite a few years I've been engaged with positivist believers in mystical experiences who don't want to take a broad realistic view of the cosmos.

For example, a supernatural experience typically demands that someone assume that human consciousness can function outside of the physical brain; that there are spiritual realms of existence beyond the physical universe; that there are "laws of nature" unknown to science, and so on. This sort of worldview requires a very different understanding of reality than is known either to science or everyday experience.

Which is why I no longer believe in it.   

Roles of Indian women reflected in Singh brothers saga

I readily admit that, not suprisingly, I'm much more familiar with the roles of women here in the United States than in India, a country I've only visited twice for brief periods. 

My impression (and please correct me if I'm wrong, something many commenters on my posts love to do) is that just as India is transitioning to a modern advanced economy, Indian women are likewise moving from traditional roles to more empowered and co-equal roles in relation to men.

A couple of stories in the Indian business press caught my eye in this regard.

Here's excerpts from a September 7 India Today story, "Singh brothers case: Shivinder's lawsuit exposes widespread forgery, fake documentation, corporate governance issues."

In a serious allegation, the petition says Shivinder's wife Aditi, other directors and Shivinder himself were documented as discussing and approving the bulk of proposals when in fact, the requisite meetings did not take place.

...In fact, (Aditi) Petitioner No. 3 was usually sent a thick stack of minutes and papers to sign at her residence, with a short notice along with a note to sign and return immediately with no further explanation, says the petition which also says there was an understanding between the brothers that ladies in the family were not supposed to ask any questions regarding business dealings.

It was always the understanding between the families of Respondent No. 2 (Malvinder) and Petitioner No. 2 (Shivinder) that ladies from the families are not supposed to ask any questions with regard to the business activities as the same were supposed to be handled by male members of the families, as was the age old tradition and family values. Therefore, the ladies were expected to follow the instructions given to them for signing the papers, says the petition.

"Age old tradition and family values."

Wow. I can pretty much guarantee that if a newspaper in the United States used those words to describe why some American women were supposed to do what their male relatives instructed, the outcry by outraged women would be so loud, it would reach the ears of the Great Goddess who rules heaven and earth. 

A September 14 Bloomberg story, "Ex-Billionaire Drops Lawsuit Against Brother After Mom Steps In,"  shows another side of Indian female empowerment.

A public rupture between the heirs to one of India’s most storied business houses looks to be healing after the mother of the two Singh brothers -- synonymous with each other for decades -- convinced her younger son to withdraw a lawsuit against the elder.

Shivinder Singh withdrew a suit alleging “oppression and mismanagement” against his brother Malvinder and a senior manager in their corporate group after their mother requested they engage in mediation led by family elders instead, according to an order Friday by Justice M.M. Kumar of India’s National Company Law Tribunal.

So this tells me that ex-billionaires in India listen to their mothers, notwithstanding the assertion in the India Today story that business activities traditionally are handled by the men in a family. 

I hope the Indian business press reports on the mediation between the Singh brothers "led by family elders," because I'm curious how many women are going to be part of that process. My guess: few, if any. 

To stimulate some comment discussion by Indian readers of this blog, I'm sharing a provocative April 2018 story from The Guardian, "India's abuse of women is the greatest human rights violation on Earth." Here's how the story starts out:

India is at war with its girls and women.

The planned rape of eight-year-old Asifa in a temple by several men, including a policeman who later washed the clothes she was wearing to destroy evidence, was particularly horrific. Asifa’s rape has outraged and shaken the entire country. Yet sexual abuse in India remains widespread despite tightening of rape laws in 2013.

According to the National Crimes Records Bureau, in 2016 the rape of minor girls increased by 82% compared with the previous year. Chillingly, across all rape cases, 95% of rapists were not strangers but family, friends and neighbours.

The culturally sanctioned degradation of women is so complete that the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, launched a national programme called Beti Bachao (Save Our Girls).

India can arguably be accused of the largest-scale human rights violation on Earth: the persistent degradation of the vast majority of its 650 million girls and women. And this includes the middle classes, as I found when interviewing 600 women and men in India’s cities.

India’s women are traumatised in less obvious ways than by tanks in the streets, bombs and warlords. Our oppression starts innocuously: it occurs in private life, within families, with girls being locked up in their own homes. This everyday violence is the product of a culture that bestows all power on men, and that does not even want women to exist.

This is evident in the unbalanced sex ratios at birth, even in wealthy families. But India also kills its women slowly. This violence is buried in the training of women in some deadly habits that invite human rights violations, but that are considered the essence of good womanhood.

Women protest against violence against women and children in Bangalore, April 2018.

Advice for RSSB believers about how to deal with news about their guru

Yesterday this comment was left on a Church of the Churchless post, "Great BusinessToday video about RSSB guru and Singh brothers." The commenter wondered how to break the news about Gurinder Singh Dhillon's financial misdeeds to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees who had put a lot of faith in their guru.

Dear Brian Thanks for your blog and exposing the truths!! It is really sad to learn all the truths of recent events. I had a feeling somethiing is corrupt but it still came as a shock when my intuition was confirmed with facts.

I am not part of Sant mat myself but do know people that I love that is. They don’t know yet and I just don’t have the heart to break this news. I can just imagine that if your whole belief system was based on the idea of a perfect living master and to found out he is not so perfect after all, will pull the rug underneath you.

Especially this path’s standards are so high in terms of diet and moral life. How do you break such news to somebody you love while you know their world will be shattered? How have other Satsangis took the news? Is it best to just keep quiet and wait till truth be revealed? Ruth

Ruth asked some good questions.

Since I was a member of RSSB for 35 years, and embraced the Sant Mat teachings for almost all of that time before I stopped believing in them, I've had to deal with the same difficult process of breaking away from a spiritual philosophy that used to mean so much to me.

All I can do is suggest the following advice, which I've shared in a "laundry list" form -- because everybody is different, and I want to give people a variety of ways to deal with disillusionment in a spiritual path or religious dogma. So I'm going to list these ideas as they come to me, without trying to arrange them in a particular fashion.

(1) Truth, Sat in an Indian language, has to be our primary concern. Without truth, we're lost in a maze of falsehoods. So whenever truths are revealed about a guru, master, religious leader, or whoever, those truths should be embraced, not pushed away.

(2) Truths can be painful. But the pain of living a lie, or living in illusion, is greater. Yes, fantasies can be fun. But eventually fantasies are revealed to be much less substantial than truth, since truth always wins out in the end. Why? Because reality is hugely more powerful than illusion.

(3) This is one of my all-time favorite sayings. When I used to give talks at RSSB meetings (satsangs), I'd often cite this quote from Philip K. Dick: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." So if a spiritual or religious belief is given up, nothing is lost, because reality is beyond beliefs.

(4) When we expect someone to be perfect, we're bound to be disappointed. So don't expect perfection. Not of your spouse, friend, relative, co-worker, boss, political figure, or... a guru. Everybody makes mistakes. Some are innocent mistakes. Some are willful mistakes. Regardless, expect imperfection, not perfection.

(5) Taoism, which I'm drawn to as a philosophy, says that the world is made up of yin and yang, light and darkness, positive and negative, substantial and insubstantial, embracing and rejecting, and so on. Opposites are what make the world go 'round. If we welcome only one side of a pair of opposites, we're ignoring a big part of reality.

(6) Often people think, "If such-and-such happened, my life wouldn't be worth living." But usually, when that thing does happen, life is still very much worth living. We humans are resilient creatures. Don't underestimate your capacity to adapt to a difficult situation, and then move on from there.

(7) It's natural to want to feel special, which includes being part of a special group, one especially favored or beloved by God. However, what if God, or the cosmos, actually doesn't play favorites? What if it doesn't matter whether someone believes in this or that, but simply does their best to be a good human being? (As you can guess, this is how I consider reality operates.)

(8) Consider: out of all the religions, spiritual paths, and mystical teachings in the world, what is the chance that you have come across the Only One that is objectively true? Very small, right? Yet almost every believer feels that they have found that Only One. Isn't this more than a little egotistical or self-centered? 

(9) What people often find most satisfying about a religion or form of spirituality isn't so much the concepts that make up that teaching, but the good feeling they have from being part of a group that accepts them, welcomes them, supports them. Yet it is possible to have that same good feeling after someone leaves a certain group, because there are countless groups that accept, welcome, and support.

(10) Think about how many changes have occurred in your life. Most likely you've changed homes, friends, jobs, cars, lovers, pets, hairstyles, clothes, sports, and so much else. So it isn't strange that people also change their religion, spiritual path, or mystic teaching. This is normal.

(11) Doubts also are normal. Often people who belong to a certain religion or spiritual group wrongly believe that everybody else in the group but them has perfect faith, because usually expressing doubts isn't welcomed. Believe me, almost everyone has doubts, whether they admit this or not.

(12) Trust yourself. If you trusted yourself when you decided to join a religion or form of spirituality, also trust yourself if you decide to leave it. Don't be led astray by a group's teaching that leaving it will bring horrible consequences, such as a nasty afterlife. Almost every group has ways to keep members from leaving. Know that you are stronger than those ways.

(In case you're wondering, yes, this 1976 cartoon really was drawn by Charles Schulz. Read the comments on that post.)

It hurts to argue with reality

This is a great simple explanation of why it makes sense to love science, to love truth, to love reasoned fact-based discussions of what is happening in the world. Fantasies can be fun, but reality has a way of biting us in the butt when we ignore what is.

"Atheist Experience" guys demolish arguments of a supernatural believer

I've come to the conclusion that a big part of being a spiritual person is thinking clearly.

(When I say "spiritual," I don't mean religious or supernatural; I mean finding meaning in life, the underlying spirit of one's life, so to speak.)

If we don't think clearly, there's a danger that our emotions, feelings, desires, intuitions, and such will lead us astray. I'm certainly not saying that thoughts are more important than other aspects of our psyche -- just that we need to find a balance between the rational and non-rational parts of ourselves.

Case in point: this You Tube video is a 24-minute example of how a deist caller to the Atheist Experience TV show is utterly unable to discuss in any sort of coherent fashion why he believes God, or any other supernatural entity, exists. 

I watched the whole video, but in the first 5-10 minutes you can get a good feel for the discussion between the atheist guys and Jeff from Aptos, California. 

The person who emailed me a link to the video yesterday said:

Hi Brian, I just listened to this call on the call-in program called The Atheist Experience. What is so unbelievably fascinating about this call is that the caller has absolutely no clue about what's being said.

I would go further and say he is unable to comprehend or make sense of what the hosts of the show are saying so clearly. It is like they are speaking a foreign language.

 

The caller is so fixated on his own viewpoint that it is impossible to have a normal conversation with him. It is the same with many of the people who comment on your blog.

I agree that many Church of the Churchless commenters display the same lack of understanding of what it means to believe in the supernatural, and not to believe in the supernatural.

Over and over, the caller, Jeff, is asked to explain why he is a deist, a believer in God. He's repeatedly asked to provide reasons, or evidence, to support his belief in God. But all of his explanations are either circular, or unresponsive.

Of course, there's no demonstrable evidence of God, or I and almost every other atheist in the world would believe in God. After all, us atheists typically are open-minded, as Don and Matt, the Atheist Experience guys, are. 

As noted regularly on this blog, most recently in this post, atheism isn't a belief; it is the absence of a belief in theism, in God. Don and Matt keep pointing out that they aren't saying there is no God. Rather, they consider that because of insufficient evidence that God exists, they assume that not-believing in God is the wisest choice.

I liked how they interrupted the caller when he tried to answer their question about why he is a deist by starting out with, "But you..." They correctly said that when someone begins to answer a question about themselves with "But you...", it's clear that they aren't intent on providing an answer.

Asking an atheist to prove that there is no God is an example of how religious believers fail to think clearly. The burden of proof is on a believer, not a skeptic.

In a trial, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone committed a crime. Fairly frequently, the defense won't call a single witness. Why? Because they don't have to prove that the defendant didn't commit a crime.  

Likewise, an atheist doesn't have to prove that God doesn't exist. Atheists like me, and like Don and Matt, leave open the possibility that God or some other supernatural entity might exist. If there is sufficient evidence of this, we would believe. Because there isn't, we don't.

Of course, there are good reasons to believe in God, even if God doesn't exist. Here's some of them:

(1) It feels good to believe that death isn't the end of us, but the beginning of an afterlife.
(2) It feels good to be part of a religious community, given the social support that comes with this.
(3) It feels good to be provided a moral code, rather than having to decide what is right and wrong on our own.
(4) It feels good to consider that we're part of a "chosen people," instead of just being an ordinary person.
(5) It feels good to believe that a divine power is guiding your life.

Here's the thing though: just because something makes us feel good doesn't mean it is true. Fantasies can be fun. 

I regularly get comments on this blog along the lines of, "Brian, why are you trying to take away an important source of support for people, their belief in God?" My answer: "I'm not trying to do this. What I'm trying to do is learn the truth about God and supernaturalism in general."

For me, the arguments in favor of believing in God or the supernatural are weak, too weak for me to accept. Yes, I used to believe in not only God, but in the existence of living masters, or gurus, who essentially were God in human form. Now I don't believe in either.

However, since I used to believe, I understand the appeal of believing. Life is hard. The Buddha got it right when he taught that life is suffering. We all need shoulders to lean on. I get why most people in the world believe in God and the supernatural. This feels good.

There's nothing wrong, and a lot right, with feeling good. I'm simply saying that feeling good because of a belief in God is one thing, and that belief being true is a very different thing.

Science was mentioned in the Atheist Experience video as being our best way of determining what is true. For sure. Here's a 4-minute video in praise of science that's well worth watching.

Great BusinessToday video about RSSB guru and Singh brothers

Here's a clear and compelling video that's based on a Business Today (India) story, "The Baba, Singh Brothers, and the Squandered Rs 225,00,00,00,000," which is $3.2 billion in U.S. dollars.

I've read numerous complicated stories about the problematic financial dealings of the RSSB guru, Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon, his family, and the Singh brothers. But this video keeps things clear and simple in just a bit over 6 minutes.

This is the You Tube description:

"An influential 'Baba' and his family with a weakness for materialism; two young businessmen loaded with nearly Rs 10,000 crore from an asset sale; and a family confidante have together cooked a cauldron that Bollywood potboilers are made of. Their machinations wrecked a flourishing empire and vapourised nearly $3.2 billion (Rs 22,500 crore then) into thin air. Watch BusinessToday.In Editor Rajeev Dubey discuss the fall of the Singh brothers' empire."

I'll use this post as an opportunity to address the many new visitors to this blog from India and other places around the world who are either devotees of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), or sympathetic to the RSSB teachings.

I was a dedicated follower of RSSB for 35 years, 1970 to 2005. I was initiated by Charan Singh in 1971 and did a lot of seva (volunteer work) for RSSB following the succession of Gurinder Singh Dhillon as guru in 1990.

So I know how important the RSSB teachings, also known as Sant Mat, are to those who believe in them. Those teachings were a foundation of my life for over three decades. It was very difficult for me to pull away from them, but I did so after I concluded that I needed to pursue a different spiritual path that made more sense to me.

Here's how I see the current situation with the RSSB guru and the financial dealings involving the Dhillon family. 

There are two main issues with Gurinder Singh Dhillon, One is whether the Sant Mat/RSSB philosophy he teaches is true. The other issue concerns the controversial financial dealings he's been a part of since he became the RSSB guru.

I'd like this blog to be a welcoming place for people who are interested in, and worried about, the second issue, even though they still believe in the RSSB teachings. And I see these as separate issues.

Recently l've been focused on the guru's financial dealings, because this is what's being reported on by Indian business publications. I've written a lot about why I don't believe in the Sant Mat/RSSB philosophy any more, but again, this is a different issue from whether Gurinder Singh Dhillon has violated ethical, and possibly legal, norms with the Dhillon family financial entanglements.

Likewise, some people who visit this blog are supporters of Donald Trump. I'm not. But hopefully we could all agree that if the Mueller investigation finds that Trump was engaged in legal wrongdoing, there should be consequences for this.

It doesn't matter whether someone likes Trump, or endorses his policies. Wrongdoing is a separate issue from Trump's policy positions. Likewise, I'm trying to differentiate between the RSSB guru's position as a religious leader, and his involvement in questionable financial dealings.

Lastly, I hope visitors to this blog from India and other countries keep in mind that the United States, where I live, has a strong commitment to free speech embedded in our Constitution as the First Amendment. 

So in my country, we're free to criticize or praise religions with few, if any, restrictions. My understanding is that other countries, including India, have different laws.

I mention this because I can tell from comments left on this blog along the lines of, "You can't say that about Baba Gurinder Singh!", that some visitors to this Church of the Churchless are viewing things from their own cultural perspective, rather than from how free speech is viewed in the United States.

But we all live in the same world, and we all are human beings. So what unites us is, really, greater than what divides us. Open discussion and debate is a wonderful thing, because it helps us to understand each other better. That's what I'm trying to accomplish on this blog.

We may disagree at times, but we always can respect our differences. If everybody was alike, this would be a hugely boring world.

Another story about the Singh brothers, RSSB, and the Dhillon family

Going through some fairly old email messages, I came across an July 23, 2018 ET Prime story that someone sent to me, "How the Singh brothers became victims of a realty play."


It takes a subscription to read the full story, so my correspondent sent a file that I converted to PDF. Here it is:
Download Singh brothers story

Like other stories about the Singh brothers and their relationship with the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the details are astoundingly complex. 

Here's some easy to understand excerpts from the beginning of the story.

ET Prime pieced together this triangular love-hate story between the Godhwanis, Singh brothers, and Dhillons by speaking with several insiders, going through public disclosures, and poring over numerous corporate filings. 



It is a story of a win-win association turning into a nightmare, an unending downward spiral.

...The transactions and movement of money and the multiple roles played by the individuals involved raise questions of corporate governance and conflict of interest. They show how Indian promoters continue to consider listed companies their private fiefdoms. 


They also make one wonder about the Radha Soami sect's principles, including that the master "does not accept gifts or money for himself or his family from the sangat; all the money donated in seva is channelled into supporting the sangat".

I'll repeat what I said in a blog post about a Business Today story about this same subject -- the tangled web of highly suspicious financial deals involving the RSSB guru, his family, and RSSB insiders.

If you read the Bloomberg and Business Today stories, you'll learn that whatever we might call the financial schemes the guru is deeply involved with, it's very difficult to call them honest living.  
Download Honest Living

Here's an excerpt from that RSSB book.

Here's the truth about when I started criticizing RSSB

Falsehoods bother me. Including falsehoods about me.

Like the completely unfounded rumor that I started criticizing Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the Indian spiritual group I belonged to for 35 years, after I was fired as a speaker at meetings of the group.

I've noticed this falsehood popping up in recent comments on this blog, most recently from "manjit." Like so many religious believers, "manjit" is repeating a conjecture that isn't correct, but since it feels good to spout it, it gets spouted.


Well, here's some truth-telling. I've shared it before in comments, but I wanted to write a blog post that I could link to when the Brian was upset when he was fired, so he started criticizing RSSB lie surfaces again. 

Actually the truth is just the opposite: after I started critiquing RSSB on this blog back in 2005, I was told that I could no longer speak at RSSB meetings (satsangs) because my blog posts were making RSSB devotees upset and uncomfortable. 

Read all about it in "I was fired," an October 2005 post.

Well, my Meister Eckhart fantasy has been fulfilled. I’ve been fired from giving talks (known as “satsangs”) at meetings of my spiritual group because my Church of the Churchless writings have been too heretical.

Yesterday our local secretary informed me that he had been told by a regional representative, Vince Savarese, that my blogging about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) had caused a lot of people to be uncomfortable. In New York. In India. All around the RSSB world.

Naturally I blurted out “Wow, that’s great! People are reading my blog!” It didn’t bother me to hear that I’ve been making some people uncomfortable. I regularly hear from others that they appreciate my posts, so it all evens out. Yin and yang. Like and dislike. Attraction and repulsion. That’s the way of the world.

Regardless, the RSSB powers that be don’t want me to be a speaker anymore. I said, “That’s fine. Now the folks at the Radhasoami studies discussion group who have been taking bets that I wouldn’t last as a speaker beyond mid-2006 will feel vindicated.”

Interestingly, it was "manjit" who wrote that October 2015 discussion group post linked to above who said about me, "Yes, he's writing some interesting stuff. I now often check out his blog," then predicted I wouldn't last as a satsang speaker past mid-2016. 

"Manjit" was wrong about the timing of that, just as manjit now is wrong about why I was fired as a satsang speaker. I guess he's forgotten the early Church of the Churchless blog posts that made RSSB devotees uncomfortable.

My turn away from RSSB and organized religion began long before October 2005, and the posts I've written since have been motivated by a commitment to truth-telling, not resentment at RSSB. 

Here's links to some of those pre-October 2005 posts, along with excerpts:

January 2005: "Religious questioning is natural"

I’ve become a bit of a Sant Mat “heretic,” just as you seem to be. Maybe more than “a bit of” in fact. My quest these days is to discern the essential in spirituality. The rest seems to be in the realm of religion, not mysticism or what I like to call spiritual science. There is a lot of religiosity in RSSB even though this path supposedly isn’t a religion. When blind belief and faith are elevated over direct experience and questioning, I call that a religion.

March 2005: "All masters but one are false"

This has been one of my criticisms of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the spiritual path that I’ve been associated with since 1970. Gradually over the years it seems that personal experience of the divine gained through meditation has been downplayed in favor of fawning guru-worship. Disciples are urged to surrender to the master, who is expected to take them back to God if they simply have faith and believe. Well, if that’s what I wanted I would have remained a Christian.

June 2005: "Cults, religions, and science"

I “signed up” for RSSB some thirty-five years ago precisely because I wanted to be a member of a non-religious spiritual group. Now, either RSSB has changed or I’ve changed. A third alternative is that both RSSB and I have changed: RSSB in the direction of becoming more religion-like, and me in the direction of liking religion even less.

July 2005: "Why I embrace unorganized religion"

When people fall into the trap of saying “I’m a Christian,” “I’m a Muslim,” or “I’m a satsangi” (in the case of RSSB), they enclose themselves in one more layer of illusion. This further distances them both from God and from their fellow human beings. Like this fair façade, their spirituality may be superficially attractive. Yet a closer examination reveals that it lacks depth and is flimsily propped up by artificial supports: dogma, blind faith, self-righteousness, unquestioned adherence to arbitrary moral codes.

July 2005: "More criticism of Radha Soami Satsang Beas"

But the reality is that my current preference for churchlessness is an evolution from my previous attachment to a church—the “Church” of RSSB. So my personal experience with organized religion stems from this source, as does the experience of my correspondent and quite a few others who visit the Church of the Churchless.

If I had remained a Catholic, I’d be focusing on the rigidity, narrow-mindedness, and self-righteousness of Catholicism right now, because this would be the religion that I knew best. Instead, I’m making the same criticisms of RSSB, because that is the religion I’m most familiar with.

My point is that what’s written below speaks of the failings of RSSB and its members. Yet these failings are present in all organized religions, as is pointed out by the author.

September 2005: "Bursting belief bubbles"

However, when it comes to spirituality I really do want my belief bubble to burst. I can say this with some confidence because I’ve been pricking away at my own bubbles for quite a few years now.

“I am a member of a special spiritual group.” Pop.
“My guru is God and will make me just like him.” Pop.
“The course of my life is being guided by a higher power.” Pop.
“If I have a sip of wine I’m a sinner.” Pop.
“There’s only one way to meditate, the way I’ve been told.” Pop.

Some or all of the above statements may be true, but I no longer believe them to be true. Lacking certainty, I hold these beliefs in abeyance.

So these posts written prior to when RSSB "fired" me as a satsang speaker demonstrate that RSSB devotees are wrong when they claim that my criticisms of RSSB stemmed from my being upset that RSSB rejected me. 

Again, the opposite was the case: my critical questioning of RSSB dogma caused devotees to become uncomfortable, which led to my firing. I was pleased to speak the truth as I saw it then, and I'm pleased to speak the truth now. 

Demolition of illegal construction by Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Someone sent me this video, along with a description:

"An illegal encroachment by Radha Soami Satsang Beas in Fatehpur Beri in Delhi that is being demolished by the Forest Department today. News reporting is by Punjab Kesari. They are breaking the shed, the building and the road. RSSB had been given several notices to vacate. Several acres of the forest land had been illegally purchased and the reporter is saying that it would be interesting to see how the government justifies this."

Some commenters on this blog like to claim that Radha Soami Satsang Beas never does anything wrong, since it is led by a guru who is considered to be a "perfect master." 

Well, my attitude is that everybody is imperfect, and so are organizations. This is normal. We shouldn't expect perfection of any individual or group, because this isn't possible. But what is possible are learning, improvement, progress. 

Everything can be reduced to the survival instinct

One of the benefits of having this blog is getting intelligent, provocative, thoughtful emails about some churchless topic. Often I'll enjoy the message so much, I'll ask if I can share it in a blog post.

Such is the case with what you'll read below. The premise of this mini-essay is that survival is the central concern of us human beings. 

I think the author gets this pretty much right.

For sure, almost all religious belief includes a focus on survival after death. Having and raising children provides some immortality of sorts. Altruism, as noted in the essay, contributes to group survival. Every act of creation -- writing, music, art, and such -- can be viewed as making a bit of what is inside us live on outside of us.

Acknowledging that survival is a primal human imperative doesn't take away from the value of the acts that proceed from this drive.

Rather, it leads us to recognize a simple truth: as much as we'd like to think that we're distinct from other kinds of creatures, we really aren't.

Yes, at the moment Homo sapiens is the dominant species on our planet. However, our instincts are similar to those of other animals, albeit more sophisticated due to our capacity for language and abstract thought.

Read on...

I've enjoyed reading your posts on the sociobiological underpinning of religious belief, spurred by your reading of Finding Purpose in a Godless World. That book has been on my wish list and I've finally decided to pick it up.

I've long been fascinated with the etiology of supernatural beliefs and, as mentioned in our prior conversation, I find the argument that religion is an evolutionary phenomenon (i.e., survival strategy) quite persuasive.

I've been recently reading about HADD (Hyper Agency Detection Device), a subset of the Theory of Mind, in which an evolutionary advantage is gained by imputing agency to inanimate forces and events.

At least this was the case when we were roaming the savannahs.

This belief today—of linking Being and the existence of the universe to an intelligence—confers a different advantage, if the term can be used. It bestows hope to the believer in what is otherwise a futile existence.

At the risk of being criticized for a broad oversimplification, I genuinely think that everything can be reduced to the survival instinct. All value ultimately derives from survival value. Even the noble human traits such as love, compassion, and altruism have their origin in the survival imperative. 

Why do human beings nearly universally admire selfless individuals and resent self-absorbed individuals?

This is an interesting question to pose to people, as I think this response is simply taken for granted without much inquiry into the source of this sentiment. People know they have an inherent dislike of selfish people, but getting them to articulate exactly why is another matter entirely.

 I would contend that we inherently dislike selfish, arrogant, and greedy people because they detract from group survival. Thus, what is "right" and "wrong" could be alternatively framed as what is conducive to group survival and what is deleterious to group survival, respectively. 

In terms of self-sacrificial altruism, why does group survival prevail over self-preservation in some people?

This behavior is not easily answered, but we see it in other species as well. Selflessness and even the giving of one's life to save another are not examples of divine supernatural virtue, but rather represent the survival impetus in an augmented form.

Love itself—the loftiest of all human tendencies— is ultimately a survival strategy, and a very successful one at that (both individually and collectively). The singular root of all behavior, from the most vile to the most "saintly" is this most fundamental drive. 

Returning to the hope that the religious believer is imbued with: what is the perennial hope found in religious belief?

Is it not, once again, representative of that fundamental drive—survival. Religion promises some form of survival for the individual, the tribe, humanity, or all of life itself. Divorced from the promise of survival, religion would entirely lose its power.

So it seems that the bulk of human behavior derives from, revolves around, and is aimed at survival, either in the short term, long term, or in an "everlasting" sense. Our programming is, in the final analysis, very simple indeed. 

Thanks again, Brian. I hope you are doing well.

Good summary of Gurinder Singh Dhillon financial issues

Here's a good overview of why it makes sense to raise questions about the financial affairs involving the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. 

It was written by Spence Tepper, who left the following comment on a recent blog post. I like the logical, reasonable way Tepper laid out the reasons concerns have been raised about those financial affairs in the Indian business press. 

As he says, other people might draw different conclusions from the facts known to date. That's fine. And as more facts come out, other conclusions can be reached. 

Here's links to some of the stories in the business press:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/billionaires-and-the-guru-how-an-indian-family-lost-2-billion
https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/the-hub/the-baba-singh-brothers-and-the-squandered-rs-225000000000/story/281437.html
https://www.cnbctv18.com/views/the-devotion-of-the-singh-brothers-of-fortis-runs-deep-into-their-businesses-63575.htm

I've corrected a few typos in the comment. Otherwise, what follows is how it was written.

All this is only to support an open mind, and encourage the courts to investigate thoroughly. There already is the court judgements and the FDA judgments against the Singh brothers. Those are thoroughly documented.

Now we have the Luthra investigations and those of the Fortis board, and others, into illegal loans, and the terminations of the Singh brothers. Those are matters of record.

Next are the $400M in unauthorized and uncollateralized loans to the Dhillons basically embezzled from the Fortis hospital system. And finally that those Dhillon loans were never paid, but serviced by creating new loans based on collateral of the Dhillons in part based on the artificial value bolstered by the prior loans.

When you look at all the information, you see that one individual funded the expansion from the trusts into Religare, mentored the Singh brothers, signed his wife and family members as principles in a number of new shell companies, including the Fortis healthcare acquisition, and then promoted the Singhs as principles at Fortis : Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

The legality of all this is up to the courts. The atribution of blame is up to the courts.

But the ethics of nepotism involved, of siphoning and embezzlement, of illegal leveraged loans on top of leveraged loans, and the business entity whose name is the center of all of this is well supported: Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Such activists have nothing to do with being a Sant Sat Guru. Is devotion to saving souls really just a sideline? All that I was taught by Maharaji, by Sawan and Jaimal Singh, says the opposite. Love of the lord is the single occupation of the Saints.

You might draw a different conclusion. It is your right to do so.

And if any of this is actually Baba Ji's intention, it is not to throw off those who accept their responsibility to make their own decision, regardless of the outcome. It is to throw off those who cling to superstitious myths, so attached to their salvation they cannot let any risk enter in, even relinquishing their dignity as adults.

Yes, this may be part of Baba Ji's plan. Though you would have to go within to see it. And the plan is the destruction of the religion that RSSB had become, and the corrupt financial institution that is the current RSSB.

Who better to do this than the Master?

RSSB calls 1500-2000 secretaries to Dera. Something is up.

UPDATE ON SEPT. 25: Juan just left this comment, indicating that the September 17 meeting of Indian secretaries was indeed scheduled, then cancelled. I've also heard that Gurinder Singh Dhillon's scheduled initiation ceremony in New Delhi, which was last weekend, I believe, was cancelled. So it still seems to me that something is up. We just don't know what.

UPDATE ON SEPT. 11: I've heard from someone with close ties to RSSB that actually there isn't a meeting of Indian secretaries happening on September 17. If Juan reads this, I'm curious to know how he learned of the meeting, and whether there was any written documentation of the meeting notice. It's strange that nobody from RSSB said that the meeting wasn't happening after I wrote this post. The only skepticism was from a few commenters who said a meeting happens every year around this time.
-------------------------

If true, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, today's comment on a recent blog post, "Will Gurinder Singh quit as RSSB guru and appoint a female successor," seems like pretty big news.

I was the secretary of our local Radha Soami Satsang Beas group for many years. Periodically I'd get written communications from the Dera (RSSB headquarters in India), but to my knowledge this is a first in the history of RSSB -- requiring secretaries to come to the Dera for an obligatory meeting. 

UPDATE: Above is another comment from Juan, which was published on this post. If I read it correctly, the meeting is only for secretaries in India. So I've reflected that new information in this blog post. I've added another guess, (3) below, as to what the meeting is about.

What's the reason for this meeting? We could wait and see. But that's not as much fun as speculating. Which is what I'll do. 

First, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, has said that he intends to answer questions about his suspicious financial dealings, which have attracted a lot of attention in India. However, it doesn't seem likely that the guru would require the secretaries to journey to India to hear a report that could be communicated in written form.

So what else could the reason be? These are my top guesses. Feel free to suggest your own via a comment on this post.

(1) Gurinder Singh is going to announce that he is resigning as RSSB guru, and wants to explain his reasons in person. He then will announce his successor, who could be a woman.

(2) Gurinder Singh is going to announce a major change in how RSSB operates. Perhaps there will be less emphasis on overseas centers, and more emphasis on initiates' private meditation and spiritual life. Going back to basics, so to speak.

(3) Gurinder Singh is going to announce his response to the allegations about financial impropriety concerning RSSB and the Dhillon family, urging the secretaries to communicate that response to the Indian members of RSSB.

(3) Gurinder Singh is going to announce that Brian Hines (me) has been correct that the RSSB guru is just an ordinary person who lacks mystical powers, and appoints me as the new "guru" who will deliver messages to RSSB members through this blog. (OK, I'm joking.)

Nasty criticisms of me from some "spiritual" RSSB defenders

I find it entertaining to see how supposedly "spiritual" followers of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the Indian organization headed up by a guru that I was a member of for 35 years, can write such wonderfully insulting comments about me.

I'm sharing some recent comments below, along with my response in italics.


These are great comments -- don't get me wrong about that -- but they pale in vehemence, profanity, and stream of consciousness verbosity to comments I've received previously and published on my I Hate Church of the Churchless blog.

------------------------------------------

Believer in Humanity said:

Brian Hines is the most egotistical person in the world. He became dead against the RSSB when his book was not printed by Dera. His ego was so much hurt. He will never let this truth out. He is a big time fame and attention grabber. He pretends though opposite...I closely know and have seen his actions first hand. The best thing we can do to him is IGNORE HIM. It is said that ignoring anyone is the best insult you can do to him. Let us not fell in his trap. If we all ignore him. He gets unsettled. He tries to find something to trigger news and get attention

Wow! I'm the most egotistical person in the world?! Thanks for the honor, but have you spent much time watching my country's president, Donald Trump? I humbly need to claim second place. Also, it was a mutual decision to have Return to the One published by myself, not RSSB. (Plug: click on that Amazon link to buy it.) Regarding me wanting to get attention, thanks for writing your comment, which I'm using to help get more attention. 

 

Naresh said:

Mr. Brian, You don't know and you will come to know in the coming days that you are an Idiot. By reproducing the text what Bombay Blonde has posted, you have acknowledged this. There is no wrong doing in conducting business by borrowing money from close family members. You have crossed your limits. It seems you are an aged person, please get your head examined.

Oh, I know that I can be an idiot. Just not all the time. A couple of days ago my car wouldn't lock after I'd parked it. I kept trying for about a minute, then realized I'd left the auxiliary power on while listening to the radio. I did indeed feel like an idiot. Regarding loans to family members being wrongdoing, read this Bloomberg story. You'll find that loans to the Dhillon family came from companies controlled in whole or part by members of RSSB, which led to "crushing debt" that helped destroy the Singh brothers business empire. Lastly, I do get my head examined at an annual physical exam. So far I've been able to correctly answer the senior citizen questions, like what my name is and where I live.

 

Gurdish Kaur said:

U r really sick and need to go psychiatrist .Mind ur own buisness and don't spread remours about dera .Ur bad statements can't harm anything.so get well soon.....Best wishes...

 

Thanks for the concern about my mental health. I'm married to a retired psychotherapist, so I figure that my wife will let me know if I become truly mentally ill. Of course, all wives sometimes think that their husband is crazy, so I'm not counting this as a mental illness, just a byproduct of marriage.

 

REVENGE said:

If only I could be the owner of hell, what splendid plans I'd come up with for the writer. I wouldn't stoop as low as you have but just remember KARMA. One day things unimaginable will happen to you and you will wonder what wrong did I do and then all of a sudden you will remember this, just know Karma fucked you hard.

 

I'd love to know more details about what sort of hell you envision for me. Suggestion: since I'm a liberal who detests Donald Trump, being forced to wear a red Make America Great Again cap and listen for eternity to Trump's campaign speeches would be a hellish punishment. 

 

Varinder Singh said:

You all are asshole stupid .you have no idea what you are doing

Well, right now I feel like I know that what I'm doing is writing a response to you telling me that I have no idea what I'm doing. But maybe this all is illusion, maya. Which would be far out!

sanjeev said:

Pigs are writing such poor attention seeking articles without having done any proper investigation. Idiot foreigners are writing such useless articles based on rumours.

 

Hey, I've got to stand up for my country! I'm not an idiot foreigner, I'm a proud idiot American! By the way, rumors sometimes are true. That's why the RSSB guru should authorize an independent audit of the Beas Trust and the Dhillon family finances. That way rumors could be dispelled. Or, maybe, confirmed.

 

Sonal said:

Total Rubbish...These people r making rumours of Rssb ...RSSB is as clean and pure as God itself...

 

Interesting argument. Not sure if it would stand up in a court of law. And what if God doesn't exist?

 

Akanksha said:

Now what good can u expect when Dirty people starts judging and blaming others who are doing good. Rssb is a class in itself. By writing a mere rubblish article what do u want to prove?? Just grow up.

 

I take a shower every morning and a bath every night. So I'm quite clean, mostly. Regarding growing up, I keep waiting for that to happen. I'm almost 70, so I'm beginning to doubt that's going to occur. But on the bright side, I'm pleased that I'm still growing, not stagnant.

 

Nidhi said:

Were u ever a follower, you Brian Hines? You are clearly KAL you should change your name to SATAN. You are the weakest human being who did have the strength to continue on the path so left it and start blaming and shaming the guru to hide your own weaknesses. They say the path is for the 'Soormas' and definitely not for swines like you. You are a bunch of weaklings and spineless swines. As I said before as well wait for your time to be over you will have to pay for your karmas and believe me you will not be able to carry their load. May God give you the toughest punishment ever.

 

Gosh, now I've gone from being a plain idiot to SATAN. Well, I guess that's a promotion. Sort of. And, yes, I was initiated by Charan Singh in 1971, through his representative Roland deVries. I meditated every day and followed the vows to the best of my ability for 35 years. I did a lot of seva for RSSB, including writing three books on the organization's behalf, serving as sangat secretary for many years, giving satsangs, and doing security seva at several of Gurinder Singh's visits to North America. Does all this count for anything with God, or am I still going to get "the toughest punishment ever"? Like, more than what Hitler or Stalin got? Yikes!

 

New one:

dharam said:

mr. Brian you have crossed the limits in writing abusive language. i request you to remove abusive language and picture from your blog immediately. i would like to narrate a story to u. some persons called 'bear' to some sangat asking for parshad in the congregation of a sikh guru and they had to be born as bears and again they were liberated from the species of 'bear' by the next guru.hope u might understand. i remind u there is heavy punishment by the God for the pain givers and criticisers of saints as per gurubani which is like bible. and thes press reports or other reports cannot be said as true or conclusive.and you better mind your business for sake of your soul.

 

I think bears are quite adorable. But I'm thinking more of Pooh Bear, than a grizzly bear. Do I get a choice of what sort of a bear I'll be reincarnated as? And is a panda a kind of bear? Being a panda would be OK. I'm a vegetarian, and I could learn to like bamboo shoots -- especially if I was a panda. Theological question: can both the Gurubani, which I assume is the Adi Granth Sahib (which I've read), and the Bible both be true? Me, I doubt it. In fact, I don't think any holy books are true, which is why I'm not afraid of anything happening to my soul, because I don't believe I have one.

 

Another new one, an email:

from Shivkumar B, Bathjia: 

In indian mythology there was one so called powerful person who had 7 heads. He was proclaimed as God. He tried to flirt with Sita wife of God. Not only he lost 7 heads he lost his entire family n his kingdom was reduced to Ashes.  How many heads you have? Your fate will be similar.  Your time starts now. Let us see how u protect yourself.

Hmmm. So Indian mythology says God cuts off someone's seven heads, destroys his family, and reduces his kingdom to ashes because he tried to flirt with the wife of God.  Seems like overkill, to put it mildly. Myths like this one is why I don't believe in God, who sounds a lot with the judgmental violent God of the Old Testament. In answer to your question, I have one head. I'm not going to do anything special to protect myself, because I'm not afraid of speaking truth to power -- even if the (mythical) power in this case supposedly is God.

Also, if someone flirted with my wife, my likely reaction would either be to ignore this, or to say to the guy (or gal), "Hey, you've got good taste, but this is my wife." I wouldn't want to behead them. So this seems to show that I've got more love, compassion, and self-control than whatever mythical God is being talked about in the "Sita" story.

 

----------------------------

UPDATE: Jesse just left a Church of the Churchless comment that explained India's crazy (to me) laws about offending religious sensibilities. I've copied in a portion below. But I'm an American. We're fortunate to have a First Amendment that protects free speech. And the state where I live, Oregon, has an even stronger statement about free speech in our state constitution. So people who live outside of the United States need to remember that we can say whatever we want about religions.

 

For those who don't know, in India, it is illegal to criticize other religions. The law talks about "hurting the religious sentiments of others" or something (IPC 153) , and crazy religious riots are almost a daily happening there, literally, because people are too emotional to hear blasphemy. I've had conversations even here with people from India and they've used those words "hurt my religious sentiments." This is why you see here everyone who is freaking out is saying Brian has no right, he's slandering, it's illegal etc. Because they developed a culture where critique is not allowed and it is illegal where they live, because they want it to be. Mobs shut cities down regularly over words they don't like. What we have in the west called "free speech" simply doesn't exist in many other parts of the world, and people who don't have this mindset will almost never convert to it, nor will their kids.

 

It's interesting that the United States rarely, if ever, has violence involving either religious speech, or anti-religious speech, whereas India does. Sure, India has its own unique religious history, marked by a lot of religious hatred.

 

Still, free speech is a very good thing, and India needs more of it.

 

When people feel like they can't express themselves honestly ad directly, frustrations simmer. That's why I was so pleased to see that India's Supreme Court has legalized gay rights. It must have been tough for gays in India to feel like they are a genuine part of their country, when the laws discriminated against them.

 

Investigations of financial wrongdoing circle closer to RSSB

I'd like to get back to writing about other subjects on this blog, but news about the Singh brothers, RSSB, and Gurinder Singh Dhillon (RSSB guru) keeps coming in from links people send to me. 

And it's a fascinating story -- this tale of how a supposedly spiritual sect, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, has gotten deeply entangled in some highly suspicious financial dealings.

Today the DNA India site reports, "SFIO may expand Singh brothers' probe to Ranbaxy sale." Excerpts:

Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) is looking for a deeper investigation of all associated firms related to brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh – Ranbaxy, Religare and Fortis Healthcare.

"This is not an ordinary case; it seems there are more people are involved in a web of transactions," source privy to the matter told DNA Money. "Initially Singh Brothers blamed the third person, Sunil Godhwani, and now they are blaming each other, which needs more thorough investigation by Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO)," he said.

SFIO, which is already probing into the affairs of Religare and Fortis, may extend the investigation to other related entities of Singh brothers including Ranbaxy. The trigger point for further investigation is the recent accusation of Singh brothers.

...The role of Godhwani and Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious sect and the management who joined the business with Singh brothers are also on the radar.

The common point of Singh brother and Sunil Godhwani was RSSB. Both have a close relationship with the sect. Godhwani was the financial head and adviser of RSSB.

Godhwani became managing director of Religare Securities on April 15, 2002, and later also held a 1.3% stake in the listed firm Religare Enterprises. Along with Godhwani, other Satsang members, including R K Shetty and Padam Bahl, had joined the Religare Enterprises Board.

As I've noted before, this scandal bears a close resemblance to what's happening with the investigations involving President Trump. Numerous associates of Trump have either been indicted, pled guilty, or are cooperating with investigators to avoid more serious charges.

But so far Trump himself hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing. However, it is well known that investigators (in Trump's case, the FBI/Justice Department) start with with lower-level people, then work their way up to the top people in an organization. 

Likewise, so far the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, hasn't been implicated in any wrongdoing. But since, as the DNA story says, Sunil Godhwani was the financial head of RSSB and the guru's right-hand man, it is difficult to believe that Gurinder Singh wasn't aware of what Godhwani was doing with Religare.

More facts will come out, I'm confident of that.

One big question is: to what degree will RSSB insiders choose to protect the guru and RSSB higher-ups, if this means that they will face serious legal problems? With Trump, we're seeing previously loyal associates of the President choosing to cooperate with prosectors to avoid jail time.

Trump, though, isn't viewed as God in Human Form by his associates, while the guru is. (Trump must envy gurus, since he loves to be worshipped.)

RSSB guru agrees to answer questions about his financial dealings

Well, this is a bit of progress.

The guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, says that he will answer questions about the seemingly shady financial dealings he, his family, and possibly RSSB itself (a charitable organization) have been involved in.

Today someone sent me a link to a story in The Indian Express, "Upcoming payouts a possible trigger for Singh brothers feud." Excerpt:

According to a source privy to the development, some senior members of the sect recently asked Dhillon about his reaction to various news reports regarding the Singh brothers. The source said that Dhillon told these members that he has answers to all the questions that have been raised and he will give the answers himself at an opportune time. Dhillon told the senior members that spiritual and business aspects of our lives are separate and that devotees should focus on the former and not get diverted from it.

The RHC Holding as well as the RSSB did not respond to the queries sent by The Indian Express. Another source — involved with RSSB’s corporate dealings — added that Dhillons have been in business with Singh brothers for a very long time. “Take the example of Luminous Holdings, which was set up in 2002, and has Babaji himself as a director. Moreover, his wife Shabnam Dhillon is the other director of this company,” he said.

According to documents with corporate affairs ministry, Luminous Holdings had a long term borrowing of Rs 6.5 crore as on March 2017. Of that, around Rs 4.4 crore came from Delhi-based Fern Healthcare. In June, a probe by law firm Luthra and Luthra found that Singh brothers moved about Rs 475 crore from Fortis to various private companies. Fern Healthcare was one of them.

I've got a couple of thoughts about this. 

(1) Indian business publications have been reporting on the tangled web of financial dealings involving the Singh brothers and the guru's family for a long time. To date, every story I've read has said that RSSB and the guru refused to comment to a reporter. So it's odd that now Gurinder Singh Dhillon is saying he'll answer questions "at an opportune time."

That time was quite a while ago. So every day the guru isn't willing to stand up in front of a press conference and answer pointed questions about his financial involvements is a day people are going to be wondering, "What does Gurinder Singh Dhillon and Radha Soami Satsang Beas have to hide?

(2) As I noted in a recent post, apparently the guru has never read a book published by the spiritual organization that he heads. "Honest Living" makes clear that, contrary to what Gurinder Singh is claiming, actually the spiritual and business aspects of our lives are closely related. If you do bad stuff in your business life, your spiritual life is going to suffer -- even, or especially, if you are a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form by the RSSB teachings.

(3) Yesterday I shared a CNBC TV 18 video of a program where there was a call for the RSSB charitable trust to be audited, to clear up questions about whether the Dhillon family, or anyone else, has been benefitting from a co-mingling of RSSB money and private money.

If RSSB and Gurinder Singh Dhillon have nothing to hide, they should be pleased to open the books of RSSB to inspection by a independent auditor. And the Dhillon family's own finances also should be audited so questions about their dealings with financial entities involving the Singh brothers can be cleared up. 

The Business Insider story ends with these passages, which show the need for an investigation into whether the Dhillon family or RSSB benefitted from the purported illegal financial transactions cited by Shivinder Singh. Sunil Godhwani is reportedly the guru's "right-hand man," and is a RSSB insider.

Meanwhile, PTI reported on Tuesday that Shivinder has alleged in his petition before the NCLT that his elder brother Malvinder perpetrated illegal financial transactions, forged Shivinder’s wife’s signature and led the company into an unsustainable debt trap.

Malvinder and Godhwani “used their respective positions to perpetrate or cause others to perpetrate illegal financial transactions and various acts of mismanagement by and through RHC, leading to massive losses to RHC and its subsidiaries, and a depletion of the wealth,” the petition said, according to PTI.

India legalizes gay rights. Only took 150 years.

Way to go, India. Your Supreme Court has given gays in India the same rights as anyone else. Here's a screenshot of a video on the New York Times story about this that shows people in India celebrating.


The New York Times points out, in "India's Gay Sex Ban, a Colonial Vesige, Is Struck Down," that the archaic rule against consensual gay sex was a holdover from the puritanical days of British rule.

In a groundbreaking victory for gay rights, India’s Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down one of the world’s oldest bans on consensual gay sex, putting to rest a legal battle that stretched for years and burying one of the most glaring vestiges of India’s colonial past.

After weeks of deliberation in the Supreme Court and decades of struggles by gay Indians, India’s chief justice, Dipak Misra, said that the colonial-era law known as Section 377 was “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary.”

“We have to bid adieu to prejudices and empower all citizens,” he told a packed courtroom.

The court said that gay people were now entitled to all constitutional protections under Indian law and that any discrimination based on sexuality would be illegal.

I'm part of a CNBC TV 18 program about RSSB and the Singh brothers

Last night I spent a pleasant half hour on the phone talking with Ekta Batra, a reporter with India's CNBC TV 18.

She asked if I'd be OK with getting up at 5 am, my time, to be part of a live 20-minute program about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) and a recent lawsuit filed by Shivinder Singh (cousin of the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh) against his brother, Malvinder Singh and an RSSB insider, Sunil Godhwani, who used to run a company founded by the Singh brothers.

No, I said, 5 am is way too early for me.

So we recorded a 20 minute interview, portions of which was neatly edited into the live program, a recording of which can be seen here: "Shivinder Singh will be held accountable for the mess in Fortis Healthcare, says Sandeep Parekh."

UPDATE: Someone in Australia said the link above was blocked by his Internet provider's server. I found a video of the program on the CNBC TV 18 You Tube channel. So you can watch it by clicking below.

Before I talk about the program, a screenshot from which is shown above, I've got to deal with some very important personal stuff. 


First, this isn't the first time a reporter has used what probably is the worst photo I've ever taken of myself, which somehow found its way onto Google Images. The photo I usually use is shown above.

I like it for a couple of reasons: (1) It was taken about ten years ago, so I look younger in it, and (2) the image is cropped from a photo where I was holding my one-year-old granddaughter while we were talking a walk around a lake near our house, so it brings back good memories.

Next, I'm pleased that CNBC TV 18 chose to use the only part of the interview where I mentioned the name of this blog. Yay! Publicity! I wasn't so pleased, though, to realize that I used "you know" an annoying number of times, completely without my knowledge as I was sitting on our living room couch, phone in hand, trying to respond coherently to the reporter's questions

Anyway, have a look and listen. 

That CNBC TV 18 web page has a transcript of what one of the Indian guests on the show had to say near the end of the program. Since he was a bit difficult to understand, here's what he said.

JN Gupta: Shivinder cannot absolve the responsibility because he was knowing very clearly that there are financial dealing between the company and RSSB. The moment you involve religion in to the business, what type of business you are running.

I am a religious Hindu, you may be a religious Hindu, but that does not mean that I will take shareholders fund into my faith. You have given up your fiduciary responsibility, you have failed in your fiduciary responsibility because you were put in the board to safeguard the interest of the company and shareholders, and you cannot be using shareholders money to propagate your belief in religion.

The following image from a Bloomberg story about the Singh brothers' downfall illustrates what Gupta was getting at. 

Note that the four arrows on the right side of the illustration show investments and loans flowing to entities affiliated with the guru's family. The three cross-hatched arrows on the rightmost side are loans associated with the guru, which total 25 billion. I assume this is 25 billion rupees, which equal $357 million dollars.

So, yes, as I indicated in the interview, the guru is indeed acting as much or more like a businessman than a guru. And a rather shady businessman at that, given the revelations in both the Bloomberg story and other stories by Indian financial publications.

Gupta says (if I heard correctly) that he feels an audit should be conducted of RSSB finances. The other gentleman on the program wasn't confident this would happen, at least not anytime soon, given religious sensibilities in India.

Lastly, here's a comment that Spence Tepper, a frequent Church of the Churchless visitor, left on one of my posts a few days ago. I can't vouch for everything Tepper says in his comment, but it's a cogent general explanation of what is going on here. I've corrected a few misspellings.

Michael Cooke is Gurinder Singh Dhillon's lawyer. Baba Ji is another name for the guru, Gurinder Singh. Satsangi means an initiate of RSSB. Maharaj ji is a reference to Charan Singh, the guru prior to Gurinder Singh.

Dear Michael Cooke

Fraud is fraud.

The Singh brothers, along with Shabnam Singh Dillon (Baba Ji's wife) and Sunil Godhwani, engaged in purchasing companies on credit, then leveraging their projected valuation for loans used to buy more companies and land, making loan payments by shuffling loans, and giving loans to themselves that have yet to be repaid.

They overextended their credit speculating on the growing realty market, letting ambition cloud judgment.

I'm a devout Satsangi. And I love Baba Ji very much. And tonight I'm heartbroken, because I see it very clearly.

My meditation has sharpened my understanding, not dulled it.

So when the Singh brothers write that they wish to restore their pride, it's clear they haven't learned the lesson of humility. Their pride is the problem. Their intentions were fine: The ones they paraded about and believed to be true. Their hidden ambitions were their undoing.

They didn't come forth. They were exposed. Years of shuffling money, siphoning money has been exposed. I'm sure they meant well. But that's how corruption works, subtly. You find yourself hiding things you know are wrong rather than being honest and making them right.

Corruption has its hands untied when you stop listening to your own inner voice, when you stop meditating.

How do people skilled in hiding their actions repent and do the opposite?

By blaming other corrupt people? LOL!

No. Integrity doesn't work that way. They left the Path long ago.

Their crime wasn't a one-time thing. It happened over a series of decisions over at least two decades to cut corners to leverage growth, to grow assets at the expense of service and quality; grow personal wealth instead of solidify company and service performance, over and over, year over year.

The greatest investment fraud in India's history and the largest Food and Drug Administration penalty in the history of the United States both at the hands of the Singh brothers, under the tutelage of Gurinder's chosen mentor for them, Sunil, with the support of Gurinder's wife, Shabnam. Yes they all became famous. Infamous.

This shame will forever be connected to Baba Gurinder Singh Ji and Radha Soami Satsang Beas. If he wasn't famous before, he is now. And this will be something he will never be able to recover from. It serves no purpose to cheat, nor to allow that to proliferate. No Saint has ever advocated any such behavior.

Michael, we don't need explanations / excuses. These guys who wanted fame got it. They are infamous, and now, so is the Master. Over one hundred years of toil; Jaimal Singh's careful and loving development of his beloved Sawan Singh and the foundation of the Dera; Sawan Singh's lifetime of devotion and toil to His master, to the colony and the disciples; Jagat Singh's life's work and love; Maharaji's decades of work and love, building free hospitals, giving his entire life, and all his time to the Sangat; all destroyed in a career tainted by ambition over land speculation.

We should have seen it coming when Baba Ji started acquiring lands all over the world. They were donations. What corruption could be connected to it?

But why build such large sites, built for a crowd that might only be seen once in many years, and which today, mostly sit empty?

But by linking RSSB investments to these various Religare companies, and those to Fortis and other larger acquisitions, the valuation of these donated lands became the paper collateral for an obscene number of unsupportable loans. The very largess of their value was the irresistible Tolkien's ring.

And then efforts to sell the lands to help pay back the loans were thwarted, because in India, donated land cannot readily be sold. And as land values softened, depts exploded, and bankruptcy abounds in truth, though not quite yet on paper.

Baba Ji knew better. Material wealth is meaningless. Sad beyond words.

Inner wealth, inner peace of mind is everything. When was the last time Baba Ji actually sat in meditation and submitted all this to Maharaji?

Divided interested, and lost focus. The sword has slipped from his hands.

The kingdom razed to the ground by the nefarious and secret actions of GurindEr's closest relatives, including his wife. His own ambition, taken to corrupt ends by those near him who loved him and were, in their eyes, emulating Him.

Gone.

But not the Practice. And not the Truth of the Inner Realms and of the Spirit.

But that mantle will now be passed to someone else, whom life and nature has already been grooming for the purpose. Someone who values those things more than life itself.

I look forward to meeting them.

Shivinder Singh sues his brother and RSSB insider

Breaking news from the world of Indian financial misdeeds. The Indian Standard reports, "Shivinder Mohan Singh drags elder brother Malvinder Singh to NCLT."

Former Ranbaxy promoter and founder of Fortis Healthcare, Shivinder Singh, said that he has filed a case against his brother Malvinder and former head of Religare Sunil Godhwani in the NCLT court for oppression and mismanagement of RHC Holding, Religare and Fortis.

Shivinder Singh said in a press release issued on Tuesday that the action was long overdue but got delayed in the hope that "better sense shall eventually prevail and another ugly chapter of family feud would not be written in our family business’ glorious history."

Stating that he was dissociating with his brother, Shivinder claimed that "The collective, ongoing, actions of Malvinder and Godhwani had led to a systematic undermining of the interests of the companies and their shareholders as also the committed and loyal employees of the group."

Shivinder and Malvinder Singh

This is turning into quite a financial and spiritual drama.

Spiritual, because Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is related to the Singh brothers. Dhillon and his family are deeply enmeshed in the shady financial dealings that led to the dismantling of the Fortis/Religare business empire.

Shivinder Singh has been rumored to be the successor of Gurinder Singh Dhillon as the RSSB guru. Yet Sunil Godhwani, named in the lawsuit by Shivinder Singh, is Gurinder Singh's right-hand man, and other RSSB insiders also are heavily involved in the tangled web of enterprises related to the Fortis/Religare debacle. 

(See here and here for in-depth stories about this by prominent Indian business publications.)

Lawsuits between family members often have a way of bringing out facts that otherwise would be kept secret, both because of the openness required by court proceedings and a desire by one side of the family to reveal "dirt" about the other side. So it'll be interesting to see how all this plays out.

The big question regarding Gurinder Singh Dhillon is akin to the big question regarding Donald Trump. Scandals, investigations, indictments, and such have been circling around Trump.

Now the big question is how directly Trump himself was involved in the Russia collusion stuff, and attempts to interfere with the investigations. Likewise, the next big question regarding Gurinder Singh Dhillon and the Singh brother's dealings is how directly the guru has been involved in the shady side of the financial machinations.

Oneness is like the Hotel California: you can't leave it

I'm a big fan of spontaneous, well-written, heartfelt descriptions of how someone realized that atheism is the way to go. And if they've got a bunch of profanity in them, even fucking better!

So when I read a comment by regular Church of the Churchless visitor Osho Robbins that met those criteria, I knew the comment should be elevated into a blog post.

There's references to Indian words in the comment, but it can be understood just fine without knowing Indian philosophy. Briefly, Sach Khand is roughly equivalent to heaven. Sat Purush is God. And the lyrics to Hotel California are here. 

(The key lyric: "You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave!")


This is the sort of comment I envisioned when I started this blog fourteen years ago. One of my first posts was "Our Creedless Creed." It's worth reading whether or not you're new to this blog, because it shows what my philosophical intention was both at the start, and now.

I mention this because periodically I have to remind commenters on this blog that it's a damn churchless blog.

I'm fine with religious people commenting on my posts, so long as they keep preachiness to a minimum. Today I had to put one regular commenter, "777," on a month-long time out, because he was an unrepentant repeat offender -- too often preachy, incoherent, and off-topic.

Anyway, here's Osho Robbins' pleasingly on-topic comment. I've corrected a few typos and changed the formatting a bit to make it more readable.

Appreciative Reader, I read your comments. My first response is this: “I ain’t got a fucking clue.” However, now that you’ve raised the subject, I will attempt to give a rational explanation.

I have never bothered to categorize myself, but I’ll do it now – just for the hell of it. I am just thinking aloud here and have no idea where this will lead me.

First thing: I don’t like the ‘God’ word – nothing personal – just in case she is reading this blog. So I don’t fit into the theist category or the gnostic category. I neither believe in God; nor do I know there is a God. (personal god)

The issue I have with “God” is the ideas and concepts attached to that word. (A powerful, all knowing guy who lives in Sach Khand and hangs out with his two pals Anami Purush and Agam – or I might have that wrong – whatever.)

So I used to believe in a character called Sat Purush, many many years ago in the days when I used to follow Darshan and Thakar and Charan.

Back then I was definitely a Theist. Then someone told me it’s all bullshit.

My first reaction was that he just hasn’t meditated hard enough. But as I spent time with him, it became clear that he fucking knew what the fuck he’s talking about. Which is more than you could say about me at the time.

All I had was grand ideas and concepts about the inner regions and about the man in the sky and I “knew” I would get there one day and have a good chat with him.

He showed me that I was a fucking lunatic. And I fucking listened – and one day I fucking agreed. That day my life turned fucking around.

I still had one question that would not go away. “What do I need to do next?” “How will I realise this fucking oneness?”

He laughed at my silly questions. “You still don’t fucking get it, do you?” I admitted the obvious. Then he dropped the bombshell.

There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to attain.

“You mean I am already there?” I asked in disbelief.

“Where?” he asked

“Well, you know, in the ONENESS?”

He laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me? You never left because you’re not allowed to leave. Nobody is allowed to leave. Nobody leaves.”

“You mean, it’s like the Hotel California?”
“I can check out any time I like?”
But….. “I can never leave?”
I laughed too. “You mean everyone is trying to get back to where they never left?”
“Well fuck me!” were my last words before I left him that night.

Oneness – at least to me – has nothing to do with God. There is only one thing that is real (the way I define real: changeless, formless etc). The oneness cannot be seen or experienced. It just is. Everything I say about it will be a lie.

I could call it “nothingness” and it would be just as valid (or invalid) as calling it the ONE. I don’t claim any mystical experience. I don’t believe there is any such thing. I believe the seekers make it out to be mystical because they don’t understand the simplicity of it. It’s a very simple realization.

Actually it appears I might actually be an atheist after all. The atheist says he doesn’t believe the theist claim of a God. Well – I don’t believe it. Since I don’t have a belief in a personal God of any sort – including Sat Purush.

The hard atheist goes further and says “I know there is No God”  I would say the same when it comes to a personal God. I now say categorically that there is no Sat Purush or Sach Khand. And his pals, Alakh, Agam and Anami don’t exist either, except in the fertile minds of the seekers.

So it turns out I am actually a hard atheist – a far cry from the Theist I once was, many years ago. Not sure where this leads – but at least it was entertaining to write about.

Religious believers ignore reality, while making up fantasies

After fourteen years of blogging here on the Church of the Churchless, I'm not surprised anymore by this evident fact about most religious believers:

They make two mistakes. They ignore aspects of this evident physical reality that conflict with their chosen religious dogma. And they embrace fantasies about supernatural realms that almost certainly don't exist. 

Thus religious believers close their eyes to what can actually be known, while making up stories about what is unknown -- such as what, if anything, lies outside the bounds of our universe.

Here's some examples of what I'm talking about. 

I've written several posts about recent stories that reputable Indian business publications have published about a guru's highly questionable financial involvements. (See here and here.)

These are well-researched stories that lay out in considerable detail how Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is deeply enmeshed in the tale of how two brothers, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, who are relatives of Dhillon, have lost billions of dollars through shady business deals.

But RSSB true believers refuse to accept the facts that are right in front of their eyes, even going so far as to consider that the guru is orchestrating the bad press about him as a test of how devoted and obedient his devotees are.

Obviously this is crazy.

But since crazy is the foundation of every religion, including the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, followers of the guru who comment on this blog, such as "One Initiated," have resorted to name-calling and insults because they are unable to come up with facts to refute the tell-all stories published by Bloomberg and Business Today.

(Additional stories about Gurinder Singh Dhillon and the Singh brothers have been published by other organizations.)

What's obvious to everyone but those head-in-the-sand acolytes is how readily religious believers ignore facts that threaten their belief system, while accepting extremely spurious dogmas that have no demonstrable evidence to back them up.

I'm proud to be a member of the Truth Telling Club. We aren't an actual club, of course. But I feel a close connection to everyone who does their best to accept reality as it is, and to dismiss fantasies that aren't real.

This is difficult work. It requires research, an open mind, a willingness to admit errors and mistakes, a heartfelt commitment to following the truth wherever it leads. 

By contrast, religious believing is easy.

So is ignoring facts about the ugly side of one's chosen religion, such as the sleazy financial dealings Gurinder Singh Dhillon has been engaging in while he supposedly was dedicating himself to both his own spiritual uplift and that of his disciples.

The good news is that the truth always wins out. Reality always has the last word. Why? Because truth and reality are vastly more powerful that falsehood and fantasies.

Likely there is more truth to come out about the RSSB guru's financial dealings.

We live in a world where secrets are difficult to keep, even by the rich and powerful.

Fortunately, our world has plenty of people who value honesty above lies, truth-telling above dissembling, straight talk above meaningless blather. Religions likely always will be with us, but I'm confident that their power will diminish as reality increasingly comes to be valued above fantasy.