Church of the Churchless

Sunil Godhwani, close associate of RSSB guru, detained at Delhi airport

Interesting news in the financial fraud case involving the Singh brothers and the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Sunil Godhwani, who has been described by a RSSB insider as the personal treasurer and right-hand man of the Guru, was detained at the New Delhi airport by the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi police.

Here's the CNBC TV18 story:

Former Religare Enterprises chief Sunil Godhwani was stopped at Delhi Airport from flying overseas on Thursday. Godhwani has been taken into custody by Economic Offences Wing.

It is learnt that Godhwani was flying to the US to visit his son.

Sources aware of the developments told CNBC-TV18 that the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) had issued a look out circular (LOC) against him.

A complaint was filed against Godhwani in the case of Religare Enterprises, which is under the scanner for alleged financial irregularities. Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL) and Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL) had filed a complaint against him.

In his submission to the MCA, Godhwani had claimed that the complaint is part of a conspiracy hatched by the current management out of their ulterior motive to cover up their nexus between the erstwhile promoters and the majority shareholder of the company.

In his petition filed with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), former Fortis Healthcare promoter Shivinder Mohan Singh had alleged that elder brother Malvinder Mohan Singh and Godhwani together conspired to divert Rs 750 crore from Religare Finvest Ltd, Religare’s wholly owned subsidiary, and Rs 473 crore from Fortis Healthcare to RHC Holding Pvt Ltd.

Last week, founder of Jet Airways, Naresh Goyal and his wife Anita Goyal were stopped from leaving the country by the immigration officials at the Mumbai Airport. It is learnt that Goyals were travelling for London via Dubai. From Mumbai, they were to board an Emirates flight EK 507, which was going to Dubai.

The MCA had issued a look out circular (LOC) against Goyal and his wife after a fraud was detected at the airline, sourced told CNBC-TV18 on Monday.

The government has decided to tighten the noose around companies, promoters, directors involved in serious fraud and irregular transactions, said the sources.

The MCA will continue to issue more look out circulars to curb potential flight risk, added the sources, who did not want to be named.

This story fails to note that Malvinder Singh's criminal complaint names Godhwani as a co-conspirator with Gurinder Singh Dhillon and others in orchestrating the financial fraud that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars being siphoned into the pockets of the Dhillon family from public companies once controlled by Godhwani and the Singh brothers.

Earlier this year it was reported that the Delhi police were investigating that criminal complaint, which, again, accused the RSSB guru and Sunil Godhwani of financial fraud (also, a death threat by Dhillon).

It looks like the Indian authorities are taking the various complaints in this saga quite seriously, since Godhwani has been stopped from leaving the country and apparently is being questioned.

It'll be interesting to see how all this unfolds. An Economic Times video about Godhwani's detainment describes this as a "Bollywood potboiler" involving a spiritual guru, among others.

For sure.

Religious fantasies are different from ordinary ones

Fantasies are fun. They're a big part of being human. Fictional books, movies, dreams, music, paintings -- all these and so much more is founded on imagining an alternative reality to that which surrounds us now. 

Other animals may also fantasize (our dog seems to have "cat/squirrel chase dreams" where she makes excited noises and moves her paws), but we humans are the top fantasizers on our planet.

Problems arise, though, when fantasies are mistaken for reality. Or, taken too seriously.

Recently my wife and I were transfixed by the Netflix film, "Homecoming," which shows Beyonce's astounding performances at Coachella in 2018. I wrote a post about the film on my HinesSight blog. 

There were many shots of extremely enthusiastic young people in the front rows nearest to the stage.

Black girls seemed to be the most energized and awestruck by Beyonce and her hugely talented crew of dancers, musicians, and singers. It isn't an exaggeration to say they were in a state of ecstasy, watching the Homecoming performances.

Yet likely every person in the vast audience knew it was a performance. I say "likely" only because psychedelics like LSD can temporarily alter someone's perceptions to such an extent, a musical extravaganza could be viewed as an alternative reality.

Leaving aside that possibility, though, the two-hour show crafted by Beyonce and her artistic directors would have been recognized as a performance even as audience members were whole-heartedly embracing the sights and sounds of Homecoming. 

There really isn't much of a difference between the artistry of the Coachella performances of Homecoming and the fantasies conjured up by the world's religions, mystical paths, and supernatural fables. All were created by humans to entertain, inspire, and captivate.

However, religiosity is a strange mixture of fantasy and delusion.

Meaning, true believers forget that much of  what they're embracing has minimal or no connection with reality. They mistake concepts and abstractions -- God, soul, spirit, heaven, Devil, and such -- for something substantively real.

A Pearls Before Swine comic from March 18, 2019 captured this phenomenon nicely.

Self-delusiontopia is where religious believers spend a lot of time.

I know, because I used to make that place a frequent home. Sure, mostly I was in contact with reality, or I wouldn't have been able to work at a job, raise a child, play tennis, drive my car, and do all of the other things that require a close connection to how things actually are, as opposed to how we fantasize them to be.

Non-religious fantasies also can be powerful, of course. Here's an excerpt from an article in the September 3, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, "Bad Bargain: Nicki Minaj and the power of fans."

In 2014, Billboard launched the "Fan Army Face-Off," a bracket-style online vote that pitted pop stars' fans against one another. The crowd-sourcing exercise was not exactly original, but its language -- which set fan bases up in imaginary battles -- encapsulated the increasingly combative state of pop-music fandom.

Some fan-group monikers have become household names: Beyonce has the Beyhive, Justin Bieber has Beliebers, Rihanna has a Navy, Selena Gomez has Selenators, Taylor Swift has Swifties. 

Unlike, say, the way Deadheads followed their band from city to city, this modern style of adoration takes place chiefly online, where it is driven not only by jubilation but by fierce defensiveness. Followers pounce on anyone -- big, small, notorious, anonymous -- who criticizes their idols.

There is a dark, obsessive energy to such devotion; fittingly, these crusaders are now often referred to as "stans"  -- a reference to a song by Eminem, from 2000, which tells the story of a fictional fan named Stan who writes increasingly unhinged letters to the rapper before driving his car into a river.

Reading this, naturally I was reminded of the decidedly weird phenomenon of the religious believers who likewise obsessively defend their chosen faith or guru (often Gurinder Singh Dhillon) in comments on this blog.

I've been surprised at why someone would spend so much time and energy reading posts on a Church of the Churchless blog, given that they are clearly in the "churched" camp.

The New Yorker article gave me a new perspective on this. These are fans of a particular religion who are so immersed in their fantasy life that they can't stand any reality-based criticism of their idols.

Weird? Yes. But equally weird is freaking out when someone criticizes Nicki Minaj or Beyonce. People are simply weird -- though obsessive "fandom" is especially intense in the religious sphere.

Open Thread 21 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks devoid of substantive content are an exception.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Reading this blog post, know that you are reading this blog post

If you're not into mindfulness meditation, the title of this blog post may seem like nonsense to you. But like I wrote last year, "Mindfulness has become my meditation."

A frequently-heard saying in the guided meditations I listen to via iPhone apps is Breathing in, know that you are breathing in. In other words, bring mind and body into a state of harmonious relatedness.

Of course, you don't have to always be aware of your breathing. But if your goal in a particular meditation session is to be aware of your breathing, then obviously you need to know that you are breathing to bring about that awareness.

It's entirely possible, very common, in fact, to be doing something physically without being aware of what you're doing. I can read several paragraphs of a book before I suddenly realize, I have no idea what I just read. My eyes were scanning the words, while my mind was thinking about something else.

So I try to get into the habit of saying to myself, "While doing ____, know that I'm doing ____."

Not continuously, of course. That would distract from my awareness of what I'm doing, since if I kept repeating that phrase, I'd be aware of repeating that phrase, not what I was physically doing.

For example, at the beginning of the three Tai Chi classes I attend each week I typically say to myself, "While doing Tai Chi, know that I am doing Tai Chi."  Maybe that seems obvious. It isn't, though. After 15 years of learning Tai Chi, I know most of the forms so well I can do them while my mind is elsewhere.

Like, thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner. Thus my body can be practicing Tai Chi, while my mind is visualizing what's going to be taken out of the refrigerator when I get home.

There's nothing wrong with doing that.

It just means that I'm not fully into the present moment, since my body is in one place while my mind is in another place. That's often fine. How would we be able to envision the future if our minds were locked into only being cognizant of what's happening right now?

Ditto for remembering the past.

I'm simply saying that by and large, I've found that life is more pleasant, and seems to flow more smoothly, when my mind is as much in sync with my physical actions as possible. Sure, sometimes we need to be almost totally immersed in thoughts or feelings that take us away from what our body is doing.

Even then, though, we should be aware of our inner contemplation while we're engaged in that inner contemplation. Most of us have had the unsettling experience of talking to somebody, then having them say, "Oh, sorry. Could you repeat that? My mind was somewhere else."

Typically we aren't as unsettled when we aren't aware of what our own mind has been saying inside our head, because this happens so frequently, it is second nature (or even first nature) to us.  

Meaning, if our inner voice were to be broadcast to the world at large via a psychological loudspeaker, other people would look upon us as if we were crazy --  much as mentally ill homeless people are viewed when they stand on a street corner and blurt out whatever pops into their head.

A main difference between them and us is that we're able to keep our bizarre non-sensical stream-of-consciousness thoughts to ourselves while we walk down a sidewalk. Which shouldn't fill us with pride in our sanity. We're just better at keeping our craziness inside our head.

Mindfulness practice hasn't made me into a Buddha, for sure.

I still get anxious, sad, upset, angry, worried, fearful, and such just about as much as before. However, I'm working on simply experiencing those feelings as they arise, rather than, say, getting anxious about my anxiety, or sad about my sadness.

Being more mindful of how I'm feeling seems to help me avoid becoming overwhelmed by an emotion, where I make myself feel worse by over-reacting to a feeling I'm experiencing. Feeling worried, I know that I'm feeling worried -- that sort of thing.

It's been a while since I've locked my car, then walked back to my car to see if I've locked it. Like I said back in February, this is a positive sign of my (mini) enlightenment.

Any resemblance between me and this image that I shared in that post is purely coincidental. I do, though, live near a lake that has water lilies, so there's that.

 

 

Praise Me! I'm writing a Church of the Churchless book

Well, the title of this post is accurate, but it needs some explaining.

Actually, I've already written almost all of the Church of the Churchless book, since after I started this blog in November 2004 I've written 2,601 posts. Assuming each has around 500 words (likely more, so this is a conservative estimate), that's 1,300,500 words.

Wow. 

For quite a while I've been thinking I should fashion those posts into a book. Recently that thought became action. I've already gotten 58,000 words worth of blog posts selected and mildly edited. Mostly I've just been removing links and a bit of extraneous material.

An 80,000 word book strikes me as a good length.

That's in the totally cool range of a Writer's Digest article. Since I'll have many short churchless "sermons," each starting on a new page, 80,000 to 85,000 words seems about right for this first Church of the Churchless book -- almost certainly with more books to come.

I'm enjoying the process of selecting and re-reading the blog posts, which will simply be listed chronologically in the book. Last Sunday I talked with an old friend about the book. He told me about an author who said, wisely, "I write the book that I'd want to read."

Since I'm feeling inspired by reading what I wrote quite a few years ago, I figure I'm on the right track. It looks like I'll be able to find 80-85,000 words worth of book-worthy posts in just the first year of this blog, between the end of 2004 and 2005.

Early on I decided that I'd only correct typos, not change what I'd written, even if now I don't agree with what I said back then. Likely I'll include a sentence or two of present-me commentary before each post, such as "Wow! I sure sounded like I believed in God here. Makes me cringe a bit to read this now."

Having written three previous books about spirituality/philosophy that I no longer believe in, to a large extent, it feels really good to be working on a book that comes much closer to my current atheistic world view.

The way I see it, converting to a religion is akin to walking up the stairs of a building with many floors. The height you reach depends on how strongly and completely you buy into the tenets of a religion.

Since I spent 35 years as an ardent devotee of the guru/meditation-centered Sant Mat teachings promulgated by Radha Soami Satsang  Beas (RSSB), I did a lot of stair-climbing. When I deconverted from those teachings, it was a gradual process, just as walking down the stairs of a tall building to ground level takes time.

So it makes sense that the blog posts which will appear in the first churchless book are filled with mentions of God, soul, and such, since I was still a speaker at RSSB meetings until October 2005, eleven months after I began writing Church of the Churchless posts.

Here's one of the early posts that made it into the book manuscript, "Become a religion of one" from October 5, 2005. I like it a lot.

Most people belong to a religion with many members. There are about two billion Christians in the world, over a billion Muslims, and nearly a billion Hindus. Sure, company is nice, but here are some reasons to become a religion of one:

-- You can hold a worship service whenever and wherever you want. Your church just needs to be as big as you are.

-- No contentious arguments about leadership. Any jockeying for power in your religious organization will be between you and you.

-- Doctrinal disputes are easily resolved. What you say, goes.

-- If you’ve ever wanted to be known as “Most eminently enlightened great being” or “Her highly esteemed holiness,” within your own mind at least, this is your chance.

-- Beer and tortilla chips can be your holy sacraments. Or, cake and chocolate.

-- Sex between clergy and parishioners is absolutely fine. Encouraged even. It’s all in your own hands. Literally.

-- Finding a name for your religion is easy: just look at your driver’s license. The hard part is deciding between “ism,” “ity,” or whatever. In my case, Hinesism sounds OK, Hinesity terrible. Hinesiosity, maybe. I need to schedule a meeting with myself on this.

-- No worries about declining membership. You’re already as low as you can go (death will take your religion down to zero devotees, but that’ll be the least of your worries).

-- Salvation is assured. All you need to do is write “salvation is assured” on a holy post-it note and then have faith in your divine revelation. Heck, if it works for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, it’ll work for you.

-- The next time someone says, “Who died and made you the pope?” you can reply with a straight face, “What do you mean? Nobody had to die, I’ve always held that office.”

But seriously…I’ve got shelves of books from each of the world’s great mystical traditions — Christian, Sufi, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu — that support the contention, “Become a religion of one.”

Science seeks universal material truths through a collaborative process of rigorous investigation. Mysticism seeks universal spiritual truths through an individual process of rigorous investigation.

Don’t believe it when you hear, “When two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I” in reference to spiritual presence. In truth, that’s when God is not present—in a group.

Believe it: the best religion has a membership of one.

An ex-Christian talks about the uselessness of prayer

Here's another churchless guest "sermon" from someone who regularly emails me descriptions of his now religious-less life, after belonging to a fairly fundamentalist Christian denomination.

Enjoy. He's a good writer with an appealingly honest style.

Hey Brian, how are you?  I’m ok.  I’m just getting over a short bout of the flu. 

I almost said, thank God it was a short bout. I am thankful for that fact, but it’s funny how the God stuff still hangs around.  We’ve talked about this before, but it’s interesting to me what still slips into my mind from my religious past.  Sometimes it’s just a thought that shows up, other times, something else triggers it. 

I think this recent thing was triggered by a preacher that my wife was listening to. It was about finding your purpose or calling. 

As soon as I started thinking about that, I got tense and crabby. Interesting. Finding God’s purpose was a BIG deal in the particular flavor of Christianity that I came out of. Some things that helped me get back to reality were that I did some reading from notes I had taken over the last few years.

Also, I looked at some blogs that have helped me, including yours. If I do a search on your site for “purpose”, there are some great posts that come up. These help me greatly to just calm down.

Back to the flu thing real quick. 

The religious group that I came from believed that God wanted us happy, healthy, and rich. So we would try to use our faith to not get sick.  But when we did get sick, we would pray and use our faith to get healed. Which seems funny to me now, because if my faith didn’t keep me from getting sick, how was it going to help me get well any faster? 

Anyway… so when I used to get sick, I would spend much time praying and reading scriptures and confessing and believing for my healing.

Looking back, I can’t say that I ever really noticed a difference in the time I got well vs. when I didn’t used to pray for healing. And it kind of added a level of stress to the whole thing. Like, it was up to me and my faith to get well faster.

Now, I can just be sick.  And not do anything else! 

I was in bed pretty much all day and night for the last two days. I slept a lot.  And when I wasn’t sleeping, I read, listened to podcasts or Youtube videos, meditated, or just laid there moaning.  LOL  Lots of body aches with this one.  But there is no pressure on me to get better. 

I know that my body is fighting whatever I had, the way nature intended, and I should be fine in a few days. Sure, I can do things to facilitate that process. I drank lots of fluids, got plenty of sleep, ate chicken noodle soup, etc.  So I’m working with what my body is naturally doing and not against it. But there was no “magic” involved.

I was telling someone recently that everyone that I’ve ever known that had an incurable, untreatable, fatal disease has died of that disease, or something related to it. 

My wife and I would pray fervently for, and often with, these people. And most of the time, when they would die, we would just not discuss our “prayer failure”. We would simply grieve and move along.  You would think after 5, 6, 7, 8 times, with zero effect, we would step back and say, whoa!  Something isn’t working here. 

And when we would pray for sick people who weren’t battling a fatal disease, they would get better and we’d be like, thank God!  Our prayers are working!

We never really stopped to think that they would have recovered, anyway. Or that they were getting medical treatment that would have worked, anyway. Logic and reason were not terribly abundant in the circles that I used to run in. 

When I look back, my prayer success rate was probably about 50%. 

Today, I can relate to George Carlin and how he talked about prayer. You probably have heard him talk about it. Carlin joked that he gave up on praying to God to fix everything and decided he'd pray to the tough-guy actor Joe Pesci — because Joe Pesci, especially Joe Pesci with a baseball bat, looked like a guy who could “get things done.”

After a while, Carlin said, he noticed something: after all the prayers he made to Joe Pesci, about half of them worked out the way he wanted them to, and about half of them didn't — about the same luck he had praying to God. Yep. Me too.

Another common thing we would hear is that the devil is attacking someone. Like, pray for brother so and so.  The devil has attacked him with diabetes! 

The fact that brother so and so is 425 lbs and eats something fried every day would have nothing to do with that. Oh, and diabetes runs in his family. 

And I’m not judging anyone for their weight.  I’m as heavy as I’ve been in my life.  I’m 5’11” and about 240 lbs. I’ve recently developed high blood pressure. I can’t say the devil attacked me with that. I need to push the plate away and walk more.

I’m pretty sure, miraculously, my blood pressure will come down to where it should be if I drop 30-40 pounds.

I don’t know why I’m so wound up today?  LOL  Sometimes I just get like that.  When I left church, and eventually, my religious beliefs, it wasn’t because I was angry. There was a little hurt when I realized I had lost almost all my friends, but I wasn’t really angry.

Now, I go through periods where I’m just angry at religion. I’ll flip churches off as I drive by them. Childish, I know. But it feels good at the time. I’m sure there are several reasons for these feelings, but I’ll save that for later.

Something that is going on that is pretty cool is that my wife is meditating with me, now.

Not long ago, she thought it was a waste of time and kind of crazy. She may have even thought that it was a way that the devil could infiltrate your mind?  But after a while, she started to see how my meditation practice was affecting my day to day life. Now we sit together several times a week and she loves it. Pretty cool.  

I hope you and yours are well. Talk to you again soon.

More details surface about financial fraud involving RSSB guru

I readily admit that it's difficult to keep track of the complex web of  financial wrongdoing that ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of rupees being funneled into the pockets of Gurinder Singh Dhillon (guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas), his family, and close associates.

But those interested in this Bollywood'ish saga  -- filled with tales of greed, a gurudom up for sale, death threats, family bickering, and much more besides -- will want to read a Bloomberg Quint story someone emailed me today.
Download Bloomberg Quint Story

The story provides more details  about the complaint filed by executives of Religare against the Singh brothers,  Malvinder and Shivinder, who are cousins of the RSSB guru.

Also, against  Sunil Godhwani, the guru's close associate, who was installed as head of Religare by Gurinder Singh Dhillon -- after which Godhwani orchestrated massive financial fraud that enriched the guy who put him in charge, Dhillon.

Here's a screenshot of part of the Bloomberg story that echoes what I've pointed out in other posts.  Religare is seeking an investigation into where the money they lost went, with the goal of getting the money back. 

Since it appears that the Dhillon family got most of the money, but lost it in bad real estate deals, it sure seems like there will be more twists and turns in this saga.

Anyone who considers that all this is just a simple tale of the Singh brothers making loans to a relative, who has failed to pay them back, needs to read the Bloomberg Quint story.
Download Bloomberg Quint Story

It restates what already was discovered by investigators in India: the money that was funneled into shell companies controlled at the time by Dhillon family members and their associates resulted from highly suspicious, and likely illegal, accounting tricks.

Below is a screenshot of part of the criminal complaint filed against Gurinder Singh Dhillon, Godhwani, and others by Malvinder Singh. It mentions Religare Finvest, which is the centerpiece of the Bloomberg Quint story. Keep in mind that Godhwani was in charge of finances at Radha Soami Satsang Beas before the guru made him a Religare executive.

And here's a Business Today graphic that illustrates some of the money flows into the Dhillon family pockets.

 

Golden Rule is a poor guide to morality

Here at the Church of the Churchless we aren't big on rules -- especially the religious variety. Morality is an individual decision. If doing something works for you, and it doesn't harm other people, go for it. 

Oh, but what about the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or words to that effect. Isn't this a non-religious rule that makes sense? 

Sometimes. But not always. Maybe not even usually. 

Frans de Waal explains why in his fascinating book, "The Bonobo and the Atheist," which I wrote about recently in A bonobo talks to an atheist about morality and religion.

Here's his take on the Golden Rule.

Much as I like the sound and spirit of the golden rule -- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" -- it has a fatal flaw. It assumes all people are alike.

To give a rather crude example, if at a conference I follow an attractive woman whom I barely know to her hotel room and jump into her bed uninvited, I can pretty well guess how she'd react. If I explain that I am just doing to her what I would love her to do to me, I'm afraid my appeal to the golden rule won't fly.

Or, let's assume that I knowingly serve pork sausages to a vegan. Liking meat myself, I am just following the golden rule, but the vegan will consider my behavior obnoxious, perhaps even immoral.

...The golden rule has a very limited reach, and it works only if all people are of the same age, sex, and health status with identical preferences and aversions. Since we don't live in such a world, the rule really isn't as useful as it sounds.

Absolutely.

It isn't hard to think of many other situations where the golden rule would be a lousy moral guide. For example, a sadomasochist enjoys receiving or inflicting pain. Is it proper for them to go up to a stranger and punch them in the stomach, since this is what they would like done to them?

Of course not. But the Golden Rule says this would be fine, since the person is doing to someone else what they would like done to them.

So a better moral guideline seemingly would be Do unto others what they want done to them.

This, though, also would have exceptions. If someone is contemplating suicide, it wouldn't be good to shoot them in the head. Or if a child wants cake rather than a nutritious dinner, a parent shouldn't go along with that desire.

Bottom line: morality is complicated. Yet it also is simple, according to de Waal.  

Almost everybody (psychopaths excepted) has a natural urge to get along with our fellow humans and fit into whatever social group we find ourselves a part of. We share this urge with our fellow mammals, especially primates. 

Here's an excerpt from de Waal's book:

The view of morality as a set of immutable principles, or laws, that are ours to discover ultimately comes from religion. It doesn't really matter whether it is  God, human reason,  or science that formulates these laws. All of these approaches share a top-down orientation, their chief premise being that humans don't know how to behave and that someone must tell them.

But what if morality is created in day-to-day social interaction, not at some abstract mental level? What if it is grounded in the emotions, which most of the time escape the neat categorizations that science is fond of?

Since the whole point of my book  is to argue a bottom-up approach, I will obviously return to this issue. My views are in line with the way we know the human mind works, with visceral reactions arriving before rationalizations, and also with the way evolution produces behavior.

A good place to start is with an acknowledgement of our background as social animals, and how this background predisposes us to treat each other.

Devotion to RSSB guru is less important than seeking truth of his wrongdoing

So if a religious leader you're devoted to is acting illegally, or at least unethically, should you pretend that behavior doesn't exist?  No, of course not. 

Seeking truth is much more important than religious loyalty. Bad things happen when True Believers turn a blind eye to wrongdoing by supposedly "spiritual" leaders. 

Child abuse by Catholic priests is a notable example. So is Jonestown, where devotees died by drinking poisoned kool-aid, their devotion to a crazed leader was so extreme. And there's plenty of examples of gurus acting badly in India, yet sometimes their followers riot after they've been convicted of serious crimes.

On this blog I've been reporting regularly on massive financial fraud involving the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon -- who has been accused in a criminal complaint of conspiring to commit fraud and making death threats.

Yet devotees of the guru are amazingly adept at ignoring those facts. They consider that he can do wrong, so obviously he must be innocent of wrongdoing. 

That sort of circular argument is laughable. However, the dangers of religious fanaticism aren't funny. History teaches us that.

Below are two recent comments by Spence Tepper on posts I've written. Tepper is a good example of a spiritual seeker who is also committed to recognizing wrongdoing by the RSSB guru. 

His first paragraph below is ironic, by the way. Tepper is illustrating the head-in-the-sand mentality of many Radha Soami Satsang Beas initiates, who are known as "satsangis." "Baba Ji" refers to Gurinder  Singh Dhillon.

Here's the first comment.

Hi Dungeness, every Satsangi sincerely interested in rising above attachment, and living for spirituality, must now tell themselves they don't really know what happened, that Baba Ji is a mystery.

Whatever you think of Baba Ji, stuff is going on with fraud on an international scale. And he and his family were recipients of most of those fraudulent loans.

The fact that you believe you don't have enough information to conclude he was involved in stuff no Satsangi should go near is very sad.

Truth invites inspection.

Baba Ji has a duty to model for us how to live. And that never includes privileges afforded to the rich, powerful and 'perfect'.

Yet today, in order to defend Baba Ji, Satsangis must every day make excuses to themselves, with justifications for why he would be the central recipient of fraudulent monies year after year, and why he 'doesn't need to repay, since he's god and it all belongs to him anyway.'

Too close to the excuses Christians in Germany gave to Hitler, and to themselves for turning a blind eye.

The Lord comes as one of us, to our level. They act as though they are responsible for their children, and not the other way around.

What you and others are doing is demonstrating why religion rarely leads the way and often becomes an obstacle that allows harm to innocent people, even exploitation of them.

I'm afraid Dungeness you have no idea of the harm that is actually being done even now.

But when do the disciples of a fake Guru figure it out?

Almost always they are the last, after so much damage has been done.

Baba Ji, pay your bills.

And here's the second comment.

Ahimsa, there are few if any conspiracy theories here.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India ruled that fraud and falsification had been committed by the Singh brothers, both Malvinder and Shivinder, in their efforts to provide loans largely to the Dhillon family and other RSSB associates.

The new Religare board also conducted their own audits and went further in their EOW to the Delhi police and the court, stating that their information proved the recipients of the loans knew and participated in fraud.

The unpaid loans at Fortis threw that healthcare company into financial distress leading to efforts to gain a buyer.

Further, it is a matter of legal court documented testimony that RSSB transferred a new 200 bed charitable hospital mid-construction to Fortis.

If the Dhillon family would simply pay their debts, that would be a step towards living up to the vows.

It is not unusual for Gurus and others, charismatic and loved by many, to have human failings and flawed character.

But it is also the case that this is psychologically near impossible for their loving followers to consider.

And that is understandable.

However, from a psychological and spiritual perspective, the excuses we make for the Guru do not help them in the least. They are actually excuses for our own weaknesses and nothing more.

We only enable our own addictions and shortcomings making claims of spiritual perfection for others when we are unqualified to make such assertions, nor would a true teacher of the highest truth ever allow such claims.

And the reason is simple. The Truth is greater than any individual personality, and should be regarded above any individual.

A person merged in that truth is not magnified, but perfectly humbled, law abiding in every sense, and near invisible socially.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru who accepts fraudulently-obtained money and makes death threats

A bonobo talks to an atheist about morality and religion

OK, the title of this post isn't literally correct. Bonobos can't talk, at least not in a human language.

But Frans de Waal is an expert on bonobos and other primates, who are our closest evolutionary relatives. At the end of his book, "The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among the Primates, " de Waal imagines what a bonobo would tell an atheist. 

This amounts to a good summary of the entire book, which I finished reading recently.

Frans de Waal doesn't believe in God. He does, however, recognize that while religions are a human invention, they are a natural outgrowth of human capacities  -- such as imagination and a strong social inclination.

As you can read below, de Waal understands from his primate research, plus his knowledge of other animals, that what we'd call "morality" is very much in evidence among non-human animals. (We are animals also, of course, mammalian variety.)

In the first 222 pages of his book, de Waal provides a lot of evidence about this. Then, in his final "Bottom-Up Morality" chapter, he draws conclusions from that evidence --  which is encapsulated in his bonobo-talking-to-an-atheist final section.

Enjoy.

What would a bonobo tell an atheist? 

...The bonobo would first of all urge the atheist to stop "sleeping furiously." There is no point in getting all worked up about the absence of something, especially something as open to interpretation as God. True, if being a self-declared atheist carries a stigma, as it unfortunately does in this nation, frustration is understandable.

...I am all for a reduced role of religion, with less emphasis on the almighty God and more on human potentials. This is nothing new, of course. It is the humanist agenda. Nowadays, humanism is often viewed as antireligious, but this is certainly not how it started.

...I should be careful here, though, because calling any values "religious" is problematic. It rather seems that universal human values have been appropriated by various religions, each supporting them with their own narratives and making them their own.

...Tolerance of religion, even if religion is not always tolerant in return, allows humanism to focus on what is most important, which is to build a better society based on natural human abilities. The outcome is the ongoing experiment in the West of an increasingly secular society.

Like that of tectonic plates, the shifting is extremely gradual.

Humanity cannot and will not change on a dime,  and it's also not as if religion is an alien influence. It is very much our creation, part of who we are, fully intertwined with our respective cultures. We had better get along with it and learn from it, even if our goal is ultimately to set out on a new course.

The bonobo would urge the atheist to take a similar long-term perspective. 

The good news is that the main ingredients of a moral society don't require religion, since they come from within. Despite its emphasis on reason, humanism considers our species a creature as much of passion as of intellect. This is where the bonobo has no trouble connecting. We have the emotions of a social animal, and not just any animal, but a mammal.

...We are driven by inborn values and emotions, which guide rather than dictate behavior. They nudge us in a given direction, but leave plenty of leeway.

As a result, we have the capacity to care for those unable to return the favor, adopt unrelated young, cooperate with strangers, and empathize with members of a different species. 

And we're not the only ones; the latest example was the assistance humpback whales gave to a mother gray whale defending her calf against a killer whale assault. Mammals are affected by the distress of others, leading to levels of altruism far in excess of what gene-centric theories predict.

This is why the bonobo disagrees with anyone who pits evolution against morality, such as the well-known American neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson, who has claimed, "Ultimately , if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don't have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires."

The problem with such statements is that if humans everywhere develop a sense of right and wrong, one of our deepest desires must be to live in a moral world. Carson assumes that morality goes against our nature, and that our desires are all bad, whereas the whole point of this book is to argue the opposite.

Thank God, if I may, we share with other primates a background as group animals, which makes us value social connections. Absent this background, religion could be preaching about virtue and vice until it became blue in the face, we'd never get its point.

We are receptive only because of our evolved grasp of the value of relationships, the benefits of cooperation, the need for trust and honesty, and so on. Even our sense of fairness derives from this background,

Here the bonobo would side with the atheist and argue that whatever the role of religion in morality, it's a Johnny-come-lately role. Morality arose first, and modern religion latched onto it. Instead of giving us the moral law, the large religions were invented to bolster it.

We are only just beginning to explore how religion does so by binding people together and enforcing good behavior. It is far from  my intention to minimize this role, which was vital in the past and may remain so in the foreseeable future, but the wellspring of morality it is not.

Finally, the bonobo laughs at the intellectual torture of trying to separate "is" from "ought," which vexes any debate about moral evolution. It is widely accepted within philosophy that we cannot move from the way humans or animals are to moral ideals. 

The first is descriptive, they say, the second prescriptive. This is a serious consideration that is not easily resolved,  but a good start would be to get our premises straight.

If the thought is that animals are mere "wantons," lacking control over the impulses that nature has given them, we are on the wrong track. Like us, animals favor certain outcomes, and react with fear or violence to any deviation. Who says the bonobo can do whatever he wants?

Even with regard to sex, where he faces fewer constraints than we do, he still needs a willing partner as well as the absence of dominant males. He faces many expectations about his conduct, which others won't hesitate to remind him of as soon as he scares an infant or tries to steal a female's food.

Even if he lacks notions of right and wrong that transcend his personal situation,  his values are not altogether different from those underlying human morality. He, too, strives to fit in, obeys social rules, empathizes with others, amends broken relationships, and objects to unfair arrangements. 

We may not wish to call it morality, but his behavior isn't free of prescriptions either.

With this observation, the bonobo concludes his advice to the atheist, whom he sees as a protester rather than an advocate. The big challenge is to move forward, beyond religion, and especially beyond top-down morality. Our best-known "moral laws" offer nice post hoc summaries of what we consider moral, but are limited in scope and full of holes.

Morality has much more humble beginnings, which are recognizable in the behavior of other animals. Everything science has learned in the last few decades argues against the pessimistic view that morality is a thin veneer over a nasty human nature. 

On the contrary, our evolutionary background lends a massive helping hand without which we would never have gotten this far.

Fortis seeking money that ended up with the Dhillon family

It's been a while since the Indian financial press has reported on the financial fraud saga involving the Singh brothers, Malvinder and Shivinder, along with their cousin, Gurinder Singh Dhillon -- the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, whose family reportedly ended up with  close to a billion dollars worth of ill-gotten rupees.

But recently someone emailed me a link to a LiveMint story,  "Fortis plans moving court to recover ₹403 cr from Singh brothers and promoters."
Download Fortis plans moving court to recover ₹403 cr from Singh brothers and promoters

Here's how the story starts out:

Fortis healthcare Ltd is likely to approach the Delhi High court seeking to recover ₹403 crore, which was allegedly siphoned off from Fortis by its former promoters, two people aware of the matter said.

The move follows an order dated 17 October by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) that directed Fortis to take necessary action to recover ₹403 crore along with due interest from the former promoters, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, and various promoter companies within 90 days. With the deadline being missed, Fortis is likely to approach the court in an ongoing case by Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Inc.

Daiichi had moved the high court here seeking direction to the brothers to take steps towards paying its ₹3,500 crore arbitration award, including depositing the amount. It had also urged the court to attach their assets, which may be used to recover the award.

In its plea, Fortis is likely to urge the court that if any direction related to payment of the award is taken, Fortis funds and the Sebi order should be kept in mind. The case is likely to be taken up on May 10.

The amount Fortis is seeking, 403 crore rupees, is about $58 million.

That's how much SEBI, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, had determined was siphoned off into shell companies, some of which (maybe all) were controlled at the time by members of the Dhillon family and close associates. These excerpts from the story should worry Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family.

Apart from the brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, the Sebi order named RHC holdings, Shivi Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Malav Holdings Pvt Ltd, Religare Finvest Ltd, Best Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, Fern healthcare Pvt. Ltd and Modland Wears Pvt. Ltd. 

...In its 13 February petition, Fortis asked the regulator to invoke the law under which a person can be arrested and held in prison. Under the same provision, properties can be attached from defaulted entities, including bank accounts of their heirs, successors, legal representatives to the extent of the full loan accounts and interest thereupon.

Now, I'm not sure what "entities" refers to. Is it the shell companies alone, or is it also the people who were the recipients of the money that was fraudulently diverted to the shell companies?

This graphic from a February LiveMint story, "Fortis fraud may exceed ₹2,000 crore, says SFIO," illustrates the situation.

Note that three of the Fortis companies named in the SEBI order are shown as having funneled money into the pockets of the Dhillon family. So it will be interesting to see whether the companies have the $58 million being sought by Fortis, or whether that money needs to be recovered from the Dhillon family if Fortis is to be paid.

A Money Control story was brought to my attention, "Digging Deeper: the Singh brothers and the saga of Fortis." It doesn't have any new information, so far as I could tell, but rather is an overview of previous stories about this subject.
Download Digging Deeper: The Singh brothers and the saga of Fortis

Here's excerpts where the RSSB guru and his family are mentioned. If you get confused, don't worry. This is a highly complex financial fraud saga with many moving parts and numerous  actors.

Quartz, in early 2019 carried a piece about one of the many feuds the two brothers were embroiled in where the elder of the duo, Malvinder Singh, reportedly filed a criminal complaint against brother Shivinder, with whom he once, yes, as we all know, ran the pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy Laboratories.

The piece spoke among other things about the complaint registered with the economic offences wing of the Delhi Police where Malvinder claimed that Shivinder, Gurinder Singh Dhillon—the spiritual head of the Radha Soami Satsang—and others committed financial fraud and sent him death threats. He also sought Rs8,742 crore ($1.2 billion) as compensation.

The complaint also claimed that Shivinder had manipulated finances because he aspired to the status of a spiritual head within Dhillon’s organisation.

...The unexpected thread in this story is that nearly Rs 2,700 crore from the Ranbaxy proceeds have been allegedly routed to entities owned by Gurinder Singh Dhillon's family. Dhillon is the spiritual head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and the money was routed allegedly to companies associated with senior Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) functionaries over three years. Of that, Rs 2,000 crore was invested in two firms, Prius Real Estate and Prius Commercial Projects.

Separately, says the piece, Rs 1,750 crore wad invested in Religare Enterprises (REL) and about Rs 2,230 crore in Fortis - again from the Ranbaxy proceeds - to fuel their growth. All these turn out to be fatal mistakes.

We quote, "The money transferred to Dhillon and associates - estimated to be between Rs 4,000-6,000 crore, with interest, depending on who you ask - remains unpaid to the Singhs. The rapid and reckless expansion spree that REL and Fortis embark on lands them in a debt trap when the slowdown hits in 2009. That's the beginning of a vicious cycle of mortgaging assets and equity in group companies to raise loans to pay off their previous liabilities."

...In February 2019, Malvinder, narrates the piece, filed  a criminal complaint against Shivinder, the Dhillon family as well as the Godhwani kin - Sunil and Sanjay (who headed loss-making REL subsidiary Ligare Aviation). In the complaint filed before the Economic Offences Wing he seeks Rs 8,742 crore owed to him by the alleged accused.

...In his 2018 statement and the NCLT filing, Shivinder said he took “public retirement” in 2015 to serve in spiritual organisation Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) and that, until October 2017, he was “not involved in the strategic operations” of companies like Religare or RHC.

Yet,  says Prabha, it is Shivinder’s involvement with RSSB that Malvinder alleges is the main cause of the depletion of the Singhs’ wealth.

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

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

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

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

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

Furthermore, Daiichi in 2018 alleged that the brothers had siphoned funds through a complex “web of companies”, to render its award, now valued over Rs 3,500 crore, a “mere paper decree”. In October last, Daiichi rushed to the Delhi High Court asking it to attach properties of several companies currently not a party to its ongoing case against the Singhs. Its lawyers alleged in court that the siblings, via companies controlled by them, were routing funds to downstream companies that further used the funds to settle debts of land-owning companies. Over Rs 2,500 crore was diverted this way, they alleged.

...In a Live Mint piece, former minister Kapil Sibal said something interesting and we quote, "Their nearly ₹6,300 crore has been siphoned off by some 'baba'. These children have been duped.''

However as multiple news sources have implied, there was nothing innocent about any of the players.

...As Forbes' Megha Bahree reported, the ongoing sibling slugfest between Malvinder and Shivinder Singh has returned yet again with a new round of allegations.

We quote, "Malvinder Singh, former chairman and managing director of Fortis Healthcare, has filed a criminal complaint against Shivinder, among others, alleging they had made death threats and committed fraud. Apart from his younger brother, Malvinder has leveled his accusations at Gurinder Singh Dhillion, a spiritual guru they follow, and a few of his family members as well as the former chairman of Religare Enterprises, Sunil Godhwani.

In the complaint, Dhillon stands accused of threatening to kill Malvinder if he failed to agree to his demands, as per the news report. It was not clear exactly what those demands were. This is the first time that Malvinder has publicly accused the family's spiritual guru of impropriety. The rift between the brothers became public when Shivinder formally disassociated himself from his brother who he blamed, along with Godhwani, for problems at the group."

Hard to remember, isn't it that the brothers once helmed a fortune once valued in excess of $2 billion and could have built the kind of  legacy that the founders had envisaged when they first founded a small but ambitious company.

Science is our best guide to a possible supernatural reality

Here's another comment from David C. Lane on a recent post of mine that makes so much sense, I'm sharing it even before I've even lunch. Sometimes my hunger for transmitting truth is greater than my stomach's yearning for food. 

Didn't someone  once say, man does not live by bread alone? (or Trader Joe's meatless chick'n tenders).

Lane talks about his Remainder Conjecture in which supernatural claims should only be accepted after a rigorous examination of them through the lens of science.

This fits with David Hume's observation, which I wrote about yesterday, that we have a tremendous amount of evidence for the physical laws of nature, and extremely little evidence for any possible supernatural phenomena.

So any claim, for example, that someone was able to use ESP to predict a future event, or perform a miracle that violated the laws of nature, has to be viewed extremely skeptically absent very convincing evidence that the supernatural event actually occurred.

After all, we humans are mistaken all the time about what happens in our minds. We accept illusions as fact. We conjure up stories that fit with our desires and sense of self. We forget things. We lie to others and sometimes to ourselves.

Science generally wants to know how something happened, though this is less important when accurate predictions can be made about what is happening. For example, the basics of genetic inheritance were understood before DNA was discovered. And quantum physics is marvelously successful without understanding what exactly is going on at the quantum level.

But if someone makes a claim about having experienced a supernatural phenomenon, we need to ask how that happened. What in the human brain is able to contact a supposed supernatural realm? Of if that capacity isn't in the brain, then where is it? In an immaterial soul? OK, if that's hypothesized, then where is the evidence for soul?

Below Lane's comment I've shared an excerpt from an essay he shared in another recent comment, "The Virtual Reality of Consciousness." The basic message of the essay is that our consciousness doesn't reflect reality as it is, but as our mind makes it out to be. 

Enjoy. I really like Lane's contention that those who view paranormal phenomena as being real should welcome each and every explanation for those phenomena that utilizes the normal.

Spence,

The movie the "remainder conjecture" is to actually open up a blind spot, not hide one.

For instance, if we exhaust physical explanations first (for instance, trying to understand the neural correlate theory of consciousness) and we find after intensive and comprehensive research that it is insufficient to the task, then it opens up a window, what I call a "remainder", which gives us suggestive indications that something ELSE is needed beyond the physical parameters we explored.

So, ironically, those most in favor of the paranormal should be at the forefront of exhausting each and every explanation that utilizes the normal.

This in itself doesn't discount the supernatural in the least, but means that we won't be duped into confusing a purely physical event for a psychic one, which has too often happened in the past.

Science actually starts with ignorance since it doesn't assume (theologically or prematurely) to have any absolute answers and thus from this state then proposes guesses and models and then tests those to see which one best fits the situation and which one provides the greatest predictive value.

Therefore, science is always doubting, always questioning, and in so doing has been wonderfully progressive in terms of understanding that which before was misunderstood.

Also, what used to be seen as magical or mysterious or produced by a god, has often turned out to be generated by physical means. The sun and nuclear fusion (see Hans Bethe for more) is a good illustration of this.

Same with the idea of gravity. Einstein's general theory of relativity made predictions that could be tested.

However, some things like "gravitational waves" were so subtle that it took a 100 years for us to detect them, which was a great breakthrough that just came to light.

The same, of course, with the subatomic physics when physicists knew that there was a missing piece in the Standard Model..... In the early 1960s they theorized a missing Boson, later found and called (after one of its more well known theorizers) the "Higgs Boson."

The Nobel prize in physics was awarded for this breakthrough, though it took decades for the proof needed to verify it.

My point is a simple one. The more patient we are in science to look for physical causes first the better off we will be, since in that pursuit we won't be duped into magical and transcendental temptations too early.

I don't think it is at all absurd to try to find an explanation for all that we can. Indeed, that is why science is science, since it doesn't simply quit but rather chugs onwards..... and in so doing the most remarkable things can happen.

Often people forget that in the early 20th century there were many that felt that the secret of genetics would never be found and instead opted for Elan Vital..... thankfully, biologists and chemists such as Linus Pauling, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkings, and James Watson were not deterred in looking for physical causations.

Indeed, they were influenced by Erwin Schrodinger's book, WHAT IS LIFE, which argued for looking for a physical medium by which information (genetic and otherwise) could be universally transmitted.

And, lo and behold, the double helix structure of DNA was discovered in 1953..... and it has radically changed our understanding of how life works.

So, again, let us pursue the Wilsonian idea of Consilient reductionism first..... and if that exhausts itself and there remains a "remainder"..... then we have something to build upon.

Or as Blaise Pascal said (or was attributed in saying), which I think goes to the heart of how science proceeds:

little faith, little doubt
great faith, great doubt

and

infinite faith, infinite doubt.

Here's the video Lane made about the Remainder Conjecture.

And here's the excerpt from Lane's essay, "The Virtual Reality of Consciousness." 

Yet, there is a downside in possessing a higher form of consciousness since it allows its owner to ponder all sorts of improbable events that will never actually happen.

We too often can get ensnared with our ideas, our fantasies, our projections and begin believing all sorts of nonsense. For a robust virtual simulator to work it must conjure up a plethora of scenarios that mix and match incongruent narratives.

In other words, for imagination to work it must be massively elastic. The glitch is that sometimes our simulations over take us and we get entrapped within their corridors.

To the degree that we can test our imaginings in the empirical world and acknowledge their successes and failures we are regarded as somewhat sane; to the degree that we cannot we may be viewed as somewhat insane. It is a thin line indeed that separates the two.

Placebo effect seems to explain most "miracles"

We humans love to believe in strange stuff. We're the only animal, most likely, with the ability to conjure up stories about what doesn't physically exist. 

Sure, my dog does seem to dream, moving her paws and making noises while asleep, but I strongly suspect her mind is fantasizing about chasing a squirrel or cat, not about God, heaven, angels, or some other supernatural entity.

Because religious stories are so deeply embedded in human culture, it's difficult for believers to find a detached vantage point to assess claims of miracles, extrasensory perception, mystical visions, and such in an objective manner.

This has been evident in comments on three previous blog posts about Faqir Chand, an Indian guru who ended up being deeply skeptical of gurus.

This blog has been fortunate, though, to have David C. Lane leaving his own comments on those posts. Lane had a lot of contact with Faqir Chand before Chand's death in 1981. He also is responsible for books about Chand's life and teachings being published, in line with Lane's academic interest in gurus.

Several of Lane's essays are included in a book about Chand, "The Unknowing Sage: the Life and Works of Faqir Chand." They can be read online.

I highly recommend this one, Inner Visions and Running Trains: Faqir Chand Meets the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Way back in my college days, 1968 probably, I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead because I was a philosophically-inclined imbiber of psychedelics: LSD, mescaline, psilocybin. Once I took mescaline with a guy who said he had seen a Clear Light while high, but was afraid to enter into it.

So he was traveling around the country searching for the Meaning of It All. That guy was the one I took mescaline with in the Santa Cruz mountains, as described in "The universe is a paper bag turned inside out."

In his essay, Lane does a good job of using the Tibetan Book of the Dead to help explain key aspects of what Faqir Chand came to believe near the end of his life, which was an evolution from his earlier acceptance of traditional Sant Mat/Radha Soami mystical teachings. Lane writes: 

What strikes the reader almost immediately after reading both the Bardo Thotrol and The Unknowing Sage is the remarkable similarity between both texts.

Whereas the Bardo Thotrol is written mostly in second person and third person, listing instructions for the departing soul, The Unknowing Sage is in first person, presenting the reader with Faqir Chand's frank autobiographical admissions about his meditative life.

Yet, in both texts the respective philosophies coincide: 1) the illusory nature of religious visions; 2) the limitations of knowledge, both rational and transmundane; and 3) the principle that the ego/self/soul is the real cause of man's unenlightened state.

Chand lost interest in inner sights and sounds after he realized that these can't be the ultimate truth that he searched for his entire life, yet failed to find.

Why? Not for me to say, but my impression is that in line with Buddhist teachings, Chand realized that behind every perception is a perceiver. Until one knows the knower, so to speak, all knowledge is open to question. Lane writes:

Thus, it was through a series of remarkable events that Faqir began to question the authenticity of his inner visions. Instead of accepting whatever appeared to him during his voyages out of the body Faqir doubted them and attempted to find the source from which all such visions arise.

Faqir's adventures began to dovetail at this point with the underlying philosophy of the Bardo Thotrol: "That all phenomena are transitory, are illusionary, are unreal, and non-existent save in the sangsaric mind perceiving them. . . That in reality there are no such beings anywhere as gods, or demons, or spirits, or sentient creatures -- all alike being phenomena dependent upon a cause. . . That this cause is a yearning or a thirsting after sensation, after the unstable sangsaric existence."

Eventually, Faqir dismissed his visionary encounters as nothing but subtle obstructions of maya. It was at this point that Faqir's meditation took a new turn: instead of enjoying the bliss of inner sights and sounds, Faqir turned his attention to the source from which these manifestations arose. And in so doing, Faqir no longer became attracted to visions of Krishna, Rama, or even his guru, Shiv Brat Lal.

The placebo effect helps to explain what is going on with inner visions, supposed miracles, and other phenomena so beloved by believers in mysticism.

We know that pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures have physical effects. It also is well known that placebos lacking direct physical effects also can lead to bodily changes. This shows the power of the mind/brain  -- which isn't all that surprising, since the mind is the brain in action, and the brain is a physical entity, along with the rest of the body.

So arguably religions and mystic philosophies are akin to placebos. Gurus, God, holy people, incarnations, and so on are the "sugar pills" that believers wrongly believe possess supernatural powers.

Their effects on people don't stem from religion/mysticism being objectively true, but rather on the fact that people believe they are true. This seems to be in line with most of Faqir Chand's observations about miracles, which David Lane has shared in a recent document. 

Someone tells a doctor, "The medicine worked." The doctor replies, "Yes, but that was an illusion. The pills you took were a placebo. Your own mind is responsible for the positive effects you got from the pills." But in the spheres of religion and mysticism, few leaders have the courage or discernment to tell people that it's all in their own mind.

However, Faqir Chand did. In fact, he went even further. Not only did Chand reveal that inner visions were the result of a devotee's faith and desires, he apparently came to a Buddhist-like conclusion that the self which has those visions also is an illusion. 

Thus Chand evolved into a "clear light" perspective described by Lane in this fashion:

What exactly this emptiness or luminosity is cannot, by definition, be described. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead the emphasis is on recognizing one's true nature, that which is no-thing in particular but rather the field in which all things arise -- itself being visionless, though producing visions; itself being structureless, though exhibiting structure; itself being non-existent, though producing existence. The clear void light is absolutely paradoxical, since the "I" cannot grasp it, nor can the mind by its subject/object dualism conceive it.

This is at odds with the traditional Radha Soami philosophy that Faqir Chand had earlier espoused, which led to him being seen as a heretic by those who believed in the inherent reality of mystic visions.

Thus Faqir, following his Tibetan counterparts, eschewed even the pure light and sound which was beyond form, and attached himself to no-thing, allowing himself, as he so astutely put it, to "hang on the gallows."

But in so doing, Faqir broke with Radhasoami tradition, which advocates surat shabd yoga (lit., "uniting the soul with the divine inner sound"), and eventually became regarded as a "heretic."

Near the end of his life, Faqir grew closer to the philosophical principles of Buddhism, particularly Mahayana, as outlined in the Bardo Thotrol. Indeed, if one were only to look at his later writings, one would come away with the impression that Faqir came from a lineage of Tibetan lamas.

Getting back to miracles, almost certainly they don't exist. But this doesn't take away from the everyday "miracle" of existence. We are. The world is. That's miracle enough for me -- and also for David Hume. See the first part of this video:

Here's another take on Hume, channeled by the Philosophy Bro. Excerpt:

Sometimes people claim even crazier shit than, “OJ is innocent.” What could possibly be crazier than that?

Fucking miracles. Occasionally someone insists that somewhere, for some period of time, the laws of nature stopped working and something absolutely batshit insane happened, like the sun danced in the sky or a bro rose from the dead, and he expects you to take him at his word.

“No, seriously, bro, I swear. It fucking happened. I saw it!” as if you don’t have the right to be incredulous at such a fucking outlandish claim. And then he gets pissed off at you for not believing him - “How could you know? You weren’t there! You didn’t see it!”

So then you have to put on the patient gloves and kindly explain why he should get the fuck out of your face. “Okay dipshit, look. There’s a ton of shit I haven’t seen. In fact, there’s a ton of shit *no one* has seen, like a man coming back from the dead. So you’ll excuse me if I look for alternate causes when everyone in the world has, for thousands of years, reported with just about 100% accuracy - ‘dead people: still fucking dead’ and then suddenly you claim that maybe a hundred of you saw something different.”

After all, I only know that everyone everywhere has stayed dead because we all agree that’s true. I only know the sun doesn’t fucking dance because I’ve seen it do the exact same thing every day of my life: not fucking dance. So has every single person in the world.

It’s like we’ve repeated this experiment billions of times, and now you’re telling me that one bro saw something different? It’s you against every single person in history. Is it possible you were deceived or mistaken? Doesn’t that seem more likely? The evidence doesn’t look good, champ.

But what if it’s true? What if it really did happen? What would it take to render a miracle probable?

Look, I’m all about the possibility that the future won’t be exactly like the past - I’ve built my entire career on the idea - but again, it doesn’t look good. So far, no miracle has even close to enough people testifying for it, much less trustworthy people.

You say a hundred people witnessed the miracle? Funny how that miracle would entirely confirm the religious beliefs of all hundred of them - what a strange coincidence!

Besides, people want to be fooled. They love believing in the supernatural, in shit that seems impossible. Maybe it’s not a miracle that Jesus appeared in your ham sandwich - maybe it’s just that, given all the ham sandwiches made in history, one of them was bound to look sort of like a guy in flowing robes with long hair eventually.

Some people refuse to accept reason and leave their superstitions behind, but that doesn’t mean I should have to believe their bullshit.

Faqir Chand believed in removing people from church

Faqir Chand is my kind of guru.

Though he started off with traditional ideas of what being a guru was all about, Chand came to realize that the mystical powers devotees attribute to gurus are merely manifestations of their own mind.

And as you can read below, Faqir Chand favored removing people from church, rather than bringing people into a church. Exactly how I feel! Churchlessness is the way to go.

This is my third post about Chand's philosophy, the previous posts being here and here. 

I've been focusing on Faqir Chand recently because I know that quite a few visitors to this blog are interested in the "guru game."  I stopped playing it about 15 years ago, but I realize how alluring it can be, and how difficult to give up.

Chand is sort of like a halfway house for those addicted to guru devotion. His teachings contain both some praise for gurus and also a lot of criticism.

In my current churchless frame of mind, I don't need any convincing that supernatural visions and mystical powers don't exist, being the product of delusions, illusions, or outright fraud. However, in my true believing days I would have benefitted from Chand's philosophy, since he ended up as a guru who exposed how gurus deceive devotees. 

I much appreciate the numerous comments David Lane has been leaving on my blog posts about Faqir Chand, since he is an expert on Chand. Other people who have a stake in the guru game have written some comments about Chand that are untrue, so I'm glad Lane has been correcting the Chand'ian record.

Here's some comments from David Lane that I found especially interesting. I've boldfaced portions that struck me as deserving of emphasis. 

Several years ago we had long discussions on Faqir Chand on RS [Radha Soami] studies and what he taught. I have long tended to favor the later Faqir writings and his most iconoclastic views, especially when he pointed out how little we actually know.

However, MBW and others pointed out that a close reading of Faqir shows he had a multi-leveled approach. Where for those in the beginning stages would indeed do dhyan, simran, and bhajan, and even have deep devotional feelings towards their chosen Istha-deva/guru.

But after this was achieved, Faqir would then stress realizing that the whole game was a projection of one's own mind and that we should let it go. I know this from personal experience as Faqir knew when he first met me that I was attached to Charan Singh and was in a very devotional frame of mind.

He then predicted the following (direct quote from the book published by Manavta Mandir called The Master Speaks to the Foreigners):

"There are two schools of thought. The aim of one school is to bring people into its circle. They bring people into their church. But I remove the people from the church also. To be in a Church is a blessing but to die in a Church is a curse. You cannot understand my views as yet, because you have to do a lot of work in your worldly life as yet. The present devotional ideas which you have now, will change after some years and then in the old age you will come to this line. This is my prophecy about you."

I think, of course, Faqir was right.

One begins to see through the "dogma" of RS and realize that much of what we believe is our own projection, our own desires. We think at first the guru is perfect or all knowing. Later, we mature a bit and see the humanness of it all. Which I think is a healthy and altogether wise thing to realize.

Now, at one end of Faqir's writings there is the advocacy of more typical Sant related ideas and then at the other, more radical end, there is a realization to go beyond it. This one can see in Faqir's classic HANGING ON THE GALLOWS metaphor:

"So, when did I realize the element? Since I have come to understand that I do not go anywhere. So, who goes in their inner visions? It’s their own mind, their own faith. So what do I do now? Because I was searching for my final abode or source, I leave the mind. When I go within and meditate, I leave the shapes, forms and colors. There is no form of the guru, no shape, nothing else. Only light and sound remain.

The entity that is inside me listens to the sound within and sees the light, that entity is something else entirely. The sound is something else. The light is something else. You listen to the sound within – you are separate from the sound. You see sun or moon inside, see light within. Light is separate from the one witnessing the light. When I search for that entity or witness, I CEASE TO EXIST."

Now, it should be acknowledged that Faqir was also quite traditional in some ways, especially on his views relating to sex. I have a couple of great stories relating to this that I should share one day. I will say this, however. Only someone like Faqir would say in open satsang at the age of 89 or so that the night before he had a "wet" dream and said that even at his age such things happened.

I can well imagine how the sangat "heard" that one! It was Faqir's transparency on his humanness that makes him so valuable, not whether he was enlightened or not (since that it is a theological question and open to endless debate).

In my conversations with Darshan Singh, for instance, I noticed he told me things in private that he would most likely NEVER say in public. So I am not in the least surprised that these gurus (from Charan to Kirpal to Darshan to whatever) would confess honestly about not knowing of their respective appearances.

We even have Charan on record saying he was unaware of appearing to a woman in her prayers. Sawan in Spiritual Gems saying something similar as well. Faqir's point is an obvious one and we have overwhelming proof that these gurus know much less than is advertised.

No need to mention a current guru losing 700 million dollars (jk)! I think of Faqir as an existential guru. As Faqir said near the end, "In the process of evolution, I appeared or manifested. Similarly, you also appeared. I did not exist before, and I won’t exist again."

Or, more poetically, "In that place there is no happiness or unhappiness, no truth or untruth, neither sin nor virtue. There is no day or night, no moon or sun, There is Radiance without Light." P.S. if you wish to understand the "humanity" of Faqir, his last letter from the hospital before he died is remarkable for its utmost honesty..... will post that later.

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Dear Dogribb, Faqir even criticized his own guru as not being as forthcoming as he should. While Faqir acknowledges that there are various levels of instructions, the most radical part of Faqir is when he wishes to question why these gurus were not as forthcoming as they should be. Here is a quote from a 1980 satsang in London,

"Today’s gurus – they don’t tell us anything. They keep repeating – Shabad, Shabad, Shabad, Guru, Guru, Guru. Look at the lives of Gurus. Nirankari guru died and gave his throne to his son. The Beas ones put their grandson on the throne. Hansa established his son as a successor. In this world, may Paramatma or supreme lord save us from these gurus. These gurus have fooled us and looted us. They did not tell the truth."

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Since Ishwar Puri is fond of making stuff up about Faqir Chand that is completely not true, I think it is important to set the record straight.

(1) Faqir Chand did not appoint anyone of his family as successors. Instead he appointed several of his disciples to carry on his teaching, including Dr. I.C. Sharma (whom I have met on several occasions), Yogini Mataji (Tripta Devi), and Bhagat Munshi Ram.

(2) As for Faqir's son, Faqir told Mark Juergensmeyer this: "My own son is well placed. He draws about Rupees 2500 per month. He is a big metallurgist, Russia returned." He never worked as a guru. Ishwar simply made that story up.

(3) As for Yogini Mataji, she refused to continue being a guru and wouldn't initiate anyone and went into relative seclusion. Here is the only movie I know that has film of her....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NYQXjIRBfs

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What may look like a miracle (and I am sure it seems like such to the person who has such experiences) is, according to Faqir, isn't due to any guru as such, but rather the intense faith and devotion which (using Faqir's own words) becomes "creative" and produces the desired effect.

Faqir gives a number of quotes relating to this. Here is just one:

"The individual worships, adores and makes offerings to some living guru, image, god, or goddess according to his own faith, belief and devotion; in return he gets the fruit of his own devotion and faith. The guru, of the worshipped, gets credit and involves himself in the false prestige and fame. While the worshipper achieves his end, or motive due to his own faith and belief. In fact, the guru or the worshipped does nothing to fulfill the desires of the devotee; it is all the faith of the latter."

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I don't think visions of Faqir or related incidents are miracles at all. Rather, they are merely projections by various individuals who then ATTRIBUTE such things to Faqir or to other gurus. The mind is a great conjurer and it is us (usually after the fact) that then attribute this or that apparition to one guru or another.

A good example of how this works is provided by Faqir Chand himself, where to his great credit he tries to see if he could come up with a rational explanation for why he had a vision of his guru Shiv Brat Lal before ever meeting him and even then getting the "correct" address of his ashram.

Here is Faqir's narrative:

"In the meantime I got a permanent job in the Indian railways and was posted as Assistant Station Master at Baganwala. But my craving to see the Lord did not diminish; rather, during this time it reached its peak. Once I wept for twenty-four hours continuously for a glimpse of the Lord. Doctors were called in. They administered medicine to me. At about five o'clock in the morning I saw in a vision the form of Maharishi Shiv Brat Lal. He drew water from a nearby well and helped me take a bath, and then told me his address in Lahore."

Now on the surface that seems somewhat remarkable given that Faqir consciously wasn't aware of Shiv Brat Lal (he was then a relatively obscure guru) and got his address correct.

But later Faqir reasoned that because Shiv Brat Lal was a prolific writer, then he may have come across one of his writings or magazines and in so doing got a picture of what he looked like and also the address which was listed in one of those writings.

These two things (picture of Shiv Brat Lal and the address)--though not consciously remembered--manifested in his dream-vision and Faqir took that as a wondrous sign. Faqir deflated the miracle.

I suggest that what seems paranormal looks less paranormal the more information we get about what really happened. I know from my own life that this is true, since I have written extensively about how my own Teaching Assistant, Michelle Lopez, had a vision of Charan Singh dying almost exactly at the time he died.

It is a remarkable story, no doubt, but one that I believe can be explained rationally without having to invoke miracles and the like.

I also got a chance to go through much of Faqir's correspondence which he shared with me back in 1978 where there were many letters about him appearing to so and so and how it was amazing. Faqir would at each turn tell me that he knew nothing about it.

Thus, these stories about Faqir are not miracles, though the disciples may believe such. They are what the mind can produce under stressful circumstances.

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Dear S, Concerning Charan Singh and not knowing about him "appearing" to a woman in her prayers. It is an interesting story. Here is what happened.

Back in 1984 I published a two part article entitled "The Enchanted Land" for FATE Magazine. It described my visit with several shabd yoga gurus, including Charan Singh, Partap Singh (Tarn Taran), Yogini Mataji (Tripta Devi), Faqir Chand, etc.

Well, the chief editor of FATE magazine wrote me an urgent letter and said that a Catholic woman from Oklahoma was trying to [get] in contact with me. They asked for my permission for her to call me. I said yes, not knowing exactly what all the fuss was about.

It turns out this woman, who was deeply Catholic, was praying one morning when she had an unexpected vision of a spiritual being with a turban and a long beard who told her that she would learn more about him the next day. She then reads the current issue of FATE magazine (I think she looked through it at the magazine store) and in it she saw a picture of Charan Singh that was embedded in my article.

She was wonderstruck since she claimed that it was the same person she had a vision of in her prayers. She wanted to talk to me about it so we had a long chat on the phone. She knew absolutely nothing about Radhasoami or Sant Mat or even eastern philosophy.

I wasn't sure what to make of it (being skeptical by nature), so I suggested she write Charan Singh directly about it and see what he said concerning it. She did and Charan wrote a 4 page letter back to her (a bit unusual, given that his letters were not more than a page or two).

She then contacted me and we went over the letter line by line. In that letter and in no uncertain terms Charan explained that he was UNAWARE of appearing to her or to others who claimed such things. He suggested that it was a product of her own mind and he had nothing to do with it. Hope this helps.

Faqir Chand

More straight talk from Faqir Chand about inner visions

Here's a follow-up to yesterday's post, "Faqir Chand was a guru who exposed how gurus deceive devotees." That post stimulated some comments in which questions about Chand were raised.

Pleasingly, David Lane responded with some highly informative comments.

Lane is responsible for a book about Chand's life and philosophy, after asking the guru if he would write his story before he left this world.  So Lane is deeply knowledgeable about all things Chand'ian.

Lane's comments are shared below.

Naturally they will be of most interest to those interested in the Indian spiritual paths of Sant Mat and surat shabd yoga. But since Faqir Chand doubted the validity of inner visions, which figure prominently in traditional Sant Mat, Chand's views on this subject are of general spiritual interest also.

Here's the first comment from David Lane. I've corrected a few typos in the comments.

Dear Spence, you write the following: "Further, he was pressed to assume the role of true Master when he knew he hadn't attained that. But as his teacher assigned it, he had no other choice but to accept it. From that he presumed the other gurus hadn't attained anything either"

Actually, this is not what transpired.

Rather, Faqir talked directly with Charan, Kirpal, and many other shabd yoga gurus and asked them in private whether they too were "unaware" of their appearances to their respective disciples.

Each of them also acknowledged that they did NOT know. It was from such experiences that Faqir formed a larger hypothesis.

But even here, to Faqir's great credit, he asked other gurus to correct him if he was wrong. But they never did on this point. Here is a direct quote from the Essence of Truth by Faqir on this point:

"Sh. Jagan Nath is present here. He offered me Rs 403/- for the Manavta Mandir. He told that I awakened him at 1:30 A.M a day before. But I did not go to awake him nor do I know any things about it. Possibly, other mahatmas and Gurus might have the knowledge of such instances of manifestations of their forms. At least I remain unaware. Many of the present Gurus have admitted before me that they remain unaware about such instance."

You also write, "his projection on what other people have experienced is also just his projection."

This is not entirely accurate since Faqir sought out what other gurus had experienced and it was from their own confessions to him in private and elsewhere that Faqir formed a more general view. In addition, even to the very end of his life Faqir pointed out that he could be wrong and welcomed others to correct him.

It was a very refreshing quality of his.

A few little tidbits that are not widely known:

1. After Faqir was appointed by Shiv Brat Lal to be his successor and a guru, he went to Sawan Singh since he didn't feel right about doing it, since he would speak the truth about what he knew. Sawan Singh then garlanded him and backed him in his ministry. However, after 1942 Faqir stopped initiating anyone and instead gave satsangs about his realizations.

2. In the 1940s Faqir even gave satsangs at the Dera when Sawan was alive.

3. Jagat Singh and Faqir Chand were friends. Faqir also knew Charan and Charan would visit Faqir whenever he came to Hoshiarpur.

4. Faqir refused to live at his own ashram since he didn't feel it was right for him to get free room and board. Instead he lived a number of blocks away and would take a bicycle rickshaw to the ashram in the morning.

5. One time when Faqir was sick and had to stay over at his own ashram, he paid for his stay.

Faqir Chand was so forthcoming and so disarmingly honest that it would make even his closest followers uncomfortable.

Hope this helps a bit.

And here's the second comment from David Lane.

Dear Brian, thanks for blogging about Faqir Chand. He is a very interesting subject.

Before I go on, I think it is important to realize that all these gurus (of whatever stripe) are human beings, with all the different quirks and distinctive personality traits that go with it.

Having met lots of shabd yoga gurus during the past forty years, I found Faqir Chand unique.

You could ask him any question and he would never shy away from it. Moreover, Faqir (to his great credit) consistently said that he could be wrong and that his point of view was not final. That was entirely refreshing to me.

I say this because one can see a progressive quality in Faqir's writings from the earlier days to near his death.

So here are some answers to the questions that both Spence and Brian posed:

1. First, Faqir came to believe that all the inner regions were ultimately illusory and that even the inner sounds were illusory. As Faqir said in London in 1980:

"Like I said yesterday, I have realized that all these stages of Sahasraradala Kamal, Trikuti, Sunn, Maha-sunn are the play of this mind. Visions are based on the thoughts one keeps. This play of whatever one sees within (i.e. visions) is based on samskaras (impressions and suggestions). They are not the same for everyone. Visions or images vary from person to person."

2. Faqir was appointed a guru by Shiv Brat Lal some 21 years before his guru's death. As he himself confessed:

"Hazur Data Dayal Ji called me in his room. I was already waiting for the moment. I went inside. Lo! His Holiness with a strange blend of affection placed in my hands one coconut, five [coins], made a frontal mark on my forehead and bowed himself to my feet saying, 

'Faqir, you are yourself the Supreme Master of your time. Start delivering spiritual discourses to the seekers and initiate them into the path of Sant Mat. In due course of time, your own satsangis will prove to be your True Guru,' and it is through your experiences with them that the desired secret of Sant Mat will be revealed to you.'

Touched by these words, I experienced both joy and sorrow within me. Hazur noted both expressions on my face and asked for clarification.

I humbly said, 'Your Holiness, I am myself ignorant of the Truth, how can I lead others on this sublime path? And when the thought that I have become a degree holder and would deliver discourses and initiate people flashed within my mind, I felt that I had become something and thus a spark of joy.'

Hazur then said, "Faqir, you may be suffering from ninety-nine shortcomings, but one sure virtue of Truth which is within you will lead you to your goal in life. You will not only redeem yourself but will help many others to attain release."

In 1981, Faqir said,

"Further R. S. Dayal writes that he heard the conch-shell sound and the omkar vibration inside. I have explained in a book why a meditator hears inside him sounds of bell, conch, omkar, flute and sitar. All these are manifestations of the mental plane.

Since this knowledge came to me, I ceased to be caught up in the whirlpool of the mind and transcended it. Now, I took upon all these manifestations as mere maya. Therefore, now, even if I try to catch these sounds, I do not get them, because their value, as something real, has vanished for me who has transcended the mind."

3. Faqir stopped initiating anyone formally after 1942, but he continued to give satsang and tried to argue that we should go beyond the mind, even beyond light and sound, and find the source from which all this appears.

Faqir explained his own way of speaking:

"I believe that the intensified faith of these devout persons becomes creative and produces these results. Many so-called gurus misappropriate the credit for similar happenings, which take place in their disciples, whose own true faith should be held responsible for those results.

By the lack of moral, courage and honesty on the part of pseudo-gurus, credulous disciples are kept in the dark and fleeced under fake pretenses.

I alert the faithful but simple minded satsangis, to beware of such sneaks and their false claims. I had been commanded by my Gurudev [Shiv Brat Lal] to introduce plain speaking into religion, so I am duty bound to proclaim the truth behind these miracles, and to save the simpletons from exploitation.

If I do not reveal the truth, I can, by keeping satsangis in the dark, extract from them large sums of money by claiming fake credit, for the miracles that no doubt do happen."

Brian is correct to ascertain that Faqir argued for something beyond light and sound, and in this way dovetailed with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

He called it hanging on the gallows.

Here is a quote:

"What conclusion did I reach? When I found out that I do not manifest or appear within anybody, then I also leave the mind (and all its appearances). Then remains light and sound. Every two or three months or sometimes every three days, when I go and search for that entity that listens to the sound, then my being disappears.

What remains? Nothing.

Now I think to myself – if I have become something by reaching that place, if I can do something, then I should be able to remove all the problems that the world is facing right now.

If they could, the ancestors from the past would have removed their problems or difficulties. Baba Sawan Singh would have removed his troubles. Swamiji would have alleviated his disease. Kabir had kidney problems for ten years in the old age.

So what did I understand? What is my realization of this supreme element (Tatva)?

I am a bubble of the supermost consciousness. In the process of evolution, I appeared or manifested. Similarly, you also appeared. I did not exist before, and I won’t exist again. Only one element will remain from which this bubble came into existence.

That element is Sound. It’s name is Naam.

That Naam is not the sound of bells or conch. It’s not the sound of Veena. It is the principle sound (Saar Shabad). This is what the bani of saints mentions – Saar Shabad.

So after reaching this, what happened to me? What did I gain? I found peace. What did I gain at this age of ninety-four? Peace."

Will write more tonight..... particularly in response to Jay (hi Jay, always good to read your ideas!).

Faqir Chand

Faqir Chand was a guru who exposed how gurus deceive devotees

I used to follow a guru. Now I don't. So I don't need any persuading that gurus are completely unnecessary to live a spiritual life or to meditate in a satisfying fashion.

But if you're someone who still clings to the idea that gurus possess special wisdom or powers, the message of Faqir Chand could help you wean yourself from those erroneous assumptions.

Until I ordered a book about Chand from Amazon about a week ago, what I knew about him came from a few essays and videos by David Christopher Lane, who brought this book into being: "The Unknowing Sage: The Life and Work of Faqir Chand." 

In the summer of 1980 Lane asked Chand if he would write his life story before he left the world. Chand agreed. Good timing, since Chand died on September 11, 1981, leaving a description of both his life and spiritual philosophy that makes up the bulk of "The Unknowing Sage."

Basically, Faqir Chand came to an understanding that bears a lot of resemblance to Buddhism: the essence of spirituality is realizing that you are not an individual "self" (or soul). Without that realization, any mystical or inner experience, no matter how profound, leads one astray, since it merely is a reflection of your own mind and possesses no objective reality.

Instead, Chand viewed himself as a "bubble of super consciousness." However, the bubble doesn't possess any mystical powers, not does it know the secret of the universe. So after practicing surat shabd yoga for many years, at the age of 92 Chand said "I do not care for the sound and light too."

He goes on to say:

Now, after having a long experience of my life, I feel that most of the past mahatmas and the present gurus by keeping the secret Truth unrevealed/undisclosed have been unfair to the public and have often exploited them. They have taken undue advantage of the ignorance of the people.

They have built their own big buildings. They have made air-conditioned rooms for themselves. These gurus enjoy themselves and the poor people being ignorant give their hard earned money to these gurus at the cost of their comforts and those of their children.

I love Faqir Chand's frankness and commitment to speaking the truth. I plan to share more quotations from him in other blog posts. For now, here's how "The Unknowing Sage" starts out.

This introduction is unsigned, but I assume it was written by David Lane. It's a good overview of Chand's unknowingness that he attained near the end of his life. I've boldfaced parts for emphasis.

Faqir Chand [1886 to 1981] was a remarkable Indian sage who spent over seventy-five years practicing an ancient meditation technique, popularly known today as surat shabd yoga, which attempts to induce a consciously controlled near-death experience,

Mastery of this experience, according to adepts of the tradition, enables one to experience regions of light and sound beyond the normal waking state, providing glimpses into higher realms of consciousness. 

After the end of World War One, Faqir Chand was recognized by his own guru Shiv Brat Lal and others in the movement to be an advanced shabd yoga mystic. According to Faqir's own account, he could almost daily leave his body at will and experience exalted states of awareness. 

Nevertheless, Faqir Chand was not satisfied with these attainments and sought something higher and more permanent. 

Eventually Faqir realized that no matter how subtle or blissful a meditation experience may be, it did not in and of itself constitute the ultimate in spiritual realization. Rather, the ultimate truth was that no experience could capture or contain the transcendental mystery of Being.

In the highest stages of development man does not develop a keep sense of omniscience, but a radical and irrevocable understanding of unknowingness. 

In sum, one realizes that he or she is nothing but a mere bubble in a sea of existence that is infinite in all directions. As such, the bubble simply surrenders its entire being to that Power which is, in truth, living it.

Thus Faqir Chand became quite outspoken about how gurus, masters, prophets, and mystics, posing as all-knowing beings, have deceived millions of followers by duping them into believing that they have omniscience and omnipotence when in fact they have neither.

What enlightened sages possess, rather, is access experientially to a higher spectrum of awareness, which, in turn, reveals not final or absolute truth, but a growing awareness of how truly mysterious life really is. As Shiv Dayal Singh, the founder of Radhasoami, poetically put it: "Wonder, Wonder, Wonder: Wonder hath assumed a form."

Coupled with Faqir's tacit realization of unknowingness, he also exposed for the first time in the Sant tradition how visions of religious personages are the products of one's own inner development. 

For instance, when one undergoes a near-death experience and beholds a Jesus or a Nanak or an Angel in the middle of the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, it is not the esteemed figure who is himself orchestrating the encounter. Rather it is the neophyte who is projecting the sacred personage on to the light from his/her own biological and cultural history,

The light may indeed be a transcultural phenomenon, part and parcel of a higher order of awareness or merely a neurological event, but the interpretation of who resides in that light (Is it Jesus?  Is it Nanak?) is entirely a personal affair, shaded by the nuances of  an individual's sojourn for tens of years on a planet we call Earth.

Faqir is perhaps best known for his frank admissions of ignorance surrounding his miraculous appearances to disciples during times of need. He unilaterally confessed that he was never aware of appearing to his devotees.

Nor did Faqir Chand claim that he had understood the secret of Reality.  As he said on many occasions, echoing the words of such greats as Lao Tzu, Socrates, and Nicholas of Cusa: "How can I make any claims about attaining the Ultimate. The truth is that I know nothing."

Hence, Faqir Chand raised the slogan of "Be-Man," arguing that to become a human being, endowed with discrimination and compassion, is a great thing in itself. To be spiritual, Faqir would assert, necessitates that one become a true man (or woman) first.

The Mt. San Antonio Philosophy Group, while not advocating any one position in philosophy or religion, established the Faqir Chand Library Series in honor of vichar, "clear thinking." As the late Sardar Bahadur Jagat Singh, a contemporary of Faqir's once stated, "Clear thinking is 90% of spirituality." 

Future volumes in the series will include works in both science and religion that promote the Chandian spirit of honest and frank criticism. this volume, The Unknowing Sage, represents the first comprehensive study of Baba Faqir Chand's life and work in English.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon should respond to allegations of his criminality

In a recent post, "RSSB guru responds to allegations of criminality (weirdly)," I shared a report of what Gurinder Singh Dhillon said to a questioner who asked the guru what to say to someone who has questions about allegations of Dhillon's financial fraud.

Tell him my baba was getting bored he needed some excitement and he came with a bang. 

OK, that's a response. But not a very good one. About eight months ago Dhillon said he would respond to allegations "at an opportune time." A  time, obviously, that hasn't arrived yet.

Here's two comments on this subject that were shared today on the recent post by "In Search Of." See here and here.

They're pleasingly thoughtful, so I'm sharing them below. "Georgy Porgy" is  another commenter. I've added a few links to the comments that provide further information. 

Georgy Porgy, for someone who knows very little about RSSB, you seem to have a very healthy understanding of what RSSB is. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were an RSSB hack. Until an official comment denouncing any of these allegations is presented by RSSB, then it's open season.

By RSSB not providing even one sentence denying any of this, it automatically creates these speculations. The findings of the SEBI report are indeed factual. No disputing that. The fact that they point directly through shell companies to GSD's immediate family is another fact. All he has to do is release a press release that says: It's all false. DONE. Right?

When there is no response to allegations, you leave it to the general public to surmise, extrapolate, insinuate... you get my point.

Recollections of answers GSD gives during Q&A are left for interpretation. We weren't there. But the one about the child being molested by the father, and GSD's response to that, is unacceptable.

He could have said, in response to her, I will meet with you after the programme and talk directly. This would have let the sangat know it was serious, and a personal direction to her as to what she she should do, ie: call the cops and kick his ass out on the street.

No amount of serious discussion will sway you, or anyone steeped in the RSSB doctrine to have any effect.

Make a statement and move along is what I would recommend to GSD. Maybe you can send him the message though your contacts at Beas.

Cheers!

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Those relatives on the board of those shell companies and siphoned monies are his two sons, his wife. The other members of the boards of these companies were high ranking RSSB management types and personal friends of GSD.

Sunil Godhwani is GSD's right hand man in financial decisions and he himself said he takes his orders from the guru. So what's your answer for that?

You actually want to say that all these people were not influenced by GSD and what has transpired? They tried to get away with transferring funds and got caught in the real estate bubble. Why is he involved in accumulating wealth?

Most members of the sangat have an unhealthy relationship with money. It's supposed to be bad and hankering after it is detrimental to your meditation. Really? Do as I say, not as I do.

It seems the closer you get to GSD's inner circle, the more the greediness and running after money you seem to get.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru who needs to answer questions about his alleged criminality