Sometimes a comment is left on one of my blog posts that leaves me with a WTF (what the fuck) feeling. Meaning, I can't begin to understand where the commenter is coming from.
Here's a recent example that starts off with a quote from a post of mine.
>>If mystics claim to find a new reality, they need to prove it<< WHY? WHY do they need to prove it? No mystic owes anything to anybody.
Wow. The answer to that all caps Why is one-word obvious. Truth.
Truth is why a mystic needs to back up their claim of finding a new reality with solid proof. Reality belongs to everyone. Reality is the home of everyone.
No one gets to spread falsehoods about my home, which is your home, which is everybody's home -- reality.
Now, I understand that truth is taking a beating these days.
Here in the United States, a majority of people who belong to one of our two major parties, the Republican Party, have shown they don't give a shit about truth.
They wrongly claim that election fraud is widespread. They wrongly claim that the Capitol insurrection on January 6 wasn't carried out by Trump supporters. They wrongly claim that Georgia's new election laws are intended to expand voter turnout rather than suppress it.
Obviously I don't claim to always speak the truth or live the truth. Like everybody else, I make mistakes all the time when it comes to understanding things.
But I've always pointed myself toward truth, even if I fail to reach it much of the time. Intention is all important when it comes to truth. Much can be forgiven if someone sincerely aims to embrace truth, rather than pushing it away.
One of the first posts I wrote when I started this blog in 2004 was called "Just have faith." Here's an excerpt that I still heartily agree with.
Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief
After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered.
Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos. You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.
Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos. For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.
Which door would you choose to walk through?
Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?
Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.
Getting back to the comment about mystics not owing anything to anybody when it comes to making a claim about having found a new reality, back in 2006 I talked about the need for questioning such claims in "With God, from 'I believe' to 'I know' is a huge step."
Here's the core of that blog post. The A.H. Armstrong quote comes from my book, "Return to the One."
If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I don’t know,” we’re comrades in unknowing. Grab a chair and belly up with me to the clueless bar.
If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I believe…,” we can have an interesting conversation. I probably won’t agree with you, but I enjoy learning about other people beliefs, or lack thereof, in a higher power.
If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I know…,” we are going to have a really interesting conversation. For once you say “know” rather than “believe,” my skeptical radar sets off a Dogma alert! Dogma alert! siren inside my psyche.
I don’t expect reasons for beliefs. They’re your business. Just like sex, whatever turns you on. Go for it. But also just like sex, beliefs need to remain personal if they are to be unquestioned.
As soon as you say, “I believe _____, and you should too,” there’s going to be a stiffening of my argumentative spine. I’m pleased to be given advice by someone who is more knowledgeable about something than I am. However, that something needs to be objectively real, not imaginary.
And beliefs aren’t real, even though lots of religious people seem to think that they are.
Going further, some people actually claim that they know the nature of God or ultimate reality. Now, this requires some serious questioning. A claim like that, why, it’s amazing. I mean, in the entire span of recorded history there hasn’t been a single clearly evident, unquestionable, plain-as-day revelation about God or the divine.
So if you tell me that you know for a fact that God exists, or that God is such and such, or that God is realized in this particular fashion, then I’m going to be super-duper interested in how you’re able to back up that astounding assertion.
I want you to lay your cards on the table. Face up. All of them. Show me your four aces. And let me know in detail, exactly, precisely, how you were able to come up with that winning hand.
Of course, I know that this won’t be possible. If you’re just bluffing, and don’t really know about God, then you’ll be empty-handed. But even if by some miracle you truly are God’s bosom buddy, you still won’t be able to lay any material proof on the table.
I’m pretty confident about that, because nobody else ever has been able to do so, and I’m willing to bet that this run of “busts” will continue.
So, please, please, please. Pretty please with blind faith crumbs on top. If you write or talk to me and go beyond “I believe…” when speaking about God, bring your best stuff. Show me the money, as the saying goes. The proof.
I’ve shared this quotation before, but it’s worth sharing again. To my mind, classics scholar A.H. Armstrong hits just the right tone.
When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion.
Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to “Thus saith the Lord” is “Does he?,” asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic “testing to destruction” of the claims and credentials of the person or person making this enormous statement.
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!).