Church of the Churchless

Science is our best method of knowing reality

Here's a basic fact: science is well-suited to understanding the nature of reality.

Religion, on the other hand, is a very poor way of knowing reality. So religious belief must bow down to the scientific method if a believer makes a claim about God, soul, spirit, heaven, life after death, or some other supernatural subject. 

Below are excerpts from a book that I've finished reading, "The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes." In a concluding chapter, Donald Hoffman, the author, makes some great points about the primacy of science in separating fact from fiction. 

Because we humans are prone to so many perception and thinking errors, science uses debate, arguments, and reason to distinguish flimsy dogma from solid truth. 

I especially liked how Hoffman demolishes the viewpoint that because some aspect of reality supposedly is beyond the bounds of language and concepts, beliefs about this ineffable something-or-other have to be accepted by other people. Wrong. If something is outside of language, nothing can be said about it.

Including "this is true." Meaning, if someone claims to have experienced the ineffable existence of God, they should say nothing, because there's nothing that can be said about God. 

On the other hand, if this person wants their belief to be adopted by others, then they've entered into the realm of science. Present your arguments for the existence of God. Show us your evidence for God's existence. Engage in debates with people who disagree with you. Refute arguments for the non-existence of God.

Here's the excerpts from the "Community" chapter of The Case Against Reality.

Science, like philosophy and religious practice, is a human endeavor. It is not infallible.

Each of the many attempts to demarcate, from first principles, science from pseuodscience remains, at best, controversial. What science offers is not gold-standard beliefs, but a potent method for winnowing beliefs that derives its power from the way it engages with human nature.

We are a species that argues.

Experiments show, and evolutionary theory explains, that we reason best when we argue for an idea that we already believe, or against the idea of another that we disbelieve. We did not evolve our ability to reason in order to pursue the truth. We evolved it as a tool of social persuasion. 

As a result, our reasoning is plagued with foibles, such as a bias toward information that supports what we already believe. The scientific method exploits all of this.

Each scientist argues for her idea, and against contradictory ideas of other scientists. In this argumentative context, our reason is at its sharpest: each idea garners the best support of reason and evidence its proponents can muster, and each endures the best impalement by reason and evidence its detractors can counter.

Add to this sharpening of reason the demand that ideas be precise -- mathematically precise, when possible -- and the phoenix of science arises from foibles of human nature.

Science is not a theory of reality, but a method of inquiry.

It orchestrates the better angels of our nature to promote reason, precision, productive dialog, and an appeal to evidence. It curbs our proclivity for the vague, deceptive, dogmatic, and imperious. Inquiry into any question that captures the human imagination -- including meaning, purpose, values, beauty, and spirituality -- deserves no less than the full benefit of this orchestration.

Why not deny our best chance to better understand?

...If a system of thought, religious or otherwise, offers a claim that it wants taken seriously, then we should examine it with our best method of inquiry -- the scientific method. That is taking it seriously.

Some topics -- such as God, the good, reality, and consciousness -- have been claimed to transcend the limited scope of human concepts and thus the methods of science. I have no quarrel with someone who claims this and then, being consistent, says no more about these topics.

But if one does say more, then "What can be said at all can be said clearly" and probed with the scientific method.

Can science describe who we are? I think so, in the sense that we can, by the scientific method, evolve and refine theories of who we are. But if science cannot describe who we are, then imprecise natural languages such as English certainly cannot describe who we are.

We have no better means of crafting explanations than the scientific method. An explanation that descended from on high, but could not be tested and debated, would be no explanation at all.

Let's take a break from "message board" commenting

As I've noted before, and surely will note again, I try to strike a balance in my comment moderating between keeping comments on-topic (of the blog post they're associated with) and free-floating comment conversations, which sometimes veer into "message board" sorts of frequent back-and-forth talk.

Things have gone too far in the message board direction, with an excessive amount of personal attacks, insults, and such. So if someone's comment hasn't been approved today, don't take it personally. This is just my way of bringing back an added dose of civility, respect, and relevance in comments.

I just added a new Open Thread post where comment standards are less strict. So please keep "message board" sorts of interactions there, and personal insults to a minimum. If your argument depends on calling someone else an insulting name, consider whether you even have a reasonable argument.

Open Thread 23 (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.

Reality is here and now, not there and then

If we aren't in touch with the reality of what is actually present before us, right here and now, there's little point in conjecturing about what might be, there and then.

This is my main problem with religiosity.

Like a magician, religions do their best to distract our attention from what is really going on, so they can astound us with supposed miracles: A rabbit popped out of a hat! A woman was cut in two! is similar in kind to God so loved the world he sacrificed his only begotten son! and Heaven awaits those who have faith!

Atheists like me have seen through the trickery.

We're no longer willing to play the God Game. We have no patience with those who promise salvation after death. We recognize the con job being promulgated by religious leaders who lust after money and power while hypocritically preaching worldly detachment and humility.

Today I went on a bike ride with my daughter and granddaughter at a resort in central Oregon, Black Butte Ranch. Near the end of the ride we pedaled across the Big Meadow, which is both big and a meadow. 

You won't find truth like that in any religion. 

A fenced area adjacent to the bike/pedestrian path contained a bunch of horses and their foals. Some of them came to the fence to be fed, either with grass or tastier morsels. A woman had planned ahead and brought a bag of baby carrots. She kindly gave some to my granddaughter. Which ended up in the mouth of a horse. That was real. Very real. I saw it happen. 

You won't find truth like that in any religion.

Look, I've done more than my fair share of theorizing, philosophizing, and fantasizing about what might lie beyond this physical world. It was fun, and I still enjoy dipping my toe into this sort of maybe, could be, perhaps. 

But my passion is this world, this time, this place. Hopefully those who read these words are similarly immersed in the reality of here and now. That's the treasure which keeps on giving, not supernatural dreams.

Here's a few photos of what I experienced today.

My daughter, in black, and my granddaughter, in grey. Plus a horse in light brown.

The horse enjoying a baby carrot.

A foal lying in the grass.

Two other foals either playing dead, or taking a nap in the warm summer sun. 

"The Case Against Reality" seems more right than wrong

It's rare that I find it difficult to put down a non-fiction book because I'm so eager to read the final chapters and grasp the author's concluding arguments.

Such was the case, though, with The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman. I hadn't planned to spend so much time reading the book this morning, but I carried on until I'd read all but a technical appendix.

Hoffman's Big Idea is this: evolution selects for fitness, not truth. If a living organism perceives reality well enough to be able to pass on its genes, that's what evolution is all about. Or at least, mostly about. In shorthand, FBT, Fitness Beats Truth.

Another acronym Hoffman uses a lot is ITP, the Interface Theory of Perception. Here's a paragraph that encapsulates key ideas in the book.

Perception is not about truth. It's about having kids. Genes that fashion perceptions that help us raise kids are genes that may win the fitness game and elbow their way into the next generation. The FBT Theorem tells us that winning genes do not code for perceiving truth.

ITP tells us that they code instead for an interface that hides the truth about objective reality and provides us with icons -- physical objects with colors, textures, shapes, motions, and smells -- that allow us to manipulate that unseen reality in just the ways we need to survive and reproduce. 

Physical objects in spacetime are simply our icons in our desktop.

This Big Idea strikes me as being more right than wrong. Which means that I agree with most of what Hoffman says in his engrossing book.

Still, a Publisher's Weekly review had some key words that reflect how I see The Case Against Reality. "Intriguing but overreaching treatise."

I'm a believer in objective reality. So I resonated with Hoffman's contention in all but the final chapter that objective reality exists. For example, he writes:

According to the FBT Theorem, if selection shapes perceptions, then perceptions guide useful behaviors rather than report objective truths about an independent world. Something exists independent of us, but that something doesn't match our perceptions. This feels difficult to understand because of our penchant to reify our interface. 

Hoffman notes that a Maserati certainly seems real. It can be seen, and touched with eyes closed. However, Hoffman says:

It proves nothing. It suggests, but does not prove, that there is something objective. But that something could be wildly different from anything you perceive. 

When you open your eyes, you interact with that unknown something and create a visual icon of a Maserati. When you close your eyes and reach out your hand, you create a tactile icon. The same is true for all the other senses.

OK, that seems reasonable.

There's an objective reality, but all sentient beings perceive it differently. We humans view reality in one fashion, while other species view it quite differently. An ant, bat, dolphin, and eagle all have their own way of looking upon the world, as would, almost certainly, aliens from a galaxy far, far away.

I certainly agree that there is no one way, or preferred way, to perceive reality. Evolution has led each species here on Earth to possess different reality interfaces, in Hoffman's language. So the icons that populate these interfaces also are going to be unique.

No two people perceive the world in exactly the same way, and certainly no two species do. Hoffman appears to be on solid ground when he says this in his Preface:

The purpose of a desktop interface is not to show you the "truth" of the computer -- where "truth," in this metaphor, refers to circuits, voltages, and layers of software.

Rather, the purpose of an interface is to hide the "truth" and to show simple graphics that help you perform useful tasks such as crafting emails and editing photos. If you had to toggle voltages to craft an email, your friends would never hear from you.

That is what evolution has done. It has endowed us with senses that hide the truth and display the simple icons we need to survive long enough to raise offspring. Space, as you perceive it when you look around, is just your desktop -- a 3D desktop. Apples, snakes, and other physical objects are simply icons in your 3D desktop.

Those icons are useful, in part, because they hide the complex truth about objective reality. Your senses have evolved to give you what you need. You may want truth, but you don't need truth. Peceiving truth would drive our species extinct. You need simple icons that show you how to act to stay alive.

Perception is not a window on objective reality. It is an interface that hides objective reality behind a veil of helpful icons.

However, Hoffman casts independently existing objective reality aside in his final chapter. I found this intellectually dubious. He spends nine chapters arguing that evolution has fashioned interfaces for determining what is useful for us, fitness-wise. So what we perceive is objective reality filtered through both a species-specific interface and our personal interface.

(A blind person, for example, has a decidedly different interface than a sighted person.)

Then, in chapter 10, Hoffman casts objective reality aside. Or at least, objective reality that is independent of conscious agents. He writes:

"But," you might object, "didn't you earlier define 'objective reality' as that which exists when no one observes? And don't conscious experiences exist only when some agent observes? Haven't you contradicted yourself when you propose conscious realism, and claim that objective reality consists of conscious agents?"

Indeed, for sake of argument, I adopted a notion of objective reality that is accepted by most physicalists. Then I used evolutionary assumptions that are also accepted by most physicalists to make the case against physicalism and its notion of objective reality.

Now that I have presented that case, I am proposing a new ontology, and with it a new notion of objective reality in which conscious agents, with their experiences and structures, are central.

Well, I think his original ontology was stronger. Somehow Hoffman ends up arguing that "Objects, shapes, space, and time reside in consciousness. If the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be annihilated." 

That's a huge argument to make in the concluding pages of a book where Hoffman argued quite differently up to that point. Understand: he isn't saying that living creatures perceive space and time from their own unique evolutionary perspective. Rather, he claims that there is no such thing as space and time absent a conscious observer.

He may be right. Perhaps the universe was just sitting there doing nothing for billions of years after the big bang, waiting for conscious observers to bring it into being.

But how did conscious observers come to exist if there was no space and time for evolution to work its magic? This strikes me as a major flaw in Hoffman's replacement ontology. His final two paragraphs sound way too New Age'y for my tastes.

What is spacetime? This book has offered you the red pill. Spacetime is your virtual reality, a headset of your own making. The objects you see are your invention. You create them with a glance and destroy them with a blink.

You have worn this headset all your life. What happens if you take it off?

That said, I still hugely enjoyed his book. Again, it seems much more right than wrong. Check out his TED talk, and I think you'll agree.

More evidence of Hindu nationalism in India

It's amusing how some commenters on a recent blog post where I shared an opinion piece about India trampling on the rights of people in Kashmir (who are mostly Muslim) are claiming that Hindu nationalism is "fake news." 

Actually, Hindu nationalism is real, and dangerous in the same way that Christian nationalism in the United States is. For more evidence, here's a New York Times story, "India Plans Big Detention Camps for Migrants. Muslims Are Afraid." Excerpts:

NEW DELHI — More than four million people in India, mostly Muslims, are at risk of being declared foreign migrants as the government pushes a hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda that has challenged the country’s pluralist traditions and aims to redefine what it means to be Indian.

The hunt for migrants is unfolding in Assam, a poor, hilly state near the borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh. Many of the people whose citizenship is now being questioned were born in India and have enjoyed all the rights of citizens, such as voting in elections.

...But the governing party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not backing down. Instead, it is vowing to bring this campaign to force people to prove they are citizens to other parts of India, part of a far-reaching Hindu nationalist program fueled by Mr. Modi’s sweeping re-election victory in May and his stratospheric popularity.

...Among Mr. Modi’s critics, events in Assam and Kashmir are Exhibits A and B in their conviction that the prime minister is using the early months of his second term to push the most forceful and divisive Hindu nationalist agenda ever attempted in India and to fundamentally reconfigure the concept of Indian identity to be synonymous with being Hindu.

Many Indians, on both sides of the political divide, see Assam and Kashmir as harbingers of the direction Mr. Modi will take this nation of 1.3 billion people in the coming years.

No lions? Then relax. Especially if you're a zebra.

I've been saying "No lions" to myself quite often the past few days.

Not because there aren't any lions in my life, because there also aren't any elephants, black holes, or starfish in my immediate vicinity, and I don't go around commenting on their absence via my inner thoughts.

Rather, recently I started reading Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, a book by Robert M. Sapolsky. First published in 1994, it's been updated regularly, with the current 3rd edition coming out in 2004.

Naturally I checked the index under "ulcers" to see if Sapolsky talks about the research that implicates H. pylori bacterial infections and non-steroidal inflammatory drugs like Aspirin and Advil in the formation of stomach ulcers. Not surprisingly, he does.

So contrary to what was thought for a long time, stress isn't the primary cause of ulcers. However, stress is a risk factor for ulcers, and can make them worse and more difficult to heal, according to the Mayo Clinic.

My interest in the book comes from my desire to worry less and enjoy life more.

I agree with my psychotherapist wife (now retired) that worrying can be productive if it leads us to recognize potential or actual problems that we can do something about.

But as Sapolsky notes early on in his book, modern life for us humans tends to be filled with stress that bears little resemblance to that felt by a zebra being pursued by a hungry lion, or to that felt by a hungry lion desperate to find food needed to survive. Instead, we often worry about things that are far removed from clear and present dangers.

That's why I've started saying "No lions" when I find myself getting worked up by thoughts or feelings that aren't connected to a genuine problem that I can do something about. 

I combine those silently-spoken words with a mental image of zebras grazing peacefully on an African savannah. Of course, I'm aware that my carefree zebra-mind can, just as with actual zebras in the wild, be jolted into full alert by an actual problem at any moment.

Which comes with being alive. A problem-free life doesn't exist. Our only choice is how to deal with problems, not whether they're going to appear.

The genius of Sapolsky's book title, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, is that it points to a truth that zebras intuitively understand, but we humans have a lot of trouble grasping. Namely, problems should only be a source of stress when they actually exist.

If there's no lion in sight, go back to grazing. If a lion appears, run. Then go back to grazing. Worrying about lions isn't going to make lions disappear.

For zebras, there's no way to guarantee a lion-free life. Similarly, there's no way any of us can guarantee a problem-free life. Something is going to go wrong before too long, guaranteed.

Cars break down. Bodies fall prey to disease. A nasty email gets inadvertently sent to the person being complained about. Our job demands too much of us. Family members are fighting. A beloved sports team has a nasty losing streak. What we care about most gets a yawn from politicians. Noisy neighbors make it impossible to sleep.

Etc. Etc. Etc. 

That's why I enjoy saying "No lions" when my mind conjures up a problem that is imaginary rather than real. I should be saving my energy for dealing with genuine problems in my life, just as zebras go back to grazing after a lion attack because they need to be able to cope with the next appearance of a lion.

Sure, it's wonderful that we humans can envision a future or past that doesn't actually exist. This enables us to plan, learn, create, and so much more. But that capacity also leaves us prone to stress, anxiety, worry. We often find it difficult to let go of a problem that has already occurred, or to stop thinking about a potential future problem.

Since I'm sharing this post on my Church of the Churchless blog, I want to add that religious beliefs can also be a non-existent lion that leads to stress. 

People worry about their afterlife even though there is no solid evidence that life after death exists. Ditto for sin, whether God is pleased with us, and a host of other sources of worry that lack any demonstrable foundation. No zebra spends its day anxiously wondering, "Am I doing the right thing?"

And neither should we, without good reason.

Life is too short to spend it in a state of concern over supernatural imaginings. Be concerned about real problems in the real world. There's no lack of them. Don't add on extra religiously-inspired worries that almost certainly are non-existent. 

RSSB volunteers punch someone in the face at Haynes Park

Hypocrisy is rampant in every religion. When love is preached from the pulpit, hate often is in the minds of believers. When humility is set forth as a virtue, egotism frequently is on actual display.

Here's an example from Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an Indian religious organization led by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years before I saw the light and deconverted.

What follows is the tale of a frequent commenter on this blog, Osho Robbins. He's a bit of an iconoclast, since he enjoys going to RSSB meetings, including those where the current RSSB guru (Gurinder Singh Dhillon) is speaking, where sometimes Robbins engages the guru in a spirited question and answer session.

But Robbins doesn't subscribe to the traditional RSSB teachings. At any rate, recently he went to the RSSB center in England, Haynes Park, where he was treated in a decidedly un-loving fashion by a bunch of RSSB volunteers, or sevadars. 

In fact, he got punched in the face by one of them, as you can read below. 

What I find interesting about Robbins' Haynes Park adventure is what it says about Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Where did these volunteers/sevadars get the idea that it was OK to act like jerks? From higher-up in the organization, of course. 

The RSSB guru has been accused of making death threats, either directly or through RSSB associates, not once, but twice (see here and here). So I guess punching someone in the face is mild, by comparison. Still, this episode makes me glad I'm no longer involved with RSSB.

Robbins alludes to the fact that devotees of the RSSB guru are absurdly attached to their seva, volunteer work.

Because the guru is considered to be God in human form by the RSSB teachings, service to the guru is viewed as service to God. So members of RSSB take great pride in being allowed to perform volunteer work, often becoming inordinately rigid and dogmatic about their assigned task.

Here's three recent comments from Osho Robbins. I've separated them by dashes. "Baba Ji" refers to the RSSB guru. "Satsang" is a spiritual talk.

BIG news coming up about Haynes Park satsang. I attended Friday and Saturday. In two days I managed to hear exactly zero minutes of Baba Ji's words.

On the Friday it was because certain sevadars took my phone and refused to return it.  I specifically said "I wish to leave Haynes Park immediately and would like my property returned to me immediately."

They said I could have it after the satsang. I explained that I am not staying, but am leaving immediately. Still they refused. So I said I would calk the police as this was theft of my phone.

I did in fact call the police exactly as promised. The police explained to them that they have no right to hold onto my phone without my permission.

Anyway, finally got my phone back at 3pm and was told that I am "banned" from Haynes Park and all satsangs. As far as I know, nobody is banned from attending public satsangs. But I guess there is always going to be a first.

Oh I forgot to mention the most important part. I did take the phone into the tent despite the notices. Guilty as charged.

I did also record about 5 minutes of the English speaker who did the satsang before the Q&A.  Because he seemed to say some interesting things. Once again, guilty as charged.

Two major crimes that gave the sevadars permission, in their mind, to keep hold of my phone despite my request to have my phone back as I wish to leave Haynes.

One sevadar was forced to tell a lie in order to keep his seva. The sevadars don't care about what is "legal". They have their own rules that are above the law. Why? Because they said so.

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The sevadar who originally “clocked me” was asked what happened.

Now the thing was, I’d spoken to him while I was waiting for my phone and he was an okay guy. In fact he started feeling bad for taking the phone and wished he hadn’t. He was very fearful of losing his seva.

So when asked to say what had happened, I was surprised when he said  “I don’t want to say it.... “ I naturally asked “ what exactly don’t you want to say, just say it.”

He then said that I had threatened to “kick him in the nuts”.

Not a phrase I would ever use. Naturally I denied it. The sevadar then said “I would rather believe my sevadar than you”.

Of course it was just too obvious what was going on. I had seen the sevadar have a meeting with this higher up sevadar just a few minutes earlier. So he had obviously told him to tell this lie when asked if he wishes to keep his seva.

So that sevadar said it hesitatingly because he was clearly having a conflict about if he should lie in order to save his seva.

If it was me, I would have simply spoken the truth and handed the sevadar my badge and walked away with a clear conscience. To me, that would be the only course of action possible. But that’s because I would not be desperate to keep my seva.

Someone who is desperate to keep his seva can be bribed. Of course if I was desperate, I too could be bribed.

So the sevadar lied to save his seva, and that was predictable and there was a brief moment when he could break out, that would change his life. Stand for truth instead of lying.

It’s not “wrong” as such. He only did what he was programmed to do. Neither is the higher up sevadar “wrong” as he too was only doing what he was programmed to do.

Liars lie. Thieves steal. It’s the way their life has programmed them. So even in the midst of all this happening against me I am saying it was all inevitable and unavoidable. Each person is acting according to the way they are programmed including me.

So all this was all happening perfectly, despite the fact that at that moment it was not in my favour.

Or was it? It was only against me if I am desperate to step this “calamity” from happening

But it’s seriously not a calamity. I was actually quite happy watching all this unfold. It was entertaining watching how it all happens. Only if I have no agenda. In this case I have no agenda, because I don’t care in the slightest about being “banned” as such.

I can’t be hurt by banning me. The sevadar picked on the wrong guy. I just find the whole thing entertaining. Gives me something to write about.

Of course I am not going to “stay banned”. I am going to test this to see what happens next. I am going to see how far this corruption at the top goes.

Obviously the higher up sevadar has a hold on the lower down sevadar that enables him to force him to lie. So the lower sevadar chose that path because he was desperate to save his seva.

There is no free will here. Nobody can break free unless he stops caring to save his seva. The higher up sevadar is just as bound because he wants me to be banned at any cost. Each is doing whatever they are doing to get the outcome they want.

Drop the outcome and it becomes a game. That’s why I found the whole thing entertaining and laughable. Including “me”. I am also part of the entertainment. If I stop, the entertainment stops.

That too is an option. I can stay banned. I am not desperate to go to satsang. My spiritual future is not in satsang. If it was I would be begging him not to ban me.

And that is what is getting to that sevadar. He wants power over everyone. He has it over the Sevadars because they want their seva. He thinks he got “a result”. But he has no idea what that result is yet. Neither do I.

That’s the only thing that makes it worth playing. Because in reality nobody including me is doing anything here of any real significance. It’s all a divine joke that we all take our personal agenda so seriously.

As I walked away from Haynes Park, I was with my cousin. He had patiently waited two hours after satsang for me. I had made it clear to the sevadars that I had a lift with someone to come to Haynes and he has a child with him. I don’t want to put him out.

They probably thought I was lying. But I wasn’t. I have told the truth from beginning to end. I have no reason to lie. I confessed my “big sin” openly from the start. I lied about nothing.

That’s what gives this whole thing credence. I have no agenda that would make me lie. I won’t lie for any outcome because I am not desperate for any outcome.

Am I bothered about “being banned”? Not in the slightest. Just as I had no care in the world when I was banned as a speaker,

My cousin asked me if I was upset about being banned from satsang. “Upset? Do I look upset?” I am about as upset as when I was banned from being a speaker.

In fact I will be the only person who has been banned from both giving satsang and attending satsang.

This “satsang” thing clearly “has it in for me” or so it seems. I hope you all find it as entertaining as I do. Because it’s about to be upped up a notch. I don’t let sleeping dogs lie.

I like a little entertainment. Hey maybe the baba is doing exactly the same, just a thought.

Stay tuned as the next episode unfolds. This was Friday. Saturday was a whole new day with a whole new adventure. Just like every episode of batman I watched as a child ( the one with Adam playing Batman).

“ Tune in tomorrow to see what happens. Same bat-time same bat-channel”. But don’t take it literally as “tomorrow” and call me a liar when it doesn’t happen tomorrow.

Till next time,. Over and out from “The ONE”.

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The full story is coming soon. It gets much much more interesting. Ends up in premeditated assault. Instigated by the sevadars.

And when I am saying I want to leave Haynes Park, six people grab me physically and take me where nobody can see and physically assault me by punching me in the face.

They think nobody will find out but don’t realise the power of truth. I am known by many of the old satsangis. I don’t tell lies. If I say it - it’s the truth regardless of if it works against me. And people who know me know this

I am not a violent person. Okay I did accept anami’s challenge to combat in jest . That’s about the extent of any violence in me. Whereas the sevadars in question might have a history of violence, who knows.

The matter will go all the way to the top to the guru himself. I have more than enough support to do this from satsangis who know me and my father and family.

Don’t forget, my father was one of the early uk satsangis from 1963.

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UPDATE: New comments from Osho Robbins. "Hukam" means divine order or command.

RSSB is meant to be a spiritual organisation and is also called Science of the Soul. I for one have always seen it that way right up to this incident.

Last Sunday, before the national satsang, Babaji said to me in the Q&A that everything always happens “in hukam” and I agree.

This too is in hukam. Nothing happens outside of hukam. Not even this. It was hukam that I get punched in the face. Obviously “The ONENESS” wants to stir things up for me. The Oneness is welcome. Let’s see what unfolds.

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There was zero resistance and zero retaliation from me during the entire two day episode. When the punching in the face incident happened I was on the way leaving Haynes Park, and my brother in law saw me leaving.

But the volunteers in question stopped me from leaving and then carried out the premeditated attack.

If anything they will be shocked at my level of nonviolence because apart from asking them to let me go, there was no other resistance from me. Six or seven guys onto one defenceless member of the sangat.

There was no reason for the attack as I was on the way out of Haynes Park. Hardly a sign of great bravery to attack a defenceless person who already wants to leave.

Of course if questioned they may lie but I can prove my position, that I was already leaving. This was a totally unprovoked attack to show me that the sevadars in question had the power to ban me. “Egos on steroids” is all I can say.

Hindu nationalism, Modi, and Kashmir

I make no claim to being an expert on either the history of India or current happenings in this vast, complicated country.

But news stories I've read about India's crackdown on Kashmir, which historically has enjoyed a large degree of independence, certainly are disturbing. As is the rise in Hindu nationalism, which bears some disturbing resemblance to the cries of fundamentalist Christians in the United States, "This is a Christian nation!" 

Which is untrue. Just as it is untrue that India is a Hindu nation.

At any rate, I just came across a Washington Post opinion piece by Kapil Komireddi, "The Kashmir crisis isn't about territory. It's about a Hindu victory over Islam." Here's how it starts out:
Download The Kashmir crisis isn’t about territory. It’s about a Hindu victory over Islam.

For two weeks, Kashmir, India’s sole Muslim-majority state, has existed in a surreal state of nonexistence. Since a presidential decree abolished the state, revoked its autonomy and partitioned it into two federally administered territories, the Internet has been shut down, cellular networks have been disabled, and even landlines went dead. Public assembly is banned, and citizens are under curfew.

A soldier has been stationed outside every house in some villages. Eight million people have been cut off from the world — and from one another. Pharmacies are running out of medicine, households are low on food, and hospitals are clogging up with injured protesters. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, insists that all this is for the good of the Kashmiris. India’s grip on Kashmir has seldom been stronger. Its hold on Kashmiris, however, has never been more threadbare.

Modi’s sudden takeover in Kashmir is the fulfillment of a long ideological yearning to make a predominantly Muslim population surrender to his vision of a homogeneous Hindu nation. It is also a way of conveying to the rest of India — a union of dizzyingly diverse states — that no one is exempt from the Hindu-power paradise he wants to build on the subcontinent. Kashmir is both a warning and a template: Any state that deviates from this vision can be brought under Delhi’s thumb in the name of “unity.”

Obviously Modi has lots of support of India, so many people would disagree with Komireddi's view of what's going on with Kashmir. Here's a discussion of his book, which in the view of the author of this piece is correct in some regards and out the mark in other regards.

Fortis files suit to get money that reportedly went into Dhillon family pockets

Today a commenter on this blog shared a link to a Business Standard story that can only be read in its entirety by subscribers.

But since it deals with a subject that's I've written about frequently -- the financial scandal involving the Singh brothers and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas -- I'm sharing a screenshot of the abbreviated story.

Scroll down for my take on it. Rs 520 crore is about $72 million, with Rs 403 crore being about $56 million.
This action by Fortis was anticipated back in May, as discussed in a LiveMint story, though the current amount Fortis wants to recover is higher now. 

The impact on the RSSB guru and the rest of the Dhillon family is unknown at this point.

What should concern them is that theyve been named as the ultimate beneficiaries of the money that flowed in a fraudulent fashion from Fortis into shell companies, then reportedly into the pockets of the Dhillon family.

Here's a flow chart from a Business Today story that shows this.

Though Fortis has filed a civil suit, if recovering the money that went into the shell companies, then apparently to the Dhillon family, results in evidence of wrongdoing by the Dhillon family and their associates, it seems there's a decent chance of criminal charges being filed at some point.

Video of Brian Hines talking about his Break Free of Dogma book

I just uploaded a video to accompany the Amazon listing of my recently-published Break Free of Dogma book. Here's the You Tube version.

Remember: this book is a great gift for the spiritual-but-not-religious person (or people) in your life. Which naturally could include you.

 

My "Break Free of Dogma" book is live on Amazon

Today's visit to our mailbox was both exciting and a bit scary. I knew that Amazon would have delivered a print copy of my new book, Break Free of Dogma, which consists of 93 posts that I selected from the early years of this blog, 2004-06. 

But even though the cover and interior design files uploaded without a hitch, I couldn't be sure the book would look as good as I expected until I ripped open the Amazon package.

Delight! Here I am, doing the obligatory author-selfie thing.

I chose to have a painting of my mother when she was sixteen in the background, with her looking over my shoulder, because she was a huge book lover who would have enjoyed my book, being a spiritual-but-not-religious person herself.

There's both paperback and Kindle versions of the book available on Amazon. Even if you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll enjoy the posts that I selected for Break Free of Dogma. 

Each continues to speak to me, even after so many years. Because my views have changed considerably since 2004-06, I preface each churchless "sermon" with a brief comment from my current perspective.

Re-reading the posts several times in the course of fashioning the book, I was inspired.

Hopefully others will be also. As I say in the Introduction, each of the 93 short chapters is just a few pages long, so if a post isn't appealing, the next one is right around the corner.

If you read my book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.

Osho Robbins talks with Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Osho Robbins is a frequent commenter on this blog who enjoys asking the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon, probing questions.

Me, I'm not into gurus anymore. But I realize that many people who visit this blog are interested in what Dhillon has to say. So below is what Robbins shared in several email messages.

Since I was a member of RSSB for thirty-five years, I'm familiar with the organization's traditional teachings and books. Thus I was struck by a seeming contradiction in what Robbins says below.

On the one hand, Dhillon told Robbins that what's important is what the previous RSSB gurus said and what the scriptures say. On the other hand, Dhillon said the guru is only a guide and a teacher.

But that isn't what the traditional RSSB teachings proclaim, including the "scriptures" -- if that is taken to mean the books describing the teachings of the preceding gurus.

Those teachings say that the guru is greater than God, because the guru takes souls back to God, being God in Human Form. The radiant form of the guru (meaning, a supernatural form) guides the disciple through higher regions of reality all the way to Sach Khand, or "heaven."

So it seems to me that the current RSSB guru is trying to have it both ways.

He doesn't claim to be any sort of divine being, yet he refers people to the traditional RSSB teachings -- which DO say that the guru is divine. Even more, those teachings speak of the Perfect Living Master, Dhillon being the current occupant of that title.

I'd find Dhillon to be more believable if he simply said that the traditional teachings are wrong. Anyway, read on for the most recent interchange between Osho Robbins and the RSSB guru.

Today I went to Haynes Park. It’s a week before the national satsang. It was a great opportunity to openly discuss various points without being rushed. I had a very interesting dialogue that answers a lot of points raised by participants in the discussions at Churchless. 

 

Firstly, the notion that “He claims this and that” has to be quashed. If you all wish to validate a claim, ask the person directly, instead of conjecture. 

 

At one point, I said “but YOU say ..........” and he interrupted me. “No, it’s not what I say. I am nobody to say anything. Just see what the previous gurus said and what the scriptures say.”

 

He also said “Please, let’s be clear. I cannot erase your karmas, I cannot do anything for you. I can only guide you and the rest is up to you. The guru is only a guide and a teacher.”

 

Clearly he doesn’t claim to be a “perfect living master” with all the notions that go with that title. 

 

He is making his position clear. If anyone wants to project their beliefs and notions onto that, it’s okay as long as they realise they are making that contribution. It’s their notion, not his. 

 

He also spoke a lot about “going beyond good and bad” and that it has to be your own experience, not something you heard or read. 

 

So the conclusion from this is clear: GSD [Gurinder Singh Dhillon] claims to be a human being. His position is a guide and a teacher. He makes no other personal claims of grandiose. He claims no special powers. He doesn’t claim to be “God in Human Form”.

 

Of course anyone can project anything they choose. It’s a free world. However I am reporting what I heard first hand from the man himself. 

 

Regarding the issue of the money transactions. My view (and it’s just my view as I was not there) is that he is a human being. When did he ever say “I cannot do any wrong”?

 

Wrong and Right are human made up concepts. One society considers the same thing to be “wrong” that another society says is “right". One obvious example is “halal meat.” Sikhs specifically consider it “wrong”.

 

As a human being, if we happen to be in business, not everything is going to be above board. There is corruption inherent in all of society. Anyone who says there isn’t is living in an ideal world that doesn’t exist. 

 

We have a president with serious corruption allegations against him. Doesn’t make him an “evil” person. 

 

All this only becomes an issue if you first project the status of “perfection” onto the guru. And when he fails, he is now condemned for not being perfect. 

 

Reminds me of a conversation I had with David Lane in London long ago about Charan Singh in the video “Satguru”. 

He feels sleepy, probably jetlag, while giving darshan at Wembley. The sangat thinks “Wow, the Surat is being pulled up by the shabd”.

 

David said “He is just jet lagged and feels sleepy. I can’t lose my faith in him as I only consider him a human being”. First you project perfection onto a person then complain when he shows he is not “perfect”. Nobody is.

 

I also addressed the topic of the master coming at death

 

Me: You ask people to meditate but then take away the reward (guru coming at time of death) so now it becomes nishkaam because no reward.

 

GSD: Forget about me. The previous gurus and the scriptures say that the creator will come and take care of his souls, but will we recognise him?

 

Me: But no god can come because there is only the ONE.

 

GSD: Yes that is true, again its words. No god will come because he has already come. He is ever present. He doesn’t come and go. But at our level we cannot understand this, so scriptures and gurus use the language we understand. In reality no guru comes or goes, it’s a figure of speech.

 

Me: Kabir says, Jab hum hoti tab him nahin. So the meeting never happens. Either I am or god is, never together. No meeting

 

GSD:  Yes, that is true once you realise that it is all the play of the ONE. We don’t do anything, he is the doer. But at this level, and until we realise for ourselves, we continue to act

 

His perspective is that although the ONE is the truth, we have to start with where we are, otherwise we cannot understand.

 

Hence the reason he says “meditate” and also says the meditation is just to tire you out until you surrender. He says the meditation will not get you there, but do it without any desire for reward. Nishkaam.

 

Which is impossible to do because we always seek the reward. So it’s a method to take you beyond the ego. 

 

Osho Robbins

 

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Calculus is cool. Spiritual, even. Infinity rocks.

Astoundingly, I'm enjoying a book about calculus, Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz. The subtitle is the reason: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe.

Hey, I'm all in on having the secrets of the universe revealed to me. Especially when the cost was a mere $16.52 to have Amazon deliver the book to my doorstep. 

I started this post with the word "astoundingly" because I was forced to take a calculus class in the first year of my Systems Science Ph.D. program studies way back when. (I completed the course work, but then gave up on being called Dr. Hines, as appealing as that prospect was.)

All I remember about the class was that I didn't like it. I passed, but I can't recall a single deep philosophical statement about the universe during that enforced dive into the equations of calculus, introductory variety.

I've only read 25 pages of Infinite Powers, yet already I'm fascinated by calculus -- because Strogatz, a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell, is both an excellent writer and a talented expositor of this difficult subject. 

Here's a sampling in Strogatz' own words of what's intrigued me in the few pages I've perused so far. (The headlines are mine.)

Calculus is key to modern civilization.
Without calculus, we wouldn't have cell phones, computers, or microwave ovens. We wouldn't have radio. Or television. Or ultrasound for expectant mothers, or GPS for lost travelers. We wouldn't have split the atom, unraveled the human genome, or put astronauts on the moon. We might not even have the Declaration of Independence.

The universe is mathematical. 
For reasons nobody understands, the universe is deeply mathematical. Maybe God made it that way. Or maybe it's the only way a universe with us in it could be, because nonmathematical universes can't harbor life intelligent enough for us to ask the question.

In any case, it's a mysterious and marvelous fact that our universe obeys laws of nature that always turn out to be expressible in the language of calculus as sentences called differential equations. Such equations describe the difference between something right now and the same thing an instant later or between something right here and the same thing infinitesimally close by.

Calculus expresses the universe's operating system.
To put this awesome assertion another way, there seems to be something like a code to the universe, an operating system that animates everything from moment to moment and place to place. Calculus taps into this order and expresses it.

Infinity is what gives calculus its power.
Calculus succeeds by breaking complicated problems down into simpler parts. That strategy, of course, is not unique to calculus. All good problem-solvers know that hard problems become easier when they're split into chunks. The truly radical and distinctive means of calculus is that it takes this divide-and-conquer strategy to its utmost extreme -- all the way out to infinity.

Instead of cutting a big problem into a handful of bite-size pieces, it keeps cutting and cutting relentlessly until the problem has been chopped and pulverized into its tiniest conceivable parts, leaving infinitely many of them. Once that's done, it solves the original problem for all the tiny parts, which is usually a much easier task than solving the initial giant problem.

The remaining challenge at that point is to put all the tiny answers back together again. That tends to be a much harder step, but at least it's not as difficult as the original problem was.

Even the quantum world bows down to calculus. 
Admittedly, some aspects of our ever-changing world lie beyond the approximations and wishful thinking inherent in the Infinity Principle. In the subatomic realm, for example, physicists can no longer think of an electron as a classical particle following a smooth path in the same way that a planet or a cannonball does.

According to quantum mechanics, trajectories become jittery, blurry, and poorly defined at the microscopic scale, so we need to describe the behavior of electrons as probability waves instead of Newtonian trajectories. As soon as we do that, however, calculus returns triumphantly. It governs the evolution of probability waves through something called the Schrodinger equation.

It's incredible but true: Even in the subatomic realm where Newtonian physics breaks down, Newtonian calculus still works. In fact, it works spectacularly well.

Completed infinity is the original sin of calculus. 
Should we take the plunge and say that a circle truly is a polygon with infinitely many infinitesimal sides? No. We mustn't do that, mustn't yield to that temptation. Doing so would be to commit the sin of completed infinity. It would condemn us to logical hell.

...Like the biblical original sin, the original sin of calculus -- the temptation to treat a circle as an infinite polygon with infinitesimally short sides -- is very hard to resist, and for the same reason. It tempts us with the prospect of forbidden knowledge, with insights unavailable by ordinary means.

The sin of dividing by zero.
All across the world, students are taught that division by zero is forbidden... The root of the problem is infinity. Dividing by zero summons infinity in much the same way that a Ouija board supposedly summons spirits from another realm. It's risky. Don't go there.

...The transgression that dragged us into this mess was pretending that we could actually reach the limit, that we could treat infinity like an attainable number. 

...In the context of chopping a line into pieces, potential infinity would mean that the line could be cut into more and more pieces, as many as desired but still always a finite number and all of nonzero length. That's perfectly permissible and leads to no logical difficulties.

What's verboten is to imagine going all the way to a completed infinity of pieces of zero length.

That, Aristotle felt, would lead to nonsense -- as it does here, in revealing that zero times infinity can give any answer. And so he forbade the use of completed infinity in mathematics and philosophy. His edict was upheld by mathematicians for the next twenty-two hundred years.

Infinity is a dangerous temptress. 
Somewhere in the dark recesses of prehistory, somebody realized that numbers never end. And with that thought, infinity was born. It's the numerical equivalent of something deep in our psyches, in our nightmares of bottomless pits, and in our hopes for eternal life. 

Infinity lies at the heart of so many of our dreams and fears and unanswerable questions: How big is the universe? How long is forever? How powerful is God? In every branch of human thought, from religion and philosophy and science and mathematics, infinity has befuddled the world's finest minds for thousands of years.

Discrete and continuous become one. 
Consider how an old-fashioned analog clock differs from a modern-day digital/mechanical monstrosity. On the analog clock, the second hand sweeps around in a beautifully uniform motion. It depicts time as flowing. Whereas on the digital clock, the second hand jerks forward in discrete steps, thwack, thwack, thwack. It depicts time as jumping. 

Infinity can build a bridge between these two very different conceptions of time. Imagine a digital clock that advances through trillions of little clicks per second instead of one loud thwack. We would no longer be able to tell the difference between that kind of digital clock and a true analog clock. 

Likewise with movies and videos: as long as the frames flash by fast enough, say at thirty frames a second, they give the impression of seamless flow. And if there were infinitely many frames per second, the flow truly would be seamless. 

...So in everyday life, the gulf between the discrete and the continuous can often be bridged, at least to a good approximation. For many practical purposes, the discrete can stand in for the continuous, as long as we slice things thinly enough. In the ideal world of calculus, we can go one better.

Anything that's continuous can be sliced exactly (not just approximately) into infinitely many infinitesimal pieces. That's the Infinity Principle. With limits and infinity, the discrete and the continuous become one. 

Get real. Accept limits. Embrace continuous. 
From the beginning, calculus has stubbornly insisted that everything -- space and time, matter and energy, all objects that ever have been or will be -- should be regarded as continuous. Accordingly, everything can and should be quantified by real numbers.

In this idealized, imaginary world, we pretend that everything can be split finer and finer without end. The whole theory of calculus is built on that assumption. Without it, we couldn't compute limits, and without limits, calculus would come to a clanking halt.

If all we ever used are decimals with only sixty digits of precision, the number line would be pockmarked and cratered. There would be holes where pi, the square root of two, and any other numbers that need infinitely many digits after the decimal point would exist. 

Even a simple fraction such as 1/3 would be missing, because it too requires an infinite number of digits (o.333...) to pinpoint its location on the number line. If we want to think of the totality of all numbers as forming a continuous line, those numbers have to be real numbers.

They may be an approximation to reality, but they work amazingly well. Reality is too hard to model any other way. With infinite decimals, was with the rest of calculus, infinity makes everything simpler.

Three of my favorite mindfulness sayings

Last year I noted that "Mindfulness has become my meditation." That's been true for quite a few years.

For a long time, over three decades, I was a believer in a mystical form of meditation aimed at detaching one's consciousness from materiality and letting it soar into non-physical spiritual regions of reality.

Sounds good. But it was a fantasy. There's zero demonstrable evidence that supernatural domains even exist, with less than zero evidence (assuming that's possible) anyone has gained access to them. 

But this world is real.

Sure, there's valid doubts about how accurately the human brain is able to cognize physical existence, since our organs of perception, analysis, and understanding are unavoidably prone to errors. 

So we've got to deal with how the world appears to us, since there is no way of knowing what it is like from some sort of abstract outside perspective -- a topic Thomas Nagel discussed in his book "The View From Nowhere." (Which I haven't read, but plan to.)

Mindfulness meditation appeals to me because it seeks to see things as clearly as possible from within our inherent subjectivity. Every morning I listen to guided meditations via the Calm and Waking Up apps on my iPhone. Tamara Levitt does the Calm meditations, and Sam Harris the Waking Up meditations.

Recently I've also been listening to guided meditations that accompany the book "Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World." (They're on the publisher's web site.)

I recall that many years ago a comedian on Saturday Night Live who played a character called Father Guido Sarducci. One of his recurring jokes was the Five Minute University. 

Father Guido’s Five-Minute University aimed to teach students in five minutes “what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she is out of school.”

In that spirit, here's some headlines, so to speak, of what I remember most from the three mindfulness apps/programs mentioned above. 

Calm. Tamara Levitt enjoys speaking in this fashion. Breathing in, know that you are breathing in. Breathing out, know that you are breathing out. This may sound trite, but for me it is the core of mindfulness practice. I say something similar frequently to myself.

When my mind wanders in my Tai Chi class, I tell myself, "While doing a Tai Chi form, know that you are doing a Tai Chi form." Ditto while driving my car. Or washing the dishes. Bringing mind and body into sync, attending to the same thing, is a powerful way of staying in touch with reality.

Waking Up. Sam Harris frequently asks the listener if in addition to being aware of the breath, say, there is a center to consciousness apart from that awareness. Meaning, I believe, a self or soul that stands apart from what awareness is conscious of. 

Looking for that center doesn't take long. Harris says it should last no longer than a snap of the fingers. Finding no such center, we're led to understand that an enduring unchanging self is an illusion, in line with Buddhist teachings. All there is, is a bunch of stuff happening within our consciousness.

Mindfulness book. I believe Mark Williams, a professor of psychology at the University of Oxford, and co-author of this book, narrates the guided meditations related to the book's eight main chapters.

I liked what he says in the Week Four meditation: Stillness is nourished when we allow things to be just as they are, right now, moment by moment, breath by breath.

This theme is echoed by Levitt and Harris. We aren't trying to change anything through mindfulness meditation. We aren't seeking to gain wisdom, be a better person, or grasp the secrets of the universe. We're simply trying to see things as clearly as possible.

Harris likes to speak about dropping back into the space from which awareness of this and that occurs. This is a powerful idea, because it makes it possible to be mindful of anything, really, including mindfulness itself. It's always possible to take a step back.

That isn't a distancing or denial of what we're experiencing, such as a painful emotion. Rather, I think Harris is correct when he advises that when something is bothering us, we should try to get closer to that feeling, to burn up with that feeling. 

He claims that this will allow us to get over the pain in moments, or at most, a few minutes.

Maybe.

I do agree with Harris that trying to change how we feel, as if we were a disobedient dog that needs training, is counter-productive. Better is to simply be acutely aware of how we feel, which rather counter-intuitively, helps the feeling to pass more quickly.

Dilbert on circular debating skills

I think the guy in the green shirt honed his circular debating skills by being a religious person who comments on my blog posts.

Fated to become who we are, each of us is marvelously unique

I'm fascinated by the subject of free will. Or more accurately, the lack thereof. 

As noted in countless (more or less) blog posts I've written about free will, the arguments in favor of determinism strike me as much stronger than a belief in some sort of magic free will fairy dust that, poof!, somehow makes it possible for us humans to transcend our genetics, experiences, culture, education, upbringing, and so much else that has caused us to become the person we are now.

My latest foray into this subject is Hannah Critchlow's book, "The Science of Fate: Why Your Future is More Predictable Than You Think." 

Critchlow doesn't focus much on free will, per se, but rather on specific examples of how factors outside of our control affect us.

So rather than taking free will on directly, as authors such as Sam Harris have done, she makes a case for fate by discussing how, for example, something so seemingly ethereal as love and sexual attraction can be persuasively explained by goings-on in the brain and body.

I've read almost all of the book and have been enjoying it. Here's a couple of passages from The Cooperative Brain chapter that I came across today. They provide a good overview of the book's central theme.

Namely, even though we're not really in control of who we are, what we do, and what happens to us, the astonishing complexity of the human brain assures that each of us is very much unique.

The latest neuroscience breathes new life into the concept of fate by situating it at the core of what we increasingly believe makes us who we are: our brain. It shows us that we are born with our behavioural propensities already sketched out.

Neurobiology and environment then work in tandem to to keep us inking in the lines of the sketch, finessing the detail in order to produce the full picture of our life.

In seven chapters we've been following the thread of an argument that goes something like this: the brain we are born with, the product of millennia of evolutionary forces, is subject to many species-wide characteristics but shaped by our unique genetic blueprint.

Our early years tend to cement our proclivities through considerable exposure to an environment that has typically been created by our parents, from whom we inherited those tendencies in the first place.

Given that our brains filter information on the basis of prior experience, our present and future reality is based on an avalanching amplification of what has happened before. 

We end up stuck in the version of reality that our brain has constructed, a simulation that has moulded itself to fit our expectations. Much of the time we dwell there quite happily but occasionally we feel its constraints or notice its glitches.

We are unhappy and can't shake the mood. We try to change a habit and may struggle for a while before giving up. Or we try to change somebody else's mind, which doesn't end well. We bump up against the constraints that govern our selfhood, other people's and our version of the world.

The experience can be frustrating. Misunderstanding, resentment and aggression may result. That's just human nature, you may say. We're fated to struggle with ourselves and each other, and most of the time we struggle in vain.

... During the course of researching and writing this book I've ended up convinced of something I hadn't entirely anticipated: that there's no such thing as human nature. Not really.

Yes, we share species-wide characteristics; sure, biology is deterministic at an individual level to a huge degree, but to say we are collectively this, that or the other is yet another over-simple model. It denies the glorious complexity and flexibility on offer to us as our brains, those billions of unique models of reality, encounter one another.

Our brains provide us with a fantastic paradox.

We are primed to seek out patterns in our environment; we comprehend the world by categorising, simplifying and making assumptions, based on what we have experienced before. This skill helps us to take shortcuts in information-processing, meaning we retain the phenomenal speed at which our brains can make calculations, judge situations and direct our decisions.

Yet it is precisely this architecture of the brain, its flexibility, its intricacy, its dynamism, that means every person on this planet is a true individual with the scope to exhibit such wide complexity of behaviours arising from the 100 trillion connections in their mind.

This ever-changing landscape of complex neural circuitry, which is driven to seek patterns, ironically means that attempting to categorise people by simplifying their behaviours to binary brackets is nonsensical, since the scope for variation in perceiving reality and complexity of thoughts and behaviours is so vast.

RSSB guru appears to have lied about his financial problems

A few days ago, in a blog post I shared a report of what Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas who has been accused of financial fraud and death threats, said in a talk in Petaluma, California recently.

This is part of what I was told:

A woman asked at the end of her questions, "Will you pay for your nephews 5 million" (something like that, I don't have a reference for that and I may not have heard clearly.) 

Baba Ji [the guru] said (as I heard it) "I have some money from my parents and have not taken anything else from anyone." Then he said my life is open (or something like that).

If Dhillon actually said that he has not taken any money from anyone but his parents, and I haven't seen anyone deny this who was at his Petaluma talk, then the RSSB guru lied to his devotees.

There's plenty of evidence to support this, as I shared in a comment where I replied to someone who said she believed what Dhillon said. 

Nancy, to put it bluntly, Gurinder Singh Dhillon lied at the Petaluma bhandara. He definitely has gotten money from sources other than his parents. Lots of it. Here's some links that prove me right, and the RSSB guru wrong. You're very trusting. Also, gullible.

Here's part of the truth about how Dhillon got so much money.

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2019/05/fortis-seeking-money-that-ended-up-with-the-dhillon-family.html

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2019/03/rssb-guru-owes-almost-800-million-in-fraudulent-loans.html

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2018/12/singh-brothers-get-into-fight-over-loans-to-rssb-guru-and-his-family.html

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2019/06/delhi-high-court-orders-recovery-of-money-from-rssb-guru-and-his-family.html

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2019/06/malvinder-singhs-message-to-the-rssb-guru-is-moving.html

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2018/08/bloomberg-story-shows-gurinder-singh-dhillons-shady-business-dealings.html

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2019/06/rssb-guru-identified-as-beneficiary-of-fraudulent-funds.html

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2010/12/radha-soami-satsang-beas-guru-makes-250-million.html

If anyone needs more convincing that the RSSB guru lied, read this June 11, 2019 Medical Dialogues story

New Delhi: Bringing in a third party, the Delhi High Court has directed Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) chief Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family along with other 56 entities to pay the recovery amount owed by Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh (Singh Brothers) to Japanese firm Daiichi Sankyo. According to a recent media report, the court has also ordered to recover the dues from ex Religare chief Sunil Godhwani and brother Sanjay Godhwani, besides, RSSB chief and the Dhillon family including wife Shabnam Dhillon, sons Gurkirat and Gurpreet and daughter-in-law Nayan Tara Dhillon.

The order comes following Malvinder Singh compliance that he can only reimburse $500 million (Rs 3472 crore) arbitration order against them, provided he can recover the money owed to him by RSSB chief and family. Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the long dispute between the former Fortis Healthcare Ltd promoters, Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh had turned dramatic with allegations one after the other. Elder brother  Malvinder Singh had alleged that parts of the proceeds from the stake sale in Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd were used by the spiritual head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon to purchase real estate.

Also Read: Malvinder Singh alleges spiritual guru invested Ranbaxy stake sale proceeds to buy real estate

The court is reportedly issuing ‘garnishee orders’ against several Dhillon and RSSB associates’ companies, including Prius Real Estate, Addon Realty, Payne Realtors SGGD Projects, Luminous Holding. A garnishee order is an order against a third party to recover money to settle a debt or dues. Garnishee order prevents these entities from alienating any assets. The dues will now be paid to Delhi high court instead of Singh brothers and their entities to whom it is owed.

With the present order issued on June 10, the court has increased the scope of people from whom the money owed by Singh brothers to Daiichi can be recovered to honour the arbitration award.

According to a report in Business Today, Daiichi has enforced an arbitration order in Singapore that directed the Singh brothers to shell out Daiichi $500 million towards alleged non-disclosure of crucial information during the sale of Ranbaxy Laboratories to Daiichi in 2008.

The flow of money from Singh brothers to entities were owned and controlled by RSSB chief, his family and associates. RoC filings and terms sheets say in a span of four years, Rs 1107.5 crore from the Rs 9,576 crore sale proceeds of Ranbaxy to Daiichi Sankyo was paid through RHC group firms RHC Holding Private Limited, Oscar Investment Limited, RHC Finance Private Limited and FHL into two group entities ANR Securities Private Limited and Ranchem Private Limited.

Afterwards, this money was transferred to Prius Real Estate Private Limited controlled by Dhillon family associates and RSSB functionaries through optionally convertible debentures (OCD). The money invested in other Prius group entities called Prius Commercial, Payne Realtors, SVIIT Software and Sharan Hospitality whose preference shares worth Rs 875.53 crore were subscribed to by Prius Real Estate. Both the OCDs and preference shares were to be redeemed between August-November, 2018 at a hefty premium, reports Business Today.

Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is an organization dedicated to a process of inner development under the guidance of a spiritual teacher. 

Good simple comment policy

Perusing news about an upcoming VW crossover, I noted the Motor1 comment policy. Nice. I couldn't agree more. Hope Church of the Churchless commenters feel the same way.

Comment respectfully, please

Here's some reminders to those who leave comments on Church of the Churchless posts. I've been loose on these guidelines, because I support free speech. But I'm going to be a bit stricter from now on.

-- Try to comment on the subject of a blog post. If you leave an occasional off-topic comment, that's fine. But in general, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread post.

-- This isn't a discussion forum. I realize that some commenters like to engage in lengthy, and often repetitive, comment conversations. Try to keep them brief. When you've made your point, and someone doesn't agree with you, move on. Stop arguing. Find another subject.

-- It's boring to insult people in a comment. Don't do it. Stand up for issues, ideas, concepts, and such that you feel need discussing. But don't insult other commenters, or anyone else. Criticize what someone says or does, not the person themselves. 

-- Brief quotations in a comment are fine. However, speak in your own words, mostly. For sure, don't include lengthy quotes from a supposedly holy book or scripture. Remember: this is the Church of the Churchless, not the Churched.

-- In general, be respectful. Be thoughtful. Be reasonable. Be factual. Be open-minded. Be flexible. Understand that we're not out to change minds. My goal for this blog is to give people an opportunity to make up their own minds.

Raids of Indian authorities circle closer to RSSB guru

Following up on my post earlier today about raids by the Enforcement Directorate, which enforces economic laws and fights economic crime in India,  a new story in the Indian financial press indicates that the raids are not only on Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, but on others.

One of those others is Sunil Godhwani, a close associate of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Dhillon had Godhwani installed as the Managing Director and then Chairman of Religare, a company once controlled by the Singh brothers, who are related to the guru.

A criminal complaint filed by Malvinder alleges that Godhwani then conspired to fraudulently funnel money from Religare into the pockets of the RSSB guru, his family, and close associates. Separately, the new board of Religare filed a complaint with the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi police.

I shared a link to that complaint in "Family of RSSB guru at risk of charges of criminal conspiracy." That possibility looks more likely in light of today's Business Standard story that somebody shared a link to in a comment. Here's the start of the story.
Download ED raids multiple locations linked to ex-Religare promoters in PMLA case | Business Standard News

The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday raided multiple premises linked to erstwhile Religare promoters, brothers Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh, and others in connection with a money laundering case, agency officials said.

They said the raids were conducted at seven locations in Delhi including those connected to the Singh brothers, ex-CMD of Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL) Sunil Godhwani, REL executives N K Ghoshal, Hemant Dhingra after an Enforcement Case Information Case (ECIR), the police equivalent of a case, was filed by the agency.

The ECIR has been filed under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after taking cognisance of a Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing (EOW) complaint filed in December last year.

REL's subsidiary Religare Finvest (RFL) had filed the complaint with the EoW, alleging fraud and misappropriation of funds to the tune ofRs740 crore and had named the Singh brothers and others.

On their part, the Singh brothers had blamed Godhwani for the troubles faced by the group.

Seemingly one of the questions Indian authorities are seeking answers to is why Godhwani funneled money to shell companies controlled at the time by members of the Dhillon family and their associates, which apparently then was used to buy real estate by the Dhillons.

See my March blog post, "RSSB insider Sunil Godhwani charged with criminal conspiracy." Here's the last paragraph of that post.

Thus it sure seems like the Dhillon family is facing some additional legal challenges. They were owners of shell companies mentioned in the Religare criminal conspiracy complaint as having participated in the fraud, and the Dhillons also were recipients of the fraudulently obtained money.

 

Singh brothers in more legal hot water. RSSB guru mentioned.

Thanks to those who have shared links to stories in the Indian financial press about new developments in the financial fraud involving Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, along with Gurinder Singh Dhillon,  the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and the guru's close associate Sunil Godhwani.

Here's a Business Today story. They say it's a developing story, so it's short at the moment.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Thursday conducted raids at the residences of former Ranbaxy CEO Malvinder Singh and his brother Shivinder Singh. The probe agency carried out the searches in connection with a money-laundering case.

According to ED officials, the raids were conducted after a case was filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The move comes amid the charges of alleged financial irregularities against the Singh brothers and the subsequent downfall of their businesses.

NDTV has a longer story. Excerpts:

NEW DELHI: 

Malvinder Singh and his brother Shivinder Singh, ex-promoters of pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy, were raided today by the Enforcement Directorate in a Rs. 740-crore fraud case. 

"Two places were raided in Delhi including Malvinder Singh's home," an official said. The searches were carried out as part of a case filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the official added.

The brothers have been accused by Religare Finvest of fraud and misappropriation of funds to the tune of Rs. 740 crore.

In December, a criminal complaint was filed by Religare Finvest Limited with the Economic Offence Wing of the Delhi Police against the Singh brothers. A case was filed against the brothers in May.

The Indian Express had a story on a different Singh brothers issue about a week ago. Excerpt below. I've boldfaced the part about the RSSB guru and Godhwani.

Using a web of offshore companies, funds were allegedly diverted from Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL), a company listed in India, into a Jersey firm that was solely owned by Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh. REL, which earned consolidated profits of Rs 92 crore on revenues of Rs 748 crore in 2007-08 turned into a loss-making firm in subsequent years with losses mounting to Rs 1,350 crore on revenues of Rs 2,586 crore in 2017-18.

The Singh brothers had a fallout with Sunil Godhwani, who was appointed by the brothers to lead their family office after Ranbaxy sale in addition to his role in Religare (of which he had become the CEO in 2001). Godhwani quit as Chairman and Managing Director of REL in July 2016, and stepped down as whole-time director in September 2017.

Later on, the two brothers fought, blaming each other and Godhwani for fraud. Malvinder alleged that loans were given to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the spiritual guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, to buy real estate.

It seems virtually indisputable that the last sentence is true. Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family did indeed use allegedly fraudulent loans to buy large amounts of real estate holdings, which later apparently lost value.

Yesterday in a biog post I shared something Dhillon is reported to have said at a talk he gave in Petaluma, California this week.

A woman asked at the end of her questions, "Will you pay for your nephews 5 million" (something like that, I don't have a reference for that and I may not have heard clearly.) 

Baba Ji [the guru] said (as I heard it) "I have some money from my parents and have not taken anything else from anyone." Then he said my life is open (or something like that).

That statement from the guru almost certainly is false. Dhillon and his family have taken lots of money from other people. The Indian financial press has written numerous stories containing evidence to support this. 

RSSB guru mentions me in answering a question

Well, I guess this is a compliment, more or less, from Gurinder Singh Dhillon -- the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas who is speaking this week in Petaluma, California at the RSSB center there. 

This afternoon I heard from someone who attended one of Dhillon's satsangs (talks) in Petaluma. This person wrote:

A woman asked at the end of her questions, "Will you pay for your nephews 5 million" (something like that, I don't have a reference for that and I may not have heard clearly.) 

Baba Ji [the guru] said (as I heard it) "I have some money from my parents and have not taken anything else from anyone." Then he said my life is open (or something like that).

Then what really caught my attention was "if you want to know more read Brian Hines." 

If you hear from or talk with anyone else who was there they might remember it differently, but I definitely remember the words "if you want to know more, read Brian Hines." 

How's that for the surprise of the year?

It is indeed a surprise, though not totally unexpected. (Note: I suspect the woman said "500 million," since this is the amount in dollars Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, the guru's relatives, first cousins actually, owe in a court settlement.)

This fits with a comment someone left a little while ago on a recent blog post.

I'm pleased that Gurinder Singh Dhillon is encouraging people to visit this blog. However, since I moderate and approve comments, I'm really not interested in RSSB devotees using comments to wish the guru Happy Birthday, or HBD.

Yes, Google tells me the guru is 65 tomorrow, August 1.

But please wish him Happy Birthday in your meditation. If Dhillon truly is God in Human Form, as his devotees believe him to be, he'll receive your thoughts that way. And if he isn't GIHF, as seems virtually certain, maybe he doesn't deserve your birthday greetings.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Dairy diet causes RSSB initiate to become an ex-satsangi

Since 1970 I've been a vegetarian who eats some dairy products. But over the years I've eaten less and less. Currently I use soy milk and basically only consume dairy in the form of a daily serving of yogurt and half-and-half creamer, plus some occasional cheese.

But I admire people who stick to a vegan diet (vegetarian, with no dairy products). So my admiration extends to the person who calls themselves "ex-satsangi" in the message below that I got via email, and was allowed to share on this blog.

They rightfully point out that dairy animals almost always are treated cruelly. Feeling that eating dairy products isn't compatible with a truly spiritual life, they wrote a letter to the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

The answer they got wasn't acceptable, so they became an ex-satsangi. Here's their message. It's well-written and moving. I corrected a few typos and added descriptions of some abbreviations, in brackets

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

Hi Brian, I was initiated on the path back in 2000. Since then I’ve done my meditation off and on and have enjoyed it and don’t regret it.

I’ve always scrutinized RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]  and GSD [Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru] along the way to test the teachings and the man they referred to as Master. I would ask a lot of questions to other satsangis and visit your website for a balanced view of things.

I’ve been to Dera [headquarters of RSSB in India] twice and seen him multiple times at other places around the world. After collecting all the data, I would usually come to the conclusion that I didn’t know if he was a PLM [Perfect Living Master] but that there was enough there to continue on the Radha Soami path.

Even the financial scandal was something that made me raise my eyebrow of course but I didn’t have direct experience with the accusations and didn’t want to be swayed by the nay sayers so I kept an open mind that GSD could be innocent.

Usually, it seemed that sexual scandals were the downfall of other gurus in other paths and were the defining moments exemplifying that gurus are just men with faults like everyone else, so it caught me by surprise when I came across a video from the dairy industry in India. This video was the deal breaker and proved (at least to myself) GSD is not a saint or PLM.

Here is the video on YouTube that I came across entitled "Infiltrating India’s Dairy Industry."

I recommend watching it to the end so you know where I’m coming from. This video shows the exploitation and abuse of sentient beings that not only happens in India but all around the world.

After watching the video, the first thing that came to mind is “does GSD consume dairy and if so how can he justify it and be considered a PLM”. I immediately contacted someone who has traveled with him around the world and asked, “does Baba Ji take dairy?” and the answer was yes but that he gets it from his approved dairies that he inspects himself.

They came up with all kinds of excuses as to why he would partake in this, excuses such as “Well if satsangis in India noticed he wasn’t taking dairy then they would stop taking dairy and those people are so poor that they would become malnourished and the karma from supporting the dairy industry can just be meditated away anyway as nobody is killed in the milking of a cow."

But as you can see in the video and the many more like it from around the world, lives ARE being taken.

Baby male calves are waste products and killed routinely for veal. The dairy cows themselves all end up as beef long before their normal lives would have ended. Breast feeding from another species is not natural and not something we need to do for health and sustenance.

Therefore, if one partakes in it, it is due to ignorance or pleasure. For God in human form to take pleasure in the suffering of other souls is immoral and breaking the 4th vow of a satsangi: to live a moral life. GSD must not know about this abuse therefore he is not a PLM. He’s just another human caught up in tradition and sensory pleasure.

I decided to write him a letter as I’ve always been told, the guru is there for you if you ever have questions. I had to send him a snail mail letter as they don’t take emails. WTF! It’s 2019, come on. Anyway, here is my letter to GSD. I wanted to give him the chance to make this right and defend himself.

Dear Baba Ji,

I am an initiate of yours since 2000. I suspect you already know this as any perfect living master would know who his disciples are.

I’ve also come across some information that any perfect living master should know but apparently you don’t by your participation in it.

That information is the violence, rape and murder in the dairy industry around the world. I have been a vegan for around 12 years with a 3 month revisit of dairy when I went to the Dera and other parts of India 4 and a half years ago.

You see, I figured since the cow is seen as holy and sacred in India, surely it would be fine to take dairy, particularly at the Dera. If Master says it’s fine than who am I to argue. Well I watched this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyV7PLwjZFo

Searching YouTube with the words “Infiltrating India's Dairy Industry” will get the same video as well.

It’s a YouTube video on the dairy industry in India. Anyone who watches this video will be scarred. It is not something that my master would condone let alone participate in.

I immediately reached out to some other satsangis that have spent some time in close quarters with you and they confirmed that you do take dairy but that it’s from your approved Dera farms that only supply to Dera.

Regardless of whether the Dera dairy is the cleanest dairy farm, where none of the cows are forcibly impregnated, where the baby calves are allowed to drink the milk that’s meant for them, where the babies are not ripped away from their mothers and are allowed to bond, where the boy calves are not sent away to become veal, where all the cattle graze in green pastures until the end of their natural lives after they can no longer produce milk, where the cows are not living in their own feces and they don’t suffer from mastitis from over milking...regardless of any of this, people outside the Dera don’t have this luxury and go home supporting an industry of violence, rape and murder around the world.

It only takes a little math and common sense to figure out that the Dera cows have to give birth to produce milk and that 50% of the babies will be male. In a herd of 100 cows, 50 male calves will be born per year.

In 5 years there will be 250 more bulls to feed in addition to 250 new cows. 500 offspring to the original 100 herd that are now too spent to produce any more milk. So now there are 600 head of cattle on this dairy farm and only 250 of those cows are producing milk.

That’s a lot of cattle to feed and shelter for no economic return. Baba Ji, what happens to those non-dairy producing cattle? Are they living the good retired life on some green Dera pastures or are they part of the statistics that make India the largest exporter of beef in the world!! Holy Cow!!!

Baba Ji, why not just exclude dairy from the satsangi diet? Why would a perfect living master partake in this? I can’t believe meditation can burn this kind of unnecessary karma.

We don’t need dairy to survive and it actually isn’t even healthy for us. We weaned off our mother’s breast milk at 2 years old. Why are we drinking the breast milk of another species? We would be grossed out at the thought of drinking our mother’s breast milk or the milk of our wives, daughters. Why do we think it’s natural to drink the milk of a cow or sheep. Perhaps dog milk is fine? Why not dog’s milk? (I’m being facetious obviously).

Anyway, I guess I’m writing to you because this is a deal breaker for me in regards to finding a perfect living master. This might be a break up letter depending on your reply. 

As satsangis there are 4 vows:

1. Meditate
2. Vegetarian diet, no eggs
3. No alcohol
4. Live a moral life

Baba Ji, how are we supposed to get the last one if you can’t even do it?  If you watch the video in this letter you surely agree that there is nothing “moral” about partaking and condoning and paying someone to do this to animals, our fellow souls.

Most people don’t know about this and so it’s understandable that they don’t have a problem taking dairy but a perfect living master should just know this stuff!! He has a different vantage point than the rest of us.

It is because of our dollar that this goes on. It’s also a human rights issue for the poor people who have to do this to animals because they can’t get a different job. What kind of ptsd [post-traumatic stress disorder] must these executioners have after bludgeoning an animal with a sledgehammer???!!

How do they get the cries of a mother cow, pining for her baby that they’ve taken away from her, out of their heads? How do they get the visuals of the blood and gore out of their heads? How do they recover from this in their lives?

What can you say about this Baba Ji? Maybe it’s time to transition your dairies into farm animal sanctuaries. Now that’s seva worth doing!

Thanks for your time

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

You’re probably interested in the reply I got from him. Well as I suspected he never replied directly. One of his sevadars replied to me on his behalf with a generic “what do we say about dairy” response. Here it is:

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

Dear Brother Radha Soami. Your letter of _____ has been received. Baba Ji has gone through your letter. Regarding your concern about the dairy industry, please know that Saints give us general guidelines to live our life within the framework of Sant Mat principles to help us on the path but ultimately leave it to us to decide the most practical way out to implement them.

The four vows form the foundation on which the Sant Mat philosophy stands. One should avoid hair splitting and maintain a balanced approach to all things in life. Every action that we do is karma. We can't take a step without karma in this world. Even when we breathe, we are committing karmas by inhaling so many germs that are present in the air.

Too much hair splitting becomes counter-productive and often distracts us from our real concern. We must take a practical approach while at the same time find our own comfort level in such matters. Basically we are allowed to take dairy products as in general terms there is no taking of life in obtaining milk from the animal and hence there are limited karmas involved and those can be taken care of by our daily meditation.

It is good to be compassionate to the plight of others. However, you can share with others only what you have. Baba Ji says that if I have $100 in my pocket, I can definitely give $99 to someone. But if I do not have anything in my own pocket what can I give to others?

If we truly want to help others we should first help ourselves. Unless we have happiness within ourselves, how can we share it with others? Most of the time, instead of sharing our happiness with others, we start sharing their sorrows and make ourselves miserable.

It is therefore essential for us to get access to the real happiness which is within our own body through our regular meditation. We should always maintain our balance while being compassionate to others. We need to be practical because ultimately everybody is paying for their karmas.

The purpose of Saints is very different from that of the social reformers. They come here to take us back to the Father. Baba Ji generally gives an example of a toddler who slips into the dirty drain. One fellow comes and cleanses the drain but leaves the child in the drain itself. Another fellow doesn't care much about the drain but picks up the child and cleanses him and ultimately restores him to his parents.

The purpose of the Mystic is to attach us with the Holy Ghost and to free us from the cage of this body, the prison of this world. In Saint Matthew, Christ said, I have not come to create peace. Don't think that by following my teaching you will find this place a paradise for you to live in. This place will remain as wretched and miseable as it is. My purpose is to detach you from this world and take you back to the Father.

Never forget your daily meditation that the Master has assigned to all of us because that alone will help us in experiencing as to who the Master is. Our meditation alone will help us in attaining the tranquillity and happiness in life.

When, after initiation, living in the will of the Master, we perform our devotional exercises regularly as advised at the time of initiation we become receptive to the grace of the Master which is constantly flowing from him to all his disciples. Meditation alone will give us the grace and understanding to go through our life in a happy and grateful attitude. Keep mind in simran during the day and try to transform your restless worldly thoughts into loving Holy Names.

With kind regards,

Yours affectionately,

Sevadar in-charge Correspondence

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

If we have all this karma to burn off, what kind of master would condone an unnecessary and unhealthy industry that exploits, enslaves, rapes and ultimately kills animals and their male offspring? That seems like karma that can just be avoided the same way satsangis are told not to eat meat and eggs.

Oh but hang on a second, Indians would hate giving up dairy. Chai tho, paneer tho, lassies tho, raita tho!. So delicious! So the master appeals to culture and tradition instead of truth. Well not my master... anymore!

Thanks for your time Brian…just thought I’d share this with you.

Ex Satsangi

Trump is guarded by angels. His re-election is assured. Supposedly.

Wow, if true this tweet by Lana Puckett would be depressing news for progressives like me who detest Donald Trump. I emailed the tweet to myself after I saw mention of it in a separate tweet by George Conway, a fierce critic of Trump despite his wife being a senior advisor to Trump.

This is what Conway said about Puckett's tweet: "um, remind me who the patron saint of porn-star payoffs is again"

It looks like Conway got the last word, because Puckett's tweet has been deleted and her Twitter account suspended. She used the Twitter name of @Mariamedia7777.

So while she believes a host of angels is heavily guarding Trump, it looks like God's protection didn't extend to her. At least, not when it comes to Twitter.

The replies to Puckett's tweet are still live, though. Here's a few of them.

Salem City Council says "NO" to LGBTQ rights

Last Monday night I learned that it isn't only religious fundamentalists who don't care about the rights of LGBTQ people.

(Since this blog is read by people all around the world, some of whom may not be familiar with that term, it's an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning.)

I was deeply irritated when the Salem City Council voted 6-1 to approve a lease with the Salem Alliance Church for use of a church-owned building as a temporary public library while renovations are being made to the library at the Civic Center.

This has been a fascinating issue for me to be involved with, since it intersects issues that I'm interested in: the role of religion in society, politics, and human rights. 

I started a "Stand Up for LGBTQ Rights in Salem!" petition that currently has 287 supporters. Feel free to sign it, if you like.

A key reason I decided to support the Salem Human Rights Commission, which opposes using the church-owned building as a public library, given the opposition of the Salem Alliance Church to same-sex marriage and same-sex sex, is that I don't see any difference between bigotry in the name of religion and bigotry in the name of anything else.

Bigotry is bigotry. If you don't support basic human rights for everybody, no matter their race, sex, gender identity, or whatever, you're a bigot.

I've had people on Facebook say to me in a comment, "What don't you understand about same-sex sex being a sin? It says so in the Bible." Hard to believe religious people can be so ignorant. The Old Testament was written by human beings in pre-scientific times. 

So using the Bible as a guide to morality is absurd. As is using any other holy book as a guide to morality.

But even Christians should recognize that the Bible can be interpreted in various ways when it comes to same sex attraction. Today a gay man, Cary Renfro, left this comment on a post I wrote about the City Council's bad decision. 

Brian, thanks for doing this blog.

First, the Salem Alliance minister either doesn't know his Bible very well or (more likely) is reading from faulty English translations. There are gay and lesbian people all over the place.

Ruth and Naomi (Ruth 1:16-18), (Ruth 4:14-15)
David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18:1-4; 1 Samuel 20:16-17 (their marriage); 1 Samuel 20:41; 2 Samuel 1:26)
Psalm 133, which is very short and begins "How good it is and how pleasant for men to dwell together in union!"

First gentile conversion was the gay treasurer of Ethiopia: Acts 8:26-39.
Gays can go to heaven: Isaiah 56:3-7

The story of Nehemiah, the eunuch (aka gay) handservant of King Artaxerxes who became the rebuilder of Jerusalem and the temple starts in Nehemiah chapter 2.

King Zedekiah’s gay (court official) Ebed-Melech, who rescued the prophet Jeremiah when Prince Malchiah and others threw Jeremiah into a cistern and he sank into the mud. (Jeremiah 38 - 39) The story ends with the LORD telling Jeremiah to go to Ebed-Melech and say: “Thus says the LORD of hosts…I will surely deliver you…because you have put your trust in me, says the LORD.”

Jesus, praying that men who love one another may be united with Him and God: John 17:18-26.

Jesus healing the Centurion's boyfriend: Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10; John 4:46-53.

SO much for all that. Look it up yourself, and do the translations yourself, and for goodness' sake use a decent English translatiion.

Now, this decision of the city council is quite upsetting to me.

If the property were owned by the KKK would the city be leasing it? No or yes? If you take that pastor's remarks and replace the word "homosexual" with any racial term or religious term such as Black person, or Irish person, or Jewish person - would there not be an outcry? and would not the city refrain from contracting with the organization?

(I put in Irish because at one time there were signs all over the country saying "no Irish need apply".)

How can the city justify this?

For those of us who can't use the temporary facility for whatever reason, please come to Chemeketa Community College library. Lots of parking, on the bus line, handicap accessible, linked to the full CCRLS catalog, and your Salem library card works just fine there. Open Monday thru Friday and even a lot of Saturdays.

I invite you to look at these four short videos I made of the people who testified in person at last Monday's Salem City Council meeting. I was the first to sign up, getting to the meeting early, so led off the three-minute public comments. The other three testifiers made some great points in heartfelt ways.

 

 

 

Do less, be happier

I believe it was in a comment by Amar on one of my blog posts that I learned about a great book by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, "Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World."

I've been practicing mindfulness meditation for quite a while, as noted in Mindfulness has become my meditation and Mindfulness is meditation on reality, not supernatural illusion.

The book by Williams and Penman is the best I've ever read on this subject. Very clear, well-written, and creative.

A core theme is the difference between Doing and Being. Doing is fine, if what we're after can be obtained through specific actions. But as you'll read in the excerpt below, Doing leads us astray when we try to apply it in the wrong way.

Why do your best efforts to get rid of unpleasant feelings backfire so tragically? When you try to solve the "problem" of unhappinesss (or any other "negative" emotion) you deploy one of the mind's most powerful tools: rational critical thinking.

It works like this: you see yourself in a place (unhappy) and know where you want to be (happy). Your mind then analyzes the gap between the two and tries to work out the best way of bridging it. To do so, it uses its "Doing" mode (so called because it performs well in solving problems and getting things done).

The Doing mode works by progressively narrowing the gap between where you are and where you want to be... It's a tremendously powerful way of s0lving problems. It's how we find our way across cities, drive cars and arrange hectic work schedules.

...It's perfectly natural, then, to apply this approach to solving the "problem" of unhappiness. But it's often the worst thing you can do because it requires you to focus on the gap between how you are and how you'd like to be: in doing so, you ask such critical questions as, What's wrong with me? Where did I go wrong? Why do I always make these mistakes?

Such questions are not only harsh and self-destructive, but they also demand that the mind furnishes the evidence to explain its discontent. And the mind is truly brilliant at providing such evidence. 

Imagine walking through a beautiful park on a spring day. You're happy, but then for some unknown reason a flicker of sadness ripples across your mind. It may be the result of hunger because you skipped lunch or perhaps you unwittingly triggered a troubling memory.

After a few minutes you might start to feel a little down. As soon as you notice your lowered spirits you begin to probe yourself.: It's a lovely day. It's a beautiful park. I wish I were feeling happier than I am now.

Think about that: I wish I were feeling happier.

How do you feel now? You probably feel worse. This is because you focused on the gap between how you feel and how you want to feel. And focusing on the gap highlighted it. The mind sees the gap as a problem to be solved. This approach is disastrous when it comes to your emotions because of the intricate interconnection between your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations.

...The mind can do so much more than simply analyze problems with its Doing mode. The problem is that we use the Doing mode so much, we can't see that there is an alternative. Yet there is another way.

If you stop and reflect for a moment, the mind doesn't just think. It can also be aware that it is thinking. This form of pure awareness allows you to experience the world directly. It's bigger than thinking. It's unclouded by your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

It's like a high mountain -- a vantage point -- from which you can see everything for many miles around.

Pure awareness transcends thinking. It allows you to step outside the chattering negative self-talk and your reactive impulses and emotions. It allows you to look at the world once again with open eyes. And when you do so, a sense of wonder and quiet contentment begins to reappear in your life.

Makes a lot of sense.

What's said above applies to spiritual goals as well, like believing that you need to do something to reach God, heaven, holy spirit, or whatever. That belief creates a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. Then that gap becomes a problem to be solved, which takes work and creates anxiety.

Yet where is the evidence for any gap at all? God, heaven, holy spirit, and such are just concepts, ideas, thoughts. Give them up, and you are much closer to where you want to be: reality, here and now.

Report on a Haynes Park Q & A with the RSSB guru

Here's a message I got today from a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, Osho Robbins. Since Gurinder Singh Dhillon (GSD) refers to the One in the message, this gives me an opportunity to plug my book, "Return to the One: Plotinus's Guide to God-Realization."

I wrote it back when I was still an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the organization headed up by Dhillon. The RSSB guru wanted a book about a Western mystic. He gave me some suggestions to choose from, and I chose Plotinus, a Neoplatonist Greek philosopher.

The book got close to being published by RSSB, but I ended up publishing it myself.

Anyway, I'm still a fan of the One, though according to Plotinus there is nothing we can really say about the unity that underlies existence, because it is, well, One. And descriptions require a quality that can be described. which makes two. At least.

Osho emailed me this:

Hi Brian

 

I went to Haynes Park today (Sunday). GSD invited questions. I asked one. 

 

My question (Dialogue):

 

The first word or gurbani is “ek” (one).

Whereas our first word is usually “me”.

Gurbani says there is no “me” or individual soul, yet that is all we focus on. 

It’s like we are trying to navigate with the wrong map. Every step we take is wrong. 

 

His reply:

 

It’s true there is only the ONE but that is not our experience. So we need to meditate to experience the merging into the ONE then we will truly understand.  Otherwise it’s jyst intellectual knowledge. From knowledge we experience and that leads to understanding. 

 

So one thing became clear. He does advocate meditation. I previously said he did not and was obviously mistaken. Meditation is the means to experience the ONE, according to his teaching. We are already merged but through meditation we go through the experience of it. 

 

It was business as usual at Haynes. Packed hall. He was his usual jovial self. Nobody would imagine he has just lost 500 million dollars. If anything, he was more jovial than usual. Cracking jokes st every opportunity. 

 

No question was asked about any financial matter. The sangat was either oblivious about the financial scandal or really did not care. Judging by how the day went, RSSB will not be affected at all by the financial scandal.  

 

Feel free to share 

Osho Robbins 

 

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Photos I took (except for one) at the Salem Art Fair

Sometimes, well, often, I wish that everyone who comments on this blog used their real name and shared personal details of their life -- much like Facebook does, or at least was supposed to do.

But once in a while I like to share some descriptions of my own life, if only to remind people that even though discussions and debates on this Church of the Churchless blog can get hot and heavy, each of us has much more important things going on in their lives.

So here's an Adobe Spark web page I made tonight of photos that I took Friday at the Salem Art Fair & Festival, where we live in Oregon. (A neighbor took one photo of my wife and I.)

It was wonderful to be immersed in the works of talented artists for three hours or so. Afterwards, we took our dogs to a dog park, where they enjoyed the "artistry" of such activities as smelling other dogs' butts, and having theirs smelled in turn. Now that is real living. 

(For dogs, at least. I don't recommend it if you're a human, at least not unless you know someone very well.)

Excellent letter to the editor about RSSB guru's financial scandal

Great comments from Church of the Churchless visitors keep on coming to this blog.

Here's one by "j" that consists of a letter to the editor about Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) who is deeply involved in a financial scandal involving many hundreds of millions of dollars.

It's a great idea, sharing a letter to the editor that can be used by people in other cities where RSSB has a large meeting center that the guru visits.

This is a great example of the hypocrisy of religious leaders, since Dhillon preaches in his talks about living an honest, simple life, yet has been busily engaged in vastly enriching himself and his family through decidedly shady practices.

About the only quibble I have with this letter, and it's a small one, is that the siphoning of money also involved close associates of the guru such as his right hand man, Sunil Godhwani, who was installed as the head of Religare at the guru's urging, then proceeded to funnel money into the pockets of the Dhillon family and other people associated with the guru.

So instead of saying "run by the guru's family members" in the Here's the gist paragraph, it'd be a bit more accurate to say "run by the guru's family members and close associates."

Anyway, here's the comment.

Here's a copy of an email I just sent to the Executive Editor of the Press Democrat, Petaluma's newspaper. I invite others to use it (or write a better one, which shouldn't be hard) and send it to other newspaper editors, eg Fayetteville or other RSSB locales, or even the New York Times.

Dear (Executive Editor)

As you may know, Science of the Soul is one of Petaluma's largest religious centers. At the end of this month it will host their guru, Baba Gurinder Singh, who is one of the most popular religious leaders in India. Many thousands of people will attend.
https://petalumaprogram.org/

This organization prides itself on its high ideals, and attracts many members based on its apparent integrity. But many people don't know that the guru and his family are embroiled in a huge financial scandal.

Here's the gist: Roughly 500 million dollars was siphoned from corporations that were run by the guru's family members, and then distributed to other members of the guru's family, and to the guru himself. A court has ruled that the money must be paid back to the corporations, but so far no restitution has been made. The guru has also borrowed large sums of money from individuals for his personal use (and opulent lifestyle) and likewise has so far refused to pay it back.

I bring this matter to your attention in hopes that the Press Democrat can do a story about it. So far, no American newspaper has published anything on this matter.

Here are a few websites that explain the scandal in more detail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaAjtRZ1S5E

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/radha_soami_satsang_beas/

https://www.businesstoday.in/buzztop/buzztop-corporate/delhi-hc-orders-recovery-from-rssb-chief-gurinder-dhillon-wife-and-sons-to-pay-singh-brothers-due-to-daiichi/story/354797.html

https://www.firstpost.com/business/malvinder-singh-alleges-spiritual-leader-gurinder-singh-dhillon-used-money-from-ranbaxy-stake-sale-to-buy-properties-6207121.html

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/malvinder-for-spiritual-seat-shivinder-allowed-dhillon-to-siphon-off-8646-crore/article26297796.ece

If you have any questions please let me know,

Regards,

Your Name

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

RSSB guru (and me!) appear in animation about Singh brothers scandal

Thanks to Amar, a regular commenter on this blog, I learned about this amazingly creative, well-done, and generally accurate animated depiction of the financial scandals involving the Singh brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder), Gurinder Singh Dhillon (the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and a bunch of other characters.

I make an appearance near the end of the video.

Sadly, the animators used a rendering of one of the worst photographs of me that can be found on Google images. Oh, well, such is life. At least I didn't cause relatives of mine to lose billions of dollars, as this video describes in an entertaining fashion -- how the Singh brothers' faith in Gurinder Singh Dhillon, "Babaji," led them to lose their wealth.

My only quibble with the video is that it fails to mention that, so far as I know, the criminal complaint filed by Malvinder against Dhillon, his family, and close associates remains active. And the board of directors of Religare has filed a separate complaint urging investigators to track the money that was siphoned into shell companies controlled by the RSSB guru, his family, and associates.

Enjoy. The video is less than seven minutes long. Well worth your time to watch it. By the way, I caused Shahid Kapoor, the Bollywood actor mentioned near the beginning of the video, to become a vegetarian. Check out "I changed a Bollywood actor's life...turning him vegetarian."

 

Don't lie to yourself about the RSSB guru

A well-written, thoughtful, truthful, and provocative recent comment deserves to be made into its own blog post.

Here's what Amar said. "HC" refers to High Court of Delhi, which has frozen the assets of the RSSB guru and his family, and garnished those assets. "RSSB" refers to Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the organization headed up by a guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Tushar, you wrote, "One who has experienced the truth it's all useless and rubbish for them."

Who is this one who has experienced this Truth? You? Certainly not me. According to almost all of the satsangs I've heard, the guru is the one who has experienced the Truth. So if he behaves in this way, then why would I want to follow that.

There is an undercurrent of arrogance in your wording that I find obnoxious. The law has proven that the guru, his family and close RSSB friends are required by law to return funds back to the HC and frozen their assets. This is fact, in the court register. If they were innocent, why would they be required to pay it back?

Why wait for the courts to order you to pay it back? Has nothing to do with faith, it has to do with common sense and using that brain between our ears to see what is in front of our eyes. Sometimes, the obvious is not so obvious because our faith blinds us.

I've been privy to a lot of conversations with RSSB satsangis who talk trash about followers of other faiths who were duped by nasty gurus who stole, cheated, and molested their followers. RSSB satsangis also have contempt for the Agra lineage of saints. Same teachings, different gurus, same contempt. Go figure.

That is the arrogance I'm talking about. I used to do it also. Makes me feel like throwing up. RSSB followers are no better off than anyone else who tries to live a good, honest and clean moral life. It's not the copyright of RSSB on this.

Learn to take a dispassionate look at the news, the court findings, the financial ties and score of business entities being run by the guru, his family, and close friends. Don't just ignore it or think it is fake news. If you do, you're probably afraid it might actually be true.

That's what you're afraid of, deep down. and that's normal, but to just ignore it and to continue on like it never happened, you're only lying to yourself. On the one hand he says don't run after money. Just make enough to take care of your family and obligations, and let the guru handle the rest.

I guess he didn't want to leave the rest to his guru, so he went after the money like a fat kid in a candy store. The teachings apply to all and everyone, including the guru. Do your homework.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (from RSSB official photo of the guru)

"Gurinder Singh Dhillon" search results feature...me!

Today Sonya, a regular commenter on this blog, noted that the "scary," "evil" photo of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, actually is an official photograph that can be downloaded from the RSSB web site. 

But as shown above, in the lower right corner, that photograph shows the guru at a considerable distance. Zooming in on the high resolution screen of my much-beloved MacBook Pro  we get the scary, evil look of Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

In the course of searching for this photo, I found that Google Images has another search result for the RSSB guru that makes him look remarkably akin to someone I know quite well. Me!

Then I wondered what the regular Google search results for "Gurinder Singh Dhillon" would turn up. Interestingly, two of the five top hits featured...me! Or more accurately, my blog posts.

It's telling that aside from the Wikipedia article, the other four top search results all concern wrongdoing by Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Kind of weird that someone who is considered by his devotees to be God in Human Form would be notorious for decidedly non-divine reasons. But it makes sense if you take another look at the "evil" photo.

Fans of The Rocky and Bullwinkle show, an animated series I watched as a kid, will remember their arch enemy, Snidely Whiplash. Here's an image of him. Does his mustache look familiar?

RSSB guru gets some well-deserved criticism

Today I got an email from someone who didn't want me to quote them directly regarding their view of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the Indian religious organization headed up by a guru that I was a member of for 35 years. 

But this person was fine with me summarizing their take on RSSB. So here goes. I'll refer to the person as "they" from now on.

Pleasingly, they read everything on this blog, but don't leave any comments. They said I'm doing a very good job, and was asked to continue doing so -- which naturally is my intention.

Like me, they are an initiate of Charan Singh, the guru who preceded the current RSSB leader, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Dhillon is embroiled in a financial fraud saga, which they call a "fiasco." Apt term.

They never were as avid a RSSB devotee as many are, choosing not to leave their children alone to attend satsang or follow the guru wherever he went. Nor did they obsess over the RSSB vegetarian diet, which even called for not eating unfertilized eggs for difficult-to-comprehend reasons.

Slowly they came to an understanding of what the world is about that freed them from the guilt that was such a big part of RSSB talks, a.k.a. satsangs. They felt happy, realizing that no one suffers from not following the RSSB teachings.

Being told that this was the only true path back to God was a turnoff. And they never felt an attraction to the current guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. They consider Dhillon to be running a "circus." 

I've been sharing reports in the Indian financial press about the involvement of the guru and the rest of the Dhillon family in financial fraud, death threats, criminal conspiracy, and other unsavory goings-on. They consider that all of this is true, but it's just a fraction of the whole story.

The RSSB guru thinks he's covered his tracks. However, they believe there's more stones to be turned over, revealing more of the mess that Dhillon is part of in Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia, Gibraltar, China, and maybe other places. India also, of course, I'd add.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon always wanted to be a rich man. Now his dream has come true.

Or perhaps more accurately, was true, since the High Court of Delhi has garnished the assets of the Dhillon family. Dhillon believes no one can touch him, perhaps because he's surrounded by devotees who think he is God in human form.

They like what I'm doing on this blog: putting the truth in "every stupid satsangis face." (Satsangi means a RSSB initiate.) Because those satsangis can't handle the truth, most will continue trying to excuse the inexcusable things Dhillon has done, and is accused of doing.

It's well known to this person that satsangis refuse to talk about the guru's legal and ethical problems. They make up stories about how rumors are being spread by jealous individuals. Of course, that ignores the fact of the many stories written by members of the Indian financial press, who couldn't be viewed as jealous of the guru.

They liked what they remember reading on this blog: that if someone was shopping for a guru, and saw the profile of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, they never would pick him.

Don't bother about all the Radha Soami haters who try to prove my blog posts wrong, they advised. I'm poking their beehive, so they are bound to attack the truth-teller. Somewhere deep down, though, they know the allegations against the RSSB guru are true.

After all, if they had total faith in Dhillon, they wouldn't be visiting this blog. So they're afraid the cover they're hiding under will be taken away, exposing them to the light, which makes them attack me and this blog.

So said this person.

 

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

 

Support LBGTQ rights by signing a petition I just started

Please sign this petition I just started to support the Salem Human Rights Commission in its stand against the City of Salem leasing a building from the Salem Alliance Church to temporarily house the public library.

Click on this link to the Care2 Stand up for LGBTQ rights in Salem! petition.

The church rejects same-sex marriage and considers same-sex sex to be a sin. The Commission is calling on City officials to find another location for the library while renovations are made, even if that location costs more and is less convenient.

For those unfamiliar with this abbreviation, LGBTQ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning.

Great that Christians are accepting homosexuality as normal

We've come a long way toward accepting LGBTQ people here in the United States. But there's a lot that still remains to be done, largely because of archaic Christian religious attitudes based on pre-scientific notions thousands of years old, now hugely outdated.

An email I got recently gives me hope, though. Read on...

Hey Brian, I saw the post about the Salem library wanting to use the church property as a temporary place while renovations take place.  Hmmm…

It’s interesting to look back and see how much my values and opinions have changed. Growing up in the heart of the Bible belt, I was surrounded by God fearing Republicans who prayed to God in Jesus’ name at sporting events and had Christmas programs in the schools. 

So, I was raised with those same ideals. Part of all that, of course, was to believe that homosexuality was wrong and sinful.  I can’t say that my family had any kind of open hatred for homosexuals, but it was thought of as wrong, according to the Bible.

Also, we would have looked at a situation like the library renting the church as a great thing. 

Lots of changes took place in my thinking in the last 10 years or so. Fast forward to today and I now I do not see homosexuality as being any different than heterosexuality. It’s just a preference. Everyone is different and that’s normal.

And my political views have shifted drastically as well. Also, I definitely have issues with the blatant non-separation of church and state that goes on here in the south, all the time. The library thing is definitely in a gray area. 

One cool thing is that my parents and sister have changed a lot as well. None of them are atheists, but they are all Democrats (gasp!) and they also no longer have issues with the homosexual community. And we all changed without knowing that each of us had changed. My parents were raised in really strict evangelical Christian traditions. So it gives me hope that people can change if they are just open to it.

I have no doubt that a catalyst for change for most people is education and exposure. In the churches I went to, we were often encouraged NOT to learn a lot of different things and don’t be exposed to “the world” because it could “contaminate” our faith.  Well shit!  Of course it will! 

When people start educating themselves and learning to think for themselves, chances are they will start to see through the religious bull shit. In my experience, the religious folks that I know who are the most staunch, unmoving believers are often the ones who have done very little study into what they believe and why. 

On the flip side, the people that I know (myself included) who have really researched the history of their religion and their holy book and some science about how the brain works and how societies have formed, and such… these people often have become less dogmatic, more open to the world around them and those that believe differently, and even have become agnostics and atheists. 

My children are a good example of this. They both were in church at a young age, but we quit going to church around 2010 or 2011. Since then, my daughter has graduated from college and my son from high school. We stopped actively indoctrinating them before we quit attending church. 

So they have had several years to think and observe and become their own people. I don’t know where they are spiritually, but I think they still believe in God in some form or fashion, but aren’t religious. They both have several gay friends and they don’t look at them any differently than their straight friends. 

Awesome. Even my wife, who is still in church and full on Christian, has loosened up on her view of the LGBTQ community, and a few other sacred cows. So that’s kind of cool.

Open Thread 22 (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.

Anti-gay church shows absurdity of religious belief

Over on one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark, I've been writing about an ill-considered plan by city officials here in Salem, Oregon to pay the Salem Alliance Church to use a building the church owns as a temporary home for the public library while renovations are being made.

You can read why the Salem Human Rights Commission unanimously voted to oppose this idea in my post, "Human Rights Commission rejects plan for library to use church building." 

Why?

Because the Salem Alliance Church holds to the archaic view that same-sex marriage and same-sex sex are sins. So their attitude toward LGBTQ rights are straight out of the middle ages, basically.

The church doesn't want to burn LGBTQ people at the stake, but it wants to deny them the ability to love and marry like everybody else.

A Salem Reporter story today, "Plan to move Salem library to church-owned property stirs discrimination concerns," contains a great quote. 

Daniel Rollings, president of the Salem chapter of PFLAG, a national organization that advocates for LGBTQ rights, said the plan is still tantamount to partnering with a hate group.

“I am completely opposed to the city partnering with any organization, regardless of what it is, that actively discriminates against anyone,” he said. “The city should not put out bids to work with the (Ku Klux Klan) nor should they work with anti-LGBTQ organizations that actively discriminate against the LGBTQ community.”

For sure. Gay marriage is legal everywhere in the United States. Acceptance of gay rights is widespread. So how is it possible that religious organizations such as the Salem Alliance Church remain mired in irrational superstitions?

A visit to the church's web site shows why. There's a link called "What We Believe." That page contains a fairly brief summary of the Salem Alliance Church's beliefs, complete with footnotes.

Only problem is, the footnotes don't point to any fact-based, rational, defensible information. They're all references to passages in the Old and New Testaments. Which enables the church to engage in the sort of circular reasoning that is common to all religions.

What we believe is true because the holy scripture or holy person we believe in says it is true.

So that web page says under the "Bible" heading:

The Old and New Testaments, inerrant as originally given, were verbally inspired by God and are a complete revelation of His will for the salvation of men and women. They constitute the divine and only rule of Christian faith and practice.18

And footnote 18, not surprisingly is: 2 Peter 1:20 - 21  Which reads:

²⁰ Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. ²¹ For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Thus Christians believe the Bible is God's true teaching because the Bible says the Bible is God's true teaching. Illogical crap like that makes me ever so pleased to be an atheist.

Straight talk about RSSB guru and dogma

It's great when I start out my morning by reading a comment that makes me smile with delight -- because it is honest, true, well written, and makes fun of religious blind belief.

In this case, the blind belief of defenders of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, who is deeply embroiled in financial fraud, death threats, criminal complaints, and garnishment of his assets by the High Court of Delhi.

But, hey, everything is going according to God's plan in the eyes of RSSB true believers, who refuse to see the facts yelling Look at me! right in front of their faces. 

Here's the wonderful comment from Amar. GSD refers to Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Dungeness, you wrote:

"But, GSD is RSSB "CEO" so to speak. It's an enormous job that reportedly would bring much younger men/women to their knees within a matter of weeks. He may well have delegated financial details to others within his family, already one of the wealthier ones in India, I presume. He may have received continual updates andassurances from wife/sons/associates, glanced at cooked books briefly, and assumed all was well."

If this is as you say, then they all betrayed him and lied to him? That's the biggest load of shit I've heard yet.

You're dumping the blame on everyone else, but him. If he did charge others to do what he asked, then he's still responsible for their actions. To say his his own sons and wife all colluded together without his knowledge is laughable. So on the one hand he's all knowing and the guru, and the next he's duped by everyone, including his own family. Ya, right.

Sumit, you wrote:

"They get small insignificant thing and they start barking. Now days the trend is spoil the image of gurus and earn money."

Are $100's of millions of dollars no small thing? These guru's have themselves spoiled their own image by running after wealth and coddling the politicians and wealthy people. Do you think he would say the same thing to you if you were involved in this kind of mess?

He'd probably say avoid the company of people who cheat and lie. Think on that...

Again, don't look at guilt right now, that will flush out eventually, against GSD or not, have to wait and see. I've said this on previous posts, would you, not knowing anything about this path, doing your homework and finding these court rulings and fraudulent money loans to the guru, his immediate family, and close friends, would you still join and follow a guru embroiled in this mess?

If you say yes, then that's why people get sucked in by dogma and bull shit. Your acceptance and denial of these events only emboldens these people to keep doing what they're doing.

They amass huge personal wealth, and hide behind it by doing charity work, and people like you, including me until recently, get googoo eyed and fall for it because the teachings sound great, but the leader is involved and connected to these nefarious things.

UPDATE: Here's another right-on comment from Amar that deserves to be read. Baba Ji  refers to the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon (GSD).

Arjuna and One Initiated, you see the Baba Ji which is trotted out to the masses. You see the image we all want to see. White clothes, white beard, sarcastic answers to play to the sangat.

You have no idea what he does in the background, the people he really associates with. The scheming and money being dealt back and forth and the solicitation of politicians. You see what the Dera managers and handlers want you to see. If you had greater access to him, like the wealthy people do, you'd see something totally different.

So Amy's Food owner decides he's going to buy the land for the Petaluma Study Centre. Now, for the last 10 years, every North American Study Centre has to purchase their nasty vegan burritos for every GSD official visit. It's actually written into the official visit guidelines provided by the Dera.

I guess if you "donate" the land or property, you get a customer for life. Makes sense, right? Not.

Money and religion don't mix, but invariably, they do mix, sometimes as give and take, or land for sustaining a prominent satsangi's business. Must be nice to keep your business going with a spiritual organization's demand for your product, spelled out in a list of directives from the Dera.

But I guess you'll have an answer for that also. I bet if GSD announced on the stage that he was guilty of taking the money, you all would probably say, naahh, he was testing us to see if we'd still follow him. Keep following, my friends.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Good overview of RSSB guru's financial fraud involvement

It's difficult to follow the twists and turns in the Bollywood'ish drama involving Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India.

About a billion dollars is at stake here, much of it in the form of fraudulent loans that ended up in the pockets of Dhillon, his family, and close associates.

Add in criminal complaints, death threats, squabbles with his relatives Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, investigations by Indian financial authorities, and court rulings -- yes,  it gets tough to keep track of what's going on.

Today Spence Tepper left a comment on a recent blog post that does a good job of providing an overview of the guru's legal and financial problems. I've added some links and made a few corrections that I think are accurate. Like, changing "High Court" to "Supreme Court" in the fourth paragraph. 

Because defenders of the guru often fail to see the big picture, choosing to focus on a few facts that put Gurinder Singh Dhillon in a more-or-less positive light, I wanted to share Tepper's comment in a blog post.

What follows isn't the whole picture, for sure, but a good summary of some key "plot points" in this drama.

Hi Osho. You wrote, "I don’t think it’s a matter of 'guilty or not guilty' but more a matter of recovery of the money."

Logically that makes little sense nor does it reflect the High Court of Delhi order. The court determined responsibility, and therfore guilt, and on that basis moved guilt away from Malvinder and onto Gurinder and company.

The Singh brothers held the legal responsibility to pay the Daiichi FDA penalty against Ranbaxy. But the High Court transferred that to Gurinder and company in June.

Malvinder claimed that he and Shivinder had loaned money to Gurinder, his family and associates, amounting to more than enough to cover the penalty. At first the Supreme Court indicated that they didn't care about the Singh's other business dealings, and held them directly responsible for repayment.

But when Malvinder was unable to pay up he filed a criminal complaint with the EOW (Economic Offences Wing) of the Delhi Police pleading his case that Gurinder, his wife, sons and associates owed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and interest and hadn't repaid for years. These were the monies he needed to pay the Daiichi penalty.

Malvinder went further to document his efforts, pleading repeatedly in writing with Gurinder to help, but with no response from Gurinder.

Even before Malvinder filed his complaint the SEBI and the Fortis board had conducted separate audits that showed fraudulent loans being siphoned through shell companies.

Business journals had conducted their own audits and found that Gurinder and his family were the recipients of nearly a billion dollars in loans through a variety of shell companies. And some of Gurinder's family were involved in the creation and maintenance of the frauds.

All the participants and recipients of the fraudulent loans are satsangis who pledged vows of loyalty to the Master, in this case Gurinder.

By June various additional detailed and indiependent audits had been conducted by the Serious Crimes Division of the Delhi police, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, and the new board at Religare (who filed their own complaint directly implicating the loan recipients and claiming this was all a big scheme involving several people who had knowingly participated in the construction and execution of several frauds).

Then in June, after much deliberation, the High Court of Delhi rendered a judgment that Gurinder, his family and associates, among others, were directly responsible for repayment of their delinquent loans, in full.

The High Court, essentially, verified what Malvinder claimed, and placed responsibility, and therefore culpability, directly onto Gurinder et al's shoulders. The High Court further froze Gurinder et al's assets as they were delinquent over several years in payment.

Guilt, culpability and responsibility have already been determined and payment ordered. For the funds Gurinder et al took, Malvinder is no longer responsible to repay that portion of the Daiichi penalty. The full responsibility is now directly upon Gurinder and company's shoulders, by judgment and order of the High Court of Delhi.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

What is it like to be you? Impossible to know.

I bought a book written by Sam Harris' wife, Annaka Harris, because the title appealed to me  (Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of Mind), and I wanted to see if she'd disagree with her husband -- a noted atheist neuroscientist whose Waking Up guided meditations I listen to every morning via an iPhone app.

As I suspected, this little (110 pages) book didn't contain much that I didn't already know. But Harris did discuss consciousness in an appealing fashion, and had an interesting take on the possibility of panpsychism. 

Here's how she distinguishes between prescientific notions of all matter being imbued with consciousness in some sense, and modern versions of panpsychism.

Some versions of panpsychism describe consciousness as separate from matter and composed of some other substance, a definition reminiscent of vitalism and traditional religious descriptions of a soul.

But while the term has been used to describe a wide range of thinking throughout history, contemporary considerations of panpsychism provide descriptions of reality very different from the earlier versions -- and are unenumbered by any religious beliefs. 

One branch of modern panpsychism proposes that consciousness is intrinsic to all forms of information processing, even inanimate forms such as technological devices; another goes so far as to suggest that consciousness stands alongside the other fundamental forces and fields that physics has revealed to us -- like gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces

Harris prefers the second idea, that consciousness is fundamental to matter. This is a simpler concept than assuming that consciousness emerges at a certain stage of complexity in information processing. 

After all, I find it hard to accept that the thermostats in our house are conscious, even though they do process information about the temperature in our home, comparing it to the temperature we desire, and "acting" accordingly. It's a bit easier for me to envision that my iPhone is conscious, though this also is a big leap of faith.

The main problem with studying consciousness is the definition Harris uses, which is founded on Thomas Nagel's famous paper, "What is it like to be a bat?" 

An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism.

Now, obviously this doesn't entail a self, soul, or such. All that's required to be a member of the Conscious Club is there being something that it is like to be you. Or me. Or anybody. Or anything. 

Because we humans have a finely honed sense of what it is like to be ourselves, and love to describe that sense in words, music, poetry, and so many other ways, we reasonably assume that our fellow Homo sapiens also are conscious. However, there's no way that we can be sure of this, since there is no way any conscious being can know what it is like to be another conscious being.

(Thankfully, really. My wife and I have been married for 29 years. We're still learning about each other, which makes life interesting, given that neither of us has access to the other person's subjective side.)

This makes consciousness seem mysterious, even though it also is the most obvious and familiar thing we know, given that all of our experience, every bit of it, is known by consciousness. A robot could be programmed to answer "Yes" if asked the question, "Are you conscious?" Yet this wouldn't prove it was conscious.

Thus consciousness has to be inferred in every being other than the entity that directly knows what it is like to be what it is. 

I'm virtually 100% certain that our dogs are conscious. Ditto for the squirrels, deer, coyotes, raccoons, and other creatures that inhabit our neighborhood. In fact, I can envision almost every living thing being at least minimally conscious, even a starfish or an ant.

As Annaka Harris notes, the problem arises when we try to establish a firm dividing line between conscious living beings and unconscious living beings. Plants respond to stimuli and have an awareness of their surroundings. Is the oak tree in our yard conscious?

Maybe. But since I can't fathom what it like to be a bat, in no way could I even begin to fathom what is like to be a tree, assuming there is anything it is like to be a tree.

Rocks and other inanimate objects almost certainly lack consciousness in the What is like to be.. sense. Yet they are composed of atoms and molecules that obey the laws of nature. How are they able to do this? Or, does that question even make sense? It does if panpsychism is accepted.

Near the end of her book, Harris writes:

It's important to clarify a few points regarding the distinction I continue to draw between two categories of questions -- those pertaining to how deep in the universe consciousness runs and those about the brain processes that give rise to our human experiences - along with the value I place on each of them.

First, although I'm defending panpsychism as a legitimate category of theories about consciousness based on what we currently know, I am not closed to the possibility that we might discover, by some future scientific method, that consciousness does in fact exist only in brains.

It's hard for me to see how we could ever arrive at this understanding with any certainty, but I don't rule it out. Nor am I discounting the possibility that consciousness is something we will never fully grasp.

Those are pleasingly open-minded sentiments. I just wish religiously-minded people had the same uncertain attitude.

Turban tying and Bollywood dancing at World Beat Festival

As a change of pace from our usual Church of the Churchless programming, I wanted to share what I did yesterday: attend the opening day of the Salem World Beat Festival, as I do every year.

It's difficult to draw profound philosophical messages from a highly enjoyable celebration of multiculturalism. But that won't stop me from trying.

After I got back from the festival, I shared photos and videos that I'd taken in an Adobe Spark web page. You can peruse them by clicking below.

 

Obviously -- but sometimes the obvious needs mentioning -- there was zero evidence of God or anything supernatural at the World Beat Festival. People simply were having a good time in this oh-so-physical natural world. 

Which is where each of us spends all of our time.

I say this with confidence, because no one alive is dead. (Logic rocks!) Thus anyone who has a spiritual experience does so via a physical body and brain. Even a near-death experience is just that: near to death.

So yesterday I ate Yakisoba noodles and vegetables for lunch at the festival. I drank strawberry lemonade. At the Sikh booth I saw how turbans are tied. Drumming was taking place in the African area. An Arab booth sat peacefully next to an Israeli booth.

In the evening, my wife and I went back to the World Beat Festival to see DJ Prashant and his Jai Hoi Dance Troupe perform on the main stage. Here's a video I made of one of their numbers.

Prashant was adept at getting us audience members out of our seats to attempt some Bollywood dance moves he taught us. My wife took a video of me doing my best to follow along.

It may not look like it, but we've taken many ballroom dance lessons. Bollywood dancing is way different, obviously. I hugely enjoyed learning some moves, though.

As noted in the web page I made, if any Mumbai movie producers specializing in Bollywood films are looking to cast an old guy from Oregon who becomes an unexpected Bollywood star, get in touch. Who knows what I'm capable of if I get more than one dance lesson?

RSSB involved in controversial land deal

Someone sent me a link to an Indian Express story, "Mystery deepens over Pune land deal as Chandrakant Patil defends his actions." 

It mentions Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization in India that quite a few visitors to this blog are interested in for various reasons. 

Just as Patil claimed that the temple trust had obtained the charity commissioner’s permission to convey the land to the Radha Saomi Satsang Beas (RSSB), a non-profit organisation, in 1998, Jayant submitted official papers in the House to show that in 1963, a local tribunal had ruled that this land wasn’t a private land. Incidentally, records show that the Pune collector had disallowed the transaction, objecting to the charity commissioner’s permission as well.

On February 19, 1998, the temple trust, through its power of attorney holder N S Chhabria, has assigned the land to RSSB, which later approached the collector and the divisional commissioner for regularisation after officials objected to it.

Patil admitted that on August 22, 2008, then divisional commissioner Nitin Kareer, who is now the principal secretary (Urban Development), had argued that the trust had violated terms of allotment, and had ordered the regularisation on the condition that the Nazrana (fee) levied by the government is paid. His order stated that RSSB had then submitted an indemnity bond declaring willingness to pay the fee.

But Patil claimed that this had been submitted “under protest”. On December 15, 2018, when the RSSB approached the collector’s office for permitting non-agricultural activity and issuing the NA (non agriculture) certificate for the land, this was turned down, with the collector’s office pointing that the Nazrana for the regularisation of the original breaches was yet to paid.

l find all this difficult to comprehend. Maybe someone who is more familiar than I am with land use law in India (in other words, just about anyone) can figure out what's going on here, and why such a fuss is being made of it.

Give up the illusion of body and mind being different

Here at the Church of the Churchless we worship truth.

I love truth. I sprinkle truth on my cereal every morning. I rinse with truth when I take a shower. I brush with truthpaste three times a day.

That's why I adore science and dislike religion. And why I'm enjoying Susan Blackmore's new book, "Seeing Myself: The New Science of Out-of-Body Experiences" so much. 

Blackmore, a British psychologist, is a spiritual but not religious sort of person. As she notes in the passages from the final Who am I? chapter in her book (which I read first, because the title drew me in) that I've shared below, science and Zen have been her twin passions.

I've read several other books Blackmore has written. I like how she uses her own subjective experiences to cast light on objective neuroscientific understandings of how the mind and body work.

Of course, the mind is the brain in action, and the brain is part of the body, so mind is brain is body. One thing, not several things.

But dualism is how most people see themselves. They wrongly believe in an immaterial soul/mind/consciousness something-or-other than inhabits the body, distinct from physicality.

Blackmore's focus in this book is on out-of-body experiences, or OBEs. The first chapter, Leaving My Body, is a detailed description of her OBE, which she misinterpreted for quite a few years, until the truth dawned on her. Blackmore writes:

I was just nineteen when everything I thought I knew was overthrown and my life changed direction. If I had imagined a future in some sensible university job, that was now impossible for I was determined to understand what had happened to me. 

For just a couple of hours I was no longer confined to a slow, heavy, physical body but escaped through a tunnel into a world of flying, exploring the world from outside my body and finally entering the mystical experience of oneness, of unity with the universe.

...I had never heard of tunnel experiences, and the phrase 'near-death experience' (NDE) had not yet been invented. So I jumped to my own conclusions. I was sure that my spirit had left my body and would survive after death. I was convinced that telepathy and clairvoyance must be possible and that ghosts were real. 

I became determined to devote my life to parapsychology and to prove all my closed-minded lecturers wrong.

I failed; of course I failed. The conclusions I had jumped to so quickly were ill-thought-out and superficial. But never mind. The vivid memories of those few hours kept driving me on. 

Nearly half a century later I can look back and see how my intellectual life has been shaped, pushed and pulled by the experience, and how my spiritual life might never have begun had I not found myself disappearing into selflessness without having a clue what that was.

So Blackmore changed her mind. She gave up a false belief in the supernatural and mysticism, choosing demonstrable truth over comforting illusion. 

Here's excerpts from her final Who am I? chapter.

I was surprised, long ago, when my Zen teacher kept going on about the importance of the body... I suppose I thought the body was unimportant, to be transcended or overcome by the mind. Surely, I might have thought, this meditation training is about the mind, isn't it?

Aren't I supposed to practise and practise and practise until I can see clearly through all the mess and worry and fear and hatred and horribleness of my own mind? Enlightenment, if such a thing exists, is surely nothing to do with the itch on my knee or the heaviness of muscle, bone, and subcutaneous fat, is it?

How my ideas have been forced to change -- for two intertwined reasons. One is the science that has transformed our understanding of human nature; the other is the ancient practices of Zen which, curiously enough, have the same effect.

For most of my life I thought these two were separate disciplines; the science was my work and Zen was a private matter, almost a hobby. Yet as it turns out they both lead in the same direction: they both take 'me' down from its pedestal and show it in quite a different light.

...Paying attention clearly and steadily to what is here right now banishes the tangly wool and disarms the slithery monsters. All those disparate thoughts, emotions and worries that otherwise keep running in our heads float through one vast space and seem to lose their power.

This is called 'one mind' or 'one-pointedness' and is quite different from our usual harried, messy confusion. The world comes to seem more and more real and immediate. Body, self and world come together. They are all the same stuff -- there is no longer a conscious me looking out at a real physical world but just all of this -- whatever it is.

This is the slow change from duality to non duality; from a world in which minds inhabit bodies towards one in which minds and bodies are fundamentally the same; from a world in which 'I' am in control of 'my' body towards one in which decisions just happen because they must.

This is a radical change and a scary one. But we can cope!

We can give up our childhood dualism; give up the idea of a unified and continuing inner self who is the wielder of free will and the subject of our experiences, and accept the scary view that neuroscience provides. Just as we have given up thinking of the earth as the centre of the universe, so we can give up our very natural but false intuitions about ourselves.

...Modern children learn about brains at a young age but they still seem to imagine a 'me' whose brain it is and who is helped along by its clever powers.

...Many adults think like this too -- believing that 'I' am the feeling, thinking person in charge. In this way we turn our self into a supreme conscious entity  living in, owning and controlling our bodies. It is no surprise, then, that having an OBE [out of body experience] seems to confirm this ready illusion: 'I' have left my body so I must be an independent thinking and feeling soul.

The reverse may also be true, that throughout the ages OBEs have inspired the idea of the soul. Either way, it's a quick jump to the false belief that the supreme conscious entity called 'me' can leave its bodily shell behind and go travelling. But it cannot: nothing can leave the body in an OBE because there is nothing there that could leave.

To call something an 'illusion' is not to say that it does not exist, it means that it is not what it seems to be. My self seems to be a continuing conscious entity, a subject of experience and possessor of free will, but this is not true. The self is a representation or model of something that does not exist -- but the model itself exists.

...Modern science says the same [as Buddhism]. In one sense there is a self -- or, rather, lots of different selves. They are useful mental models of a continuing conscious entity. In another sense there is no self because these models are ephemeral constructions that arise and fall away, change and decay, and no such continuing powerful and unified conscious entity actually exists.

...We have come a long way from believing that an OBE proves the existence of a soul or a conscious 'me' that can abandon its body and live on without it. Instead, we find that our notions of self and consciousness have been, and are being, transformed. What seems so wonderful to me, after all these years, is OBE's can now contribute to that transformation.

For me it's been a long journey. 

As Metzinger says, 'For anyone who actually had that type of experience it is almost impossible not to become an ontological dualist' and I did. Like so many others who have OBEs I jumped to the obvious conclusion that my soul or astral body had left its physical shell and could think and feel and travel without it.

It has taken a lot of thinking, experiencing, meditating and science for me to travel from that dualism to its utter rejection -- to seeing the duality of body and mind, or physical and mental, as a feature of the way we model the world, not of the world itself.

I no longer think that my soul left my body; that my astral body separated from its physical shell to travel on the astral planes or that my deep and unforgettable experience has anything to do with life after death. Thanks to decades of science and philosophy I have a far better idea of what happened to me during those special few hours back in 1970.

I am alive here and now in a vivid and colourful world.

Stuff happens

Here's what I'd call a guest post, if I wasn't the guest, since I wrote it for my HinesSight blog a few days ago. There I called it, Stuff happens. Things fall apart. Such is life. But "Stuff Happens" is a fine title all by itself.

Enjoy. Unless you don't. Which is fine, since stuff happens.

Sometimes the most obvious things about life need to be talked about.

It's easy to overlook them not in spite of their obviousness, but because the familiar tends to fade into the background, while new stuff grabs our attention.

So here's a few obvious truths about life:

-- Life is finite. It comes to an end for every living being. Including us humans.
-- Life is uncertain. We can hope for the best, but sometimes the worst happens.
-- Life is about caring. We care, because what we're concerned about is finite and uncertain.

I've been reminded about these truths by reading a fascinating book by Martin Hägglund, "This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom." It's over 400 pages long. Yet Hägglund's core concepts are quite simple, three of which I shared above.

Now, I realize that many people believe in eternity, being religious. There's a lot of talk about eternity in this book. I'm going to ignore that subject, other than to say that Hägglund argues persuasively that even if eternity exists, it isn't something desirable.

At the very least, and I think this point is virtually inarguable, the life each of us is living now is in no way eternal, nor perfect (eternity presupposes a certain perfection, since nothing changes in eternity).

Thus whenever we care, whenever we exert ourselves to nourish and protect what we love -- whether this be a person, animal, cause, object, or whatever -- we do so because the object of our caring is finite, and it could fall apart if we don't act to help keep it together. Of course, it might fall apart anyway, even if we act.

Again, in no way is this news to anybody. It just bears repeating.

One reason this is necessary is that most of us have a strong desire to look on the bright side. Usually when I go grocery shopping, as I did today, a clerk will say something to me like, "So how's your day going? Got anything exciting planned later on?"

There's a social expectation that I'll answer in some positive fashion. It would be jarring to tell the clerk, though honest at times, "My day is going like crap. I've got nothing planned other than to hope tomorrow will be better." 

I'm not suggesting that we bare our souls at the checkout counter, since these brief chats while our credit card is being processed aren't the right time to share our most intimate secrets. Still, I've found that being as honest as possible often leads to a more interesting conversation.

Sometimes I'll respond to "How's your day going?" with "Fine, so long as I don't listen to the news. Then I get anxious and depressed." This is an exaggeration, though not hugely so. It usually elicits a reply like "I hear you. I feel the same way."

We're all in this finite life together. The boat of our body and mind is going to sink one day.

Keeping it afloat, and in decent working condition, for as long as possible, requires a lot of attention from ourselves and many others: friends, relatives, doctors, teachers, all of the people who interact in such complex and fascinating ways in the society that surrounds us.

To mix metaphors, no one is an island. We're all connected. We're all dependent. We're all caring. We're all in need of care.

A one-page article in the current issue of TIME magazine makes some of the same points that Martin Hägglund makes in his big thick book.

Here's some excerpts from "Tell kids the truth: hard work doesn't always pay off." It was written by Rachel Simmons, author of Enough as She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy and Fulfilling Lives.

The humbling, brutal, messy reality is that you can do everything in your power and still fail.

... Instead of allowing our kids to beat themselves up when things don't go their way, we should all question a culture that has taught them that feeling anything less than overwhelmed means they're lazy, that how they perform for others is more important than what actually inspires them, and that where they go to college matters more than the kind of person they are.

The point is not to give our kids a pass on working hard. But fantasizing that they can control everything is not really resilience. We would be wise to remind our kids that life has a way of sucker-punching us when we least expect it. It's often the people who learn to say "stuff happens" who get up the fastest.

(I wrote a post on my Church of the Churchless blog about Hägglund's book, "What sustains us is caring in time, not detachment in eternity.")

A thirteen year old blog post that still rings true to me

About a month ago I started working on a book that will be a compilation of my favorite posts from the early years of this blog, 2004-2006. 

Most days I try to find some time to re-read the blog posts that I've chosen, correcting typos, deleting links, and adding a brief introduction that describes how I feel about the post now.

I just came across a post from January 2, 2006 that I still like a lot. Well, actually I still like all the posts I've written on this blog, but I like some more than others. 

Here it is:
---------------------------------

Tell yourself your spiritual secrets
January 2, 2006

It’s a new year. Time to tell yourself your secrets. Especially, your spiritual secrets. I’m sure you have them. Almost all of us do.

You’re sitting in church, temple, mosque, meeting hall, your own living room. Praying, meditating, singing, listening to a sermon, reading your holy book. And from your psyche’s secret chamber a barely audible whisper comes.

It’s your own voice. 

But you don’t want to listen to what it is saying. The voice is telling you a secret. Something that is true but rarely spoken to yourself. Not openly. Not directly. Only in whispers.

Which usually are met with a “shush.”

Quiet down, secret chamber. I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to tell me. Maybe later. Not now.

And yet, the memory of the whisper is more vivid than a recollection of the loudest shout. Once you’ve heard it speak even once, you can’t deny the secret that you don’t want to tell yourself.

I don’t believe in God. (Or Jehovah, Allah, Buddha-nature, the Guru, whoever). 

I no longer am inspired by the Bible. (Or the Talmud, Koran, Dhammapada, Adi Granth, whatever.)

I’m tired of these meaningless rules. (Or rituals, rites, vows, commandments, whatever).

Maybe you’ve never had such thoughts. Maybe you’ve never had any doubts about your faith. Maybe you’ve never wondered if your innermost spiritual beliefs were much different from the beliefs you present to the outside world.

Maybe. But I doubt it. 

We’re all atheists, deep down, for who among us has experienced God directly? The truth is that we don’t know. Our faith in the divine is a pebble resting on the edge of a dark abyss of doubt that we’re deathly afraid to approach.

That whisper coming from our psyche’s secret chamber is an invitation to kick the pebble over the edge and find out what, if anything, will keep it from rolling all the way down into nothingness. 

That whisper is the most honest voice we’ll ever hear, yet we do our best to shut it up.

It’s always struck me as strange that so many people, including myself, say that they want to fathom the secrets of the cosmos, yet are reluctant to lay bare their own secrets.

Seekers of secrets should start their search close to home: within themselves. When we don’t even want to know the truth about ourselves, how can we lay claim to knowing the truth about the ultimate reality of God?

My bet, or gamble, is that if God exists, He, She, or It resonates with truth (I’d say “rewards” but that sounds too anthropomorphic). Hypocrisy is out of tune with divinity, which to my mind reverberates to the rhythm of oneness.

Thus when I break down the barrier between what I really believe and what I tell myself I believe, this unitary truth-telling effort brings me closer to God, not farther away. Such is my hypothesis, anyway.

There’s a lot of energy locked up in secrets. 

Telling your spiritual secrets to yourself is empowering. You don’t need to also let the world know about them. However, I’d suggest that the more your outward life reflects your inward self, the less stress you’ll feel.

Acting out an artificial role is more difficult than playing the part of who you naturally are. In the latter case you have to keep remembering what your spiritual stage name is and what lines you’re scripted to speak.

“Praise Jesus.” “I believe!” “God is great.” “Blessed is the compassionate Buddha.” “Guru’s grace is always there.”

So often we speak untruths, albeit with good intentions. 

It’s what other people in our religious organization want us to say. Or what the organization itself demands be spoken to keep harmony in the ranks. We’re reluctant to rock the boat with the swaying that accompanies the speaking of a secret.

“What?! You don’t believe in _____ any more? What’s wrong? What’s happened to you? How did you come to lose your faith?”

My answer: You’ve got it backwards. I’ve found my faith. Faith in honesty. Faith in telling the truth to myself. Faith in letting secrets out. Faith that sincere doubt is better than hypocritical belief.

I could be wrong about all this. But at least my error will be mine, not borrowed from a holy book. I’m tired of keeping secrets. Especially from myself. 

RSSB and other religions play on peoples' egos

Below is an interesting comment from Ned that he just left on my recent post, "The arrogance of believing you're a chosen one, RSSB variety or otherwise." 

I agree with Ned. We all want to feel worthy. But religions preach about how fallen and sinful their devotees are, then boost their ego by telling them they are "chosen people."

He's absolutely correct when he says that a core teaching of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the Indian religious organization led by a guru I once belonged to, is how special and chosen RSSB initiates are.

This isn't something devotees make up. They're told it over and over in books and talks.

For example, a children's book that I once owned (believe it is called Journey of the Soul) shares the RSSB teaching that souls used to reside with God, but were sent to this lower region of creation for some reason. Nine-tenths of the souls were happy to go.

One tenth weren't, because they wanted to stay with God.

That one tenth supposedly now is being brought back to God through initiation by a Perfect Living Master, or God in Human Form -- which is how the RSSB guru is described.

Can't get more special than that, though I'm sure Jews, Christians, Muslims, and members of other religions would disagree. Here's Ned's comment.

Georgy wrote: "Some ppl have more of an ego than others - some think they are better and special - but that’s precisely what the guru is trying to help you overcome. The Nazis also thought they were special, as have most of the biggest c**nts in history, that’s the one thing they all have in common."

The Masters teach that they have come to bring certain souls back to Sach Khand. Not everyone; only those who are tired of this world and ready to go home. That means that initiates are separate from the rest of humanity. They are special because everyone else is still happy stuck in the cycle of re-birth, but the initiate has this realization that there is a better world and they know the Way.

You can find this statement over and over in Sant Mat. So the idea of being special and chosen is not due to egotism. It is part of the teachings of Sant Mat. It actually plays on that person's ego.

What spirituality and religion is selling is self-worth and belonging. As social animals, we all need that. The problem with most paths is that they start with the premise that you are somehow inferior and alienated.

You need to believe something, do something, or know something in order to become worthy. Religious leaders and spiritual teachers play to the most vulnerable in our society because of their backgrounds-- people who already feel like nobody cares and nothing they do matters.

And the "worst c*nts in history"-- authoritarian regimes-- all played that game. The Dear Leader is perfect and beyond reproach, to be worshiped, loved, feared. They gave everything to the party and the movement, and so should you.

Self-interest gets put down a lot in spiritual circles, but I think we all are running on it-- even the most altruistic. It feels good to help others; there is this idea that you are a good person.

People who suggest you eradicate your ego only see that as a better way you can serve their interests. If you follow self-interest far enough, though, you see that we are all interdependent on each other. So then acting in a way that only serves you and harms others isn't in your best interest. "A rising tide lifts all ships."

The arrogance of believing you're a chosen one, RSSB variety or otherwise

Not long after I started this churchless blog, I wrote a post called "Bursting belief bubbles."

In it I talked about feeling really special when I still belonged to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) and believed I'd been chosen by God and the guru for a spiritual journey only available to a few.

I used to believe in belief. It felt good to believe that my religious beliefs were better than other peoples’. I recall standing in line at a movie theatre, feeling exactly like someone standing in line at a movie theatre, when I remembered to do my guru-given mantra.

Instantly I thought to myself, “I’m special. I’m unique. I’ve got a spiritual practice known to only a few.”

I stood straighter. I looked at the spiritually impoverished human beings around me with proudly compassionate eyes. “Ah, I have something they don’t. How fortunate I am not to be them.”

Now I pray, “God, whatever or whoever the hell you are, burst my belief bubbles and lead me not into self-righteousness. Blessed be reality.”

Several recent comments left on this blog by Amar reminded me of how I felt back then. He makes some similar points about his involvement with RSSB. 

Here's one of Amar's comments.

GSD refers to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current guru of RSSB, who is enmeshed in a massive financial fraud scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars (the rupee equivalent, since the guru lives in India). Seva means volunteer work or service. So a sevadar is a volunteer. 

To everyone who has opinions on this, it's great that we can all communicate on a platform Brian has provided. We don't all agree on each other's perspectives, which is okay. Let's just remember to be open to all possibilities if we can.

Here's what I've been thinking on today, and it helped bring back into focus why I feel the way I do.

I do feel betrayed on the one hand. I feel taken aback at the comments here also, because I used to think the same way. Very humbling to view my own arrogance and pride in being included as one of the chosen ones.

So, it's not the fraud, the court orders, the filings by Malvinder on the scale of the money distributed apparently without his knowledge, or the complete silence from GSD. It's that he is involved in it. Doesn't matter how much complicity/money involved: it's the fact that he's involved in it.

It looks like it's become an obsession to build properties and purchase land for the sake of putting up buildings, for the purpose of doing seva. Gives him an excuse to get out of India and travel. Why not build one large complex in each continent and be done with it? Why have so many?

It's like an addiction to being a massive landholder. But that's just my take on it.

The inaccessibility, the arrogance, the expectation of having lavish accommodations not only in renovating his own place at the Dera (which only a handful of people can actually go into, and is apparently really over the top), but at all the other locations around the world.

While most of the sangat sleep on the ground or in the large metal sheds at the Dera, while he and his good friends sleep in air conditioned upscale bungalows, eat separately, and have everything done for them. Sevadars are sevadars, regardless of their position. Right?

There's a saying that goes,"Sometimes you get too big for your own britches." Maybe RSSB has gotten too big for it's intended task.

Another comment by Amar delves into some specifics of how the RSSB seva system works. It's indeed strange that a practice intended to inculcate humility leads to so many inflated egos.

There are many people who have stood guard during GSD's official visits abroad, including me. There's nothing humiliating about it. At the time you feel privileged for the honor. Writing books or giving satsangs, or any other seva is considered a privilege. With this privilege comes arrogance, entitlement and ego.

I found myself doing it or becoming aware of it and it made me sick. A lot of people have it, and a few don't.

One example of this is that all sevadars have to park away from the main hall. But hey, if you're in the "Management Team", you can park right next to the main doors. Some even have the balls to park in the handicap spots because they don't want to have to walk the extra 20 feet.

Once you understand the behind the scenes antics of the senior sevadars at these RSSB locations, you find nepotism.

Majority of these individuals don't get rotated in the seva rotation. It's created a a kind of class system within the sevadars. If you have a degree or high education, you certainly can't put them out in the scorching heat to park cars or do pat downs.

What nonsense! When they can't find any higher educated individuals to man the "cushy" seva's they go down the totem pole to the next group of people. Kind of like the Hindu caste system... Brahmins, the Khatriya's an so on.

If you've been coming for seva for years but don't meet the invisible criteria, then you get called next. Of course they deny this, but when you get up close and hear the discussions and see it in action, it's there. Believe me or not. Just putting it out there.

Here's a third comment from Amar that starts off with some great advice.

Everyone's gonna die one die. That's the only guarantee. We don't need a mystic to tell anyone that.

Live a good, honest, happy life. Be active and engaged with an open mind, and the world becomes a fascinating place to explore.

Those that feel they are better than the rest or entitled to special treatment because of their job title or seva position, even the guru, are not acting in good faith with their own Self.

When there are "senior" sevadars visiting an RSSB site, they are put up in the "guest" quarters, given special lunches and dinners and special treatment. If all sevadars are equal, why the special treatment? If a sevadar travels from across the country, he doesn't get a special breakfast, or lunch, he eats with the rest of the sevadars at the common eating location. These others don't.

If everyone is equal, then why special parking, special eating, special lodging?

This permeates all the locations RSSB is located. It starts with the guru getting specially built, sound proof houses on the sites, with special meals, and driven in fancy cars. Only those trusted to be in the near vicinity are allowed. So this trickles down to the board members, Reps and Chairman of the board across North America.

The entire sangat sees this, but these "higher ups" are oblivious to the perception this creates. This is that RSSB caste system I mentioned before.

UPDATE: Amar just left this comment on his comments. Naturally I had to share it. But otherwise I'm not commenting on his comment about his comments. But if you want to comment on either his comments, his comment about his comments, or my decision to not comment on his comment about his comments, comment away.

Just to follow up on Brian's compilation, that this is what I've experienced and seen myself. If you're lucky and in an area that doesn't have this vibe around it, consider yourself blessed and move along with your journey. I've been exposed to all sorts of people over the years from different places of different seva rank, and they're all the same.

Ego is tough nut to crack.

Where there are humans, there will be the mind and the mind is a bitch to control. We all fall prey to it at some point. I've seen GSD get pissed and get angry at his accommodations. They weren't set up properly. We all get angry. We all get disappointed, and egos will be bruised. But if we choose to follow a perfect living master, then the bar gets set high. That's where we can get into trouble.

GSD says this often, don't put me on a pedestal.

Everyone thinks he's trying to be humble, but I think he's being honest. He's trying to tell everyone he's not what they think he is. He's just like us, in a seva that he probably wished he never took on. But I guess when you get dealt with a mind blowing ego swelling seva like that, you have to play along and maybe it just consumed him.

At any rate, I'm moving on and there is no hatred from me on GSD, just disappointment.

Malvinder Singh's message to the RSSB guru is moving

At the end of the attachments to the criminal complaint filed by Malvinder Singh against his cousin, Gurinder Singh Dhillon (the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas), there's some messages that are both moving and enlightening -- as they cast light on the complicated financial scandal involving the Singh brothers, the Dhillon family, and others.

I'd looked at these quickly when I wrote a blog post about the criminal complaint. Today I read them more thoroughly. I've made screenshots of several messages from Malvinder to make it easier for other people to read them.

To begin with, in May 2018 Dhillon agreed to settle his debts if Malvinder and Shivinder (Malvinder's brother) would submit an accounting of what is owned to them by the guru and his family.

Then, below is a letter addressed to the RSSB guru, whom Malvinder ("Malav") refers to with the honorofic, Babaji. This alone is interesting, since Malvinder is both a relative of Dhillon and also an initiate of his. 

You can read how Malvinder addresses Gurinder Singh Dhillon with the utmost respect, even capitalizing You and Your, seemingly in the same way "God" is capitalized by religious believers.

Malvinder is desperate to resolve the financial difficulties that are causing him so much distress. In response to Dhillon's request for the liabilities owed, Malvinder describes what Dhillon and his family need to pay.

(Two other messages I've shared that follow describe the problems involving Dhillon and his family in more detail, as does the criminal complaint itself, of course.)

Presciently, Malvinder recognizes that various investigations into financial wrongdoing have the potential to be very dangerous to the Singh brothers, the Dhillon family, and others involved with shady loans. 

He presents a way forward that, in his view, would resolve the problems. Perhaps not completely, but largely. Here's the message to Dhillon.

Later, Malvinder turns his attention to the three companies named in a SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) report detailing fraudulent transactions, after apparently failing to get a response from Dhillon to his July 12 message. 

What's significant here is that Malvinder draws a connection between (1) the fraudulent money diverted from RHC (Religare) and Fortis to the three companies named in the SEBI report (Best, Fern, Modland), and (2) who ended up with the fraudulent money -- Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family.

Several commenters on this blog have been trying to make a big deal out of the fact that the first SEBI report didn't mention Dhillon, his family, and close associates as being involved in the fraud.

However, Malvinder's criminal complaint names Dhillon, et.al., as does his messages below, where he makes it clear that the Dhillon family owes money to the three companies, and those companies owe money to Religare and Fortis. Thus this establishes a clear link between the fraud described in the SEBI report and the ultimate beneficiaries of that fraud.

Pankaj apparently was in charge of Best Health Care, based on his email address.

A second message was sent on November 28. Malvinder is even more desperate now to be paid the money owed him by the guru and his family, which totals $158 million just for funds diverted from the Best Group of companies.

What's disturbing in all this is how Malvinder's relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, who he also considered to be his father figure and spiritual advisor, was so uncaring and unresponsive to Malvinder's entreaties.

Not exactly how one would expect a guru who is considered by devotees to be God in human form should act. In fact, it isn't even anywhere close to how a decent human being should act.

It must have been difficult for Malvinder to decide to file a criminal complaint against Dhillon, given how close they once were and how much trust Malvinder once had in the RSSB guru. But Gurinder Singh Dhillon ignored Malvinder's repeated requests for the guru to pay back the money that was owed to him and the companies he once controlled.

So whatever befalls Dhillon, he deserves it. At the moment the Dhillon family has gotten their assets frozen by the High Court of Delhi, which then will be sold by the Court. Whether they also will face criminal punishment remains to be seen.

RSSB sells NYC building for $26 million

For a change of pace on this blog from news about the massive financial scandal the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, is involved with, here's some news about a massive real estate sale of property owned by RSSB in New York City. 

Maybe Radha Soami Satsang Beas has started to raise cash to keep their guru in the lavish lifestyle that he's become accustomed to.

After all, reports in the Indian financial press indicate that in recent years Dhillon and his family were the beneficiaries of up to a billion dollars in shadowy and sometimes fraudulent unsecured loans.

But now the High Court of Delhi has frozen the assets of Dhillon, his wife, and children, with the intent of garnishing those assets (forcibly selling them) so his cousin, Malvinder Singh, can recover the money owed to him -- which Malvinder needs to pay a $500 million settlement to a company that successfully sued Malvinder and his brother.

It's a tough life, being a spiritual guru in India these days. Sure, in the days of the Buddha all you needed was a loincloth and begging bowl. Now private jets and expensive homes all over the world are necessities for Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Hopefully the $26 million will keep him happy. For a little while.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru who doesn't pay his debts unless a court forces him to