Church of the Churchless

Why religious disillusionment can be more painful than political or work disillusionment

Today the Oregon Government Ethics Commission voted to move ahead with the investigation of a complaint against the Mayor of Salem and city councilors that I'd filed last March with the Commission. I wrote about this on my Salem Political Snark blog in "Ethics Commission approves investigation of my complaint against Mayor Hoy."

That made me feel really good, as I'd put quite a bit of time and effort into researching and filing the complaint. I did this because it bothered me that Mayor Hoy appeared to have engaged in prohibited private "serial communications" with members of the City Council that resulted in the forced resignation of the City Manager, Keith Stahley.

But here's the thing.

Though it definitely seems to be the case that Mayor Hoy did something that's prohibited by Oregon's public meeting law, I wasn't all that surprised that this happened. So I wasn't disillusioned by what Hoy did, because I don't have high expectations for ethical behavior from politicians. The same applied during my pre-retirement years: often I was disappointed by how my supervisors or fellow employees behaved at work, but I wasn't disillusioned, since I didn't expect them to be anywhere close to perfect.

No one expects politicians or business leaders to be saints. At least, I'm not aware of anyone who thinks this way. However, when it comes to religious organizations, the situation is different. Sainthood is bestowed in the Catholic Church on deceased members of the church who have demonstrated a supposedly high form of spirituality and kinship with God.

Going further, some Eastern religions -- including one I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) -- teach that there are Perfect Living Saints on our planet today who manifest divine qualities, being considered God in Human Form, just as Jesus was. So if someone is a believer in RSSB or the broader Sant Mat ("path of the saints") movement that RSSB is part of, they are prone to looking upon a guru of their faith as a saint, and not a mere human being.

This helps explain why followers of religious organizations in general, and saint-focused organizations like RSSB in particular, are more likely to be severely disillusioned when they observe leaders of their organization behave in ways that are not only unsaintly but unseemly even by everyday standards. The sex abuse of boys by Catholic priests is a clear example of this.

Sex abuse is always a bad thing. However, it becomes an even worse bad thing when the abuse occurs at the hands (or other body parts) of religious leaders who are viewed by followers of their faith as being trusted spiritual guides. That's when a feeling of disillusionment really sets in -- when someone has put their heart and soul into trusting a priest, bishop, minister, guru, or some other religious leader and has experiences that cause that trust to dissolve in a bursting of their "I trust in you" bubble.

This has happened to me. I've seen it happen to other people I know personally. I've also observed it occur in the many messages I've received since I started this blog in 2004 from people who want to share with me their disillusionment with a religious organization or religious leader. This sort of disillusionment can be much more painful than disillusionment with a politician or business leader who acts badly.

It is more painful because the expectations were higher, so a failure to match those expectations by a religious leader involves more of a fall. People are attracted to a religious organization in part because it promises to be a refuge from worldly problems and concerns. Putting one's faith in a higher power, especially a higher power that is immanent in another living human, can feel absolutely wonderful. But when that faith is dashed by observations of behaviors that are decidedly flawed, it hurts. 

Much more so than when a politician or business leader fails to meet our expectations, since few of us look upon those people as modern day saints. That role belongs to religious leaders, which is why it can so disturbing when they let us down.

We humans are good at making illusory magic

Almost everybody enjoys a good magic show. I sure do. But hardly anyone actually believes in magic. We understand that when a magician does something that appears to violate everyday laws of nature, that trick is based on illusory magic, not genuine magic.

An article in the April 12, 2025 issue of New Scientist, "Magicology," talks about how psychologists are looking to magic tricks to better understand how our brains make sense of the world around us. I found this example fascinating.

A classic deception known as the “vanishing ball illusion” – already well-known when Binet discussed it in 1894 – provides an ideal example. In this trick, a magician repeatedly tosses and catches a ball. At one point, they make the same movement, but, having concealed the ball in a pocket or with their hands, they don’t throw it. Quite remarkably, most spectators report seeing the ball fly up into the air before it vanishes into nothing.

The effect can be startling. “It produces a distinct feeling that’s more than just basic surprise,” says Geoff Cole, a psychology researcher at the University of Essex, UK. “It really does look like it’s disappeared.”

The illusion is thought to work because of “predictive processing”, a theory of consciousness that is gaining ground among cognitive neuroscientists, psychologists and others. This framework suggests that the brain is constantly making predictions about the world around us to inform complex simulations that help it make sense of the imperfect data gathered by our sensory organs. Our experience of reality is dictated by these mental models.

Most of the time, they match what is occurring in the real world – but they can sometimes make incorrect predictions, producing a sense of something that isn’t there. In this case, the expectation that the ball will rise out of the magician’s hand creates a split-second impression that it is rising in front of us. When the data from our eyes catches up with the brain’s simulations and corrects them, the perception of the ball vanishes while it is in mid-air.

“We don’t have a picture of the world as it is,” says Cyril Thomas, a cognitive psychologist at the Marie and Louis Pasteur University in Besançon, France. “We add a little bit of anticipation.”

Tricks like the vanishing ball illusion demonstrate just how easy it is to prime the brain’s simulations. Kuhn, for instance, found that around a third of people will experience the illusion with a single fake throw, for instance, without any of the usual ball-tossing beforehand.

This is an important point: "We don't have a picture of the world as it is." Sure, as the passage above says, usually our mental models make use of predictive processing in a fashion that gives us a mostly accurate view of the world.

But sometimes we are fooled. A good magician can do this so skillfully we're unaware of how we've been deceived. All we know is that something which ordinarily seems impossible appears as if it actually happened -- as when a ball thrown into the air suddenly disappears. 

A magic show advertises that unusual events will be observed by the audience. We pay the price of admission because we want to be fooled by the magician.

And often we do something similar with a religious, spiritual, or mystic leader. We willingly put ourselves under the spell of their "magic" because we long to have a miraculous experience that seems to violate the ordinary laws of nature.

When I spent two weeks in India back in 1977, I wanted to do this because I'd never seen in person the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) guru who initiated me in 1971. So I traveled to the RSSB headquarters in the Punjab, the Dera, to get myself some up close and personal time with Charan Singh.

A short way I've used to describe those two weeks is It was magical. That was true for me when I was still an active member of RSSB and it's still true for me now that I've left the organization and become a proud atheist. 

My memory of that time at the Dera isn't affected by how I currently view Charan Singh -- not as God in Human Form, which is what I thought in 1977, but as a warm, gentle, kind person. I realize now that the magical feeling I experienced during my visit to India was produced by the expectations I brought with me, not by the guru or the surroundings of the Dera.

I expected to have a magical experience. I did have a magical experience. The expectation was the primary reason.

Just about every encounter I had at the Dera was suffused with a difficult-to-describe "specialness." Not because it was outwardly special, but because I'd looked forward to my India trip so intensely, I imbued the experiences I had there with an overlay of what can only be described as magic.

So what I did was similar to the people watching a magician toss a ball into the air that disappears in a magical fashion. There isn't any actual magic going on with that trick, just as there wasn't any actual magic in the words and actions of Charan Singh. 

But since my mind was expecting to have a magical experience in the guru's presence, I did have such an experience. And the good news is, since magic comes from within, not without, each of us is capable of fashioning our own unique personal individualized magical moments. Just expect magic to happen and, who knows, maybe it will.

No need for magic to be attached to special experiences. Ordinary experiences will do just fine. After all, Zen reminds us that all we need to do is chop wood and carry water, or otherwise engage in our everyday actions. Magic is in the ordinary just as much as in the extraordinary. 

My Oregon softball obsession shows the pluses and minuses of attachment

For 35 years I belonged to an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that was an offshoot of the broader Sant Mat movement. As I wrote about in 2013, RSSB had a decided renunciative focus, as contrasted with a life-affirming focus.

For about 35 years I was a member of an India-based organization headed up by a guru whose teachings were definitely in the renunciative camp.

The goal was to leave this physical world behind and find a better one in higher realms of reality. To do that, it was necessary to beware of the Five Deadly Foes, lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism. So really serious stuff. Vows were taken of no sex outside of marriage, no use of alcohol or recreational drugs, no meat, fish, or eggs. 

Nothing wrong with all that if that's what you want in life. But I observed many instances of fellow initiates becoming rigid, moralistic, judgmental, holier-than-thou, and generally not pleasant to be around. Stifle normal urges and emotions and you've got a textbook renunciative theology.

Those Five Deadly Foes are basically the same as the six enemies of the mind in Hindu theology, which adds jealousy.

Moha, attachment, is described as want/desire, which definitely is my attitude when I watch the University of Oregon women's softball team compete in the current NCAA tournament that culminates in the Women's College World Series.

I wrote about the Oregon Ducks victory in the regional competition last weekend in "Oregon softball team was inspiring in winning regional over Stanford." (My granddaughter, who graduates from high school at the end of this month, will be attending the University of Oregon next fall, so this gives my Oregon sports obsession an extra burst.)

Now Oregon is hosting a super-regional. Their opponent is Liberty.

Yesterday Oregon beat Liberty in extra innings in an exciting fashion, the second game in a row that one of their players got a hit that earned them a "walkoff" win -- which means the team walked off the field with a victory after the hit because it led to their team leading and winning at the bottom of a final inning, either the 7th in a regular softball game or an extra inning if the game was tied after regulation.

I get really nervous when Oregon falls behind, especially when an error or bad play by the Ducks leads to runs being scored by the other team. I also get really happy when Oregon scores, and super happy when the team wins. Make that super duper happy if the win is dramatic, as it was last Sunday when Oregon trailed Stanford the entire game until a three-run walkoff home run gave them the victory.

I pump my fist in the air. I yell "Yes!" out loud if I'm by myself, silently inside my head if my wife is home (she's utterly uninterested in sports). For hours afterward, extending into the following day, I feel buoyant and optimistic. Everything may not be right with the world, but it definitely is in the little corner of the world that's my Oregon softball team obsession. 

Of course, the opposite is pretty much true if Oregon loses. A blowout doesn't disturb me as much as a narrow loss, because it is possible to think "If only..." with a one or two run victory by the other team. Thankfully, those losses don't bring me down emotionally to the same extent as the wins raise me up.

But there's no doubt that my attachment to having Oregon win affects my mood both positively and negatively. Which raises the question of whether I'd be better off not watching the Oregon softball team play at all. That way I'd avoid both the pleasure of victory and the agony of defeat. 

Well, my answer to that question is No way! I'd rather feel those ups and downs than not feel anything at all. And for me this is a general answer to the question of attachment. My attachment to my wife, better termed love, leads me to hurt when she hurts and to feel happy when she's happy. There's no way I'd prefer to be in some sort of permanent detached mental state where I didn't feel those emotions.

After starting to write this post earlier today, I just finished watching Oregon demolish Liberty 13-1 in the second game of the super regional. This wasn't a tense game for me, given the final score. Liberty did lead 1-0 after the first inning, but after that it was all Oregon. Watching the players celebrate made me feel happy also.

Without attachments and desire, life would barely be worth living. Sure, there are more important things than softball to be the object of desire, but I'll take my joys however they may appear. Now it's on to the Women's College World Series. I'll be glued to my television, feeling good when Oregon wins and bad when Oregon loses.

This might not be in accord with the teachings of RSSB and Hinduism. So what? Lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism, and jealousy are natural aspects of being human. Godliness is an abstraction. I prefer concrete reality. 

Here's a story of someone's Grand Disillusion with RSSB and Gurinder Singh

It's always a pleasure to hear from someone who has become disillusioned with a religion. In this case, it was a person who had a history fairly similar to mine with an India-based religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that is headed up by a guru.

Below you can read the document this person sent to me that's called "The Grand Disillusion." They want to remain anonymous, but said I could share this info about them. The Dera is the RSSB headquarters in the Punjab. Gurinder Singh is the current RSSB guru. Charan Singh was the guru prior to Gurinder Singh. Satsang is a spiritual meeting.

You could let people know I first became involved with RSSB when I was 17 and I am now 69 and spent 15 months at Dera. The disillusionment started with Gurinder Singh. I am cool with Charan Singh but now I must wonder about him because he appointed Gurinder Singh. I still do the meditation as taught to me by Charan Singh and deep down in some crazy place I think that just maybe a glowing man in a beard and turban will appear in my forehead. I have not gone to satsang for the past 20 years. 

Here's what this person wrote.

THE GRAND DISILLUSION

In Sikh cosmology the Grand Dissolution occurs between enormous spans of time where the entire creation is dissolved and reborn. This video is a description of the Grand Dissolution made by Ishwar Puri, a Sawan Singh initiate. It sounds like the ramblings of a crazy man but there was a time when I believed it. I had my own Grand Disillusion with RSSB but I don’t expect anything to be reborn.

It started when I was working in the computer room at the Dera and I saw they were using bootleg software which is equivalent to stealing from the software developer. The lesson learned: It is ok to steal. 

Then I saw the laundryman beat the hell out of one of his staff who was only a child. I told the guest house manager Mr. Desai (who grew up in Gandhi’s ashram) about it expecting him to protect the child. Instead, his eyes flashed in anger and he told me to keep my mouth shut. The lesson learned: beating the hell out of children is OK. 

I re-read Sheena’s book, "Memoirs of a Seeker," excerpts from which can be found on this website. In it she mentions that a known pedophile was in Gurinder Singh’s entourage. Another account on this website mentions a question and answer session where a woman did not know what to do about her husband molesting their daughter. Gurinder Singh told her to “be more loving” which doomed the girl to untold amounts of abuse. The lesson learned: molesting children is ok. 

Sheena also mentions the cutting and devastating remark from Gurinder Singh about her “sleeping around” in front of 50 or so people. The lesson learned: it is ok to hurt and embarrass people. 

Based on the events described in this biography I know exactly who Sheena is and she is not a liar. If you really want to know what Gurinder Singh is like I suggest you read the last 1/3 of this short book that relates to RSSB. Sheena, I would like to write to you. If you are reading this maybe you can write Brian who can give you my email address.  

Here I will compare what I saw and what I was taught.

Be Content:  Be content with what you have. Look at the example of Jagat Singh who refused the gift of a shawl with the response that he kept one in the laundry and one on his person. He said having more than he needed would only complicate his life.

The amount of possessions you will ever own in this life were all predetermined before you were born. This cannot be increased or diminished so be happy with what you have. 

Don’t become obsessed with money. Read Charan Singh's strong words about speculating in the stock market.  

This is what I saw: Don’t be content even if you have 150 million dollars. Instead speculate in real estate and engage in dishonest financial dealings with shell companies where you and your family members will be enriched far beyond one’s needs.  Lesson learned: Greed and dishonesty are OK. 

Be Compassionate: Do not eat meat because it causes pain to the animals. Spiritually minded people are extremely kind hearted and they shy away from hurting any living creature. 

This is what I saw: Ignore the dairy industry which is far more brutal than the meat industry.  India is the largest producer of dairy products in the world and is also the second largest exporter of beef after Brazil. There is a cruel and brutal line between Indian dairies, lassies at the Dera snack bar, and the murder of millions of cows. If geckos are bothering you at the Dera guest house just tell the office and they will send someone to kill them. 

In Petaluma someone asked Gurinder Singh about dairy products and if he had seen the websites that explore its brutality. He cut the questioner off with the statement that “not all countries treat their dairy cows like this” and then quickly went on to the next question. My thought was “torture is not allowed in all countries” so I guess I should be able to torture people. Lesson learned: Exploitation of animals is ok. 

The guru is only pretending to be like everyone else because God told him to pretend he was like everyone else. Don’t expect him to know your name or forecast the weather or the real estate market.  

 All true gurus live in the will of the lord and do not break the laws of nature by performing miracles or using their abilities to forecast the future, even if they have a lot invested in the real estate market. This is because they are obedient sons of God and live in the will of the Lord. 

The other answer could be they are human beings just like everyone else. 

There's value in experiencing new things, even if you're not sure you'll like them

We simply don't know what the future will bring. That's a basic fact of life. I was reminded of that today when I rummaged through a drawer where I keep blank notebooks and notepads, making room for a new supply I'd gotten from Amazon.

Down at the bottom of a bunch of rarely used stuff was an envelope. On it I'd written "Will (open -- obviously -- only if I die)" It was a one-page document dated March 2, 1991 called Last will and testament. 

I'd written it in a period between my marriage to Laurel in 1990 and whenever we got around to having an attorney draw up wills for us, which ended up being living trusts. My motivation was stated in the first paragraph:

Before I leave on a trip to California, I want to set down my wishes regarding my personal property which would be inherited by my beloved wife, Laurel, and my beloved daughter, Celeste. 

While this informal will now has no effect, I found it interesting to read. Especially this section:

While I unconditionally give all that I have to Laurel, I hope that she will do her best to carry out these two wishes:

(1) It would give me great pleasure to be able to donate 10% of the value of my property to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India. This probably should be accomplished through the comparable association in America. Some of the satsangis could help you determine how to do this. But I only want you to make such a donation when and if your financial situation permits it.

Please think of your needs first, and please make this donation over a period of ten years or so. In other words, figure out what the 10% equals, and donate 1% a year, if this is comfortable for you. For twenty years I have given 10% of my time to my Master in meditation, and it seems only right to give 10% of my assets to this Path which has provided me with so much love and satisfaction.

Well, about fourteen years later I'd stopped being a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, having decided that pursuing other forms of spirituality made more sense to me.

But just as getting divorced from my first wife didn't negate all of the love Sue and I had for each other during most of our eighteen years of marriage, leaving Radha Soami Satsang Beas didn't negate all of the wonderful experiences I had during the thirty-five years I was an active member of the organization.

Recently I wrote about transformative experiences in "If an experience promises to transform us, it's difficult to decide about it." The basic notion put forward by philosopher L.A. Paul is that if an experience (such as having a child) is transformative, the person we will be after we go through that experience is different from the person we are when deciding whether to undergo the experience. 

So which person gets our allegiance? This is a tough question with no easy answers. The best answer Paul comes up with in her book, Transformative Experience, sidesteps the question by approaching it from a different direction. 

In her "The Shock of the New" chapter Paul talks about the decision whether to try a durian for the first time. This is a tropical fruit that I'd never heard of before seeing Paul's mention of it. Wikipedia describes why tasting it involves a bit of a gamble. 

Some people regard the durian as having a pleasantly sweet fragrance, whereas others find the aroma overpowering and unpleasant. The smell evokes reactions ranging from deep appreciation to intense disgust. The persistence of its strong odour, which may linger for several days, has led some hotels and public transportation services in Southeast Asia, such as in Singapore and Bangkok, to ban the fruit.

Here's a passage by Paul that describes one way out of the transformative experience dilemma. 

Instead of constructing the decision in terms of whether you will enjoy the taste of durian or whether you will find it revolting, you can choose to try durian based on whether you want to have a new experience for its own sake, that is, solely for the sake of the value of having the experience, whether what it's like to have that experience is subjectively good or bad. That is, you decide to try a durian for the sake of the revelation the experience of tasting a new kind of fruit brings. 

The relevant outcomes, then, of the decision to have a durian are discovering the taste of durian versus avoiding the discovery of the taste of durian, and the values attached reflect the subjective value of making (or avoiding) this discovery, not whether the experience is enjoyable or unpleasant. If you reconfigure the decision this way, your choice can be framed as a choice of whether to try something new solely for the sake of having the experience that is, for the sake of the revelation it brings.

There's problems with this approach, though, as Paul discusses in other parts of the chapter. For example, in trying something new, like the (mythical) experience of becoming a vampire, we not only have a revelation of what it's like to be a vampire, but we likely will end up giving up preferences we had before becoming a vampire -- like being a vegetarian.

Still, there's a lot to like about looking upon trying new things as an adventure into the unknown that, while the specific outcomes are hidden, we can be sure that we'll learn what it's like to experience that thing -- whether this be pleasant or unpleasant.

When I was initiated into Radha Soami Satsang Beas in 1971 by the guru at that time, Charan Singh, I had no idea how this would end up transforming me. For about thirty-five years I was devoted to the RSSB teachings, though I had doubts about them. Then, those teachings stopped appealing to me and I changed my spiritual course.

But I have no regrets about the time I spent with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, just as I have no regrets about the time I spent with Sue, my first wife. In both cases, I had many good times, and also some bad times.

That's the nature of life: you don't know what will happen or where you'll end up. All you can do is make your way through the twists and turns of life as best you can, making the choices that seem right at the time.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, reportedly off the job as of April 1

Here in the United States, and in quite a few other countries, April 1 is April Fools' Day. That's when people engage in practical jokes and hoaxes, which are sometimes close to believable.

I doubt that the news of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization that I belonged to for 35 years, giving up all of his official duties as of April 1, 2025 is a hoax.

But all I know for sure is that Osho Robbins, who comments occasionally on this blog, emailed me a link to a video that makes this claim.

The two-minute video can be watched on You Tube. I can't embed it in this post, as the person who shared the video disabled that feature. It's in Hindi, so I had You Tube translate the narration into English. It seems accurate, reflecting what Robbins said in his message (he does know Hindi). Below is my transcript of the English translation.

"Baba Ji" is a term of respect for Gurinder Singh Dhillon. VIP means Very Important Person, so VVIP is a Very Very Important Person. "Radha Swami" is a greeting used by members of RSSB. "Satsang" is a spiritual talk.

Radha Swami, Ji, today's video is something special about Baba Ji. As we know that the satsang of Baba Ji in March is going to be the last satsang. After this, Baba Ji will not do satsang. Similarly, another news has come that after March, Baba Ji will not meet any VIP and VVIP minister or any person.

After March, all the responsibilities of the RSSB department will be given to Hazur Ji Jasdeep Singh Gill Ji by Baba Ji. In the crowd of this world, the one who is closest to us is our Baba Ji, our God, our master, whose form we have settled in our minds.

But now perhaps many things are going to change. We have to live in the goodness of that God and follow his orders. It is said we do not look for the Guru, he looks for us. We do not recognize him, he recognizes us.

We meet the guru when God takes pity on us and helps us to meet him. When he draws a line on our forehead, the Guru looks at this line, accepts us as his own and adopts us. Our own efforts have no meaning. 

Meeting with the Guru is only possible through Guru. We have been blessed by God, may Baba Ji's blessings continue to remain on all of us like this. Radha Swami Ji.

A couple of comments about the video.

First, it's interesting that on February 22 of this year I wrote a blog post called "Photos of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, with rich and political people." And now it appears that as of April 1, Dhillon "will not meet any VIP and VVIP minister or any person." Hey, maybe the blog post caused Dhillon to back off his fondness for spending time with wealthy, famous people.

Second, as I said in a September 2024 blog post, "Let's make sense of the strange RSSB guru succession episode," this is the first time in the history of RSSB that a guru has given up his duties to a successor while still alive. If the video is correct, Jasdeep Singh Gill, who has been the guru-in-waiting, will take off his spiritual training wheels as of April 1 and become the one and only RSSB guru.

This doesn't make any difference to me or the vast majority of other humans. But it will be a big deal to the RSSB faithful, especially those who were initiated by Gurinder Singh Dhillon and now have to figure out how to relate to Jasdeep Singh Gill.

Here's a thoughtful critique of Radha Soami Satsang Beas -- well worth reading

I've received a critique of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India and led by a guru, from someone who wants to be anonymous, preferring to be called "LGG." Here's the PDF file.
Download Critique of RSSB

The critique is thoughtful and well-researched. Below I've shared the first six pages of the 53-page document. There's plenty of white space in the document, which I've minimized in my copy and paste below, so it doesn't take long to read the document. 

Even if you aren't familiar with RSSB, but especially if you are, I'm confident that you'll enjoy this critique. It's a great example of using reason and evidence to evaluate spiritual/religious teachings, and the organization behind those teachings. 

Here's the initial pages to whet your appetite to read the whole critique. This sample includes a summary of the critique. 

Why am I writing this?

I am writing this to organize and explain my ideas. I want to get this down on paper and out of my head because it’s probably the best way to organize my thoughts, address inconsistencies, and find a consensus on the real teachings and criticism.

This writing will mostly consist of facts with a few personal experiences, but I’ll make that well known when addressing it.

This will be an evolving document so I will continue to add and change it with any new information I find. There will also be writing where I miss ideas and thoughts because of a lack of information or understanding of the tenets or principles, so please don’t go too hard on me :).

I will try my best to remain unbiased while addressing concerns and teachings behind RSSB, but I will tackle ideas that seem counter to the teachings of RSSB.

Another abstract idea that I might want to add later is whether we believe something because we’re born into it, sharing the values and ideas from our family and relatives, or if we believe something because we truly understand it, resonate with it, and can back it up with enough evidence to be reasonable.

TLDR (Summarizing the 50+ pages); [stands for Too Long, Didn't Read, so a synopsis]

1. The Foundation of RSSB Relies on Karma – But Is Karma Real?

RSSB’s core doctrine is that karma binds souls to a cycle of birth and rebirth, and the only escape is through the guidance of a Perfect Living Master. But does karma actually exist in the way RSSB claims?

• Other religions reject reincarnation – Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) teach that we live once, and judgment happens after death. RSSB cherry-picks from different traditions without clear justification.

• If karma isn’t real, RSSB collapses – Without karma, there’s no need for meditation, no need for a guru, and no necessity for this specific path.

2. The Guru’s Role: A Contradictory Doctrine

RSSB teaches that a Perfect Living Master is required for spiritual liberation. However, its own history contradicts this idea.

• Shiv Dayal Singh (founder of RSSB) had no guru – If a guru is required for spiritual progress, how did he become a master without one?

• Circular logic in guru validation – The current guru picks his successor, and followers are told they can’t question his legitimacy unless they are enlightened themselves. How is this different from blind faith?

• The last three gurus are from the same family – This looks more like nepotism than divine selection.

3. The Fraud Scandal: Can a ‘God in Human Form’ Be Involved in Financial Corruption?

The current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, has been implicated in a multi-billion-dollar fraud case linked to the Singh brothers (Religare). Court documents suggest financial mismanagement and hidden transactions involving RSSB leadership.

• Would a true spiritual master engage in this?

• Why didn’t he foresee this if he’s enlightened?

Sources:

• Bloomberg: The Billionaires and the Guru

• Business Today: Delhi HC Orders RSSB Chief to Repay Debt

4. Misinterpretation of Religious Texts

RSSB frequently reinterprets religious scriptures —particularly from Christianity and Islam— to fit its theology.

• Example: Jesus and karma – RSSB claims Jesus took on karma like their masters do, but this is not found in Christian doctrine.

• No historical or theological backing – Many of these claims lack scholarly support and seem more like selective reinterpretation.

Final Thoughts: Why I No Longer Follow RSSB

After years of reflection, I’ve realized that RSSB requires faith in authority rather than evidence-based belief. My biggest takeaways:

1. You can’t confirm the guru is divine unless you’re divine yourself – an impossible requirement.

2. Religious contradictions abound – Why do major religions differ so much if they are all supposed to point to the same truth? Moreover, does RSSB continually try to make sure every religion fits its ideas?

3. Spiritual leaders must be held accountable – If a guru is truly enlightened, their actions should reflect divine wisdom, not nepotism and financial scandals.

I remain grateful for some of RSSB’s teachings—such as discipline and a vegetarian lifestyle — but I can no longer accept it as truth.

What Do You Think?

I invite RSSB followers, ex-followers, and spiritual seekers to share their perspectives. If you believe my reasoning is flawed, I welcome a discussion. Let’s seek the truth together.

Download Critique of RSSB

Note: after reading the entire critique of RSSB, consider sharing your thoughts in a comment on this post. That will enable the author of this critique, "LGG," to consider your ideas and possibly respond via their own comment.

If humans are the top of creation, what about Neanderthals?

The February 2025 issue of National Geographic features a fascinating story by Brook Larmer, "The Hunt for the  Other Humans." This got me to thinking about the common religious teaching that humans are the top of creation.

For example, the Bible says in Genesis:

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

And an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), which I know a lot about because I was a member of the organization for 35 years, similarly taught that humans are the top of creation -- and that it is only possible to return to God if one has a human form (the group believes in reincarnation). Further, supposedly there always is at least one human who is God in Human Form, and who is responsible for taking "marked souls" back to the highest supernatural realm of creation.

Since I love to delve into weird theological questions, even though I no longer believe in God or the supernatural, a couple of way-cool graphic depictions of human origins in the National Geographic story got me pondering some pertinent issues about the whole "top of creation" thing.

Here's photographs of the graphic depictions. I've made them as large as possible.

The top graphic says: 

Homo sapiens are the only humans left on Earth today, but at one point we shared the planet with other species of ancestral humans, collectively known as hominins. As climates and ecological opportunities shifted, hominins migrated out of Africa, reconnecting and interbreeding with the descendants of their relatives who had made similar journeys thousands of years before.

So do all of the hominin species count as being the "top of creation," or only our species, Homo sapiens? The bottom graphic shows that hominins have been around for over four million years. If they count as ancestral humans, then the RSSB philosophy implies that Gods in Human Form have been on our planet for that length of time.

But let's assume that only species in the genus Homo count as humans. That graphic says:

Homo sapiens are the only remaining humans. Our genus, Homo, features relatively larger brains, full bipedalism, and the ability to make tools. 

The right side of the graphic shows that there have been about ten species in the genus Homo. Seemingly they all would count as being the top of creation, being humans. This includes our closest relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans. 

From the graphic, our species diverged from Neanderthals and Denisovans about 800,000 years ago, though the top graphic says that the oldest known Homo sapiens fossil dates from about 300,000 years ago. Thus those who believe in the RSSB teachings have to accept that there were Gods in Human Form at least that long ago, and almost certainly they killed animals and ate meat -- which is against the current RSSB teaching.

Another question is whether Homo sapiens is the species that will forever be the "top of creation." After all, evolution hasn't stopped. There's a good chance our species won't last forever. The National Geographic story says:

The disappearance of the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other groups around 40,000 years ago marked the end of millions of years when multiple groups of hominins walked the Earth. The current epoch is a historical anomaly, and Stringer [a paleoanthropologist] advises us not to be smug in our status as the last ones standing.

Neanderthals and Denisovans survived for half a million years; Homo erectus lasted nearly two million years. At the rate we're going, how successful will we look in 2,000 years, much less a million?

Photos of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, with rich and political people

Below I've shared twenty photos of the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, that were sent to me by someone who said:

Hello Brian, I want to put your attention on one matter that effects on the heart of common satsangi, the matter is Why do Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his intern Baba Gill like to visit only the houses of rich and political people and get photographed with them? Whereas none of them is a follower of Radhaswami cult and most of them are corrupt, jail inmates, non vegetarian, heavy drinker. Many of them are involved in drug business and have gone to jail.

I'm sending you few of photographs of GSD with rich and privileged people who are mostly corrupted and indulged in business which are dubious in nature. Plz make an article blog on this email with your effective writing which could convey the real message to common people. When even saints and sages, Baba start jumping around to meet rich people and politicians, then understand that the power is in authority, not in God. Thanx

 

I agree that the guru's propensity to associate with the rich, famous, and well-connected is at odds with a longstanding Radha Soami Satsang Beas principle that the main purpose of human life, as exemplified by the RSSB gurus, is God-realization, with worldly pursuits being secondary.

 

It sure looks like that principle now is for RSSB disciples to follow, while Gurinder Singh Dhillon is exempt from it. The captions below each photo are from the person who shared them with me.

 

Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon bowing before the photo of Om Parkash Chautala, former Chief Minister of Haryana State, who was arrested on charges of smuggling and spent the last years of his life in jail on corruption charges.

With chief minister of rajasthan bhajan lal sharma.

With ex minister of punjab state Anil joshi

 

With chief minister of Jharkhand state Hemant Soren

 

With governor of punjab state gulab chand kataria

With chief minister of haryana state nayab singh saini

With bollywood actor Shaheed kapoor

 

With minister of punjab aman arora and baba gurinder and apprentice baba gill paid visit minister home

 

With Abhay singh chautala , ex opposition leader of haryana state , son of ex chief minister of haryana , and grand son of deputy prime minister of india Devi lal 

With Ashwani kumar chopra , owner and chief editor of oldest and leading newspaper of punjab state Punjab Kesari

 

With Ex chief minister of jammu and kashmir Farooq abdullah and with current chief minister of state jammu and kashmir Umar abdullah and both are known for non vegetarian

With ex minister of punjab state Rana gurmit singh sodhi 

 

With ex minister of punjab sunil jakhar and current head of BJP party in punjab 

Visiting home of minister of punjab aman arora's house

 

With ex minister of punjab state bikram singh majithia, grand son in law of maharaj charan singh, who spent time in jail in charges of drug rackets and drug trafficking and give shelters to drug mafia of punjab

 

Attending the party of ex deputy chief minister of Punjab's daughter wedding

Visiting house of minister of punjab aman arora

 

Doing Orthodox hindu rituals Agni prajvalit at the moment of visiting home of punjab minister with intern baba gill

 

With ex minister of punjab pratap singh bajwa

 

With bollywood actress, model  shehnaz kaur gill and her family

 

I'll also share a photo that I found, as I was curious about whether Gurinder Singh Dhillon had ever met with the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi. Turns out that he did.

 

Wow. Here's an AI generated podcast discussion of the RSSB guru's message.

When I got an email yesterday from Osho Robbins, a regular visitor to this blog, at first I didn't know what to make of his description of a new video on his You Tube channel. (Osho Robbins is a pseudonym; I assume Art Ashta is his real name.)

He said:

Hi Brian, one of my friends showed me how to get AI to do an indepth analysis of a video, in the form of a podcast. So I used my previous video, to get a perspective of how AI would handle this. The result is very interesting. 

https://youtu.be/tTXCgAAbh2c?si=Yn8Gqe1aII5oj7Ty

This is solely generated by AI, which is creating two different personalities to discuss and analyse the implications of the statements made on the video I previously posted. Will make an interesting discussion because they conclude, on the podcast, that the statement of oneness cannot be ignored, and if it is accepted then it means the efforts to merge are all in vain. 

 

Hence most disciples just ignore it when the current guru makes such statements because they cannot reconcile these statements with the duality teachings. 

 

kind regards

Osho Robbins

The AI generated video is below, or you can click on the link above. I just listened to the "podcast."

Maybe I missed something on my one-time listening, but I didn't get the impression that the AI generated personalities, one of whom is Robbins/Ashta, arrived at a solid conclusion about the nature of oneness. Rather, I came away with the message that different people will arrive at different conclusions about the oneness message that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is conveying in his talks. And that's absolutely fine.

Since this is an AI generated conversation based on a single video that Robbins/Ashta believes points in the direction of oneness, and away from the traditional dualism of RSSB where disciples are to rely on the guru in a journey from this physical realm to higher supernatural realms, obviously it isn't surprising that the conversation is sympathetic to how Robbins/Ashta sees things. Here's the "podcast" video.

So I came away less interested in the message of the "podcast" and more interested in how it was AI generated. Some Googling revealed a September 2024 post with the provocative title, "I tried Google's new one-click AI podcast creator, and now I don't know what's real anymore." Here's most of the text, absent the video made by GoogleNotebookLM.

I’ve had a glimpse of how AI will change the world, and it’s filling me with both fear and wonder in equal measure.

The source of my consternation is Google NotebookLM. NotebookLM takes an article, blog post, or web page, and with just one click produces an audio file of a conversation between two people about it that sounds so natural and realistic that there is no way you’d believe you weren’t listening to two real people talking. They talk with passion and authority about the subject, sound engaged and interested and riff off one another in such a natural way that it takes your breath away. There are even the little sniffs, slight mispronunciations, slurs, and little giggles that all make it sound completely human.

Here's what happened. In my spare time I write a blog about Tai Chi called the Tai Chi Notebook. So, having heard about NotebookLM (the 'notebook' in the name is just a coincidence) I thought I’d throw one of my Tai Chi articles at it, just to see what it did.

Creating the audio is easy. It took it a few minutes to think about it, but it very quickly generated a .WAV file that I could download to my desktop. The audio clip lasted around eight minutes and after I’d listened to it, the world simply wasn’t the same anymore; I no longer had confidence that I could tell what was real and what wasn’t.

The AI had taken my article and explained the key concepts via the 'presenters' having a conversation. It had even expanded on it in new and interesting directions that I hadn't thought of, drawing analogies about what I was saying to other areas of life. The presenters had even introduced practical examples of what I was talking about, and these examples weren't taken from my article but from their wider knowledge of the subject. And, most importantly, it didn’t get any of it wrong.

Obviously, we’re just at the start of the new AI-age at the moment, with key players such as ChatGPT, Gemini and more recently Apple Intelligence only just getting started. NotebookLM doesn’t have that many options right now – you can speed up or slow down playback and that’s about it – but it won’t be long before it lets you choose the type of presenter you want, their accent, their expertise, their political leaning, their personality and, once we move into AI-generated video as standard, how they look. As I wrote recently, AI is already being used in films, and we can imagine a world where a movie is generated on the fly, with the plot changing to suit your whims.

Yes, this will sound terrifying to some, but movies are already flights of fancy that exist in the world of the imagination. It’s when AI intrudes on the real world that I get most concerned. I’ve got a friend whose daughter is applying for university right now, and he tells me that many institutions are saying they don’t require a personal statement anymore because so many are doctored using AI that there’s little point to them.

All of which brings me back to NotebookLM. It can already produce a fantastic podcast out of one of my articles at the click of a button, and it feels like we're on the dawn of a very big change in the way media is produced. I'm not sure I know what's real anymore, and that's something I'm just going to have to get used to.

Free speech is as important in religion as in politics

I'm continuing to enjoy Tim Urban's book, What's Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies.

He's a wonderfully creative thinker. It's rare that I can read 245 pages of a non-fiction book without coming across something that just seems wrong to me. But Urban's arguments are so compelling and well stated, so far he's convinced me of the rightness of every point he's made.

Recently I read his take on free speech. I'll just describe a few aspects of what he says about this important topic, which is enshrined in the United States constitution in a way that few other countries can match: The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.

However, private organizations can restrict speech. And various influences, including cultural norms, can make it difficult or awkward for someone to speak freely. Urban writes:

Putting the Higher Mind and Primitive Mind aside for a minute, let's break every human into two parts another way: their Outer Self and their Inner Self. The Inner Self represents what a person thinks; the Outer Self represents what a person says. If we take any given topic, we can depict each of their viewpoints by where they're standing on the Idea Spectrum, and by the color of their head:

We can combine these using a shorthand notation. And we can color these to show what a person is thinking (brain color) and what they're saying (ring color). When a person is being honest and saying what they really think, the two colors are the same, allowing the thoughts of the Inner Self to pass unimpeded through the Outer Self and out into the world.

So, for example, when three people are having a conversation about a topic and everyone is saying what they really think, their brains link together into a three-brain thinking system:

In Chapter 1, we saw how human brains can have emergent properties, combining together into larger superbrains called genies. This only happens when the brains actually connect, which they do by way of expression.

So when people are able to speak their mind freely, good things can happen. This is a foundation of brainstorming. And of psychotherapy, scientific discussions, conversations with friends -- the list is almost endless of positive results through free speech. However...

When a person isn't allowed to say what they think, their ideas become quarantined inside their head, isolated from the outside world. From the communal brain perspective, where each individual human mind is a single neuron in a larger brain, it's as if the axons of the neurons have been hijacked, and any real neural communication ceases.

When I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru, for several years I did quite a bit of speaking on behalf of RSSB at meetings called satsangs. 

That word literally means association with truth. Yet often there was a large difference between the truth of what RSSB members were thinking inside their brains and what they were saying outwardly in public. 

Frequently I'd say something in a satsang along the line of "The easiest RSSB vow to keep is the prohibition against revealing inner mystical experiences, because hardly anyone is having any." Usually some people would come up to me after I'd finished speaking and say, "Thanks for saying what you did. I thought I was the only person who felt this way."

Urban writes:

A phenomenon that psychologists call "pluralistic ignorance" begins to set in when no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes. Over time, hearing everyone expressing the same viewpoint, people start to doubt their own beliefs and assume that if everyone is saying it, there must be something to it.

...Throughout human history, clever opportunists have discovered that if you could control what people say, you could write the story people believed. You could dictate the values, the morals, and the customs. You could decide who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. You could create the laws, dole out the rewards, and inflict the penalties. If you could write the narrative, the group became your marionette.

The most effective puppet masters came up with depictions of reality that tapped directly into people's Primitive Minds. Some would stoke fear with stories of imminent danger or invoke rage toward a common enemy to fuel the Primitive Mind's natural fires. Or they might write stories of their own ruthlessness and inflict fear of torture and death on subjects. 

Others would claim knowledge of the divine in order to bring the afterlife into the picture and drive incentives to astronomical heights. 

Free speech is an antidote to these negative outcomes.

Beyond protecting against tyranny, free speech laws open the gates to a dynamic free-speech market -- the marketplace of ideas. In the marketplace of ideas, scientists freely do their research, philosophers freely philosophize, activists freely protest, journalists freely report, and artists and comedians freely challenge norms and test the edges of what's socially acceptable.

If the market's "supply" is made up of the ideas of millions of free-speaking humans, "demand" consists of millions of free-listening ears. To win the key currency of the market -- attention and influence -- ideas have to outcompete other ideas in the market.

In the same way that a free economic market has a natural tendency to push bad products to the fringes while elevating the rest, the marketplace of ideas serves as a vast information filter. Ideas are stripped naked and analyzed from every angle. This exposes and embarrasses false or unwise ideas and prevents them from spreading too widely.

The marketplace of ideas is messy, and it doesn't always succeed at sorting right from wrong and good from bad, but it's a far better system than the alternative: allowing the most powerful people to decide what's true and what's good.

Plotinus, a Greek philosopher, spoke a lot about the One

My previous post was about the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas referring to oneness, rather than duality, as being a characteristic of God. So much so, the guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, says that you can't get to God through meditation if you think that God is there and I am here.

Osho Robbins, who messaged me about Dhillon's remarks, viewed this as being in accord with the teachings of Advaita, an Indian philosophical system centered on the notion of not-two, the meaning of Advaita. Which does indeed sound a lot like One.

However, I believe that Dhillon's discussion of divine oneness is closer to the teachings of Plotinus, a 3rd  century Greek mystic philosopher, than to Advaita. I can claim this with some confidence, because I wrote a book about Plotinus's teachings, Return to the One.

When I wrote the book, I was still an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). It was Dhillon, the RSSB guru, who suggested several names of Western mystics that I could write about on behalf of RSSB. Plotinus was one of those names, obviously the one I chose. I have no idea if Dhillon has read my book, but I had several discussions with him about the book.

Now, before sharing some quotations from Return to the One pertaining to the nature of the One, I want to be clear about this: I have no idea if what Plotinus says about the One (or what Dhillon says about oneness) is objectively true. Meaning, part of the nature of reality. This is different from a subjective sense of oneness -- which almost everyone has from time to time.

Here's what I said about the One on the first page of the Introduction to Return to the One.  The Enneads is Plotinus's collection of writings, which were edited by one of his students, Porphyry.

A central message of the Enneads is that what each of us truly longs for, even if we don't consciously realize it, is to return to the One -- which may be thought of as "God," if this more familiar term for ultimate reality is stripped of its personal or theistic connotations.

The One, for Plotinus, is unequivocally and indisputably one. It is the root of everything in existence, for the One is both the source of being and the ground of being (even though, as we will learn, it also is beyond being). So at a deep, mystical level you are the One, I am the One, this book you are holding is the One, and everything else outside and inside of us is the One.

Why is it, then, that the world appears to be constituted of so many distinct entities? I certainly seem to be separate from you, and you from me. Each of us feels closer to some objects, people, and concepts than to other objects, people, and concepts, but always there remains a gap between one's self and all that is other than one's self.

It is natural to try to bridge this gap because humans have an innate longing for intimacy and union, not isolation and separation. Indeed every urge -- such as to worship, to act rightly, to love, to create, to know -- flows from a primal drive for fulfillment. We want to make whole what has been broken, to find what has been lost, to do what demands to be done, to return from where we have come.

It isn't easy to summarize the means by which Plotinus said it is possible to return to the One, in part because Plotinus was a notoriously difficult-to-understand author. But I attempted to encapsulate his teachings in this regard in a final substantive chapter, Vision is Veracity. Again, I'm struck by how similar Dhillon and Plotinus seem to be. But like I said, this doesn't mean they are objectively correct.

Consciousness is its own confirmation. I may be misled about how real something is within my consciousness, since it is possible to see and hear things that exist only within my own mind. But consciousness itself must be accepted as a given, the bedrock on which stands all else I am and do.

This allows Plotinus to move beyond what the Greek Skeptics considered an impassible barrier to knowing absolute truth: the seeming fact, as Richard Tarnas puts it, "that any conflict between two apparent truths could be settled only by appeal to some criterion; yet that criterion could itself only be justified by appeal to some further criterion, which would thereby require an infinite regress of such criteria, none foundational. 'Nothing is certain, not even that,' said Arcesilaus."

In contrast, Plotinus teaches that the One serves as the immutable foundation of reality. Everything in existence emanates from the One and the human soul is able to return to the One, sharing in a universal consciousness of what is true and eternal. 

This is accomplished not by perceiving the One as something separate from ourselves, for then, as the Skeptics argued, we would indeed need some means of determining whether the object within consciousness was real or unreal, and then need some means of determining the reality of that means, and on and on and on it would go, endlessly seeking validation of the highest truth but never finding it.

Rather, Plotinus says that when the soul is purified its seeing is identical to what is seen. To disbelieve in the sight of God at that point would be to disbelieve in our very seeing, consciousness itself, an impossibility. 

...Plotinus tells us that the means by which we now know the creation must become the end we seek. Like a snake that swallows its own tail, the sage turns his attention back upon the consciousness that usually attends to outer things and thoughts. Uniting within himself the knower and the known, the One is revealed as the ground of the sage's own self. We've seen this quotation before but it is well worth repeating.

We must believe that we have seen him when, suddenly, the soul is filled with light, for this light comes from him and is identical with him... This is the real goal for the soul: to touch and to behold this light itself, by means of itself. She does not wish to see it by some means of some other light; what she wants to see is that light by means of which she is able to see.

...Presently each of us lives in a realm of duality. There is an individual and there are entities other than that individual. It is extremely difficult to break out of this manner of being, even to merely envision the possibility of existing as simultaneously one with ourselves and one with the cosmos. Thus Plotinus warns us not to assume that spirituality can be confined within the bounds of what is familiar.

To be spiritual isn't a matter of moving this way or that along the customary dimensions of everyday life: time and space. We can't know God by becoming as small and insignificant as an atom or by becoming as large and momentous as the universe. Spirit and the One do not lie in a particular direction, nor is divinity realized by having more or less of anything possessed now.

Returning to the One means embracing mystery, cultivating another way of seeing, leaving aside visions and becoming sight.

...There, in the higher reaches of the spiritual world, the light that dazzles the soul doesn't illuminate anything, for manyness has not yet emanated from oneness. Here, we see things that are separate from the light that makes seeing possible. But when all separateness and multiplicity have been eliminated from the soul, what remains is awareness of the conscious power that produces separateness and multiplicity, spirit, the creative energy of the One.

...Becoming the One is the only way of knowing the One.

The RSSB guru appears to be teaching Advaita

Today I got a message from Osho Robbins, which I've shared below. He titled it "Radha Soami guru is teaching Advaita." Advaita can be described simply or complexly. Here's a simple description. 

Advaita is a philosophical and spiritual tradition of self-realization. At the heart of Advaita is the concept of unity. The Sanskrit word Advaita means "not two," or nondual. This philosophy asserts that there is something essentially good, intelligent and awake in each of us—and that something is no different from the essence of this creation.

Advaita’s approach is fundamentally experiential. Deep peace and connection to the love and consciousness that underlies all can be understood and experienced with guidance, practice, and self-examination.

Previously Robbins has shared his views on this blog about how the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a guru-centered religious organization headquartered in India that I belonged to for 35 years, have been updated by the current guru (Gurinder Singh Dhillon) to Versions 2.0 and maybe even 3.0.

Here's how I summarized the differences between Versions 1.0 and 2.0. Sant Mat is another term for the RSSB teachings.

Sant Mat v. 1.0
--The guru is God in human form
--The guru is perfect, possessing God’s divine qualities
--God has chosen certain souls to return to Him
--God delegates the guru to initiate these “marked souls”
--Without initiation by a perfect guru, God-realization is impossible

Sant Mat v. 2.0
--The guru is a human who is seeking God, just like us
--The guru is imperfect, just like us
--Whether we want to pursue God-realization is up to us
--The guru is a spiritual guide, not a savior
--There are many paths to God, not just Sant Mat

Five years later, I wondered if the RSSB guru had moved to Version 3.0, quoting someone who is familiar with what Dhillon has been saying in his talks.

I was at the national satsang [gathering of disciples] in the UK last weekend. Gurinder has changed from the old days. His teachings are going through a noticeable change - and so is he himself.

What I noticed is that
(1) He talks a lot about The ONE
(2) He laughs and jokes a lot
(3) He tells people not to be so serious
(4) He tells them that the master will not come at the time of death - that they have mis-understood the teachings. Just as it does not take four lifetimes.
(5) He says there are no regions - that Sach Khand does not exist - neither does Sat Purush. He says they are levels of consciousness

He says the purpose is to REALIZE that there is only the ONE - and that we are caught in maya - duality.

Having the darshan of the physical master is not even mentioned anymore. He says seva will not help you make any progress - it simply makes you humble if done correctly. There is no spiritual merit.

You will NOT be able to succeed through meditation. Meditation is just to make you give up. You can never get there through your efforts.

Now these kind of teachings have never been given before in rssb.

With that background for those unfamiliar with the RSSB teachings and how they appear to have changed under the leadership of the current guru, here's the message from Robbins. Sach Khand is basically heaven in the traditional Sant Mat teachings. Seva means volunteer service. GSD means Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru.

Hi Brian, I just uploaded this video:

I am just pointing out that the Radha Soami Guru is saying THERE IS ONLY ONE - no separate soul. He also says "You will never get to God through meditation as long as you think of it as duality - I am here - God is there."

 

Now in the old days, others would object and say I have misunderstood. However, now the videos are on YouTube. Now there can be no doubt about what He has said

 

So another strange phenomena happens now. Satsangis DISAGREE with the Guru - they say he is just pretending.

 

He has said many times "I am not coming at your death" because obviously there is nobody that can come and nowhere to take the soul.

 

There is no Sach Khand.

 

My conversation with Him back around the year 2000 (early days).

 

Me: My God is here!

GSD: My God is also here.

Me: No, the God of RadhaSoami resides in Sach Khand - the fifth region.

The soul has to go through four regions to reach Sach Khand and meet Sat Purush.

GSD: There are NO REGIONS - it was just a way of explaining. They are levels of awareness.

Me: But the books explain... in detail...

GSD:  Burn the books.

Audience member: Turn off his mic.

GSD: Then turn my mic off too. 

 

What all this shows is that the Guru does advocate the non-dual path.

 

However, he has inherited a duality path and cannot just transition to non-duality without objections from followers.

 

He used to say "I am not coming at your death" but followers were offended, so after a while he changed it to:

 

"The Guru does not come - GOD himself comes...He comes for EVERYONE - not just satsangis...and He is also here NOW - the question is do you recognize Him?"

 

This is just a way of saying ONENESS - non-duality. Without spelling it out.

He still says "meditate" because that is his method of getting people to be serious about God-Realisation. He also adds "You will not reach through meditation..."

 

The obvious question is "Why meditate then?" But nobody asks that question.

 

He says "Just do - don't count..." but that is impossible. Nobody can do that unless they are already beyond duality.

 

Whatever we do - the counting comes first. The motivation comes first - then the action. If the motivation is gone - the action will not take place.

 

You go to work because you will get paid at the end of the week. No pay - no work.

 

Seva is an attempt to do the impossible. Do seva, for no reward. But it's not what is really happening. The reward is just hidden. The hidden reward is "I get promoted to a higher seva position. OR Guru is watching and giving me the credit OR I can't meditate - so I'll do seva instead." The counting is still there.

 

If there is no benefit - nobody will do the seva.

 

How do most of the followers take all this? Their conclusion:

 

The Guru IS coming at death - he is just saying he won't come to make me meditate - but he will definitely come anyway. So they remain in duality and cannot even understand ONENESS. ALL they have is belief and they think that ONENESS is just another belief.

 

Chances of getting realized: zero

 

Osho Robbins

Robbins told me which Radha Soami Satsang Beas video on the RSSB YouTube channel contained the question for Gurinder Singh Dhillon that he shared in his own video. Here's that video. I made it start at the second question in the Q&A session, the one Robbins shared in part. The entire question and answer is worth watching as it gives additional context for the guru's remarks.

Gurus are like Trump: promising protection in return for absolute fealty

My wife found a Slate article by Steven Reisner on Apple News that she thought I'd be interested in, "The Deep Psychological Reason We're Stuck in This Feedback Loop With Donald Trump."

Reisner starts off by saying:

This is the third time Donald Trump has run for president as a major-party candidate, and yet, this cycle, the American electorate and the American press seem unable to fully comprehend the choice we are facing. It is not, as we’ve been trained to think, a contest between an extreme Republican and a middle-of-the-road Democrat.

There is still no language that conveys what the stakes really are. This election is not about politics; it’s much more basic—it’s about how the American determines what is real. Will the future of the country be based on evidence and law, or will government be twisted to reflect whatever Donald Trump tells us is true?

Reality. Truth. Ah, now we're getting into some really interesting philosophical territory, which I find just as interesting, if not more so, than the political side of Reisner's article. Of course, the two are related.

I'm perplexed by how almost half of American voters are willing to worship at what Reisner calls The Church of Trump. I can understand the appeal of ordinary religions. They promise salvation in exchange for faith in things unseen and unproven. 

But how is it that Trump commands such loyalty from his devotees? He lies, cheats, and steals. He cares only about himself, not the needs of others. He is frequently incoherent. He is always hateful and insulting. 

Reisner has a theory about the source of that loyalty. I tend to agree with it, though I never like it when an author appeals to Freud to make some point. Freud's ideas are outmoded in this era of modern psychology and neuroscience. 

However, I still think that the conclusions reached by Reisner make sense. People do seem to be willing to be loyal to a leader if that person promises to protect them. This applies to a guru who promises to protect his disciples from the ravages of death, and to a politician who promises to protect his followers from dangers while they're alive.

We are now at the eleventh hour. The Republicans, under the brilliant tutelage of Donald Trump, have become the Party of Sociopaths, and their aim is to relegate the Democrats to a Party of Hapless Neurotics. The fateful question is, will the Democrats and the mainstream press continue to waste their energy being shocked, or will they change their strategy?

It all boils down to this: How will the American voter assess what is true?

For Republicans (and Fox News), truth no longer has anything to do with facts, or even reality. Truth has returned to its pre-enlightenment meaning; or, as Merriam-Webster puts it, its archaic meaning: “Fidelity, constancy.” To be true, in the medieval Trumpian world, is to be loyal and steadfast. It’s no longer about reason or even belief: It’s about faith. Freud had a word for this kind of primitive faith; he called it illusion.

People crave a godlike father figure, Freud explained, especially when they feel threatened with the eruption of two dangers: “the crushingly superior force of nature … and the shortcomings of society which have made themselves painfully felt.”

In the 21st century, facing severe social inequities just when nature seems most out of control, America is in exactly that vulnerable state. And so it shouldn’t actually surprise us that nearly half the country’s voters have rallied around a sociopathic strongman who promises protection in return for absolute fealty.

Note that truth falls by the wayside in this bargain. Neither a guru nor a politician is able to show exactly how they will be able to protect their devotees from reality's vicissitudes. To their true believers, it really doesn't matter if there's no evidence that the leader's promises can be kept. 

The bargain is what's important. In exchange for unquestioning devotion, the believer is promised protection. This works for politicians like Donald Trump, and it works for gurus like the head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Trump is a proven authoritarian fascist. Reminds me of some religious leaders.

Yesterday I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog, "Trump is a fascist, says his chief of staff, John Kelly." Here's part of a quotation from a New York Times story that I included in the post.

In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online.

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr. Trump.

“So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Mr. Kelly said.

He added: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

This got me to thinking about the extent to which religions are led by people (almost always, men) who may not fit all the characteristics of a fascist, yet nonetheless are similar in some regards. For example, this is the first paragraph of my fascist blog post. 

What bothers me the most about today's Republican Party isn't the conservatism -- my mother was a lifelong Republican with deeply held conservative values -- but the Party's dangerous submission to Donald Trump, thereby elevating a single man's personality over Republican principles.

The religious organization I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is led by a guru, Gurinder Singh. If I substitute certain words in the paragraph above, the result is a statement that's a pretty good summary of how I currently feel about RSSB.

What bothers me the most about today's RSSB isn't the spiritual teachings, but RSSB's dangerous submission to Gurinder Singh, thereby elevating a single man's personality over RSSB principles.

Now, it is true that submission to a guru always has been a hallmark of the RSSB teachings. The guru supposedly is God in Human Form, so submission to the guru is viewed as submission to God. Since God is hidden, and the guru is a visible person, it's argued that submission to the guru is even more important than submission to God.

What's different now, though, is similar to the difference Trump has brought to the presidency of the United States. It used to be assumed that every president respected the Constitution and our rule of law. Violations were few and far between. All that changed when Trump became president in 2016.

Trump refused to adhere to longstanding moral and ethical practices that, by and large, previous presidents accepted. This has led to several criminal indictments being filed against Trump. Similarly, Gurinder Singh is the first RSSB guru to be criminally accused of financial fraud that enriched the guru and his family by hundreds of millions of dollars.

So just as Trump made the presidency into a means of fulfilling his personal desires for power, wealth, and praise, Gurinder Singh has done the same thing as the RSSB guru. He is less a spiritual leader who dabbles in business, than a businessman who dabbles in spirituality. Which wouldn't be so bad if his business practices were aboveboard, but they weren't, though so far this hasn't been legally proven.

Most religions are marked by authoritarianism. They aren't committed to democracy.

While voters decide who leads democratic nations, religious leaders typically are chosen by a few people at the top of a religious hierarchy. In the case of RSSB, the previous guru appoints the successor guru. Thus a single person decides who leads the millions of people who belong to RSSB.

Given the nature of religions, this authoritarian top-down rule is taken for granted, being viewed as a reflection of God's dominion over humankind. Nobody tells God what to do, and nobody tells the RSSB guru or the Pope what to do.

In the United States, our Constitution and supporting laws are supposed to constrain the power of the President. But that only works when the person occupying that office respects the rule of law. Likewise, Gurinder Singh has gone against both longstanding RSSB traditions and teachings. 

I wouldn't call him a fascist. But I'd definitely call him an authoritarian guru who cares more about what's good for him personally, than what's good for RSSB. Rather than being a servant of the RSSB organization, as previous gurus aspired to, Gurinder Singh mainly serves his own self-interest.

My wife's shoulder surgery is a growth opportunity for me

For a long time I felt that my daily meditation was the best way for me to become a better person. Looking back, that was a selfish attitude.

I'd bought into a form of pseudo-spirituality that taught self-realization (I'm soul, not body!) was the stepping stone to god-realization (My soul is a drop of the divine ocean!). 

I call it "pseudo" because in my current frame of mind, genuine spirituality is about forgetting the self as much as possible, not trying to enhance it, even if the supposed enhancing is aimed at merging with the Grandest Self of All, god. 

Acting for the good of others is a higher purpose than acting for our own good. And I'm not talking about a narrow definition of  "others," such as a guru.

During my true believing days when I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-centered religious organization, I encountered many RSSB initiates who were all in on selfless service -- to the guru.

They'd journey to the RSSB headquarters in India or a RSSB center in their own country to reap the spiritual benefit of seva, volunteer service. I did that too, but I never felt that this sort of service was more important than all the ways we can be of service to friends, family, our community, and such.

In fact, in a way it was less important than those other ways, since service to the guru and his organization had a Me-Me-Me vibe to it. It wasn't really selfless service, because the sevadar doing the service supposedly was getting major benefits from serving the guru, God in Human Form.

Karmas were erased, easing the way for the soul to soar to higher supernatural regions of reality. The guru's grace was bestowed upon his servants. Detachment from worldly relations chaining us to this realm of illusion was made easier by attachment to the guru.

I'm not saying that other forms of service are free of self-righteousness, ego, and desire. A volunteer at a food bank may enjoy the feeling of doing something that others will applaud them for. That's human nature -- to care as much about ourselves as other people. 

But we can aspire to a purer form of service that is founded in love, not self-gain. I have that aspiration, even though I am a long way from achieving it. 

That's how I'm looking at the shoulder replacement surgery that my wife, Laurel, had today.

Ten years ago she had shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. After it became re-torn, Laurel engaged in a lengthy process of deciding whether to have another surgery or make do with a painful right shoulder that limited what she could do with that arm.

It wasn't easy to decide on a shoulder replacement. Just a few days ago Laurel was still having doubts about whether she was doing the right thing. In the end she answered "yes," which is how I went with her to a 7 am appointment for the surgery today. 

She drove us to the Salem Health outpatient surgery building, since that was the last time she'd be able to drive for at least a month, until her sling comes off. For the next 4-6 weeks I'm my wife's caregiver. Today and tomorrow, I'm giving her an especially large amount of care, given that Laurel is supposed to use an ice machine for 40 minutes on/20 minutes off for two days after her surgery to reduce inflammation.

I've already learned some things about myself. Not new stuff, really, just confirmations of my old stuff.

I enjoy bringing food and drink to Laurel. I like figuring out how the ice machine works and keeping it stocked with 12 bottles of frozen water (easier than using regular ice). I don't mind feeding and walking our dog twice a day rather than once a day.

I'm getting a fresh appreciation of the marriage vows "for better or worse, in sickness and in health." It's easier to love someone when things are better and healthier, but it's more satisfying when love works through tough times. 

Of course, I find myself starting to get irritated when, say, I'm trying to write this blog post and Laurel needs me to do something for her. I'm a creature of routine, and now my routine will be considerably different for a month or so. 

Which is good for me. I need some shaking up. Laurel, like most women, does more of our household chores than I do. Now it's time for me to serve her to a greater extent than I usually do. I don't have to fly off to India for this service, this seva. 

She's right in the next room, waiting for me to refill the ice machine with fresh water bottles to keep her shoulder cool through the night. 

Why the mystical notion of a "sound current" is at odds with science

I used to belong to an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), whose teachings centered on the notion of shabd, or sound current -- considered to be the audible voice of God, being an all-pervading conscious energy that created and sustains the cosmos, including our physical universe.

Believing in this, my first book was called God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder: Echoes of Ultimate Reality in the New Physics. (In the shorter and simpler version that I published after the original book went out of print, I changed the subtitle to Echoes of Spiritual Reality in the New Physics, which makes more sense.)

In the course of reading theoretical physicist Matt Strassler's book, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean, I've gotten some insights that point to why I came to believe that the sound current is an intriguing idea, but almost certainly no more than that. Here's how Strassler starts off an "Elementary Fields" chapter. 

In this chapter, we make a first attempt to grasp how the cosmos works, trying to understand its fields using analogies with the ordinary fields of the last chapter. As we proceed, we will be retracing steps taken by generations of physicists over the last century and a half. Right from the start, our approach will encounter problems, and the further we go, the worse the difficulties will become.

I tell you this now so that you won't be expecting a moment of sudden enlightenment. This chapter will end ambiguously, and we will escape to firmer ground only thereafter. 

But we have to travel this route. To fathom our astonishing universe requires a deep appreciation of why the last century's greatest scientific minds have failed to make sense of it, and why it could justifiably be called "an impossible sea."

The basic message of the last chapter is that an ordinary field represents a property of an ordinary medium. In the chapter before that, we encountered the idea of a medium in the context of waves: air as the medium for sound waves, rock as the medium for seismic waves, and so on. Now we want to put this triad of concepts -- medium, field, and wave -- together. 

We've largely established how the members of our first triad, air, wind, and sound, are related to one another. Wind is the flow of air. Sound waves are ripples in air. Air is the medium for sound waves in particular and for the wind more broadly.

Now, an interesting thing is that the ordinary fields are quite different from the elementary fields. Elementary fields include electromagnetism and gravity. They aren't localized like sound. They are present everywhere in the universe. 

And with the exception of gravity, science hasn't been able to identify a medium in which the elementary fields reside. After the discovery that light was a manifestation of the electromagnetic field, scientists of that time assumed that just as sound requires the medium of air (there's no sound in a vacuum), light must require a medium that they called luminiferous aether. 

Problem was, experiments showed no evidence of it. Eventually it was determined that waves in the electromagnetism field only require empty space to propagate. Meaning they move at the speed of light through nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, since Einstein proved that gravity is the warping of space, or space-time, so somehow the nothing of empty space is able to warp under the influence of mass. 

Turning to the sound current, which is theorized to manifest as divine sound and light that can be perceived by subtle senses of the soul, this means that it isn't really a problem scientifically that the "wave" of the sound current lacks a medium through which it propagates. Waves of electromagnetism do just fine moving through empty space. 

A much bigger problem for those who, like me, sought to blend ancient mysticism with modern science, is that there's no evidence that the sound current exists -- which can only be known through its effects. For all fields are known through their effects. Drop a spoon and the effect of gravity is evident. Flip a light switch and the effect of electromagnetism is evident.

Where's the effect of the sound current, or shabd, other than in the mind of someone who believes in it? If the only place the sound current manifests is in the brain of those who believe it exists, this is no different than fairies being only as real as a belief. 

One would think that the divine power that supposedly brought our universe into being, and continues to sustain it, would have some effects beyond the forces known to science: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong forces.

Again, there's not really a problem with the sound current lacking a medium, but not manifesting any effects is a huge problem -- at least for those of us who want our spirituality to be founded in objective reality, not subjective belief.

If anyone who believes in the sound current can demonstrate some provable effects of it in the physical world, I look forward to reading your comment on this post that contains such evidence. But I'm deeply skeptical that anyone can do this. 

RSSB gurus meet with Pope Francis. I comment on a report of their meeting.

Today in a comment someone shared a link to a story on the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) web site  about the two RSSB gurus -- Gurinder Singh Dhillon and Jasdeep Singh Gill -- meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on October 5.

(Dhillon apparently is still the chief guru, while Gill has taken on some of the guru responsibilities but not all of them, being the guru-in-waiting.)

I found RSSB's description of the meeting to be theologically problematic. Below are my comments on the story, in boldface. The RSSB story is in regular type.

Baba Gurinder Singh and Hazur Jasdeep Singh were invited to Armenia at the invitation of the Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI Minassian, of the Armenian Catholic Church. The invitation included a visit to the Holy Father, Pope Francis at the Vatican.

At the meeting with the Patriarch, Baba Ji and Hazur Ji spoke about the common ties that bind all faiths to the Creator. While we may have been separated by distance and language, our journey to return home and live in His will remains the unifying goal.

Well, I disagree that all faiths have common ties to the Creator, God. That's the RSSB party line, but it goes against the obvious major differences between religions.

While I'm no expert on the world's theologies, I'm confident that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam don't share with RSSB the goal of what amounts to soul travel -- rising to supernatural realms of creation through several hours of meditation each day under the guidance of a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form. 

Regarding "living in His will," RSSB teaches that it is a sin to eat meat, fish, or eggs and to consume alcohol. This definitely is at odds with the precepts of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. So is the notion that initiation by a Perfect Living Master, which Dhillon and Gill supposedly are, is essential to return to God.

On the 5th of October Baba Gurinder Singh and Hazur Jasdeep Singh had an audience with Pope Francis. The Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI Minassian was also present at the meeting.

Baba Ji started the meeting with an introduction of RSSB and stressed the commonality between the different faiths of the world. As an example he spoke about the importance of the “Word” and the “Shabad” amongst our paths. In both Catholicism and Sant Mat the creation began with the Word/Shabad and is sustained with the energy of the Creator through the Shabad. Baba Ji mentioned RSSB publishes over a hundred books that highlight the commonality between the faiths of the world and that the ultimate goal of all is to be one with the Creator.

Dhillon, referred to as Baba Ji, is wrong. I defy anyone to show convincing evidence that Catholicism teaches the Indian notion of shabd, basically all-pervading conscious energy that manifests as divine sound and light, is how creation came into being and continues to be sustained. 

Again, I realize that RSSB interprets the "Word" in the Bible as meaning shabd. However, this is an attempt by RSSB to claim that the teachings of RSSB are the foundation of every world religion, even if those religions don't know this to be true. In my current view, which is different from what I believed during most of the 35 years I was an active member of RSSB, each religion is entitled to determine what its teachings consist of. 

RSSB doesn't have the right to tell Catholicism, or any other religion, what its teachings are. I'm virtually 100% certain that mainstream Christianity, Judaism, and Islam don't consider that their ultimate goal "is to be one with the Creator." In fact, this would be blasphemy for those religions, since they don't share RSSB's belief that humans can unite with God. Their goal is worship of God, not union.

The Holy Father, Pope Francis, stated that he respected any institution that laid emphasis on the unity amongst all people. That amongst this time of global uncertainty and conflict, harmony was essential and all of us must work towards that common goal.

It sounds to me like the Pope, courteous guy that he is, sidestepped the obvious fact that RSSB and Catholicism have very different theologies, focusing instead on the uncontroversial notion of unity among all people. After all, every person shares in our common humanity. The Pope's statement wasn't at all mystical, but practical, calling for harmony among nations and their citizens.

Baba Ji also presented a set of books to Pope Francis, published by RSSB, that highlight how each faith in its own way has sought to lay a path of the journey of the soul to return to its Creator.

The RSSB books likely will find their way into the Vatican library, where they will be read by just a few people, almost certainly not including the Pope. But hey, if the Pope ever applies for initiation into RSSB, being convinced by the books that he needs to dump the Catholic teachings and embrace "the journey of the soul to return to its Creator," after I recover from the intense shock of this, I'll be pleased to admit that I was wrong about the Pope not being a fan of the RSSB teachings.

Baba Ji and Hazur Ji also visited Armenia, this was their first visit to the country and they left with fond memories of the people, the culture and the history of this ancient country.

The Holy Father Pope Francis requested Baba Ji to pray for him as he would in turn pray for Baba Ji.

I guess the Pope wasn't aware that Dhillon, Baba Ji, is considered to be God in Human Form, so he's the one people pray to.

New RSSB guru, Jasdeep Singh Gill, gets paramilitary commando protection

A few days ago someone sent me a link to a story in an Indian publication, ThePrint, titled "Centre provides Z category VIP security to Radha Soami head." I've copied in the short story below.

This sure is a strange new world we're living in, where the guru of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB)  is considered to need such protection. 

The RSSB teachings proclaim that the guru is God in Human Form. I guess God requires armed security to keep Him/Her/It safe. 

New Delhi, Oct 1 (PTI) The Centre has granted the Z category VIP security cover of armed paramilitary commandos to Jasdeep Singh Gill, the newly appointed spiritual head of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, official sources said Tuesday.

The Union home ministry has asked the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to take charge of the security of the 45-year-old religious head.

A Z category security cover has been approved by the Centre for Gill following a threat perception report prepared and recommended by central intelligence agencies. Armed CRPF commandos will secure him across the country, the sources said.

A squad of 12-14 commandos will be with the VIP round-the-clock and in shifts, they said.

The Radha Soami Satsang Beas, headquartered along the banks of Beas river near Amritsar in Punjab, has a large number of followers across the country and abroad. Top political leaders, business tycoons and famous people from various walks of life visit the sect headquarters regularly.

Gill was appointed as the head of the sect early last month. He is an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi alumnus, and holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from Cambridge.

He was the chief strategy officer and senior management personnel at Cipla, India, from where he stepped down earlier this year. His wife is a doctor.

His father, Sukhdev Singh Gill, retired from the Army in the Colonel rank and he reached Beas more than two decades ago. Jasdeep Singh Gill has been visiting and doing ‘sewa’ at the ‘Dera’ (Beas) for the last 30 years, sources at the sect had said. PTI NES TIR TIR

This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

I prefer honest sinners to deceptive saints

Let's be clear.

I don't believe in the notion of sin, which is an offense against God. That's ridiculous, since there's no persuasive evidence that God even exists, nor, obviously, that anyone knows what the nonexistent God likes and doesn't like.

I also don't believe in the notion of saints, who are believed to have a closeness to God, for the same reason.

So when I refer to sinners and saints in the title of this post, I'm speaking in a secular sense of bad and good people -- where "bad" and "good" are actions or qualities that a certain culture or society has determined deserve those terms.

My previous post, "Morality has evolutionary roots, but goodness still feels like a choice," got me thinking about something in a New Yorker article that I included excerpts from.

We all depend on trust, yet it works in tricky ways. On the one hand, we trust people who are guided by consistent ethical precepts. I’d rather go to dinner with someone deeply opposed to stealing than a jerk who pockets my valuables as soon as I get up to pee.

On the other hand, we’re turned off when people’s commitments seem calculated. The ascent of terms like “slacktivism,” “virtue signalling,” and “moral grandstanding” bespeaks a frustration with do-gooders motivated more by acclaim than by an internal moral compass. The idea is that, if you’re in it for the reputational perks, you can’t be relied on when those perks vanish.

That's true, but I'm bothered less by how a moralistic do-gooder is motivated than by the basic fact of their calculated, rather than natural, approach to interacting with other people. 

I had a lot of experience with this during the thirty-five years I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious group which taught that the Five Deadly Sins -- lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism -- are to be done away with in order to pursue God-realization. 

Aside from the fact that everybody I've ever come across in my 75 years of living has manifested those supposed sins, including some extremely kind-hearted people, it irritated me (oh, no, anger!) when a fellow RSSB member would act in an artificial fashion that seemed scripted rather than spontaneous.

They might even take on the gestures and speaking style of the RSSB guru, as if behaving outwardly like a supposed saint would make them into one. Sometimes I'd feel like grabbing them by their shoulders, shaking them, and saying loudly, "Just act like a normal human being! Be yourself!"

I remember seeing an episode of the 60 Minutes show many years ago that featured a convicted murderer who was being interviewed in prison. He said something like, "Yeah, I killed a guy. That's a fact. It's why I'm in this place." 

His honesty about the crime he committed struck me as more laudable than what our president at the time, who I think was George W. Bush, was deceptively saying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a lie that was being used to justify our invasion of that country.

Back in my RSSB days, my wife and I would host a Christmas gathering of people in our local group ("sangat") where we'd enjoy a potluck and sharing White Elephant gifts that were things people brought that they wanted to get rid of, being ugly, useless, or whatever.

The best part of the evening for me was when most people had left and there were just a few of us sitting around talking. That's when things got more real. We all were pretty natural to begin with, but after chit-chatting for several hours there'd be a desire to open up even more.

Someone might say, "I've never said this to anyone before, but..." That would grab our attention. Ooh, go on, please, go on. The revelation wouldn't be as dramatic as having killed someone. It'd just be something honest and revealing about who the person actually was in private, versus how the person appeared in public -- a difference almost everybody engages in, me certainly included.

No matter what was revealed, even if it went against the precepts of RSSB, everybody still hanging around in our living room would be fine with that. We valued honesty over deception, speaking a dark truth about ourselves over putting on a fake smiley-face.

Sure, there's a time and place for absolute transparency, and a time and place for putting on a false front that disguises who we really are. I'm simply saying that I prefer people who are as natural as possible as often as possible. That allows me to feel like I can be equally natural around them.

A claim that Gurinder Singh "demolished" the Western RSSB sangats

As I frequently observe on this blog, the reason I refer so frequently to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is that for thirty-five years I was an active member of this India-based religious organization headed up by a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form.

If I'd spent that amount of time as a Catholic, then deconverted from that faith, rather than RSSB, now I'd be talking about the downsides of the Catholic Church based on my experience with that religion.

I also point out fairly frequently that for most of the thirty-five years I belonged to RSSB, I was happy with the organization. It met some needs of mine. I felt good about the volunteer work I did for RSSB. I got to know many fine people. 

That helps explain why, when I read the comment below that was left by someone named Chiro today on a recent post, I was bothered by the description of how the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, reportedly markedly changed how the RSSB organization is managed in Western countries.

I'm sharing the comment in this post in part because I'm curious if other people knowledgeable about RSSB agree with Chiro's statements about how Dhillon altered the RSSB groups ("sangats") in Western countries in a manner that the previous guru, Charan Singh Grewal, wouldn't have approved of.

I still have a lot of fondness for Charan Singh, who initiated me in 1971 through a Western representative, Roland deVries, who, like me at the time, lived in California. Back then I recall that most of the people who came to local RSSB meetings ("satsangs") weren't Indian. That certainly was the case when I moved to Salem, Oregon in 1977, where I still live.

There were a few Indians in our sangat, but mostly it was made up of non-Indians. As noted by Chiro in the comment below, prior to Gurinder Singh becoming guru in 1990 after Charan Singh died, Charan Singh (referred to as Maharaji in the comment) appointed "native people" to lead the RSSB organization in Western countries.

(I put quotation marks around native people, because in the United States no one is native except for descendents of the Native Americans who lived here prior to Columbus making his voyage to America in 1492.) 

During Charan Singh's time as RSSB guru, there was an easy grace to the organization. Charan was honest, kind, and warm. There was just the faintest hint of scandal relating to Charan Singh, a single rumor that once he asked a disciple visiting India to smuggle in some watches duty free, if I remember the story correctly.

Gurinder Singh, on the other hand, has been the only truly scandalous RSSB guru. Gurinder has had a criminal complaint filed against him by a family member who accused him of financial fraud totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Gurinder has been accused of making death threats. Gurinder supposedly has markedly updated the RSSB teachings to v. 2.0 or even v. 3.0 after the teachings were basically unchanged for about a hundred years.

So I find it easy to believe that Gurinder Singh also has made large changes to how the overseas RSSB sangats are managed. Gurinder reminds me of Donald Trump in some regards. Both men have strong authoritarian tendencies and like to surround themselves with people who don't question their decisions. Often members of this inner circle are family members. 

Anyway, here's the comment from Chiro. Leave your own comment on this post if you have an opinion about what is said below. It has a ring of truth to me, but I'm open to additional information. 

@um "And lo and behold ..what happened?? .... in Europe the growth of the sangat almost came to a still stand and most people that frequent the gatherings are immigrated Indians."

Why? because of Gurinder's vicious, brutal and despotic attack on the Western sangats after his appointment. Maharaji respected the right of countries to their native people, He often told the story of the Indian child stolen for adoption abroad and how when it found it was Indian deserted even his wife and children to return to India.

Maharaji had an English representative in England, a German in Germany and so one. Gurinder the Shaitan demolished every single Western sangat and handed it over to Indian immigrant control, if possible by his own family members or perhaps a Western crony of his here and there.

RSSB is now an Indian organisation in which Western disciples, if they are foolish enough to subscribe to it, are second class citizens in RSSB. Look at the endless stream of mainly junk videos emanating from RSSB commentators and the official videos of Gurinder himself, for example Modi's electioneering visit (which MCS would have been totally against!). Have you ever seen a Western face in any of them?

In my country every single Western disciple left RSSB over Gurinder's appalling behaviour, his seeming allergy to giving satsang, his rich list lifestyle in the former mansions of the Duke of Bedford in England, holidays on beaches full of semi-naked women and the rivers of Bani drying up from the Dera.

It is shocking to hear he sits on the stage while a preacher does his job for him. You call yourself a Guru when you can't even give Satsang? I could go on. In the immortal words of James Bean on RSSB "Into the mouth of Kal!"

Eyewitness report shows Radha Soami Satsang Beas truly has two gurus now

Just got the message below from someone who received it on their Radha Soami WhatsApp chat.

Seems to show that contrary to claims by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) that the new "guru in waiting," Jasdeep Singh Gill, will just be an administrator rather than a true guru for now, Gill actually is performing some of the duties of the current guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, referred to as Baba ji.

Hazur refers to the new guru, Gill, who has been given that title of high respect. So the person on the chat believes RSSB now has two living masters. Interesting theological development. Dharshan refers to the guru attentively looking at his audience, which is considered to have spiritual significance.

Today the new Hazur came on the stage without Baba ji. It was very surprising and shocking, we all expected Baba ji to come out and give Dharshan. Hazur started by looking to his right at the sangat the same way Baba ji looks at each soul in the sangat when giving dharshan. Baba Ji is sharing the load while taking rest after two days of Naam Daan in the Dera. I guess he must be tired. Nobody really screamed or objected in any way, all have accepted Hazur as the new Master. Watching Him give Dharshan means that At this time we have two living Masters. Radha Soami Ji 🙏🏼

UPDATE: Here's a comment I left on this post in response to someone who questioned whether Gill giving Darshan (or Dharshan) really was a change from what RSSB had said earlier about Gill's role as guru.

sant64, the RSSB secretary said that Gill would attend satsang with Dhillon, the current guru. That didn't happen, according to the WhatsApp message. Gill was at a satsang all by himself. So this is why the person who sent the message said that RSSB has two gurus now. It wasn't me that made that claim, it was someone who attended the Gill-only satsang.

Here's an excerpt from a news story that I quoted from in a previous post:
https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2024/09/lets-make-sense-of-the-strange-rssb-guru-succession-episode.html
----------------------------
Devender Kumar Sikri, secretary of the RSSB, said Gill would eventually be the Sant Satguru and will then have the authority of bestowing ‘Naam Daan’. “Till then, he will remain in attendance with Babaji (Dhillon) for the scheduled satsangs,” he said.

The sad state of RSSB gurus, and advice on seeking spirituality without them

Today M K Sharma left this comment on my previous post, "Jasdeep Singh Gill, successor to RSSB guru, has disturbing tie to Ranbaxy." Sharma made some points that I'd thought of, yet wasn't able to grasp as clearly. GSD refers to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) who appointed Gill as his guru-in-waiting.

What a saga unfolding before our eyes! The new Baba, now revealed as the cousin of the old Baba, GSD, is knee-deep in the same deceitful schemes, and it seems the corruption runs through the entire family.

It’s almost like GSD found the perfect accomplice in his own blood, ensuring that all the ill-gotten gains stay neatly within the family circle. For years, countless devotees have poured their hearts into what they believed was true seva—selfless service—only to realize that their dedication and sacrifices meant nothing when it came to choosing a successor.

No one among these devoted followers was ever considered worthy; the role was reserved for a family member who, it seems, has spent time abroad and conveniently stepped in to take over.

This situation stands in stark contrast to the traditions of genuine saints and Gurus of the past, who selected their successors based on merit, spiritual dedication, and selfless service—a painstaking and rigorous process. The transition of leadership was never treated lightly; it was a testament to the chosen one’s spiritual journey and commitment.

But here, we witness a spiritual empire handed over like a royal throne, with no regard for the values that once defined the path.

It’s disheartening to see a lineage that now operates like a dynastic rule, where leadership passes down through blood rather than virtue. If God is truly watching over Sant Mat, one hopes that He will hold this family accountable for their actions. But in moments like this, it’s hard not to question: is God still present, and how can He allow this to happen?

Great question, assuming one believes in God, which I don't -- since the probability of God existing seems vastly less than the probability of God not existing, given the lack of evidence for God's presence (leaving aside the question of what that presence might consist of and how it could be realized).

However, I remain interested in spirituality, which I define loosely as the search for deeper meaning in a person's life, in this case, mine. For about thirty-five years I accepted the RSSB adage that a guru was needed to be a guide to God-realization. Now I embrace the notion that what many or most of us are looking for is so close at hand, we hardly need any help at all in embracing it.

Just a few pointers, basically. Here's how Joan Tollifson puts it in the "Is India More Nondual than Chicago?" chapter in her book, Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogues About Non-Duality. The back cover describes Tollifson as having "an affinity with Buddhism, Advaita, and other forms of nonduality, but she belongs to no tradition."

Since so-called Eastern spirituality has come to the West, many westerners have rushed to Japan or India or someplace in the Far East to get the real goods. There is nothing wrong with traveling, but what these teachings point to is right here in front of you.

You don't need to go somewhere else. In fact, you never do go anywhere else. Places appear to you, in awareness. They come and go, dream-like.

It has been said that the truth is inside, not outside you. That doesn't mean it's in your intestines or in your emotions, but not in the chair across the room. It means it's in the undivided awareness that beholds intestines, emotions, chairs, birds, and everything else. It points to the realization that there is no boundary, that inside and outside are one whole.

In the same way, past and future are inseparable from Here/Now. When I talk about the jewel of Here/Now, I'm not in any way intending to disparage the study of history or the creative envisioning of the future. I'm simply pointing to the fact that it all shows up Here/Now as one indivisible whole that is boundless, seamless, timeless and spaceless.

How to realize that? Well, first of all, notice that the question itself is rooted in the assumption that it is not realized right now. Is that true? What are you imagining that such realization would look like?

Perhaps the acquisition of the sighting of an enormous object like a giant dinner plate? Or maybe an experience like being permanently high on drugs? Or maybe some mental understanding like an algebraic equation or a verbal formulation that would be the final answer to every question?Does it make sense that totality would be an object, an experience, or a formulation? Does it make sense that "you" would need to find it?

The truth itself is so simple that the mind habitually keeps overlooking it by looking elsewhere.

Endlessly fascinated by glittering distractions (India, Japan, robes, bells, gurus, teachers, retreats, satsangs), we overlook the jewel of here and now. Of course, India, Japan, robes, bells, gurus, teachers, retreats, satsangs -- it's all the jewel. There's no escape.

But when we think the jewel is in India but not in Chicago, or that we need to go to a retreat or a satsang to find it, then we are like a wave looking for the ocean. The imaginary problem can only be resolved Here/Now.

After wandering all over the world seeking the truth "out there" somewhere, after having amazing spiritual experiences and breakthroughs, we inevitably end up back in our ordinary everyday life. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we wake up back in Kansas. The whole journey is inside us, and what we are seeking is inside us, too.

And when I say inside us, again, I don't mean inside the body mind -- I mean Here/Now.

And that's really what all spiritual teachings are pointing to -- that the heart of the matter, the jewel that is being sought is not "out there" somewhere apart from you or in the future. No one can give it to you. You must discover it yourself. And the only thing that makes this discovery seem difficult is how easy it is. It is already perfectly realized.

This moment is the Buddha.

The thought of "somewhere better" keeps us from seeing that what we are seeking, we already are. The postponements, the ways we move away, get subtler and subtler. Wanting to never run off on another journey to Oz ever again is itself running off on such a journey! But luckily, the journey and the one taking it are both imaginary. You never really leave Here/Now.

Sometimes people say, "Everything is great when I'm at these meetings," or "It's all totally clear when I'm off on a meditation retreat, but then I get home and I lose it all." I come back to Kansas and it seems like I'm this screwed up character again.

But of course being on a meditation retreat is going to be different from being in the office. Sitting in silence listening to the rain is different from listening to other human beings. And yet both the office and the meditation retreat appear Here/Now in this ever-present awareness. 

What is, is so simple, so unavoidable. Everything is as it is, even if what is appearing is confusion or upset. 

I like what Tollifson says. I also like what Rumi said in a bit of Sufi poetry, as shared in my blog post, "This is my favorite Rumi quotation." Both are speaking about the here and now.

Fear the existence in which you are now!
Your imagination is nothing, and you are nothing,
A nothing has fallen in love with a nothing,
a nothing-at-all has waylaid a nothing-at-all.
When these images have departed,
your misunderstanding will be clear to you.

Jasdeep Singh Gill, successor to RSSB guru, has disturbing tie to Ranbaxy

The gurus of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) are supposed to demonstrate exceptionally high spiritual virtues, including honesty. After all, the RSSB teachings proclaim that their gurus are God in Human Form.

So a few days ago, when I saw on the RSSB web site that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the organization's current guru, had appointed a successor, Jasdeep Singh Gill, I was surprised to see that Gill had worked at Ranbaxy from 2006 to 2010.

Ranbaxy (2006 – 2010): Multiple roles
Worked across Project management and Strategy functions

Surprised, because Ranbaxy was accused of pharmaceutical fraud following sale of the company to Daiichi Sankyo in 2008, following which the fraud allegations came to light.

In 2013 the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Ranbaxy had agreed to plead guilty to several felonies. 

In the largest drug safety settlement to date with a generic drug manufacturer, Ranbaxy USA Inc., a subsidiary of Indian generic pharmaceutical manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, pleaded guilty today to felony charges relating to the manufacture and distribution of certain adulterated drugs made at two of Ranbaxy’s manufacturing facilities in India, the Justice Department announced today. Ranbaxy also agreed to pay a criminal fine and forfeiture totaling $150 million and to settle civil claims under the False Claims Act and related State laws for $350 million.

And when did the illegal manufacture and distribution of adulterated drugs take place at the two Ranbaxy manufacturing facilities in India? At the same time (2006-10) Jasdeep Gill was serving as Executive Assistant to the CEO of Ranbaxy, Malvinder Singh. That's an important position. We have to assume that Malvinder was the one who hired Jasdeep.

The Department of Justice announcement says:

Ranbaxy USA admitted to introducing into interstate commerce certain batches of adulterated drugs that were produced at Paonta Sahib in 2005 and 2006, including Sotret, gabapentin, and ciprofloxacin... Ranbaxy also acknowledged that the FDA’s 2006 and 2008 inspections of the Dewas facility found the same issues with incomplete testing records and an inadequate stability program, as well as significant cGMP deviations in the manufacture of certain active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished products.  

There's more, so bear with me on what admittedly is fairly complex corporate malfeasance. I've shared additional detail in previous blog posts for those who really want to learn about the Ranbaxy-related scandals.

First, Gurinder Singh, the current RSSB guru, reportedly was highly involved in Ranbaxy dealings. In 2016 a Singapore tribunal awarded Daiichi Sankyo about $500 million in damages because Ranbaxy hadn't divulged its pharmaceutical quality problems in the course of the sale to Daiichi Sankyo.

Then, according to the preceding link, "In 2018, Daiichi Sankyo approached the Indian Supreme Court with the allegation that the Singh brothers were diverting funds using a number of shell companies to avoid the payments."

Now Gurinder Singh enters the picture again. Because Malvinder Singh accused the RSSB guru in a criminal lawsuit of being a recipient of that massive money diversion via shell companies. Religare and Fortis were companies once owned by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh into which they pumped much of the $2 billion received from the sale of Ranbaxy.

In 2019, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, or SFIO, was also probing their [Singh brothers] role in an alleged fund diversion at Fortis Healthcare. After its initial probe, the SFIO had said that it believed that the fraud could be to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore. The Securities and Exchange Board of India and the SFIO suspected that the Singh brothers had diverted public money from Fortis Healthcare to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and other religious bodies.

In 2019 Gurinder Singh, his family, and close associates were ordered by the High Court of Delhi to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to RHC Holding so the money that was siphoned off into their pockets could be used to pay what Malvinder and Shivinder Singh owed Daiichi Sankyo. 

NEW DELHI: Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the spiritual head of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), his family members and associates are among 55 individuals and entities ordered by a court to pay over Rs 6,000 crore owed to RHC Holding in connection with the settlement of a dispute related to Daiichi Sankyo’s acquisition of Ranbaxy Laboratories.

The Delhi high court ordered Dhillonʼs wife Shabnam, sons Gurkirat and Gurpreet and daughter-in-law Nayan Tara, among others, to pay up the amount due to RHC Holding, the flagship holding company of the Singh brothers who formerly owned Ranbaxy. Money will also be recovered from former Religare Enterprises chief Sunil Godhwani and his brother Sanjay Godhwani. The non-banking financial services conglomerate was formerly promoted by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh.

So Jasdeep Singh was part of the financial scandals that started with the illegal actions by Ranbaxy regarding dangerously adulterated pharmaceuticals at a time when Gurinder Singh's nephew, Malvinder Singh, was CEO of Ranbaxy and Jasdeep Singh was an executive assistant to Malvinder.

In my post, "'Dirty money' tied to RSSB guru's Ranbaxy wealth," I quoted from a Wikipedia article about Malvinder Singh and Ranbaxy.

Malvinder Singh's tenure as CEO of Ranbaxy starting in 2006 is controversial. Corporate culture of fraud continued unchecked under his tenure.

Jasdeep Singh, the guru-in-waiting of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the hand-chosen successor to Gurinder Singh, became the executive assistant to Malvinder Singh in 2006. It's difficult to imagine that someone so close to the Ranbaxy CEO, who almost certainly was hired by Malvinder, wasn't aware of that "corporate culture of fraud" during the four years he worked at Ranbaxy.

Jasdeep Singh Gill should be questioned about this by the Indian financial press. He's a distant cousin of Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Malvinder Singh also is related to Gurinder Singh, a nephew I believe, though genealogy isn't my strong suit. Here's a Family Tree that someone sent to me today. The Gill and Dhillon families are linked.

Given how closely Gurinder Singh was involved with Ranbaxy and the Singh brothers at the time, it seems entirely possible that the RSSB guru had a say in the hiring of Jasdeep by Malvinder. You know, keep everything in the family. 

Now Gurinder has chosen Jasdeep as his successor, also keeping the RSSB guru'dom in the family. It's unsure why this happened now. RSSB says that the guru's health is fine. If that's true, then it's possible that the guru's legal problems played a role in his decision to step aside from managing the large RSSB financial and real estate holdings, handing that over to Jasdeep as of a few days ago.

I give credit for stimulating this post to a Church of the Churchless reader who emailed me with thoughts about Jasdeep Singh Gill's connection with Ranbaxy. This person had read Bottle of Lies, a book about the fraud in the generic drug industry. An excerpt from the book about Ranbaxy was shared with me:

At the behest of managers, the scientists substituted lower-purity ingredients for higher ones to reduce costs. They altered test parameters so that formulations with higher impurities could be approved. They faked dissolution studies. 

 

For some markets, the company fraudulently mixed and matched data streams, taking the best data from manufacturing in one market and presenting it to regulators elsewhere as data unique to the drugs in their markets. For other markets, the company simply invented data. Document forgery was pervasive.

 

The company even forged its own standard operating procedures, which FDA investigators rely on to assess whether a company is following its own policies.

 

In one instance, employees backdated documents and then artificially aged them in a steamy room overnight in an attempt to fool regulators during inspections.

 

There was little effort to conceal this method of doing business. It was common knowledge,  from senior managers and heads of research and development  to people responsible for formulation and the clinical people. Essentially, Ranbaxy's manufacturing standards boiled down to whatever the company could get away with.'

This person commented:

What am trying to get at is that if it was common knowledge all this was taking place, plus the using of brand name drugs crushed up and made into capsules to be tested plus superimposing brand-name test results onto their own applications, unless everyone was briefed to change tactics, there is no way Gill couldn't have known.

Here's more of what this person wrote to me. The quote at the beginning is from an unnamed source. It seems accurate.

Malvinder and Shivinder Singh were running Ranbaxy until 2008 when they sold their stake.

 

"11 June 2008, Malvinder Singh stunned the Indian business world by announcing that he and his brother were selling their 33.5% stake in Ranbaxy to the Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo for $2 billion."

 

'Stunned' the business world because Ranbaxy was at its peak. Malvinder and Shivinder were arrested in October 2019.

 

So Gill was there during the rampant fraud going on and Ranbaxy had Malvinder as CEO. Gill must have been aware something was wrong?

 

Thakur, the main whistleblower knew there was something seriously wrong in 2003. Thakur encountered chaos. Disputes at executive meetings sometimes escalated into fistfights. He said, "There was no structure. It was the complete antithesis of everything I had learned for ten or twelve years."

 

Everyone tried to block every single attempt he introduced to sort the mess out. His boss who had employed him resigned because of the rampant corruption. He told Thakur he knew enough to bring the company down.

 

I have to condense this. Brian.

 

His next boss had the same problem. He discovered there was astonishing fraud going on. Astonishing is the right word! Ranbaxy was lying about everything. The drugs destined for terribly sick AIDS patients had not even been tested.

 

When Thakur's boss 2 told the corporate office the drugs must be immediately withdrawn, they refused. Thakur's boss responded by telling them he was a physician and no way was he going to sign off something he knew full well was going to cause harm to patients. Either they pull the stuff off the market or he was resigning. 

 

Anyway, Ranbaxy was faking its dossiers to the FDA, Europe and India. At behest of the managers of Ranbaxy, (Malvinder and Shivinder) scientists substituted lower purity ingredients for higher ones to reduce cost. They faked everything. To generate normal results, they crushed up brand name drugs into capsules so that they could be tested instead of Ranbaxy's own drugs. They then used the brand-name results as their own.

 

It goes on an on. In markets including Brazil, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Peru, and Dominican Republic, Ranbaxy simply invented all the data. Thakur's boss 2 resigned when they refused to withdraw the crap drugs and stop selling them to all these countries.

 

Then they got rid of Thakur because they knew he knew too much. After they combed his computer for incriminating evidence against Ranbaxy they hacked his servers and planted his IP address on porn sites.

 

Thakur was furious and handed in his resignation providing the evidence of computer tampering. Thakur then decided to contact the FDA and present his evidence....long story.....

 

Will leave it there, Brian because it's a long, convoluted saga but just to give you a preliminary background sketch.

 

I can't believe Gill was not aware of what was going on. He was there when Malvinder and Shivinder were at the helm for four whole years until they sold their stake to the Japanese company when they were being asked to present legal data to UNICEF which they couldn't do. Neither could they supply data to the FDA.....am being vèry brief. 

 

And who got Gill the job? More nepotism? Gill is Babaji's [Gurinder Singh's] mother's sister's grandson. They are related. Yikes!

Let's make sense of the strange RSSB guru succession episode

I'm used to strange things happening in the realm of religion.

After all, this is where we humans believe in the strangest things: a virgin birth, commandments issuing from God, and in the case of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religion, a guru who is God in Human Form.

At least, that's how the RSSB teachings describe the guru, a fact that I'm well aware of, since I was an active member of RSSB for thirty-five years. 

So when the RSSB guru announces a successor, this is a big deal in the eyes of RSSB devotees. It's also newsworthy otherwise, since RSSB has enough followers to be a significant political force in India, especially in the Punjab, where the organization's headquarters is located.

As noted in my first post about the recent strange RSSB guru succession episode, "RSSB guru appoints Jasdeep Singh Gill as successor," traditionally this has happened much differently than what transpired this time.

Always, to my knowledge, the RSSB process has worked this way. If anyone can point out why I'm wrong, do so in a comment; I don't claim to be an expert in the history of RSSB.

A guru of advancing years makes known who their successor will be in a document that isn't made public until after the guru's death. Then it is opened and the RSSB membership learns who the new guru is. The guru is inaugurated, so to speak, through a turban-tying ceremony (Dastar-bandi) that's part of the Sikh tradition.

But the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, did things differently.

His chosen successor, Jasdeep Singh Gill (a distant relative), was announced while Dhillon was very much alive. Because this meant that two RSSB gurus were alive at the same time, considerable confusion resulted from the succession announcement.

This official succession announcement must have been approved by Dhillon. It seems inconceivable that something so important would have been approved by someone else without Dhillon's knowledge of the wording.

The first paragraph of this announcement says that Dhillon is both the Satguru (true guru) and Patron of RSSB. Satguru refers to the spiritual side of the guru's duties. I take it that Patron refers to the organizational/management side of the guru's duties. Gill has been nominated as Patron, effective immediately from September 2, 2024.

The second paragraph of the announcement goes further, saying that Gill also shall succeed Dhillon as the Satguru of RSSB and will have the authority of giving initiation. Not surprisingly, this caused most people, journalists included who wrote stories about the RSSB succession, to conclude that Gill not only has become the Patron of RSSB, he also is the Satguru. 

That conclusion is reinforced by the third paragraph, which says that Dhillon (Baba Ji) wishes and requests that the same love and affection he has received from RSSB members (Sangat) be given to Gill in carrying out his service (Sewa) "as Patron as well as Sant Satguru." Again, both: Patron and Satguru.

Note that the announcement says "For Information of Entire Sangat." That's every member of RSSB, who number in the millions worldwide, I believe. So this announcement was widely shared. I'm no longer a member of RSSB, but I got copies of it from several people who knew I'd be interested in it.

Also note that the subject of the announcement is "Nomination of Patron and Sant Satguru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas." Nothing in the announcement says that Gill has to wait to carry out these roles. The whole tone of the announcement is that this is happening now, not in the future.

However, the RSSB web site had a different tone. I'm not sure when the web site message was published. As mentioned below, I suspect it was considerably after the just-discussed announcement. 

The web site says that Gill will become the Patron of RSSB right away,  but will succeed Dhillon as the Satguru and have the authority to initiate people in the future. So Gill is an instant RSSB manager and a RSSB guru-in-waiting.

A story in The Tribune, "Day after flip-flop over Beas dera head, Dhillon and Gill share stage," indicates that the RSSB web site language is the result of Dhillon changing his mind about having Gill become the full-blown RSSB guru -- both Patron and Satguru, as the three paragraph announcement said was happening. 
Download Day after flip-flop over Beas dera head Dhillon and Gill share stage - The Tribune

Here's excerpts from the story.

A day after a ‘clarification’ over the occupant of ‘Sant Satguru’ (spiritual head) seat of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), ‘Babaji’ Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his successor, the newly appointed patron ‘Huzur’ Jasdeep Singh Gill, shared the stage in the presence of a large number of dera followers, who converged at its main centre located 45 km from here.

Gill (45), a distant relative of Dhillon, has been appointed the patron of all RSSB Societies with effect from September 2 as part of the succession plan. On the official website of RSSB, the title ‘Huzur’ has been prefixed with his name and a photograph showing Dhillon with Gill has also been uploaded.

It is learnt that confusion ensued among the followers about the sudden development and they started pouring in last evening when the announcement of Gill as successor was made.

...An earlier communiqué issued yesterday on behalf of Dhillon read: “He has received full support and love of Sangat. He has wished and requested same love and affection be given to Jasdeep Singh Gill as patron as well as Sant Satguru”.

Following this, the followers gathered at the dera, apparently upset at the impending exit of Dhillon. They seemed to be pacified only after the RSSB issued a ‘clarification’ late last evening, stating that Dhillon would continue to lead as ‘Sant Satguru’.

Devender Kumar Sikri, secretary of the RSSB, said Gill would eventually be the the Sant Satguru and will then have the authority of bestowing ‘Naam Daan’. “Till then, he will remain in attendance with Babaji (Dhillon) for the scheduled satsangs,” he said.

So it appears that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current RSSB guru, changed his mind about handing over to Gill both the spiritual and management duties of the guru. Nothing wrong with that. To me, it just shows that even a supposed "God in Human Form" makes mistakes and learns from experience. That's how it is with all people. Even gurus.

RSSB guru appoints Jasdeep Singh Gill as successor

NOTE: I just saw in a comment on this post a link to a story about RSSB now saying that Gill actually won't have initiation authority as a previous RSSB message shared in this post said. Reportedly this occurred after RSSB members got upset about the news. Here's how The Tribune story starts out: "In a dramatic turn of events, the spiritual head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon (69), nominated his distant relative Jasdeep Singh Gill (45) as his successor with 'immediate effect', but later decided to continue to hold his position."

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

Big news in the world of Indian gurus! The guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon, has appointed Jasdeep Singh Gill as his successor. 

This is the first time that's happened in RSSB history. Previously, a guru would appoint a successor who took over after the guru's death. Now Dhillon has done this while still alive. 

RSSB has a notice on its web site.

It sort of sounds from this like there will be two RSSB gurus. Dhillon will remain as the "real" guru for a while and Gill will become the full-blown guru in the future after becoming Patron now, basically manager of RSSB's operations. Apparently only Dhillon will be initiating new disciples until Gill gets the go-ahead to initiate once he becomes the full-blown guru at some point, though this is contradicted by news stories below. 

This will be confusing theologically. But, hey, Dhillon hasn't been a traditional guru so it fits with his style.

UPDATE #1: Just checked my email and saw that several people sent me a RSSB notice saying that Gill has initiation power. So it looks like RSSB now has two full-blown gurus at the same time.

The Economic Times has a story about Gill. It starts this way, contradicting what the RSSB web site says about when Gill will become the "sant satguru" with initiation power.
Download Who is Jasdeep Singh Gill Radha Soami Satsang Beas' new head and former Cipla CSO

A Hindustani Times story also says that Gill will be initiating new disciples. Guess we'll just have to wait and see whether RSSB now has two satgurus: one complete satguru and one incomplete satguru. Or maybe there are two complete gurus, which will confuse disciples who won't know which they should bow most deeply to. [Note UPDATE above: this seems to be the case, since Gill apparently will be initiating people.]

Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated his successor, 45-year-old Jasdeep Singh Gill, as patron and ‘sant satguru’ of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas Society with immediate effect.

In a significant development, the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organisation headquartered on the banks of the Beas river near Amritsar, on Monday announced that its head Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated Jasdeep Singh Gill, 45, a doctorate in chemical engineering from Cambridge and an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, alumnus, as its patron and ‘sant satguru’. 

A statement by RSSB secretary Devender Kumar Sikri said: “Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated Jasdeep Singh Gill, son of Sukhdev Singh Gill, as patron of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas Society with immediate effect from September 2, 2024.

“Jasdeep Singh Gill shall also succeed Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon as the Sant Satguru of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas Society and will have the authority of giving initiation (naam),” Sikri said, adding “Baba Ji has expressed that like he has received full support and love of the ‘sangat’ after Huzur Maharaj ji, he has wished and requested that the same love and affection be given to Jasdeep Singh Gill in carrying out his ‘sewa (service)’ as patron and sang satguru.”

UPDATE #2: I received this thoughtful message from "DSK" just now. Wanted to pass it along with this person's permission.

Dear Mr. Hines,

I have, for many years, followed with great interest the RSSB part of your blog because I come from a Radhasoami family.

I write to draw your attention to this morning's rather surprising announcement that Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon has nominated his successor, an academic and businessman called Jasdeep Singh Gill. As per the expected RSSB style, the announcement on its official website is low-key, inconspicuous and provides only the most basic information on the newly appointed Guru: https://rssb.org/JSG.html.

The speed and suddenness with which the decision was made is enough to pique the curiosity of even an aloof observer such as myself. It is of course entirely likely that the search for a candidate has been going on for any number of months or years before settling on this one, but for most satsangis including my parents, news of this sort was only ever going to be received negatively.

There are accounts, for example, of a spate of suicides during a previous succession described in the RSSB literature, and other drastic emotionally-charged reactions. The stakes are high, and RSSB has made its way into almost every country on earth; a coordinated emotional outburst on a worldwide scale that is anything like those of the past would be catastrophic in its proportions, and, more importantly for GSD, would be terrible publicity for the sect.

On the less emotional side of the spectrum, it is a known phenomenon for even longstanding satsangis to reject the new Guru and go their own way: accounts of this too can be found in the RSSB literature — they simply cannot "feel" connected to the new Guru, they simply cannot bring themselves to attend satsang, and so on. I partly suspect that GSD simply wishes to cushion the ill but inevitable effects of the transition on such a neurotic, dependent and obsessive population that is the sangat by nominating and "training" the new Guru whilst still living, breathing, and giving satsang, almost like — an apprentice!

A separate but related observation. More important than the satsangis are those high-ranking disciples of GSD who have amassed enough material support, enough popularity, and enough prestige, either to attempt to claim the Guruship for themselves from within, or break away and form their own splinter groups under the same or a similar banner.

Those who are familiar with RSSB history and literature will already be aware of the various Guruship claims, iterations, and spin-offs that have accompanied every succession so far. With the organisation having grown as large as it is today, a succession dispute would be akin to a schism in the Catholic Church, and a spin-off would represent the loss of hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of disciples as they are siphoned off into the worship of yet another pop-up dera.

And this would be shown in all its terrible ugliness by the Indian media. Best to have a successor in line that everyone can agree on whilst still alive, and avoid the dramas. GSD has learned from the dark days of RSSB's previous successions, and is trying a strategy which he hopes will obviate these risks.

The new satguru has, you will observe, already been assigned his spiritual title of "Huzur," which, while I suppose does have the practical effect of distinguishing one Guru from another in speaking and writing, it more importantly allows for a modicum of pretence at a grandeur that comes with, say, regnal and papal titles.

Every Guru in the lineage has some sort of title or "nickname" by which he is exclusively addressed by all disciples, and which appears to me to be specifically contrived to demarcate the newly anointed divine Master's identity from his previous merely human identity:

1. Soamiji Maharaj (from Shiv Dayal Singh)
2. Babaji Maharaj (from Jaimal Singh)
3. Bade Maharaj/Huzur Maharaj, et al. (from Sawan Singh)
4. Sardar Bahadur Maharaj Ji (from Jagat Singh)
5. Hazur Maharaj (from Charan Singh)
6. Babaji (from Gurinder Singh Dhillon)

Though the titles tend not to be too over-the-top in comparison with other Indian-style sects of similar type, we can still see that RSSB, with its dour rejection of the majestic, the ritual and the ceremonial, appears at least subconsciously to have preserved this nominal element of traditional succession.

It remains to be seen what will become of the old Dastarbandi, the traditional turban-tying ceremony, considered by many satsangis to be almost akin to a coronation. The communique (attached) makes it clear that the succession is "with immediate effect" from today. This may not seem significant to many, but to the masses of satsangis who have grown attached to the current Guru, whether Indian or diaspora, a ceremony represents a visible transfer of authority which fits in nicely with the simple "God-In-Human-Form" style of theology.

A transitional apprenticeship period now blurs these lines. "How can there be two Gods, two Babajis?" I hear my mother ask. I suppose we shall find out soon enough under the new diarchy.

A final point to be made is that it is clear for anyone with eyes to see that successors are not selected for their piety or religious merit, but for their business, management and administration skills. A quick perusal of the Successor's profile will make this plain enough to even the most casual observer. RSSB is no longer a religious organisation; it is an organisation with some religious activities, and must be run accordingly. The present Master is part-Guru, part-CEO. The new Master will be more CEO than Guru.

Why teachers are needed, but not gurus

Back in my true believing days, the 35 years that I was an active member of a guru-centered religious organization (Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB), I accepted the RSSB adage that a guru was needed because we require teachers throughout our life, and finding God or our true self, pretty much the same thing according to RSSB, really required a teacher, being so difficult on our own.

That made sense at the time, but not now. For in my present way of looking at reality, there's a big difference between needing a teacher (who can be really valuable) and a guru (who can be really problematic). 

I'm not going to rely on dictionary definitions of "teacher" and "guru," because these don't capture the emotional difference between people who embrace someone they call a teacher and someone they call a guru. Being intimately familiar with this difference, having experienced it myself, I'll explain what I mean.

I've had many teachers of various sorts in my life. When I was young, they were classroom teachers in elementary school, high school, and college. When I was working, they were people who knew more than I did about some subject. When I played competitive tennis, they were instructors and coaches who could help me with the flaws in my game. I also consider that every book I've read has taught me something, so all the authors I've read during my lifetime have been teachers.

This just scratches the surface, of course. My wife has been my teacher, along with my daughter and granddaughter. Dogs and cats also. Plus movies and television shows. There's no end to the teachers we encounter, looking upon "teacher" as any entity that helps us learn something. Nature can be a great teacher.

But here's the thing: I've never looked upon any teacher as infallible or irreplaceable. Each of them had strengths and weaknesses. I never worshipped any of them. I never viewed any of them as being different in kind than I was. They simply knew something that I didn't, so there was a flow of knowledge from them to me. Of course, often there was a return flow also, since students can be sources of knowledge for teachers. It goes both ways. 

If a teacher wasn't meeting my needs, I had no problem letting them go and finding a better teacher. Athletes do this all the time with coaches. Students do this all the time with their instructors. For it isn't the person that is important in teaching, it is the knowledge being transmitted from the teacher. If I could get more of that knowledge from someone else, I happily said goodbye to a teacher. 

A guru often, or usually, is looked upon in a different way.

I'm speaking here of real gurus, not those who just have that title applied to them casually, as in "he's a real guru when it comes to fixing computer problems." I'm talking about people who claim to have spiritual, mystical, or religious knowledge that can be conveyed to students, often termed disciples. These gurus typically are viewed as possessing wisdom that others lack, which merits a level of devotion to them that teachers aren't entitled to.

I say this as someone who has been criticized many times by visitors to this blog for not sticking with the RSSB guru who initiated me in 1971, Charan Singh, for my entire life. I'd sometimes reply to those criticisms by saying that I've had two wives, many cars, lots of different teachers, various jobs, numerous houses, and varied political beliefs. So why the heck should meditation or spirituality be the only part of my life that can never change? Why can't I say farewell to Charan Singh, especially since he died in 1990?

The reason offered by avid guru-worshippers was along the lines of, you were initiated by a perfect living guru, God in Human Form; this is a lifetime commitment; even if you don't get the hoped-for results or knowledge, you should have stuck with the guru. 

Well, that's ridiculous.

This attitude assumes that a guru has supernatural powers, so is able to bring benefits to a disciple that an ordinary meditation teacher -- person, book, video, whatever -- can't provide. I heartily disagree with this faith-based assumption. I can easily do this, because I used to be a disciple who felt that way, so I know how wishful thinking can lead followers of a guru astray.

Almost certainly, the human brain and mind is as physical an entity as rocks, trees, and grass are. The only difference is that our brains are hugely complex, capable of so much more than other physical objects are. Given that complexity, sometimes we need teachers to point the way toward a good way to meditate, practice mindfulness, be happier, and other possible goals.

And sometimes we don't need any help at all, being capable of figuring things out by ourselves. It just depends on a person and their situation. Serious mental illness may require a psychiatrist. Merely feeling down may just require a walk in nature. 

I'm not saying that embracing a guru is always the wrong thing to do. This felt absolutely right to me at a certain point in my life. However, I do believe that viewing a guru as divine, as perfect, as beyond criticism, is dangerous. For most of the 35 years I was a part of RSSB, I kept telling myself something that I read in a book by Huston Smith, who heard this from a Zen practitioner.

I have a new koan: I could be wrong. 

Beautiful. I readily admit that I could be wrong about gurus. All I ask is that those who follow a guru say the same thing about the person they're devoted to: I could be wrong. 

RSSB national satsang at Haynes Park leaves attendee with "disbelief and disappointment"

Since I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) for 35 years until I became disillusioned with this India-based religious organization headed up by a guru considered to be God in Human form, I like to share messages from other people who don't like what RSSB has become.

Below is a comment left on a recent Church of the Churchless blog post by M B Sharma. I enjoyed his honest "review" of a RSSB talk, or satsang, apparently given by Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current guru. 

Sharma alludes to the fact that while the RSSB teachings clearly state that the primary purpose of human life is God-realization, which requires living a pure and simple life, Gurinder Singh enjoys a lavish lifestyle and has been accused of financial misdeeds that reportedly enriched the Dhillon family with hundreds of millions of dollars. 

There's many posts about this on this blog. Here's a couple of them:
More details surface about financial fraud involving RSSB guru
Why the RSSB guru is responsible for financial fraud

In 2018 Gurinder Singh Dhillon reportedly said that he'd answer questions about his involvement in the financial misdeeds. I'm quite sure that this never happened. In his comment, Sharma says that people attending the RSSB satsang were told they couldn't ask questions about the guru's involvement in shell companies or his financial dealings.

So much for transparency and truth-telling. Apparently that's something RSSB initiates should do, but the RSSB guru is exempt. Here's what Sharma said:

I recently attended what is referred to as the national satsang in Haynes, Bedford, UK, and I left with a deep sense of disbelief and disappointment. The event, which draws crowds from all over, turned out to be little more than a recital of selected poetry from saints or teachings from previous RSSB leaders. There was nothing new, nothing profound—just a repetitive cycle of words that seemed designed to maintain a facade rather than inspire genuine spiritual growth.

The Q&A session, which I had hoped would offer some clarity, was even more bewildering. The responses were vague and confusing, leaving me with more questions than answers. It felt as though real issues were being sidestepped, and any attempt at deeper inquiry was subtly discouraged.

The satsang took place in a sprawling mansion, a stark contrast to the simplicity one might expect from a spiritual gathering. What struck me most was the realization that GSD has a private residence within the premises, a well-guarded house that raises serious questions. How did he manage to secure such a luxurious home on land bought under the guise of charity? This residence is maintained by sevadaars—volunteers who provide free housekeeping and other services. It seems this place serves as his holiday retreat, where he spends 5-6 months each year.

Observing the opulence surrounding GSD, it’s hard to reconcile his lifestyle with that of a genuine spiritual leader. Yet, his sevadaars, some of whom are reportedly paid handsomely, work tirelessly to project him as a divine figure, a 'God in human form.' The commercialization of the event was evident—after the program, there were stalls selling food, books, and even photographs of GSD. Donation boxes were scattered everywhere, inviting contributions without providing any receipts, making it impossible to account for the funds collected. Not be surprised if it used for money laundry.

Given the substantial income generated, one would expect that the organizers could at least provide free food, especially considering that many attendees travel long distances. However, the irony is that the food sold is prepared by volunteer sevadaars, who then have to pay for it themselves.

I also learned that attendees are not allowed to ask about GSD’s involvement in shell companies or his financial dealings. Questions must be submitted in advance, and only a select few are permitted to speak. This level of control was not seen a few years ago, and it seems designed to prevent any scrutiny.

The security at the event was on par with that of an airport—rigorous checks, and no phones allowed. The atmosphere was more reminiscent of a high-security event than a spiritual gathering.

Having returned after a long time, I couldn’t help but feel that the situation is deteriorating. The contrast between the message of simplicity and humility and the reality of luxury and control was too glaring to ignore. I can only hope that the truth will eventually emerge if there is truly a higher power overseeing all of this.

This is a comment by AAM in response to what Sharma said. 

@M. B. Sharma, I have to agree the atmosphere at these events have deteriorated, as there isn't much spiritual inspiration. Of course, the representatives are quick to tell you that the problem is with you. You are not receptive. You get what you come to get. May not be attending in the future.

Look without, not within, is the best spiritual advice

For thirty-five years I belonged to a guru-centered religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), whose teachings centered around a meditation approach aimed at "going within." 

Through the repetition of a mantra, visualization of the guru, and observation by one's inner senses of theorized divine sound and light, the promise was that realms of reality beyond the physical would be experienced on the road to God-realization.

Nice idea. Never happened to me. Nor did it happen to anyone else associated with RSSB who I talked with over those thirty-five years. And believe me, I talked with lots of RSSB initiates.

Now, the whole notion of going within doesn't make much sense to me. I meditated in that fashion for over three decades. Eventually I realized that this sort of meditation can lead to concentration, but it isn't a useful means of living a more satisfying life, since life is lived without, not within.

Buddhist'y meditation, which typically involves following one's breath, being mindful of external perceptions, and having the eyes open at times and closed at times, strikes me as a wiser form of spirituality.

In Thomas Metzinger's book, The Elephant and the Blind, which is about the experience of pure awareness either in meditation or in everyday activities, he makes an astute observation in the "Coming Home" chapter.

For now, we can simply conclude that on this reading -- treating it as something aimed at successful practice (not as metaphysics) -- the classical motif of "recognizing your own true nature" would really describe the possibility of a shift in the unit of identification: the possibility of pure awareness becoming that from which the world is now experienced, as opposed to that at which the meditating self looks.

Metzinger says that a common mostly unconscious belief in the brain holds that (1) we have a preexisting, perhaps innate, true nature, and (2) this nature can be recognized. This certainly fits with the RSSB meditation I was taught which theorized that our true nature is soul, but soul is disguised by coverings of mind and matter that need to be removed so our pristine immaterial nature is recognized.

Maybe, but I deeply doubt it. 

What seems much more likely is that we do not possess any sort of enduring, unchanging true nature, commonly termed the Self. Instead, we are an ever-changing collection of qualities that arise from countless causes and conditions extending for vast periods of past time -- all the way back to the big bang, really.

As I frequently say to myself, No self, no free will, no problem. 

If I look within, I won't find anything very interesting. Just more of me. Thoughts, emotions, memories, anticipations. When my mind is silent and still, there's a certain peace, but this is an absence, not a presence. Deep dreamless sleep is peaceful also, as is death. Why would I want that before I die?

I enjoy a certain state of pure awareness where I feel what Metzinger said in the quotation above: becoming that from which the world is experienced. It's hard to put into words what this feeling is like for me. 

One way to put it is Douglas Harding's well-known adage of having no head. At first this seemed ridiculous, since obviously I and everybody else has a head.

But what he means is that when we look with eyes open, what we see is the world, not a head. A head only appears when we look in a mirror, or at a photograph of ourself, which entails making an object of ourself.

Our subjectivity, our consciousness, has no head. There is no place where we could "go within." That's a fantasy, an abstraction with no basis in reality. What is real is our awareness from which the world is experienced. It makes no sense for awareness to be that at which the meditating self looks, because awareness is what is doing the looking, and we can't look at what is doing the looking. 

Expressed in words, this sounds confusing. But in my actual life, it is very simple. At times throughout the day, I feel the breath passing in and out of my nostrils. Centered in that physical sensation, I view the world as if it were my head. Which indeed, it is, for the only way I can know anything is by being aware of it.

Looking without rather than within feels better to me. Again, the world is much more interesting than I am. My thoughts and feelings are very familiar to me. I much prefer to have the world be my head, rather than my head be my head.

That may sound crazy to you. It does seem that way when I read the words I just wrote. All I can say is that it reflects how I feel, albeit imperfectly. That's the problem with words. They aren't reality.

Why Christians believe in the resurrection is why other people believe in gurus

Recently I got an email from Gary Mason, a former evangelical Christian turned religious skeptic, who shared with me a marvelous approach to arguing against anyone who believes there is solid evidence for Jesus' resurrection.

The post is titled "Best Method to Defeat Evangelical Apologists: The Ghost Buster Counter-Apologetics Technique." 

Since I've never believed in the resurrection, though I dabbled with believing in the historical Jesus briefly during my college days when I got involved with a crazed Greek yoga teacher who blended West and East in his Christananda ashram (the 1960s were weird), at first I thought Mason's post didn't have much relevance for me.

But after reading it, I realized that the reason evangelical Christians believe in the resurrection -- because they feel the spirit of Jesus within them -- is the same reason members of the India-based organization I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, believe that their guru is guiding them from within.

They feel the guru's spirit. More accurately, they imagine that a sensation within their consciousness is evidence for a massive metaphysical and supernatural assumption: a divine being is communicating with them.

So it's interesting that while Christianity and Sant Mat, the umbrella term for the religious philosophy of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and similar groups -- Sant Mat means "path of the saints" -- have very different core teachings, the basis for believing in those core beliefs is quite similar.

Mason argues that there are two main pillars supporting a belief that Jesus was resurrected, which obviously is very important, if not absolutely essential, to being a traditional Christian: the historical record and an inner communication with the spirit of Jesus.

He points out that the historical record is very weak as regards the resurrection. 

Yet with all this evidence, Saul did not believe in the Resurrection. Really? Dozens if not hundreds  of dead saints were “raised to life” out of their graves on that first Easter Sunday, but Saul still doubted? Was he an idiot? It took a “heavenly vision” three years later to finally convince him.

What about the rest of Jerusalem’s Jews? Thousands greeted Jesus on Palm Sunday as the new King of Israel, but according to the Book of Acts, only 120 of them were still followers of “The  Way” on the morning of Pentecost. So even the Christian Scriptures provide evidence that the overwhelming majority of the people of Jerusalem were not impressed by the evidence for the Resurrection. Why? Were most first century Jews idiots?

Many Christian apologists say there is  another, more sinister, reason why most Jews did not believe. They quote Paul in Acts 28: Jews are a calloused, hard-hearted people who have closed their eyes and ears to the truth. That is why most of them did not, and still do not today, believe the Resurrection evidence. (They are evil.) God has therefore turned his back on the Jews and offered salvation to the Gentiles. Gentiles will believe the (strong) evidence.  

Ok… But what about the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims, Hindus, and other non Christian theists do not believe the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? No public university history textbook on planet earth lists the resurrection of Jesus as an historical fact. Is everyone calloused and hard-hearted against Christianity’s “strong evidence”? Is that why all non Christians, Jews and Gentiles, do not believe in the historicity of the Resurrection? 

This leaves the feeling Christians have that Jesus lives on within them. 

This is why skeptics should not debate evangelical Christians regarding the historical evidence for the Resurrection. It is a waste of everyone’s time. The real issue everyone should focus on is the evangelical belief: “The Testimony of the Holy Spirit”. All Christians believe that the spirit of Jesus  (“the Holy Spirit”) dwells (lives) inside each true Christian. However, evangelicals take it a step  further. Evangelicals believe that they can perceive Jesus’ presence within them and that Jesus’s spirit, living within them, communicates with them in a non-audible voice, giving them life guidance on a daily basis. Evangelicals believe they can feel the presence of Jesus inside their bodies!

Well, that's exactly what many fundamentalist devotees believe is true of the guru who initiated them into Sant Mat: the guru, who is viewed as God in Human Form, guides them just like Jesus on a daily basis, and they can feel his inner presence. 

Mason sums up his position at the end of the post:

Conclusion: Evangelical apologists claim that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is very strong, as strong if not stronger than the evidence for any other major event in Antiquity. But no one who believes that Caesar crossed the Rubicon believes that the spirit of Caesar dwells within him, testifying to him of the historicity of the Rubicon crossing in a still, small voice!

For evangelicals to claim that they can objectively evaluate the historical evidence for Jesus’ alleged bodily  resurrection is ludicrous. They are hopelessly biased by the delusion that the ghost of the man in question lives within them.  

Belief that a spirit (ghost) lives inside you, dear Christian, is a delusion. It is nothing more than an ancient superstition. Superstitions are for children, not adults. 

Evangelicals for the most part are good, kind-hearted people but their delusion of a ghost living  inside them, a ghost who gives them life guidance on every facet of life, including politics and social issues, is dangerous for our society and the world.

We must do all we can to help our evangelical friends and neighbors see that their invisible best friend, whom they believe lives inside them and communicates with them, is no more real than the imaginary friend of a lonely child. Jesus is dead, friends. Ghosts are not real. 

Dear Evangelical apologist:

1. You believe the ghost of the man whose resurrection is in question lives inside you, communicating with you in a still, small voice.

2. You appeal to consensus expert opinion only when it supports your worldview (e.g., the historicity of Jesus) and reject it when it doesn’t (e.g., Darwinian evolution).

How can you expect us to believe that you are capable of objectively evaluating the historical evidence for the Resurrection when the perceived ghost inside of you is given more credence than consensus expert opinion? Don’t these two facts strongly indicate that you are hopelessly biased?

I am trying to help you see the folly of your superstitions, my friend.  You are indoctrinating little children and gullible adults to believe in capricious ghouls who punish people for what they believe.  Thought crimes!  You threaten children with eternal torture simply for what they believe.  How horrific.

Yet, the “evidence” for your belief system is the perceived presence of an invisible, inaudible ghost living inside of you.  You have no objective evidence that the spirit (ghost) of Jesus lives inside of you.  None. A small child who has invented an imaginary friend reports the same subjective feelings of comfort and security. Please see the light of reason and rational thinking.

Amen to that, Brother Mason. Read his entire post for a fuller understanding of his arguments. 

Anyone have opinions on the Soami Bagh line of gurus?

I've communicated via email with someone who had questions about Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the organization I was a member of for 35 years. Now this person is wondering if any visitors to this blog have an opinion about the Soami Bagh branch of Radha Soami.

Below is part of what they said to me. Leave a comment on this post if you have some experience with Soami Bagh.

I've become a Radha Soami skeptic, but for those who aren't, I just noticed that the Soami Bagh web site has some interesting books and other publications available online. Like, the Phelps Notes, which if I recall correctly, was viewed as sort of an underground, "forbidden fruit" book by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Naturally I had a copy, but gave it away at some point.

Can you please put a post up on your blog asking others what sort of experiences that they have had with the Soami Bagh branch of Radha Soami, the so-called parent line?

 

As I have previously mentioned, I am still holding out some hope that there may be a real Sant Sat Guru someplace. But before I go trekking all the way to India, I was curious to hear from some others who may have already gone to Soami Bagh before me.

 

And just so that I am clear, I am asking specifically about the Soami Bagh line. And not the Dayal Bagh line. The Dayal Bagh line is much bigger, but I do not feel any draw towards them.

Why "being at the eye center" isn't possible

In my preceding post, "Joan Tollifson on the Imaginary Vantage Point. Brilliant observations," I shared quotations from one of her books that clearly demonstrated why it makes no sense for a person at one of her talks to claim that they were able to concentrate their mind at a vantage point that enabled them to be aware of the world from a detached distance that they considered to be positive for them.

Just a bit of clear thinking illustrates why this couldn't actually be the case. Meaning, this person wasn't really concentrating their mind at a certain point in their consciousness. All they were doing was thinking or believing that this was happening, and that thought or belief provided them some comfort.

Awareness, or consciousness, is the only way we know anything about the world inside and outside of ourselves. Absent awareness, there's no world for us. And so far as anyone knows -- neuroscientists, mystics, meditators, anyone -- awareness is singular, not plural, for every individual. Meaning, you and I don't have several independent awarenesses or consciousnesses. 

Sure, split brain patients do have their awareness divided in a certain sense, because if the connection between the two halves of the brain is severed, each half has a somewhat different perception of the world. Since language is primarily in the left half of the brain, if a image is presented to the right half, the patient won't be able to describe that in words.

But my understanding is that the split-brain patient still has a single consciousness that enables them to live pretty much normally. Meaning, they have a split brain, but not split consciousness. So says a 2017 research study.

So Tollifson is on solid ground when she points out that any notion of being aware of awareness, or of being conscious of consciousness, or of having a mental vantage point to observe the mind, is just conceptual thinking, not anything real in the brain/mind. This makes a large share of religious and mystical teachings a bunch of bullshit.

For example, the religious group I was a member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), taught that meditation should be practiced by concentrating at the eye center. You know, that supposedly sacred spot in the forehead between the eyes, often termed the Third Eye.

This is similar to the person Tollifson engaged with believing that they could focus their mind at a vantage point. The problem with this is the same problem with believing it's possible to concentrate at the eye center. Since awareness is singular, not plural, everything we experience is as that singular awareness. Repeat, everything. 

You can't focus your mind at the eye center. There's no such thing as the eye center. That's a concept within awareness. Again, you can believe you're focusing your mind at the eye center, or fantasize you're doing this. But that believing and fantasizing is occurring within awareness, as is everything else you experience. 

If it was possible to be aware of awareness, obviously there would have to be (1) awareness, and (2) another awareness that's aware of the first awareness. Of course, if we then wanted to be aware that we were aware of awareness, we'd need a third awareness that's aware of the awareness that's aware of the other awareness.

The problem with this is that it leads to a never-ending cascade of multiple awarenesses, something that doesn't exist, since I've just shown that awareness is singular, not plural. The same problem arises with believing that it is possible for the mind to be focused at the eye center. Who or what is doing the focusing? Another mind? 

Sam Harris, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a wealth of experience with meditation, primarily of the Dzogchen variety, speaks on the guided meditations in his Waking Up app about this issue. He'll frequently ask if it seems that consciousness is inside the head, which is much the same as it seeming that consciousness is inside the eye center.

Harris points out that the sensation of consciousness being inside the head is part of the contents of consciousness. In other words, each of us is simply conscious. We're conscious, or aware, of many different things. One of those things is that consciousness appears to be inside the head, that we're looking out at the world from a vantage point that seems to be at the eye center or forehead.

But again, this sensation of a vantage point is part of the contents of consciousness. Thus Harris agrees with Tollifson that any sense of awareness or consciousness being localized, here rather than there, is within awareness or consciousness. Meaning, we can't look at our awareness or consciousness as an object that can be manipulated, like an apple or rock. 

Awareness or consciousness is how the world is experienced. There's no "we" or "me" outside of awareness. A simple true idea with profound implications. Tollifson writes:

We imagine "me trying to merge with the flow, or be in the flow, or understand the flow. But actually there is only flow. There's no way in or out and there's nothing separate to be in or out. But it doesn't seem that way because the very nature of thought is to divide up and freeze what is actually indivisible and fluid. 

I share a fascinating message critical of Gurinder Singh, with praise of Flora Wood

Below is a message I received yesterday from someone who describes how Gurinder Singh, the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), created a highly negative atmosphere in the United Kingdom after he became the successor to Charan Singh, a much-beloved RSSB guru.

The message also is filled with praise for Flora Wood, a long-time RSSB initiate, or satsangi, who wrote a book for the organization and was a positive influence in the United Kingdom's RSSB membership.

It doesn't surprise me that Gurinder Singh comes in for such criticism in this message. There's plenty of other evidence that at best, Gurinder's ethics are at odds with how previous RSSB gurus have behaved, and at worst, Gurinder has engaged in financial fraud aimed at enriching himself and his family to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Here's the message. "Sewadars" means volunteers. "Sangat" refers to the RSSB community. "Radha Soami" is a greeting used by RSSB initiates. "Haynes Park" is a large RSSB center in the United Kingdom. The "Dera" refers to the RSSB headquarters in India. "Satsang" is a talk about the RSSB teachings.

Dear Brian, I submit this to you anonymously.

In 2005 Mrs Flora Wood was asked by the Dera to write a postscript to her 1965 book In 'Search Of The Way' in which she recalled her Indian experiences with The Great Master Baba Sawan Singh, as well as the history of the birth and development of the British Sangat.

When Mrs Wood's friend, a secretary to her commanding officer in the British Army in India, told her that the colonel had became a satsangi, she followed him in that respect, but only after she had persuaded him to brief her, over dinner, on the teachings and the Master.

Flora Wood, born in 1923, and an early disciple of Sawan Singh, had served as representative to three masters. No satsangi in the UK could deliver a discourse at her level of spirituality and knowledge both of Sant Mat and of the Persian mystics. Under her quiet seemingly hands-off rule the satsang was intimate, peaceful, happy and without dissent.

All this changed when Gurinder made his first visit to the UK, and when Mrs Wood had booked the large Birmingham Convention Center in order to accommodate what had by then, under the guruship of Charan Singh, as well as mass Indian immigration, become a large sangat.

We sewadars positioned at the door of the VIP entrance were in awe expecting that another Charan Singh, whose bearing was that of emperor of emperors, who bathed in divine light, whose aura was of sanctified purity and spiritual radiance, instead witnessed the entry of an angry young man in a turban, boiling with rage, accompanied by a hired security made up of East London gangster types of the kind seen in Guy Ritchie's movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

 

Gurinder glared past our Radha Soamis and into the main hall leaving behind a shocked air of surprise and disappointment.

 

The word quickly spread that he was furious with Mrs Wood for the expense of the venue. Mrs Wood was quickly replaced by a family relation of Gurinders who may or may not have been very familiar with the English language and who confined himself to the Indian group. It is said that he did give a few satsangs in Punjabi to them.

 

From then the British sangat was butchered and by the time of the purchase of Haynes Park and the changeover of once loving sewadars to a sort of unkind Stasi rule, western satsangis were detaching themselves  from RSSB in droves.

 

A political shift to republican thinking about Northern Ireland saw its very capable secretary fired and all power moved far away to Dublin down in the Irish Republic; a long journey to satsang. As it happened however all the western satsangis in northern Ireland, disciples of Charan Singh, no doubt sharing a feeling of many around the world for westerners that the behaviour of Gurinder and his lack of any of the qualities of mastership including his allergy to giving satsang were intolerable, abandoned the Radha Soami Satsang Beas anyway.

 

Mrs Wood passed away at 100 years of age in 2023.

 

As stated in the beginning of this piece Mrs Flora Wood was asked by the Dera in 2005 to write a postscript to her book In 'Search Of The Way.' It can only be surmised that the reason for the Dera's request for this further addition to the text was that she would note in her postscript the new incumbency of Gurinder Singh at the Dera.

 

However, Mrs Wood did no such thing, she did not even mention Gurinder's succession or anything about him. One can only surmise that this very learned and old satsangi saw the successorship in a different light than the general conclusion.

 

It is one of those fantasies of a Dera Baba Jaimal Singh cut off from the larger Sant Mat world outside its gates that a master will always appoint a perfect successor, what used to be called 'Dera gossips.' In the reality of history this is not always the case.

 

Given the vast size of a possibly multi-billion dollar world-wide institution like RSSB with all its housing dependents and even old sewadar pensioners and huge numbers of Satsangars and other properties (particularly all across India) the last Master cannot just throw in the turban and say "OK, there is no worthy successor, we are closing down the RSSB tomorrow!"

 

No, it is just then allowed to rot at the head, true seekers are no longer drawn to it, or leave it when they find it is no longer true and it deteriorated into another religion. That is the kindest way to go about it, a gradual shutdown.

 

All these years later the surviving satsangis of Charan Singh are still in a daze at what happened and have had no explanation from expert sources. There is an unhealed wound in many hearts, there are disciples of Charan Singh who lost their faith in the confusion some of whom want to find the way back to the path.

 

Today the RSSB to any outsider seems like some closed cult, hidden in plain sight from the world. To the spiritually minded internet seekers it is a black hole out of which no Bani comes. Anyone who goes to YouTube and looks up videos of Gurinder might be forgiven in thinking he is an apparatchic or politician of the Bhrata Janata Party or some sort of Raja.

 

He is ever seen surrounded by a posse of police officers or army men as he arrives in his private helicopter or jet somewhere for some reason. There is no teaching that an enquiring mind can grasp from this output, no satsangs of his to listen to (some say he does not give satsang).

 

Is Gurinder Singh a perfect master? Is there something numbers of people have missed? Or is he simply the manager of a large institution playing it by ear? Many would like to know.

I respond to a Sant Mat true believer who sent an email critical of me

Yesterday I got an email from someone who doesn't like that I've strayed from the path of Sant Mat, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) variety, that I followed for 35 years. 

That made me happy, since it had been a while since I've gotten emailed criticism of me. Gosh, I'd been feeling all neglected, so it was a pleasant surprise to get this person's message.

I saved my response for this blog post. No reason to waste the person's message and my reply as being just between us. I've interspersed my responses in italics following their statements in regular type.

It's quite obvious that your lack of true understanding of Sant Mat has led you to totally negate all the teachings.

Hey, not at all. I'm still a vegetarian. Of course, I was a vegetarian before I was initiated into Sant Mat, so it figures that I'd keep on being a vegetarian. I also still meditate every day, though not in the same way I did in my RSSB period. Regarding my "lack of true understanding of Sant Mat," I'll reply to that false assertion below.

Sounds to me from your writings that you basically gave up on the idea of an Oversoul/God, in favor of believing we just die and everything is over and we don't exist.

That's pretty much accurate. However, this wasn't so much a giving up on the idea of God, as of coming to the realization that God is an unnecessary concept for living a meaningful life. If you doubt this, talk to some Buddhists. Or Taoists. Or the large number of people who are agnostics or atheists when it comes to God. Likewise, it wasn't so much that I chose to believe that when we die, we're gone forever. It was more that I realized there was no convincing evidence for life after death. If it turns out that there is, and it's a good life, I'll be pleased to learn this after I die.

If you've ever experienced the sound current and heard it, even for a second, you would understand that this is the essence of consciousness and that this indeed, is what Sant Mat teaches is God.

Well, here's what I said in a 2009 blog post, "Q and A about me about Sant Mat." My experience of the sound current, in the form of a bell sound, lasted more than a second. Yet I didn't understand this as the essence of consciousness and of God. So looks like you're wrong about the even for a second thing.

A few days after I was initiated I heard loud bell sounds inside my head while I was meditating. These never came back. I've had other glimpses of inner light and hearings of inner sound, but these could be (and probably are) produced by the brain, not immaterial soul or spirit.

Not the Master, not following blindly the Master, not being dogmatic, and not following some religious rituals as other religions do.

Hmmmm. You sure sound dogmatic to me. Maybe you should take your own advice.

In fact, if you've read any Sant Mat books you'd see this same teaching about the dogmatic behaviors of religions and that practice of Sant Mat is very practical and scientific, unlike religious rituals which are just the opposite.

Not only did I read every RSSB book published in English up through 2005, when RSSB and I parted ways, I read most of them many times. More: I took copious notes on them in the course of writing three books on behalf of RSSB: God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder; Life is Fair; and Return to the One. So your implication that I don't have an in-depth understanding of the RSSB teachings/Sant Mat is completely wrong. For many years I was a speaker at our local RSSB meetings. I also spoke at regional meetings of RSSB, including one national meeting. Have you read my first book about the relation between the new physics and ancient mysticism? It talks about the scientific nature of meditation, something I still believe in, just not in the same way.

Sounds to me like you're bitter from lack of experience and dedication to the path, even tho you might actually understand it, and have decided to try to turn others against it.

Wrong again. I'm not bitter about my 35 years in the RSSB fold. Those were enjoyable years, by and large. In the same sense, I'm not bitter about my first marriage, which ended in divorce after 18 years -- also mostly enjoyable years. I was extremely dedicated to Sant Mat during those 35 years. Followed the teachings to the best of my ability; did a lot of volunteer service; meditated every day. I do try to convince other people to become spiritually independent, rather than following the dictates of a religion. RSSB is a religion, in my well-informed view, so I use it as an example of the drawbacks of religion because it's the religion I know best. I mostly write about other subjects these days, though for a while I did write many blog posts about RSSB.

That's true ego dominance and it's pretty sad. I hope you can turn from that and become more humble and meditate again if you've learned this.   

I'm always amazed when strangers like you write about me as if you know me better than I know myself. Regarding "ego dominance," it takes a healthy ego to criticize someone you've never met, drawing conclusions about them from very flimsy evidence, none of it direct. I could be wrong, but I don't sense a lot of humility in the message you sent me. Regarding meditation, like I said, I still meditate every day. It's just a Buddhist/mindfulness variety of meditation, not Sant Mat meditation.

God bless --👋

 

Well, I don't really know what that means. Isn't God capable of deciding who to bless, assuming God exists? But thanks for what I'll take to be a kind wish. Nice that you ended on a positive note, since the rest of your message was so negative.

"Perfect" never applies to a guru or other religious leader

In everyday life, I've never heard of anyone described as being perfect. Makes sense.

For one thing, how could "perfect" even be defined as regards a person? For another, assuming it could be defined, how would a person's perfection be assessed? 

In sports, perfect applies to something measurable. If a pitcher has a perfect game, no batter from the opposing team reached a base. A perfect game in bowling is 300 points, strikes in each of the first nine frames plus three in the tenth.

Otherwise, typically perfect means high quality. If a waiter asks a patron how they enjoyed their meal, a highly satisfied person might say, "It was perfect, absolutely perfect."

But in certain religious circles, a guru or other leader may be termed "perfect." Not for something they've done. For who they are.  And that, in my present skeptical atheist mental state, is utterly unbelievable. 

Not always for me, though. For 35 years I entertained the possibility that the guru who initiated me in 1971 into the Radha Soami Satsang Beas fold was a "perfect living master."

The guru's name was Charan Singh. After he died in 1990, and also while he was still living, I'd talk to him inside my head. Never got a discernible response, but the talking made me feel closer to him, especially when I needed a spiritual shoulder to lean on, even if it was imaginary.

If I was in an informal mood, I'd simply start off by saying, "Master.... ." If I was in a formal mood, wanting to address him with a lengthy honorific, I'd say, "Param Sant Satguru Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh Ji, Perfect Living Master of Beas, India... ."

Param Sant means highest saint. Satguru means true guru. Maharaj Ji is a title of deep respect, since in Sanskrit maharaja means great king.

However, all of those other titles pale in comparison to "Perfect Living Master."

That's how the gurus of Radha Soami Satsang Beas are regarded in the RSSB teachings. They are perfect. Not physically, obviously, but spiritually, for their soul consciousness supposedly has merged completely with the divine force that powers the cosmos, and may be called God. 

It's a great story. With a glaring problem. It isn't true.

At least, there's no demonstrable evidence that any guru or religious leader is perfect in a divine sense. Without exception, everyone who is claimed to be perfect has obvious imperfections: moral flaws, poor judgment, prone to mistakes -- in short, everything that other imperfect human beings demonstrate, "perfect" gurus do also.

You might be thinking, okay, I agree, but so what? Where's the harm in putting someone up on a pedestal and looking upon them as a perfect being, even though that's an illusion?

Well, based on my lengthy experience with belonging to a religious organization founded on the notion of a perfect living master, there's several harms. The claim that the RSSB guru is perfect leads to an extreme dogmatism among devoted followers. Since it's believed that the guru makes no mistakes, every utterance, every command, is unquestioned.

This sort of fanaticism is dangerous. It can lead to bad behavior by devotees who consider that even if the guru is asking them to do something wrong by worldly standards, a perfect living master operates by rules known only to other satgurus, not to ordinary people.

Also, the egos of the guru's devotees become inflated by proximity to a supposedly perfect being. They come to see themselves as special in the eye of God. Members of other religious groups have imperfect leaders. But us lucky souls, we have won the divine lottery by being initiated by a perfect living master who guarantees that God-realization will be ours through his grace and guidance.

Which again isn't true, in my well-informed opinion. So the best thing to do is to give up on viewing any guru or religious leader as being perfect. They aren't. And you'll be happier in the long run by realizing this.

Science says we are all vibrations in the same invisible oceans

For 35 years I was a member of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that taught the essence of reality was shabd, all-pervading conscious energy, which could be heard as divine sound and seen as divine light.

In the early 1990s I wrote a book for RSSB, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, that described my take on the links between the new physics and ancient mysticism, focusing on how the "all-pervading" and "energy" aspects of shabd were recognized by quantum mechanics, but not the "conscious" part.

That's still true, of course.

Naturally there have been advances in quantum mechanics over the past 30 years, but the basic tenets remain the same as when this field of the very small (which nonetheless has strong implications for the very large, since the universe started out as very small in the big bang) came to be in the first part of the twentieth century.

There's a difference in me, though. 

I no longer view all-pervading conscious energy (I liked the acronym ACE) as the foundation of ultimate reality. However, I still enjoy learning about how science views all-pervading energy, which in physics is known as quantum fields.

My new favorite book -- I'm serially promiscuous in a literary sense, finding intense delight in a book before casting it aside in favor of a fresh-faced attractive newcomer -- is Harry Cliff's Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding  of the Universe. The back cover says:

Harry Cliff is a particle physicist based at the University of Cambridge and carries out research with the LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. He was a curator at the Science Museum, London, for seven years and regularly gives public lectures and makes TV and radio appearances. His 2015 TED talk "Have We Reached the End of Physics?" has been viewed nearly three million times.

So Cliff is both highly qualified to write about the current state of physics, and a skilled enough communicator to make what he says both understandable and entertaining. In short, he has a way with words that is unusually appealing for a scientist.

In a Prologue, Cliff summarizes the core theme of his book.

Meanwhile, in particle physics, a series of anomalies has also been growing ever more significant, leading many to believe that we are on the brink of something big. Particles with unbelievable energies have been spotted bursting from beneath the Antarctic ice while hidden forces seem to be tugging on the basic building blocks of matter.

From the vast subterranean caverns of the Large Hadron Collider to a balloon floating high above the frozen ice sheets of the South Pole, scientists are uncovering a catalog of weird phenomena that can't be explained by our long-established theories of the universe.

...These anomalies could be the answers to all our prayers, lifting the veil on nature's best-kept secrets and leading to a revolutionary new scientific age.

But they also bring danger. As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there are good reasons to question whether these results are really signs of something wondrous and new or mere statistical flukes, theoretical confusion, or, worst of all for us practitioners, a glitch in an experiment.

Could we be so desperate to see something new that we risk seeing effects where there are none? Could we be chasing ghosts? Or, after decades of fruitless searching, could we finally be catching glimpses of a profound new view of the fundamental nature of reality?

Before Cliff gets to the anomalies that stimulated those questions, he spends 18 pages on telling "The Cosmic Story" in a chapter with that title. This is background for the science to be discussed in later chapters. But there's some sparkly scientific gems to be admired in that introductory chapter.

However, rather strangely perhaps considering its name, the standard model of particle physics isn't really a theory of particles at all. Instead, it describes the world around us as being made of rather more mysterious and nebulous objects known as quantum fields. Particles are fairly easy to picture, conjuring images of little spheres whizzing around in space. Quantum fields are far harder to get our heads around.

...[Regarding the force felt with magnets, attraction and repulsion] The thing that's there is a quantum field, in this case the magnetic field. It may be invisible, and you may not be aware of it except when you're playing with magnets, but nevertheless it is ever present. And it is not simply the case that magnets generate a magnetic field close to their poles.

In truth, the magnetic field permeates the entire universe, connecting my little magnets to the magnetic dynamo of the Earth, the Sun, and even the most distant galaxy. There is only one magnetic field, and it's everywhere. 

The "quantum" bit of a quantum field comes into play when we try to understand what a particle is. If quantum fields are like invisible fluids filling all of space, particles can be thought of as little ripples in these fluids.

The reasons you are able to read these words is that a torrent of uncountable particles of light known as photons are bouncing off the page and smashing headlong into your retinas. Each photon is a tiny undulation in something called the electromagnetic field (of which the magnetic field is just one aspect).

What we think of as a particle, therefore, is simply the smallest possible amount of wobble that can travel through a quantum field.

It may seem counterintuitive to think that it is the invisible influence of fields that governs the universe. But in fact, it's even stranger than that. According to the standard model, fields explain not just light and photons but even the particles that make up the apparently solid world around us. 

Atoms are ultimately made of subatomic particles -- electrons and quarks -- which aren't tiny hard spheres, as we've been trained to imagine, but instead little ripples in underlying fields. Electrons are little ripples in something called the electron field, while quarks are tiny wobbles in the quark fields.

It is those fields, not particles, that are the ultimate constituents of our universe. Each of us is made of fields. Deep down, we are all vibrations in the same invisible oceans. 

Beautiful. No, more than beautiful. Awe-inspiring also.

This is the message of mysticism in the language of science, supported by solid facts rather than ethereal conjecture. It's why I've always loved science. Yes, for a long time I also loved mysticism. And I'm still open to the possibility that one day science will add "conscious" to the attributes of all-pervading energy known as quantum fields.

Until that day arrives, though, I much prefer science to mysticism. Because I prefer my reality to be real.

I bow at the feet of pain and disability endurers

There's a lot to admire about people. Since everybody is different, a truism that holds even for identical twins, each individual has some unique qualities that merit admiration.

(To those who consider that some people have nothing to be admired about them, here's an adage that a friend of mine liked to say: "No one's life ever is completely wasted; they can always serve as a horrible example for others.")

I find that a good gauge of what I find admirable is emotion. When I'm deeply moved by something a person has done, and I feel tears coming to my eyes, that's a reliable sign of admiration. 

Often this happens when I'm watching TV. After all, as I go about my everyday life, it's rare that I directly experience someone engaged in a truly admirable act. 

Last night I wrote a post for my HinesSight blog: "Woman in wheelchair brought tears as I watched So You Think You Can Dance." Here's the audition that had such an effect on me.

I related this woman's courage to my own much lesser difficulty with getting around.

I've had painful sciatica in my right leg, hip, and butt for more than four years. In December of last year it got quite a bit worse, though initially in 2020 the pain was so bad I frequently had tears in my eyes for that reason.

I can't walk very far now. I can't go to my Tai Chi class now. I can't exercise without enduring some intense pain. I feel sorry for myself, even though I try to be as positive as possible about the prospect of finding some relief once my appointment at Salem Pain & Spine Specialists arrives in ten days.

The example of Kaylee Bays, who is much worse off than I am, yet has a much bigger smile than I'm able to manage most days, makes me feel that no matter how bad my pain is, and no matter how little I may be able to benefit from treatment, I can still fight as hard as I can to keep on doing the things I like to do and need to do.

So I guess I admire myself for, say, doing what I did today: exercising through the pain at our athletic club, then coming home and taking our dog for her evening walk on a hilly trail that is difficult for me to handle given the current state of my sciatica.

Yet I enjoy the dog walk. Not in a physical sense, because pain isn't enjoyable. At least, it isn't for me.

What I enjoy is the feeling that I've done something difficult that's helpful to my wife and dog. Wife, because if I don't walk the dog, she has to, and today she wanted to do some planting in our yard while the weather was warm and sunny. Dog, because I take her on a longer walk in the late afternoon than my wife does, and Mooka (our Husky mix) likes that walk.

This gets into the subject of seva, an Indian word that means service. Seva was a big deal in the guru-based organization I was a member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). RSSB initiates considered that seva for the organization, and thus indirectly for the guru, was an admirable thing to do.

Of course, the strange thing is that everybody in the world is doing seva of one form or another. It isn't anything special. A mother fixing breakfast for her young children -- seva. A teacher providing supplies for his classroom at his own cost -- seva. A nurse working an extra shift to care for hospital patients during a staffing shortage -- seva.

Most people don't call their acts of service by a particular name. I do this, because it was such a large part of my life for those 35 religious years. However, the most moving displays of service are when people simply do what needs doing because that's what has to be done. 

Kaylee Bays, the woman in the wheelchair, said that she's performing on So You Think You Can Dance in order to draw attention to the incurable disease she suffers from, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. That's a service to humanity, for sure. 

Bays also is being of service by simply dancing in and out of her wheelchair. Watching her changed me, as I'm sure countless others also were changed by her performance. Her courage and dedication are infectious. I can't say that I possess anywhere near the strength and dedication shown by Bays.

However, her example made me realize that as annoying as my own pain is, it doesn't have to define me; it doesn't have to limit me; it doesn't have to prevent me from doing what I'm capable of doing. She's a wonderful example for others. 

May you do well in the choreography round of So You Think You Can Dance, Kaylee. I and so many others will be rooting for you. 

A Charan Singh initiate says that Gurinder Singh "is not who he is believed to be"

Yesterday Anise left a comment on a churchless blog post from 2022, "Description of Gurinder Singh Dhillon 'secret' video."

Since the comment contains criticism of the guru who heads up Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization, and we here at Church of the Churchless absolutely love heretics (more heretic'y, the better), I'm sharing the comment below in order to bring it to the attention of more people. 

Enjoy. I've added a few definitions [in brackets] of Indian words that won't be familiar to many people. 

Deeply grateful to have found this blog...

My beloved Guru, Maharaj Charan Singh Ji, initiated me in 1988 at the tender age of 20. A guru who had magnificent presence and radiated Love. What a smile…! I fell in love with him as a 2 year old and it stayed like that until the end. Wherever he went, he left behind only humility, grace and bliss.

In 1982 we went to see him in Durban, South Africa, as a family who lived 180 km away. At tea-time on one of the days, I was in the tent when he came in. My eyes were glued to him, mesmerized as he moved slowly among the people, looking rather shy. Brilliant, but shy. I could not love more than what I felt I loved at that time.

He radiated something.... unnameable. So soft spoken and always kind. Rarely did he have to talk seriously when answering questions on the tapes, and even then, he was always kind.

But that was then. Where am I now?

Broken hearted, disillusioned, self-examining till the cows don't want to come home anymore ...for the past 18 years. After discovering this blog today, I feel a ton lighter!

I went to see Babaji [Gurinder Singh Dhillon, successor to Charan Singh Grewal] in Spain in 2006. Hoping that someone else who also attended his long weekend in Malaga at that time, reads this and can share what they experienced. I need to know if anyone else saw what I saw.

For me, this is what happened: He arrived a good hour or two late, came in walking extremely fast, looking extremely angry. In fact, my biggest take away from the 3 days, is that the corners of his mouth turned down throughout the whole time he was on the dais. It was crazy-strange and it freaked me out badly.

(Excuse the down to earth language, but even as a language teacher, I cannot find a more formal synonym, that does it justice.) I found it deeply disconcerting, and I still do. His mouth was the opposite of a smile. Honestly, it was like that most of the time: he looked angry. It was disturbing. Did anyone else notice anything similar?

When he started talking, he was very upset. Controlled, but really angry. (My thoughts were: I grew up understanding that anger is one of the 5 big tools of the mind...?? Something is not right.) I don’t remember his exact words, but he told us very angrily that the sangat is unorganized and that they should have controlled the traffic from the airport better, because it caused him delay!

Good grief?! This is the guru? This was where the first chord struck false. It hurt.

The second was when I discovered (through considering putting in an application for work at the Dera’s school) that said school prides themselves in their special subject: AI.

You may call me a traditionalist/naturalist/old fashioned teacher, but my entire body experienced a shockwave when I read this fact. Of course, then my wonderfully creative mind indulged itself into turning the whole thing around which caused me to introspect myself into a state of near depression.

Yes, maybe there is wrong with me, but I must be true to who I was made to be with the mind I was given. Have to live truth from the heart, head and gut, and therefore I now accept that, not with all the willpower in the world, could I rejoice in the arrival of AI. I probably see differently than most here. I am not here to convince anyone of anything. It just feels very wrong to me. Off.

Then, in 2015, I saw him in Johannesburg. There was an incident that I would never forget and once again, I ask if anyone else attended and can remember it? There was a moment between a person who just finished getting his/her answer to a question and the next person being ready to ask theirs, when he broke the silence and said the strangest thing.

I do not remember his exact words, but it was something like: ''Doesn't anyone have a question about sex? We are so shy to ask about this normal bodily function but in this day and age....'' What followed was just this thick silence from the audience that hung in the air. It felt very inappropriate. Naturally, no sexual questions were asked even after his prompting.

Around 2017, one Sunday, a speaker sevadar [volunteer] clearly said that Babaji said: 'If you haven't gone within yet, you are wasting your time.' I was horrified. I am not taking it out of context. Those days we were still allowed to have tea after satsang [meeting] and this was discussed between myself and 3 or 4 others sitting at the same table.

The next time that Gordon, the country’s representative was available after satsang, I went to ask him if what the speaker said is true. If GSD said this. His answer was that the speaker is responsible for what they say and that is how we should take it. This was the fourth. It goes against everything that every Radha Soami master has ever said.

The fifth one came like a dagger with the pandemic. We all have our own views; please understand that this is not meant to upset or hurt anyone, and I deeply respect everyone's right to believe as they see fit, but to me, it honestly stank that he has/had ties with the pharmaceutical industry. The reader may have totally different health views, which I respect highly.

However, it went completely against my grain that he advocated for and mandated a therapy that was untested, for a disease with a 99% survival rate. Pregnant woman not excluded. In many countries, children too. I felt that he was more than bowing down to negative forces and that he should not be so deeply involved in these things. The double whammy was learning about his fortune and the court case against him. Something is very wrong.

My biggest struggle is the fact that I just cannot take to him. I have tried again and again. I strongly feel he is not who he is believed to be. Something went very wrong.

How Radha Soami Satsang Beas is similar to Christian dogmatism

I was almost going to skip the book review section in the March 11, 2024 issue of The New Yorker. I could see that it discussed books about Genesis, and I find the Bible about as interesting as hockey. Namely, not at all.

But after deciding to see what the review had to say about Marilynne Robinson's writings on Genesis and other parts of the Bible, which are prolific, I began to see parallels between Christian dogmatism and the India-based group headed up by a guru that I was a member of for 35 years -- Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

That made things more interesting for me. So here's some excerpts from "Had to Happen" (title in the print edition) by James Woods, along with how I see the RSSB connection.

Marked souls: Woods says...

Calvin (1509-64) was a French Protestant Reformer, who became a kind of theocratic boss of Geneva. Robinson has written powerfully in defense of Calvin and of the lively Puritanism that his movement birthed, not least in America.

She tends to pass over, as she does in that description of Lincoln’s theology, Calvin’s signature terror—that the divine intention of which Robinson speaks was, for Calvin, an ordained system of doom and election. Calvin believed that God had chosen for each of us, before our births, our ultimate fates.

A fortunate few (starting, of course, with Calvin’s own lucky congregation) will go upstairs, to reside with the Lord; a much larger number, the plebeian damned, will go downstairs, condemned to eternal Hell. And there is nothing any of us can do about it.

This is almost exactly what RSSB teaches. The guru is believed to come for "marked souls." These are people who supposedly did not want to enter the physical realm of creation when God created our universe and it needed to be populated with souls. 

So they are fated to return to heaven, which RSSB calls Sach Khand. Non-marked souls are out of luck. There's a video of the guru who initiated me, Charan Singh, nodding his head to either the left or right as a long line of would-be initiates passes in front of him. The guru is believed to be able to discern the marked souls, who get approved for initiation.

Too bad for the non-marked souls. They shouldn't have happily descended into this realm of reality, goes the RSSB dogma.

Sinful beings. Woods says...

Like many Christians, Robinson sees Genesis, and, by extension, the Bible, as a tale of protected errancy. We sinfully swerved away from God’s “first intention,” and the writers of Genesis are extremely interested in all our subsequent avarice, aggression, rebelliousness, and sexual deviancy.

In order to be free and autonomous beings, we had to be allowed by God to be capable of such errancy. But we are ultimately protected by “the faith that He has a greater, embracing intention that cannot fail.”

Again, very similar to the RSSB teachings, which inveigh against the Five Deadly Foes (if I recall the name correctly): lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism. These weaknesses, along with our other missteps, are believed to keep us trapped in the physical realm through the inexorable law of karma.

Karma supposedly begins with a freely willed action. That action, or cause, produces various effects, each of which create more karma. And so it goes, karma piling up, until the pristine nature of the soul is buried under a big stinking pile of karmic causes and effects. 

Just as Jesus was sent by God to be a sacrificial lamb who takes upon himself the sins of humankind, RSSB teaches that the guru has the power to wash away our karmic burden -- in part by taking it upon his own being, in part by converting a karmic sword thrust into a pinprick, as the RSSB gurus are fond of saying.

Human fictions not God's truth. Woods says...

It is, in truth, very hard to remember, if one has been brought up in a religious tradition of any kind, that the God of the Hebrew Bible is not God himself but a collection of human approximations and reckonings and inspired fictions.

I have spent much of my life hating the God who replies to Job, the God who bullies and blusters out of the whirlwind, when calm rationality should remind me that this God speaks words written by a human or group of humans.

From a literary point of view, it makes no more sense to hate this God than to hate King Lear. In both cases, human beings, writing with an ardor and an inspiration that indeed seem sacred, went to the edge of the knowable.

And, in both cases, these writers use words and characters to bring back the great treasures of their literary pilgrimages. It is an extraordinary thing that a human being saw fit to describe the creation of the world from the point of view of God himself. I share Robinson’s reverence for the endeavor. But the tale is itself a creation.

In Christianity, as in RSSB, there are dogmatists who believe that the religion's writings come straight from God, and there are pragmatists who believe that the religion's holy books were written by fallible humans.

Having written a book published by RSSB myself (Life is Fair), I'm firmly in the pragmatist camp. After all, I know that I didn't take God's dictation. I researched and wrote the book on my own, which then benefitted from the suggestions of other people who read and commented on my drafts. 

Yet many, if not most, RSSB initiates believe that the books written by the organization's gurus are divinely inspired, since the RSSB guru is considered to be God in Human Form. I deeply doubt this is true.

However, just as Christian dogmatists view every word in the Bible as reflecting a message from God, RSSB dogmatists do the same thing, obsessing over language in books written by the gurus to be certain that they're correctly following the teachings and thus on their way back to God. 

Me, I no longer believe in any religion. And that's a huge relief. It enables me to simply live my life without worrying about whether I'm endangering my salvation by doing something wrong.

I can't stop seeing religious belief as a placebo

So, I'm reading along this morning in David Robson's book, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change the World, enjoying the "Faster, Stronger, Fitter" chapter, which is about athletic performance, not anything spiritual, and I come to a passage about how a bicycle racer benefitted from an injection of sugar water, which got me to thinking about how religious belief also is a placebo.

(I've boldfaced the concluding sentence that struck me most strongly.)

This new theory of exhaustion, one that rightly places the brain as controller of what the body can do, helps us to understand the influences of placebo treatments in sport. If we consider Virenque's amazing time trial in the 1997 Tour de France, the injection of the "magic potion" increased his perception of what he could achieve.

His brain calculated that it could devote more of the body's resources to the race without risking injury, allowing his muscles to work harder on the track. The fact that it was only sugar water didn't matter: because of its effects on the prediction machine, the injection still increased the amount of energy that Virenque was able to expend.

We may describe the substance as "inert," but in terms of its effects on performance, it was anything but. Virenque's belief and the sense of ritual accompanying the injection imbued the substance with power. 

I only have direct experience of two religious systems, Catholicism (which I left behind as a child after First Communion) and Radha Soami Satsang Beas (an India-based faith headed up by a guru that I embraced for 35 years).

In my brief exposure to Catholicism, I learned that after you confess your sins to a priest -- I was so young, the only sin I could come up with was not going to church very often -- you're told how many Our  Father and Hail Mary prayers to recite, and bingo, your sin has been absolved. At least that's my understanding. 

Since I deeply doubt that prayers do anything for the person praying, given that God almost certainly doesn't exist, those prayers are a religious placebo. They make someone feel better without having any active ingredient in them. 

With Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a new disciple is given Five Holy Names to repeat in an initiation ceremony. Those names are to be kept secret, though they're the same for all initiates. They're believed to be imbued with the guru's power, a big deal, since the guru is considered to be God in Human Form.

In 1970, when I was going to RSSB meetings in preparation for applying for initiation, I recall a man in the Palo Alto group (his name might be Milton Monasch) telling a story about the power of the Five Holy Names.

He said that he was in a business meeting that wasn't going very well. Some sort of contract negotiation was being discussed, as I recall. The man said that he got up from the table, walked over to a window, and started to repeat the Five Holy Names, which serve as a mantra. 

As soon as he sat down again, the negotiation turned the way he wanted it to. Monasch, or whatever his name was, ascribed this to the Five Holy Names. 

Well, obviously there's no way to prove that. It could have been that his getting up caused a pause in the negotiation, and this allowed the side he was dealing with to reconsider the wisdom of their current position.

That's much more likely than the RSSB guru (God in Human Form) controlling the minds of the people Monasch was working out a contract with, making them decide to take a position more advantageous for Monasch because he repeated the Five Holy Names.

This would be as crazy as God determining the outcome of a football game, even though players on both sides prayed for victory. Just really hard for me to believe that God intervenes in sporting events. Or in contract negotiations. 

But people who believe in religious rituals feel a power within them, just as the Tour de France rider felt power in the sugar water he was given that improved his performance. Such is the power of placebos. It's all in the mind, but the mind is a powerful force.

Mass hysteria isn't all that different from religious groupthink

During the 35 years that I was a member of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), one of the things that I liked most about that experience was how I felt like I was part of a giant family.

A family not in the usual sense, but in the sense of a group of people who had much in common, who shared a similar view of reality, who trusted each other, who helped each other, who looked up to a father figure -- the RSSB guru, which made us sort of like brothers and sisters.

All that felt good at the time. In retrospect, though, there were some downsides.

If someone strayed from the RSSB tenets, such as drinking a glass of wine at a party, there would be gossipy talk about this "sin" behind the person's back. Likewise, questioning the validity of the RSSB teachings was frowned upon. That was supposed to happen before someone was initiated into the RSSB fold, not afterward, as initiation was viewed as an unbreakable bond between the guru and disciple.

(Since reincarnation was assumed, the guru supposedly took it upon himself to shepherd the disciple back to God in a maximum of four lifetimes, less if the disciple was cooperative.)

So the flip side of a communal sense of belonging was an intolerance of thinking and behavior that deviated from the RSSB norm. This is a familiar characteristic of groups, since there has to be some fairly firm boundaries between what the group is and isn't, or the "group" fails to live up to its name, being merely a collection of individuals.

I got to pondering this while reading a chapter in David Robson's book, The Expectation Effect, called "The Origins of Mass Hysteria."

The chapter starts off with a description of how in May 2006 "Portugal was beset by mysterious outbreaks of illness." Only in teenagers, who experienced dizziness, breathing difficulties, and skin rashes. Three hundred students across the country were affected within a few days. No cause could be found, until:

Inquiries eventually revealed that a popular teen soap, Morangos com Acucar (Strawberries with sugar), was to blame. In the days before the first reported cases, the main characters on the show had been infected by a life-threatening virus that had led to very similar symptoms.

Somehow the "virus" had jumped from the small screen to a handful of viewers, creating real physical symptoms -- despite the fact that the illness in the program was totally fictional. These children had then passed it on to their classmates, leading the cases to multiply. Portuguese adults were unlikely to have been dedicated viewers of the melodrama, so they were less likely to develop the disease.

Scientists call this kind of outbreak, with no physical vector, a "mass psychogenic illness." (Whereas "psychosomatic" can refer to our mental state exacerbating existing symptoms, "psychogenic" means that the origin is purely psychological.)

Robson goes on to explain that "mirror neurons" in the brain enable us humans to internalize the physical and mental states of other people. If we see someone smiling, we feel happier. If we see someone frowning, we feel sadder. This doesn't have to happen consciously. 

Without our even noticing it, the presence of another person can therefore change our body as well as our mind. And these bodily effects apparently have a purpose -- they increase our understanding of what the other person is feeling.

Of course, most religious groups use rituals to foster a strong sense of commonality and shared purpose. When I went to India in 1977 to see my guru, Charan Singh, in person for the first (and only) time, it didn't take long into my two-week stay for me to feel like I was part of a community of kindred spirits.

When we ate in the dining hall, we all had much in common. When we performed volunteer work (seva), such as carrying sand on our heads in baskets to fill in ravines for an expansion of the spiritual community, we felt like members of a family, not strangers. When many thousands of people would gather for a discourse by the guru, all eyes were focused on him, leading to a shared experience.

All this felt magical. Those two weeks I spent in India were like none I'd experienced before, or since. The atmosphere of the Dera (how the spiritual community was called) seemed to be permeated by the guru's love and tenderness. So how could this be likened to a mass hysteria event?

Well, because as soon as I arrived at the Dera, I was influenced by everybody I came into contact with, just as each visitor was. What they were feeling, I soon felt. What they were thinking, I soon thought. Not completely, obviously, since we still had our unique minds and inclinations. 

But since we'd all embraced the RSSB teachings, or we wouldn't have journeyed in India to spend time with the guru, there was a groupthink foundation that only became stronger under the influence of the ritualistic atmosphere of the Dera. It would have been very difficult to resist, not that I wanted to.

I'll end with a passage from Robson's book that illustrates the power of shared feelings. Fascinating stuff that's hard to believe, but it seems to be true.

As an illustration of how far someone's feelings can spread, imagine that you became friends with someone with an astonishingly positive attitude, who is incredibly satisfied with her life. You might feel a bit glad for her, but could her joy really bring lasting happiness to your life, too?

According to one detailed longitudinal survey -- the Framingham Heart Study -- the answer is yes. Because of your regular interactions with her, you would be 15 percent more likely to achieve a high score on the survey's measure of life satisfaction -- despite no direct change in your immediate circumstances.

How about your friend's friend? The same study found that their happiness will be passed on to your friend, who passes it on to you, increasing your chances of happiness by about 10 percent in the coming months. Your current satisfaction with life is even influenced by a friend of a friend of a friend, who can increase your chance of happiness by about 6 percent.

These are people you almost certainly have never even met, and you probably don't even know of their existence, but they are nevertheless influencing your well-being through a chain of interactions.

The real saints are ordinary people

"Saint" is a word that generally has religious overtones. For example, I used to belong to an organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that was part of the Sant Mat movement, which means "teaching of saints."

The RSSB saints were gurus who supposedly were God in Human Form, something I now deeply doubt. The Catholic church has a more expansive view of saints:

The saints of the church are a diverse group of people with varied and interesting stories. Their ranks include martyrs, kings and queens, missionaries, widows, theologians, parents, nuns and priests, and “everyday people” who dedicated their lives to the loving pursuit of God.

Religious and nonreligious people alike have found inspiration from their lives, particularly in the stories of saints who devoted themselves in service to the poor, sick, and disenfranchised, such as St. Mother Teresa and St. Vincent de Paul, among others.

Many of the saints who were persecuted for their faith, such as St. Stephen and St. Perpetua, showed remarkable forgiveness and patiently suffered through their trials and tortures. Some are revered for their simplicity and humility, including St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Several, notably St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, were writers and thinkers who shaped Western thought for centuries.

Then there's the Urban Dictionary definition, my favorite.

I like this because it doesn't have any sort of religious connotation. Indeed, to me the most impressive saints are, as this definition says, ordinary people who put others' needs before their own. Sure, not always, as this doesn't seem to be possible. But frequently.

That opens the door to sainthood for lots of people, probably most people. Which is as it should be. Genuine saints, not the fake saints revered by religions disconnected from reality by supernatural B.S., are usually little known, though greatly appreciated by those they serve.

Caregivers to those afflicted by dementia. Teachers who are overworked and underpaid. Sanitation workers. Advocates for the homeless. Immigrants who do the tough jobs Americans dislike, then send much of their money to relatives in their native country. So many others.

Sainthood isn't an either-or proposition. It's a sliding scale. Everybody possesses the capacity of acting in a saintly fashion. Some just are able to be compassionate and self-sacrificing to a greater degree than others. 

I'm definitely average when it comes to saintliness. There's nothing special about me in this regard.

But last Friday I had an appointment with the nurse practitioner who serves as my primary care provider. We talked about how to handle the sciatica in my right leg, which has gotten much more painful the past few months.

Since this was my first visit with the nurse practitioner after my doctor left the clinic and I needed a new provider, I told her about how the sciatica began four years ago, in early 2020. In the beginning it was super painful. Nothing could help the pain appreciably. The pain would laugh at the couple of Tylenol pills I'd take.

I'd cry out loud with the pain, and I'm normally not big on crying. I was determined to keep on doing what needed done around our non-easy-care house on ten rural acres. Back then we had a walk-behind mower. I'd mow the grass with tears streaming down my cheeks, the pain would be so bad. I got the grass cut, though.

Every day I'd walk our dog in the late afternoon, just as I'd done before the sciatica started. Some days I'd wonder if I could make the mile-and-a-half loop on roads in our neighborhood, which is quite hilly. Just as with the mowing, I'd hold the dog's leash while I cried out in pain, one step at a time. I'd want to quit and go home, but I never did.

In no way is what I did exceptionally saintly. I mention it just to give a personal example of how people can push through extreme discomfort because they want to feel useful and do something that benefits others. In my case, a wife and dog. 

Given my substantial ego, I'm proud of many things that I've done in my 75 years of living. However, doing household duties while I was racked with severe pain is something that especially pleases me, when I remember it. 

(That said, I'm still looking for ways to relieve my sciatica, since I'd prefer to be of service to others in ways that don't involve a lot of pain, even if that reduces my saintly rating.)

My book made Shahid Kapoor into a vegetarian. Now he follows Radha Soami.

One of the people I follow on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared a post recently about Shahid Kapoor, a Bollywood actor in India, embracing the Radha Soami teachings that I followed for 35 years.

Below is one of the similar stories about this. It comes from The Indian Express. This interested me because Kapoor and I have a connection: a book I wrote turned him into a vegetarian. I'll describe this after the story.

In a chat with Quint Neon, Shahid was asked about an incident that shaped up his life, and he immediately spoke about the Radha Soami organisation. “It is my spiritual path. I always had a spiritual leaning. I always was very curious about life, about the source of life, about why we are here, what’s the point of it all, and I was very lost because I didn’t have any answers so I couldn’t make sense of anything,” he said.

Shahid continued, “I follow the Radha Soami path. I really connected with it, and I think that helped me set context to everything. I think that helped me understand things much better, understand myself better. And I think, amongst other things, like being an actor and being a parent, and being a child, I am actually on the quest of finding myself and my relationship with God.”

Shahid, in an earlier chat with Mid-day, opened up about sharing the same faith as his wife, Mira Rajput. “We do share a spiritual faith, but we met via family. We were aware of each other’s spiritual faith,” he said. Shahid and Mira lived with Mira’s parents in Punjab for two years during the pandemic. “We went and lived in Punjab for two years, with them for a few months, and on our own during Covid. So, I spent a lot of time with them… Her side of the family is very normal, and that’s something I cherish about them,” he said.

Shahid and Mira got married in 2015. They are parents to two children – Misha, 7, and Zayn, 5.

Regarding the first paragraph of the story, I too became an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) because I was looking for answers to the Big Questions of Life.

However, I came to the conclusion after those three and a half decades of being an active member of RSSB that while the organization did indeed have answers to some of the Big Questions, there wasn't any convincing evidence that those answers were more valid than any other answers.

So now I'm comfortable with the meaning I personally get from life, since the quest to find a universal meaning that applies to everybody seems doomed to failure. But I can totally understand why Shahid Kapoor is pleased with the Radha Soami teachings, since having meaning come ready-made from a spiritual group can be easier and more fulfilling (though not more valid) than finding meaning on one's own.

As to Kapoor becoming a vegetarian, I wrote about this in 2013 in "I changed a Bollywood actor's life... turning him vegetarian." The link in this post no longer works, but I just found the story that I quoted from on the DNAIndia site. Here's the story.

His father, who follows Radha Soami, had been preaching to him for years about the benefits of eating only what is grown in the farms, had no effect on him; but the book converted him.

A decade ago Shahid Kapoor turned vegetarian. He got on to a flight with a book Life Is Fair by Brian Hines (gifted to him by his father Pankaj Kapoor) and when he got off the flight, he never touched non-vegetarian food again. Such was the impact of the book that Shahid even wanted the women he dated to embrace his food habits...

His father, who follows Radha Soami, had been preaching to him for years about the benefits of eating only what is grown in the farms, had no effect on him; but the book converted him. It is written by an author for the Indian spiritual organisation, Radha Soami Satsang Beas and it is a karmic justification for vegetarianism. Strangely today, the author who changed the actor’s life does not believe in the same principles that he spouted then.

Hines, who now runs a a blog called Church of the Churchless, says, “Today, I don’t look upon karma and reincarnation as I did thirteen years ago. The only thing I can be certain about is that from this moment until the day I die, I’m not going to be absolutely certain about anything. But here’s the thing: I changed. And I’m still changing. As are we all. Thankfully. Because change only stops when we’re dead. Until then, living leads us in largely unpredictable ways. I’m glad I wrote the book. It pleases me to think that some people have become vegetarians as a result of reading it, or were strengthened in their commitment to remain meatless. Likewise, writing Life is Fair meant a lot to me. I agree that some parts of the book aren’t scientifically defensible. I’d write it differently today, but yesterday isn’t today.”

When asked if  Hines still subscribes to vegetarianism, he says, “Well, I no longer believe that reincarnation, and karma, that extends over multiple lives, is the best reason to be a vegetarian. However, there is plenty of scientific evidence, along with ethical arguments, for not eating animals. I still stand 100% behind these reasons for being a vegetarian. These really, are the main points I made in Life is Fair; killing and eating animals for food creates negative health effects for people and (obviously) negative effects for the animals who have been killed and eaten.”

When told that a leading Indian actor turned vegetarian after reading the book, he says, “I’m pleased that my book had an effect on Shahid. Since this book was written as seva, I didn’t get any payment from writing it other than the satisfaction of feeling that some people may have been encouraged to become vegetarians.”

Don't idealize spiritual teachers or put them on pedestals

There are thousands of religions in the world. But I believe that the one I belonged to for thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), which is headquartered in India, could have the most grandiose conception of its spiritual leaders of any religion.

For the RSSB teaching is that not only is the organization's guru God in Human Form, but the guru is greater than God, since the guru manifests on our planet to initiate "marked souls" and guide them back to the highest supernatural level of reality, while God just sits up there, letting the Perfect Living Master do the work of saving souls.

Note that word, Perfect. The RSSB gurus are considered to be just that, notwithstanding their evident human flaws, such as the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, being embroiled in a financial scandal that reportedly has enriched he and his family with hundreds of millions of dollars.

So when I read a chapter this morning in Joan Tollifson's book, Nothing to Grasp, that included warnings about viewing spiritual teachers as way holier than they actually are, I thought, "So true." I've seen plenty of problems with people looking upon the RSSB guru as infallible, never to be questioned, beyond criticism. 

Actually, Dhillon is just like everybody else: flawed, imperfect, with strengths and weaknesses. Here's what Tollifson had to say about spiritual teachers.

There is a widespread tendency to idealize spiritual teachers and put them up on pedestals, especially dead gurus. And many living teachers are only too happy to accept these projections and pretend to themselves and everyone else that they are beyond all forms of human error, uncertainty, confusion, or unhappiness.

But whenever teachers start insisting they never make mistakes or get upset anymore, or that anything scandalous they do is some form of "crazy wisdom" that they are doing for your benefit, hide your wallet.

It's completely possible to be fully enlightened in one moment and totally deluded in the next. In fact, that fluctuation is the very nature of life.

...The thinking mind loves to rank and compare, and you'll hear some people insist that their teaching, or the teaching they identify with, is the highest, most advanced, most profound, most radical teaching of all. There are those who claim to have reached a stage of enlightenment that surpasses anything previously known to humankind.

If such talk sounds suspiciously egotistical, dualistic and reminiscent of the most competitive aspects of society-at-large, it may be because it is.

This is not to say that every teacher is equally clear, or that all paths are identical or that they all lead to exactly the same place, nor is it to deny the relative reality of evolutionary development. But I'm always wary of those who claim to have risen to a level never before reached by anyone else.

The clearest teachers I've met are the most ordinary. They have humility, not grandiosity.

They don't claim to possess something that the rest of us do not possess. They empower those who come to them to be their own best teachers rather than encouraging dependency or the tendency to idealize authority figures and put them up on pedestals. The best teachers throw you back on yourself.

...Liberation doesn't mean having The Answer. It doesn't mean that we've figured out how the universe works, but rather, that the itching need to figure it all out dissolves. The bubble of separation and encapsulation pops and there is simply this inexplicable happening, just as it is.

There is no one apart from it trying to figure it out, control it, fix it, or get something from it. There is simply what is, as it is. This is not an achievement. It is the recognition of what has always been so.

The most deeply enlightened figures in Zen are often portrayed as carefree fools holding on to nothing at all. They see clearly that there is nothing to grasp and no one to grasp it.

I'm inspired by Sam Harris' sharp attacks on religion

Like all of us, Sam Harris has changed over the years.

Following the publication of his acclaimed The End of Faith in 2004, Harris became well known as an eloquent advocate for atheism against the foolishness of religion, joining other noted atheists -- Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett -- who were known as "The Four Horsemen of the New Atheism."

Since, Harris has written additional books and has fashioned a vibrant online presence through his Waking Up app and Making Sense podcast. He still bashes religion, but appears more concerned with other subjects, such as helping people experience the notions of no-self, emptiness, and lack of free will that are compatible both with Buddhism and neuroscience. (Harris has a Ph.D. in neuroscience.)

I was reminded of the old-time Harris when You Tube kept displaying to me a video called "Sam Harris: Arguments Against Religion - Part 1." This is a compilation of highlights from talks and debates Harris did after The End of Faith came out. 

I've been listening to the video while I exercise. It's inspiring stuff. Well, unless you're religious. Then you'll think this is blasphemous disgusting stuff. Harris doesn't pull any punches. He hits hard at the ridiculousness of religion, using facts and logic to make his case.

There's a quote in the Amazon listing for The End of Faith that reflects how I feel when I watch the video. 

"The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated....Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."―Natalie Angier, New York Times

Truth-telling has tremendous power.

Harris isn't a comedian, though he does make humorous remarks, but this video has something in common with an edgy stand-up comic. We laugh because the comic is fearless about making fun of "sacred cows," forbidden topics, that usually aren't talked about in polite company. 

In Harris' case, it isn't so much laughter that he elicits from me (though sometimes that happens), but a sense of "Oh, yeah, that's just how I feel, but for some reason I've been reluctant to say it as directly as Harris does." Well, one reason is that I'm not as knowledgeable as Harris is, or as eloquent.

Can't do anything about that. But I can try to be more honest about how I genuinely feel about certain subjects, following in Harris' truth-telling footsteps. For example...

Harris spoke about the insanity of allowing Iron Age myths found in the Old Testament and Jewish lore to inform 21st century warfare and politics. A large proportion of Israelis believe that God gave the Jews territory in the Middle East, so they're now entitled to it. Lots of Christians in the United States believe the same crazy thing.

As Harris notes, a belief is a statement about reality, truth. It's different from a hope.

It isn't crazy for an Israeli to think, "I hope my country can keep control of the West Bank." I don't share that hope, since I favor a two-state solution where Palestinians have their own country. However, it's a lot more acceptable than a bizarre belief that God, the cosmic real estate agent, bequeathed land to Jews.

There's zero evidence supporting that belief, just as there's zero evidence supporting any other supernatural claim religions make. Yet religious people usually aren't challenged about their fact-free beliefs in the same way someone would be if they claimed the moon landings were faked, or that Donald Trump had the 2020 presidential election stolen from him.

Since Harris was speaking not long after the 2001 9/11 attacks by Muslim terrorists on the United States, he was blunt about the Koran -- which he correctly calls not the word of Allah, but one of the world's most boring and poorly written books. Of course, Muslims believe it was dictated to Muhammad by an angel, so every word in it is true.

That sort of religious dogmatism obviously is highly dangerous. Islamic martyrs believe that they'll head to paradise if they die killing infidels. Clearly they're wrong. But that's no comfort to those who lose their lives in the name of Muslim terrorism. 

I'm not as familiar as Harris is with Christian, Jewish, and Muslim history. I do know that he's absolutely correct about how the Bible in no way is divine, but purely human.

The content of the Bible has changed a great deal over the centuries. Some parts of it have been deleted, with other parts added. Editing has altered the meaning of passages to make them conform to how Christians want to spin the story of Jesus, whose supposed miracles aren't unique at all, but were taken from myths floating around the Middle East long before Jesus supposedly existed.

In short, all religions are B.S. (The only exception is non-supernatural Buddhism, which is highly psychological and thus open to confirmation or rejection.) This includes the Eastern religion I was a member of for thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

The hour is late and I don't feel like pointing out all the absurdities taught by RSSB, many of which I never really believed in. So I'll limit myself to one absurdity that comes easily to mind: the belief that Kal, the negative power (think Devil, more or less) who oversees the lower realms of creation, got his position by impressing God with an impressive display of athleticism. 

Here's an excerpt from my 2009 post, "A dialogue about Radha Soami Satsang Beas." The dialogue was between me and Shiloh, who wrote to me because she was concerned about her sister being sucked into a cult. Shiloh asked me some questions about RSSB, which I answered, then got comments on those answers from Shiloh.

(5)  Are Kal and the mind used to dispel the disciple’s rational assessment of the master and his words and actions?

Brian: Absolutely. Questioning is supposed to happen before initiation. Afterwards, the initiate is warned to beware of Kal, the Universal Mind who stood on one foot for eons and earned the right from God to rule the lower regions of creation. (Shiloh: Great heavens! How spiritually athletic!)  Kal's job is to keep souls here, and the mind is his means of doing so.

Shiloh: I rest my case. The above-mentioned attitude nullifies the checks and balances ingrained into our very souls to guard against deception. Willfully giving up the critical mind must indefinitely commit one to labor, with dwarfed mentality, through a spiritual never-never land where the only hope of eventual rescue is through painful disillusionment. Since my sister defensively denied that there was any such requirement, she obviously knows, deep down, how dubious this is.

Two complaints ask Delhi police to probe wrongdoing of RSSB guru

Well, it's been a while since there's been fresh news from India about the financial fraud scandal involving the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. 

But today a commenter on this blog shared a link to a recent story in the New Indian, "As Dabur eyes Religare, Punjab's Radha Soami chief took ₹1006 cr, company to police." I've shared the text of the story below. Click on the preceding link to see the documents included with the story.

Some of the story is old news. However, the complaints submitted to the Delhi Police by Religare's current management and Malvinder Singh are new. For those who don't know how much 1006 crore rupees is in dollars, it's a bit over $120 million. So a substantial amount of money is alleged to have been illegally diverted from Religare by the RSSB guru.

That allegation has been the subject of previous stories in the Indian financial press. Now it looks like those allegations may be investigated more seriously. I also checked Google News to see if there were any other recent stories about Gurinder Singh Dhillon's fraud accusations. There was. You can read that story after the one from the New Indian.

NEW DELHI: The ongoing spat between billionaire brothers, Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, who once together ran Fortis Healthcare and Ranbaxy Laboratories, has taken a sharp twist after a complaint before Delhi Police has directly named Radha Soami Satsang Beas Gurinder Singh Dhillon known as Babaji for illegally benefitting, conspiring and diverting funds more than Rs 1000 crores from Religare.

The New Indian has accessed all relevant documents related to this complaint at a time when Burman family, the promoter of Dabur — India’s leading consumer goods company, has mysteriously made an open offer in public to raise its stake to 26 % in Religare. Dabur family already has a holding of 21.5 % in Religare Enterprises Limited.

The open offer would bring fresh consideration of Rs 2,116 crore.

These sensational charges, asking the police to probe the Dera head, have been made in two different plaints, one submitted by Religare’s current management and second by Malvinder himself.

“Pursuant to being appointed, the new professional board and management has realised that REL and its subsidiaries were in terrible financial condition and it sought to ascertain the reasons for the same. Through internal enquiries conducted….the new management found that there was widespread illegal siphoning of funds from REL and its subsidiaries…..” the complaint by Religare, on October 6, before Delhi Police reads.

“Role of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, Alok Rai Rajpur, and Yuraj Narain Gorwaney, needs to be investigated who conspired and illegally benefitted by causing wrongful cause of RFL by executing deed of Asola Land, already mortgaged with RFL”.

In the same complaint, the Religare company’s vice president Manpreet Singh Suri, has also sought probe against Shivinder’s wife Aditi for allegedly paying illegal gratification of Rs 200 crore to jailed conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar to “bribe public servants for obtaining bail of her husband from the judicial custody”.

Supreme Court had last year jailed both Malwinder and Shivinder while Malwinder had this year in June secured a bail.

In a separate complaint, Malvinder too had told Delhi Police, that he requested the Dera baba to settle the loans extended by Religare or its subsidiaries to Gurinder Dhilllon and his family members including his son as the total outstanding of Religare had reached up to Rs 5,400 crores.

[NOTE: That's $650 million, roughly, a huge amount of money.]

The complaint also said that six firms, as subsidiaries of Religare, were used by Shivinder to aid Gurinder in Punjab’s Beas, and his associates in achieving his goal.

These six companies are Best Healthcare Private Ltd, Modland Wears Private Ltd, Fern Healthcare Private Ltd, Devera Developers Pvt Ltd, Green Line Buildwell Pvt Ltd, and Adept Lifespaces Pvt Ltd and acquired these firms without proper due diligence.

The deposits made from these companies were as follows. Modland was used to divert Rs 223 crore, Devera gave Rs 122.6 crore, Fern Healthcare handed over Rs 292.5, Best health care deposited Rs 207, Adept and Rosestar gave Rs 152.8 and Rs 8 crore to Dera baba’s family members: Gurinder Dhillon (himself), Gurkirat, Gurpreet Dhillon, Shabnam Dhillon ( Dera baba’s wife).

“Shivinder frequently shuttled between the Radha Soami Satsang headquarters in Beas and Delhi in the period leading up to December 2017. He was deeply involved in senior-level affairs. The accused plotted a cunning scheme to divert RHC’s funds and absorb Gurinder Singh Dhillon’s debts and dues, leaving RHC with liabilities and stripping it of all assets, transferring them to Gurinder Singh Dhillon,” the complaint has said.

The complaint recalls Dera Beas’s entry into Religare group through Gurinder’s relative, Sunil Godhwani.

According to Malvinder’s complaint, Sunil and Gurinder were helping the company grow, but they were allegedly conspiring to deceive him and the firm.

The complaint further alleges that in December 2017, Shivinder, while misusing his position in RHC, concealed the precarious financial status of the six companies whose money were allegedly transferred into Radha Soami family members.

Later, Malvinder discovered only through an auditor appointed to audit the accounts of these six firms that they were burdened with debt, his submission before Delhi Police has said.

In fact, the Complainant (Malvinder) believes that, in his ambition to become the next spiritual leader of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Shivinder unilaterally signed a purported ‘family settlement’ with Gurinder Singh Dhillon, absolving Gurinder of any wrongdoing and agreeing that no liabilities, legal proceedings, or criminal charges would be attributed to Gurinder under any circumstances,” the complaint reads.

Delhi Police Special CP EOW, Shalini Singh, did not comment on the investigation.

Malwinder confirmed that the police was probing the matter.

Here's another story on this subject from the MillenniumPost, "Radha Soami Satsang Beas head accused of illegally diverting Rs 1oo6 cr from Religare."

New Delhi: In a startling turn of events, the ongoing feud between billionaire brothers, Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, who previously held influential positions at Fortis Healthcare and Ranbaxy Laboratories, has taken a dramatic twist.

A formal complaint filed with the Delhi Police has directly implicated Gurinder Singh Dhillon, also known as Babaji, the spiritual leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, in a web of alleged illegal activities, conspiracy, and the unauthorised diversion of over Rs 1000 crores from financial conglomerate Religare.

These allegations have prompted a comprehensive investigation by the police and stem from two separate complaints, one filed by Religare and the other by Malvinder Singh himself.

The complaint submitted by Religare on October 6 unveils a concerning picture: “Upon taking the reins, the new professional board and management uncovered the distressing financial state of REL and its subsidiaries, leading them to delve into the root causes. Internal inquiries unveiled a widespread and unauthorised drainage of funds from REL and its subsidiaries.”

At this juncture, The Millennium Post has secured access to vital documents related to this complaint. This development occurs in parallel with the Burman family, esteemed promoters of Dabur, one of India’s foremost consumer goods giants, making a cryptic public offer to acquire Religare.

The complaint underscores the urgency of investigating the roles played by Gurinder Singh Dhillon, Alok Rai Rajpur, and Yuraj Narain Gorwaney, who are accused of conspiring and benefiting unlawfully at the expense of RFL through a transaction involving Asola Land, a property already mortgaged with RFL.

Within the same complaint, Religare’s Vice President, Manpreet Singh Suri, has also called for an inquiry into allegations against Shivinder’s wife, Aditi, involving an alleged illegal gratification of Rs 200 crore to the jailed crook Sukesh Chandrasekhar, aimed at influencing public servants for her husband’s release from judicial custody. Both Malvinder and Shivinder Singh were imprisoned by the Supreme Court last year. However, Malvinder secured his release in June this year.

In a separate complaint, Malvinder informs the Delhi Police of his attempt to seek resolution with Gurinder Dhillon, the spiritual leader of the Dera, regarding the outstanding loans extended by Religare and its subsidiaries to Gurinder Dhillon and his family members, amassing a staggering Rs 5,400 crores.

The complaint suggests that six companies, subsidiaries of Religare, were employed by Shivinder to assist Gurinder and his associates in their financial pursuits. It has also been alleged that in December 2017, Shivinder, while exploiting his position in RHC, disguised the treacherous financial status of six companies.

Subsequently, an auditor appointed to scrutinize the accounts of these six firms discovered that they were buried under a mountain of debt, having extended financial assistance to Gurinder, his family, or companies operated by them, totalling a staggering Rs 1006.3 crore.

The complainant (Malvinder), contends that Shivinder, driven by his aspiration to ascend as the future spiritual leader of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, unilaterally executed a purported ‘family settlement.’ This settlement absolved Gurinder Singh Dhillon of any alleged wrongdoing and stipulated that Gurinder would be shielded from any liabilities, legal actions, or criminal charges.

Delhi Police Special CP EOW, Shalini Singh, refrained from providing comments on the ongoing investigation, maintaining a stance of official discretion. Malvinder, however, has confirmed that the police are actively investigating the matter.

No free will is the secular version of karma

It had to be. During my religious days -- well, make that 35 years -- I wrote two books that addressed the subject of karma.

In God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, karma was secondary to my main theme of spirit being the creative power of the cosmos. But in Life is Fair, the whole book was about this spiritual law of cause and effect.

Now, when I've become an atheist, I'm fascinated by the strong neuroscientific and philosophical arguments against free will. What's interesting is that no free will is almost exactly the same as karma.

Guess I was meant to not believe in free will. 

Of course, often karma is viewed as having supernatural elements, especially in its Eastern religious form. Karma is seen as extending over multiple lives, through reincarnation. But otherwise, no free will is the secular equivalent of karma.

To demonstrate this, below are some quotes from the literature of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for those three and a half decades.

I assembled these quotes in the course of my research for my first book. I read, or rather re-read, every book in English published by RSSB and took notes on various subjects concerning how mysticism and the new physics could relate.

Here's some of what the RSSB books say about karma, which sounds just like the notion of no free will, leaving aside the references to God as being the overseer of karma and mentions of past lives. Every quote is from a book written by one of the RSSB gurus, such as Charan Singh and Sawan Singh.

The Karmic Law is supreme on the material and mind planes, and nothing happens of its own accord, spontaneously, so to say. The law governs the planes; therefore, no haphazard happening of events takes place anywhere, whether the events are of microscopic or astronomical dimensions. (Sawan Singh)

According to the layer of our Karmas that comes into action, our Lord makes people act towards us in that way. So we should never blame anybody. (Charan Singh)

Our present life was marked out in the minutest detail, even before we were born, and no change can be made in that now. (Charan Singh)

No person, dead or living, can influence the life of another person. That is settled strictly according to the law of Karma. You go where your attachments are and you reap what you sow. These are eternal laws which work in this creation and every soul is bound by them. (Charan Singh)

Everything in our life is predestined according to the karmas of our past life, but this does not preclude all effort on our part. The effort that we make is also part of our destiny. We, in fact, have no free will as we call it... our will is very limited and what we call free will is all circumscribed by our birth, the family we are born into, the country, the education, and so forth, over which we had no control. All these circumstances have moulded our thoughts and we act and think accordingly. (Charan Singh)

There is no necessity to worry because whatever is destined, whatever has to happen, has already happened, is already destined. (Charan Singh)

We cannot think why should we do anything if it is already written in our destiny and we will get it automatically anyway. If a thing is in your destiny, then your way of thinking will be to develop it. We are all just like puppets who are dancing, and the strings are being pulled by Him according to our karmas. The realized souls and the unrealized souls are all dancing in the same way. The only difference is that the realized souls know that He is pulling the string and the unrealized souls think that they are dancing by their own effort. (Charan Singh)

If we look at it on a grand scale, from the top down, we have hardly any free will at all...We may say that this is my decision, this is my free will, but we forget what has led us to make that decision, to think in that direction... So, on a broader scale, we have absolutely no free will at all. Everything was planned, so to say. But with our limited view, looking from here up, we have free will. (Charan Singh)

We cannot know what is our karma or what is in store for us... Karma will be taken care of automatically. We should not try to analyze what is our karma or what is not our karma, for that will take care of itself. (Charan Singh)

What destiny has planned for you will come to pass without any planning on your part. Your destiny will cause you to act and make effort according to its plan. Destiny and effort go hand in hand. One is as much a part of the other as the sun and its rays. (Jagat Singh)

Spirituality is simple without Self and free will

So why do I enjoy pondering the notion that we not only aren't an enduring separate Self (a central tenet of Buddhism), we also don't possess free will (a central tenet of neuroscience)?

Though I haven't heard anyone asking me this question, I heard the voice that speaks inside my head asking it, so I'm pleased to answer myself.

Note that the "self" in that second sentence isn't capitalized as the "Self" in the first sentence was. That's to distinguish between the metaphysical idea of Self -- often expressed as soul -- that somehow exists separate from the physical body/mind, and the common sense idea of self as being that physical body/mind.

In other words, there's no doubt that each of us is a distinct self. But there's a lot of doubt that residing within that self is a separate and distinct Self that enters the bodily self at birth, leaves it at death, and isn't affected by anything, being eternal.

I used to believe in such a Self during the 35 years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a dualistic religion based in India and led by a guru who taught that our true nature is Soul, not body, and that the purpose of life is for the Soul to journey through higher regions of reality back to God.

This grandiose task involved many complications, because extricating the Soul from the grip of mind and matter supposedly wasn't easy, requiring arduous spiritual practice that included 2 1/2 hours of daily meditation that might extend over four lifetimes. (RSSB believed in reincarnation.)

RSSB initiates also vowed to be strict vegetarians, not drink alcohol or ingest recreational drugs, abstain from sex outside of marriage, and lead a "clean and moral" life -- whatever that means. 

Thus there were many things you had to do to save your Soul. These were different things, in large part, than believers in Christianity, Judaism, or Islam are expected to do.

But the common denominator between all dualistic religions that I'm familiar with is how difficult and complex it is to please God by doing what supposedly is required to break the bonds of this earthly life and return to "heaven," which goes by a variety of names but is considered to be much different from this world.

What a relief its been to leave all that supernatural superstition behind. I'm not saying that I'm completely cleansed of the religious beliefs that I used to embrace, but since 2005 I've become steadily more spiritually independent.

That has led me to an increasingly simple world view. Well, more than a world view, for I actually experience things differently now. For quite a few years I've read, and thought, and felt, and meditated in accord with the assumption that I am not a Self, nor do I possess free will. 

Those two assumptions are closely related, because the only way to possess a will that is free of the deterministic causes and effects that control everything other than, perhaps, the quantum realm where randomness appears prevalent, is to believe that an immaterial Self or Soul resides within us, or as us, that can act without being affected by those causes and effects.

Life is so much simpler and more satisfying without a Self or free will. Sure, problems still have to be dealt with. That comes with life. However, I feel like a large metaphysical load has been lifted from me now that I no longer believe that I have to make of life something larger than it naturally is.

Enlightenment. Satori. God-realization. Whatever we want to call it, that thing used to gnaw on me like an itch that wouldn't go away no matter how much I scratched it. In fact, the scratching, the quest for a supernatural transformation that would make me more than human, was producing the itch.

Now, lacking a Self, there's no Self to be saved, no Self needing God's or Guru's grace, no Self requiring assistance in being freed from the karmic wheel of reincarnation, no Self standing apart from the natural world. 

I still meditate. I still enjoy exploring ways to be happier, calmer, more energetic, loving, calm, and at peace with myself and other people. I was a vegetarian before I joined RSSB and I've continued to be a vegetarian after I left RSSB.

So I still consider myself a spiritual seeker. I'm just seeking what is attainable and real, rather what is  fantasy and illusion. And that feels oh-so-good.

Another strange use of force at a RSSB meeting

Below you can read a message I got a few days ago from someone who attended a Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) meeting in the United Kingdom where volunteers dragged out a questioner in the presence of the RSSB guru.

I was asked what I thought about what happened, along with some more general questions, and to share the message and my response on this blog. Glad to oblige. My comments are in bold, interspersed with the message.

Naturally I thought about another example in 2019 of heavy-handed RSSB sevadars/volunteers at a center in England that Osho Robbins described in several posts, here and here. 

Dear Brian,

In the UK, Coventry has just opened their new RSSB centre. Baba Ji [Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru] came on Sunday 16 July for a Q&A session. Before he arrived, there was some argument about someone wanting to ask a question after the tokens had all finished. After a while, several heavy handed sevadars [volunteers] were dragging him, and forcefully removing him from the hall. Everyone saw it because he was crying and telling them to stop.

Sure doesn't sound like a loving or spiritual thing to do.

The noise attracted the attention of everyone. I have never seen anything like this before, so I thought it was a bit strange. I have seen your website before but have never commented. I just wanted to inform you in case it was of interest and maybe someone else who was there might know more about what happened.

I'm always interested in news of this sort about RSSB goings-on. It shocks me when I hear of force being used in a RSSB meeting. I was initiated in 1971 by Charan Singh, the guru who preceded Gurinder Singh, and nothing of this sort ever came to light while Charan Singh was in charge of RSSB. He died in 1990, then Gurinder Singh took his place as guru.

The incident happened in front of a hall full of satsangis [RSSB initiates] and not a single person helped or seemed concerned. I found the incident rather disturbing. I thought violence was against the principles of sant mat [the philosophy of RSSB] but clearly over a thousand followers must have thought otherwise. I just hope the person was not too upset or hurt. I am confused.

It's good that you're confused. This shows that you have the natural human desire to see other people treated fairly and respectfully, even if they might be breaking some rule or law. Yes, violence is indeed against the principles of Sant Mat, at least when it isn't justified to prevent some harm that is worse than the use of force. In this case, violence against the man wasn't justified.

Is this normal? I am not initiated as I am too young, but my parents are and they want me to get initiated once I am old enough to apply. I asked them about it later, and they told me not to worry because the sevadars know what they are doing and they said they were acting in the hukam [divine order] of Baba Ji.

I'm sure your parents are sincere in their love and devotion for the teachings of RSSB and the guru. I used to believe as they did. Now I don't. No guru is perfect. Not Gurinder Singh, not any other guru. So their orders aren't perfect either. The orders have to be questioned when they don't make sense or, as in this case, harm other people. Sevadars/volunteers also aren't perfect. Their egos swell when they get to perform some service in the presence of the guru, sometimes acting like jerks. This was one of those times.

You can write this on your church of the churchless website and I will let you know if I find out anything else. My parents don’t know I have written this, and I would never tell them, but I don’t think it was right. I don’t know what they mean by hukam, but it seems like using this type of force is accepted by the Baba Ji. Can you explain this to me because you were once a follower too?

Well, all I can say is that people can act badly when they're under the sway of a charismatic leader. Hitler, Donald Trump, Putin, there's lots of examples of otherwise decent people acting indecently when a belief system or inordinate devotion to a leader infects their brains. RSSB is adept at making initiates feel special. After all, they've supposedly been chosen by God to return to God via a Perfect Living Master, with Gurinder Singh being considered one.

It's like there's a magical force field in the mind of true believers that causes life to be viewed through the prism of the RSSB teachings and the utterances of the RSSB guru. Normal standards of right and wrong no longer apply within that force field. Whatever the guru commands, that is "right." No questions asked. As Gurinder Singh used to say, and perhaps still does, "It's my way or the highway."

So many people were there I am sure someone will know more.

Send me another message if you learn more.

I know you have written several books for RSSB, one being “Life is fair.” You must know a lot more than most people about RSSB, because who else has written a book? Did you ever do this type of seva and use force on the followers when you was a sevadar?

Writing books for RSSB just means that I wrote books for RSSB. It doesn't mean I'm special in any other way. I did learn a lot about RSSB in the process, which helps explain why I ended up leaving RSSB. After Gurinder Singh became guru, I did do other sorts of volunteer work in addition to book writing, including "security seva" due to my learning karate.  

I never used force on anyone, but I observed it once, as described in a 2013 blog post. Here's an excerpt.

Some people love being part of a military-like chain of command. I understand the appeal. I’ve been a committed religious soldier myself. However, now I look back on my jump and ask “how high” on the way up days with more than a little embarrassment.

One example: I used to be an enthusiastic Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) “sevadar” (volunteer). After I started learning Shotokan karate, I got to be a security sevadar during the guru’s occasional visits to the United States and Canada.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with security. Except when it’s overzealous. During a visit Master Gurinder Singh made to Honolulu I was standing outside the auditorium when the guru’s entourage strode by.

Gurinder Singh walked past me and toward the building where he was to speak. He stopped and turned around about thirty yards away, looking and waving his hands in a “no, no” gesture toward my general direction.

The reason? A man near me had pulled out his camera and was taking photographs of the guru. From a good distance—not at all a paparazzi sort of intrusion. But RSSB initiates were under firm orders not to photograph Gurinder Singh or record his words.

However, this guy was in a public place. And we had no way of knowing if he was a member of RSSB. Plus, even if he was, what right did we have to stop him from taking a photo of the guru?

Such considerations didn’t enter the mind of the aggressive security sevadars around me (myself, I had no inclination to confront the man). They yelled “Stop!” He looked confused. “You can’t take photographs of the master,” he was told.

It was a unpleasant scene, especially considering this was supposed to be a weekend of spiritual love. I can’t recall all of the details of the encounter. I’m pretty sure the man got talked into taking the film out of his camera and handing it over.

I do know that I’ve seen a similar scene in movies, like when a Mafia boss is photographed in a compromising situation and his goons rough up the camera man.

What’s most disturbing to me now is how little I was disturbed at the time. Like everyone else around me, I assumed that obedience to the guru trumped respect for non-sectarian niceties like the First Amendment. After all, the guru was considered to be God in human form, and it isn’t a good idea to disobey God.

In short, I was enmeshed in a cultish way of thinking back then. Heck, I may still be, but at least now I’m a devotee of the Cult of Me—which has a much more flexible code of conduct. Scanning these “Warning signs of dysfunctional cults,” I see quite a few that apply to RSSB.

If life is fair, was what I saw also fair? Does this not create karma for the sevadars? Also, the person who wanted to ask a question, does he also create karma? After death, do we have to account for all these actions, like my parents always tell me?

No. No. No. No. Because I no longer believe in karma as it is commonly understood. I do believe in causes and effects, but that's different from karma that supposedly carries over from life to life -- since I also no longer believe in reincarnation or life after death.

My parents tell me that after death, Baba Ji will save me from bad karmas if I get initiated, but in one of the questions, he said that “God comes for every soul, regardless of whether they are a satsangi but we might not recognise God.” It doesn’t make any sense to me, and I asked my mum but she was not able to explain it. Do you know what this means?

I'm not the best person to ask, since I don't believe in God.

Also one more thing. Can you explain to me what is "Sach Khand?" I am told it is a spiritual realm where all the satsangis will go after death, but I don't see the point of going there and Baba Ji never says anything about this subject. 

 

You're right. It's a spiritual realm. But traditionally the RSSB teachings say it can take as many as four lifetimes to reach Sach Khand. It's good to hear that Gurinder Singh doesn't say anything about Sach Khand, since almost certainly it is a fantasy. 

 

Please post this on your website, and post your answers too. Thank you.

 

And thank you for your message and thoughtful questions.

A Seeker

Can your religion survive without supernaturalism? Buddhism can.

I'm pleased to present another comment from "Appreciative Reader," a regular commenter on this blog, that I liked a lot. (Not coincidentally, I agree with with what he says.)

Appreciative Reader makes a point that, while it appears obvious now that I've read the comment, I hadn't thought of before. Or at least, not as clearly as he expressed it. 

Namely, that some religions, mystical practices, and other forms of spirituality can function just fine without supernaturalism, while others require supernaturalism in order for their teachings to be coherent.

By coherent, I don't mean that the religion or whatever makes objective sense, as a scientific theory would, just that within the confines of that belief system, its tenets hang together in a fashion that is reasonable to someone who embraces the belief system.

As you can read below, Buddhism is coherent whether or not supernatural notions like rebirth and non-physical planes of existence are included within Buddhist teachings.

This explains why a 421 page book about the core Buddhist principles of emptiness and dependent arising that I finished reading today, Seeing That Frees, contains no mention of anything supernatural. At least nothing I recall, and I read the book quite closely.

It also explains why I came to doubt the validity of the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the India-based religious organization headed up by a guru I belonged to for 35 years that Appreciative Reader uses as an example of a religion that requires supernatural entities in order for its theology to work.

In addition to the examples of RSSB supernaturalism cited by Appreciative Reader, I'd add the belief that the RSSB guru is God in Human Form, having been sent by God to return "marked souls" to Sach Khand, a sort of heaven. 

If the RSSB guru is viewed as a mere fallible human being, the traditional RSSB teachings fall apart, because at their core is the assumption that the guru is divine and accompanies his disciples through higher regions of reality in various non-physical forms.

Buddhism, on the other hand, has no need to view the Buddha in any supernatural sense. He can just be a wise person who figured out a way to end suffering. 

Here's Appreciative Reader's comment.

Hello, Dungeness!

I'm afraid you may have misunderstood me there. What I was trying to say is this:

The Buddha’s methods are designed specifically to lead to the end of suffering, by doing two things: first, arriving at realization that there is no abiding self; and second, by going beyond desire and aversion.

Now that works, obviously, given the superstitions about rebirth and different planes of existence and so on. But it works equally well when those superstitions are got rid of: even without rebirth and planes of existence, these methods still help take us to realization of Anatta [non-self] and towards Nirvana.

On the other hand, Christian prayer and works and intercession and the rest of it, are geared specifically towards getting around Original Sin and reaching the Kingdom of God. So that if those assumptions are invalidated, then that invalidates the entire structure of Christianity.

Likewise, RSSB meditation is geared towards taking us out of the region of Kal [a negative power who rules lower regions of creation], and to Sach Khand [heaven, basically] all of that. And that makes sense only if Kal and Sach Khand exist. If those assumptions are invalidated, then that invalidates the basic, essential purpose of RSSB meditation, and of everything RSSB stands for.

Sure, there might be incidental benefits, like general physical and mental well being. As far as I know, these benefits have been evinced for mindfulness meditation, and not for RSSB meditation, and we might be jumping the gun in assuming that what applies to mindfulness methods applies also to RSSB meditation.

But, regardless of that, these benefits are only incidental. Both in the case of Buddhistic practices, as well as in the case of RSSB. There’s nothing wrong in taking advantage of such; that’s all good, why not; but that incidental wellness is just that, incidental, and has nothing at all to do with what either Buddhistic practices or RSSB practices are geared towards.

And, like I spelled out here, the essential Buddhistic “project”, if I may call it that, which is the cessation of suffering by recognizing that we have no abiding self and by decoupling from desires and aversion, stays valid even if we jettison the superstitions it is predicated on.

But the essential Christian project of going around Original Sin and attaining to the Kingdom of God, and the essential RSSB project of removing oneself from the domain of Kal and acceding to the Sach Khand region, these are completely invalidated if those assumptions, they are predicated on, are invalidated.

I understand what you’re saying, that unlike Christianity, RSSB does not demand that adherents swear belief in superstitions. And that the truth will reveal itself through meditation practice. Even if both those were true, even then, should those superstitions not actually be true, should Kal and Sach Khand not actually exist, well then, surely that renders moot the whole basic fundamental point of RSSB meditation?