Today someone asked me and someone else some questions about the meditation I did during the 35 years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India.
Here's what Tony Wims said in a comment.
Hey Brian or Osho. Just curious: Did either of you ever see the light or hear the sound during meditation?
If you did, what stopped you from developing your perception further?
If you didn't, I'm actually really surprised that you didn't and you were initiated.
Were you following the precepts? ( If you didn't see/hear).
Did you not start by placing your attention at the 3rd eye center?
I know I shouldn't be, because anything is possible, but I'm very surprised to hear of initiates who left the path. Especially if they had even a brief glimpse of the light or a snippet of the sound.
Thank you in advance for your answer. Forgive me for asking if you don't feel like it.
Hey, I have no problem with questions about my meditation experience. But before I get to the answers, I'll share some observations about the assumptions underlying Tony's comment.
The main assumption is that there's such a thing as supernatural light and sound emanating from higher spiritual regions of reality. I used to believe this was true, but beliefs are different from what actually is the case.
There's no demonstrable evidence of anything supernatural, much less mystical light and sound. So the burden of proof rests on those who claim that there is, not skeptics like me who doubt the existence of realms beyond the physical.
Another assumption is that meditation is aimed at anything other than being fully in touch with what appears in one's consciousness. Yes, I realize that Tony is talking about a very special form of meditation, Surat Shabd Yoga, or uniting one's soul with a divine sound current.
Again, this is a religious belief, not a proven reality.
In fact, a comment Sonia left today appears to accurately describe how the current guru of RSSB, Gurinder Singh Dhillon (GSD), looks upon meditation. What Sonia says fits with the notion that Dhillon has moved RSSB to what's been termed v. 2.0 and v. 3.0.
@Tony Most people don’t recognize the light or sound.
GSD just said some people go to the doctor thinking they have tinnitus when really it’s the “sound”. He also said if you want to see lights go to a disco. He’s made it abundantly clear that seeing the light or hearing sound is not what meditation is about. Many people won’t recognize it. He said just do your meditation.
The reason he says all of this is because satsangis complain over and over and over again to him about not hearing the sound or seeing light during meditation.
And the only reason I’m sharing this with you is so that you will understand that your Master never promised you a rose garden—he never promises you’ll see light and sound and most of your fellow satsangis don’t have that experience.
That was my clear impression also from the three-plus decades I spent talking with countless (more or less) RSSB initiates, or satsangis. i used to do a lot of speaking on behalf of RSSB, where one of my favorite lines was "The easiest vow to uphold is the one against talking about your mystical experiences, because no one is having any."
The line always got a laugh.
And no one ever came up to me afterwards and said I was wrong. As Sonia said, most RSSB devotees aren't focused on experiencing inner lights and sounds. They're focused on other things: the guru, going to RSSB meetings, being a vegetarian, socializing with RSSB friends, and such.
Getting back to Tony's questions, in 2014 I wrote a blog post called "I'm asked about my RSSB meditation experience." These lengthy excerpts address the more recent questions from Tony.
In "Why I'm justified in complaining about Sant Mat" I wrote:
I was initiated in the spring of 1971. For over thirty years—until 2002 or so—I was damn near a model satsangi (disciple).
I never missed a day of meditation. Mostly it was for the full proscribed two and a half hours. Sometimes less. One and a half hours was a minimum, such as when my daughter needed after-work attention and I was working full time. I followed the other vows perfectly, aside from having a single drink at my ten year high school reunion, which was just too freaking weird to endure without a dose of alcohol.
So don't tell me that I can't complain about Sant Mat and Radha Soami Satsang Beas. I'm totally justified in doing so. Because I know more about this philosophy and this organization than most initiates. Not just book knowledge—direct experience also.
Or, lack of experience, when it comes to meditation. I'm typical in this regard. Over those three decades I talked with hundreds, maybe thousands, of RSSB meditators. Very few, perhaps none, had experienced what they were told to expect. Those flights to inner mystical regions and the meeting with their guru's radiant astral form.
With me, it wasn't for lack of effort. Again, I did everything right. And the results were wrong. Now, many of the faithful would say, "Brian, you expected too much, too soon." Give me a break.
Thirty years isn't too soon. A glimpse of the promised spiritual land isn't too much.
In "Q and A about me and Sant Mat" I wrote this in response to another question that I'd gotten:
(2) Why do you think you never had a spiritual experience despite 30 years of devoted meditation?
Like I've been saying in several posts lately, including here, I'm not sure what "spiritual" means anymore. I had plenty of experiences in meditation.
What I didn't have was the sort of out-of-body, astral projecting, soul-flying, blasts of cosmic light and sound experiences that the Radha Soami Satsang Beas version of Sant Mat tells disciples to expect in meditation.
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.
Over more than three decades I've talked with lots of fellow RSSB initiates about their experiences in meditation. More accurately, their lack thereof.
When these people spoke honestly and openly (which usually isn't done in the formal satsangs, or talks), I learned that my lack of mind-blowing meditation experiences was par for the course in Sant Mat.
So there you have it.
Naturally I had lots of experiences in meditation. It was impossible not to have them, since I was awake and aware for most of the 1.5 to 2.5 hours of meditation I did each day for over thirty years. (Yeah, I'd fall asleep occasionally.)
I feel like I gained a lot from all that meditating.
It was a mix of "mantra meditation" (repeating a word or words to concentrate the mind) and "open awareness" meditation (trying to be still, mentally and physically, and being aware of what passes through consciousness).
Thus even though Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) views its meditation technique as something special, actually it is very much in the meditation mainstream. Mantras and open awareness are used in many other meditative practices.
The RSSB meditation did focus on "going within," though, to a much greater extent than mindfulness practices do. That is, the initiate was supposed to direct his/her attention to the third eye, or eye center, which supposedly was a gateway to higher realms of consciousness.
Now my daily meditation usually involves more of a balanced approach.
I like to follow my breathing for part of the time, either counting breaths or simply being aware of my breathing body doing its thing. I also enjoy mantra meditation. Usually I choose different words than the Five Holy Names taught by RSSB, but for old time's sake I'll occasionally return to the mantra I repeated for so many years.
It's difficult for me to describe what I experienced during my RSSB meditation years. As noted before, I've sat for tens of thousands of hours in meditation. How is it possible to sum that up in a few words?
I laughed; I cried; I was joyful; I was sad; I was peaceful; I was restless; I felt at one with the cosmos; I felt alone. And so much more.
One of the key things I learned was the difference between what my conscious mind does, and what the rest of my mind does. Well, let me rephrase that, because I no longer believe there are two entities inside my head: me, and my mind.
There is just one: brain/mind, or whatever you want to call it.
I used to enjoy, and still do, the sensation of either repeating a mantra, or doing nothing, and being aware of what happens inside my head when the brain/mind aspect called "I" isn't trying to direct the show of consciousness.
As anyone who meditates knows (or anyone who is alive knows)... a lot happens.
The brain/mind, like an iceberg, consists of a whole lot more than our conscious awareness, will, intention, and such. Dualistic forms of meditation, which see a distinction between soul and mind, or pure consciousness and impure consciousness, consider those unintended goings-on to be a distraction. Non-dual forms of meditation, such as mindfulness and Zen, don't.
To them, as to me these days, what happens in the brain/mind is what is happening. To deny it is to deny reality. Thoughts come and go. So do emotions, perceptions, intuitions, and much else.
Thus whereas I used to believe that God and the guru were responsible for what happened within my consciousness when I wasn't trying to make anything happen, now I realize that the part of brain/mind outside of conscious awareness is responsible.
I still feel that I'm part of something much larger than myself. I just don't call it God, or divine. It is me. And the world, which really isn't different from me.
Another RSSB defender attacks the messenger, me
This blog has been alive and well since 2004. That's 15 years of talking truth to religious power here at the Church of the Churchless.
After over 4 million page views, 2,526 posts, and 42,239 comments, I'm well aware of the games religious believers play when their cherished faith comes in for criticism. One of their favorite ploys is to attack the messenger when the message being shared is so convincing, they have no effective response to my truth-telling.
Recent case in point: commenter Chris.
He's been doing his best to defend the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, against a criminal complaint filed by his cousin, Malvinder Singh, alleging that Dhillon, his family, and close associates have fraudulently siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars from companies once managed by Malvinder and his brother Shivinder, who reportedly aided and abetted in the financial theft in exchange for a promise that Shivinder would become the next RSSB guru.
In addition, the complaint says that the guru has made death threats against Malvinder. Not exactly how one would expect that a supposedly "spiritual" guru would behave, though there are plenty of examples of other Indian gurus behaving badly.
Now, it seems to me that even if someone was a devotee of a guru who has been accused of such serious wrongdoing, especially since investigators in India have documented the money trail that leads to the guru's doorstep, they would say something like, "Wow, these are serious accusations. I sure hope they aren't true. But this purported wrongdoing needs to be closely examined."
Chris isn't that sort of person, though.
He's been doing his best to attack my credibility, even though I've simply been writing about what the Indian financial press has been reporting. Thus he's doing the attack the messenger thing, rather than responding to the details of the message regarding Gurinder Singh Dhillon's reported misdeeds.
After Chris wrongly claimed that I'm an "icon for dissatisfied meditators," I challenged him to explain why, if this was true, I've been meditating every day for 50 years. If I, and other spiritual but not religious types, are dissatisfied with our meditation, seemingly we wouldn't be so happy to meditate.
Here's the most recent comment from Chris, along with my responses in red. I enjoy puncturing religious pretense, so it was a pleasure to reply to Chris' comment. Since my name is Brian Hines, I'm the "BH" in the comment Chris shared.
As a gesture of good faith, I'll do you the courtesy of replying to your points and questions first. I have assumed you will permit me to be rigorously honest with you. . . . , . . .
Hey, I love honesty. Especially rigorous honesty. That's the best kind. I sprinkle rigorous honesty on my cereal each morning -- that's how much I adore it.
BH: “you claim to be devoted to the truth." I have not made such a "claim" here. Can you quote me? FALSE ASSUMPTION 1
Oh, I'm sorry. When I said in a comment that you (Chris) claim to be devoted to the truth, I thought you'd take that as a compliment. I stand corrected. You don't claim to be devoted to the truth. But I am. I guess I assumed that you were as devoted to the truth as me. My bad.
BH: “you speak of things that you have no knowledge of." Brian you don't know me, nor what I know. FALSE ASSUMPTION 2
Well, what I was thinking of when I said that about you was the above-referenced statement you made about me being an icon for dissatisfied meditators. Since you don't have direct knowledge of how satisfied I or others are with our meditation, I stand by my assertion. But if you do know how satisfied we are with our meditation, I look forward to seeing evidence of your mystical powers.
BH: "Such as, what I and other critics of the RSSB guru have experienced in meditation, and continue to experience." I have made no such claim to such knowledge. And I admit I don't have it. FALSE ASSUMPTION & ACCUSATION 3
Hmmmm. It sure seems like you made that claim. Below is an excerpt from one of your comments. You said that I and others have embraced "erroneous certainties." But I'm glad that you now admit that you don't know whether what we non-religious meditators experience in meditation is true. So I accept your apology. You wrote;
"Most people live their lives out of self-invented illusory certainties. In my view Brian Hines and many others here have merely swapped one set of erroneous sureties for a different set. As we ALL have the right to do. But if Mr. Hines wants to claim he is spreading 'truth' -- and doing it very publically -- then he also can be held accountable for what he spreads. Don't you think? Or has he now become an untouchable icon for dissatisfied meditators, thus someone who must be defended at all costs, even when he is clearly in error?"
BH: "As Sonya correctly said, we are not the 'dissatisfied meditators' that you say we are." I meant specifically surat-shabd-yoga meditation. And I wasn't referring to JUST you. I was colloquially referring to you and some of your defenders/supporters. In your case I was referencing how you have often expressed a dissatisfaction with the results of your decades of RS surat-shabd yoga. I admit I have made an assumption of my own, that someone who had satisfactory results in surat-shabd yoga would not be regularly engaged in the kind of comments that are commonplace here.
Ah, now we get to the crux of what is bothering Chris. He apparently believes that surat-shabd-yoga meditation is the only genuine kind. I heartily disagree. I spent 35 years diligently practicing that sort of meditation, which is that taught by Radha Soami Satsang Beas.
For about 15 years I've been meditating in a Buddhist fashion, using Vipassana (mindfulness) and Metta (loving kindness) practices. In my experience mindfulness and loving kindness are better ways of meditating. But everyone has to decide for themselves.
I'm just surprised that Chris is so judgmental about meditation practices that differ from the one he prefers.
I'm also surprised that Chris seems to be suggesting that he has achieved some sort of meditation heights that us mere mortals haven't. Do you really believe that surat shabd yoga meditation is better than other types, Chris? Regardless of the answer, I now understand why Chris is so defensive about criticisms of the RSSB guru.
If the guru really is guilty of the crimes he's been accused of, this would show that surat-shabd-yoga doesn't make one a better human being, given that Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the spiritual leader of a surat-shabd-yoga sect.
BH: "You seem to look upon meditation as some sort of a contest...” No, I have not written that, and I do not think that. FALSE ASSUMPTION 4
Again, I stand corrected. When you spoke of "dissatisfied meditators," I understandably assumed that you had a vision in mind of what a satisfied meditator would be like. It's good to know that notwithstanding your statements about surat-shabd-yoga meditation, actually you don't believe that sort of meditation is better than other kinds. On that we agree. Which is why I'm pleased to stick with mindfulness and loving kindness meditation.
BH: "If you're willing, please share what you consider should make someone dissatisfied with their meditation." I regard this as a devious attempt at entrapment used as a defensive avoidance tactic. But ...only you can know for sure. Whatever, I have no interest in pursuing such a line of enquiry and don't see how it adds to the discussion of you presenting one-sided allegations and speculations as if they are factually proven, when any honest person knows that, as yet, they aren't.
Gosh, Chris, I politely said "if you're willing..." No need to view my request as a "devious attempt at entrapment."
Didn't you just say that you don't view meditation as some sort of contest? I simply was wondering why you claimed that I and others were dissatisfied with our meditation. Seemingly that claim would be backed up by a criterion of what would make someone satisfied with their meditation.
Regarding the allegations made against Gurinder Singh Dhillon, you should complain to the Indian financial press and Malvinder Singh, since they're the ones reporting on and making those allegations. I sprinkle my blog posts on this subject with "allegedly" and similar terms. I've never said that they were factually proven. Maybe you've been reading some other blog and mixing it up with this one. Hey, we all make mistakes.
BH: "Again, along with Buddhist teachings, I consider that coming closer to the reality of the present moment, whatever that reality consists of, is what meditation is all about. If you disagree, share your own view of meditation." Again, I see this as yet another irrelevant point to my specific observations and therefore a diversionary tactic. There.
There? That's your answer to my query about whether you believe coming closer to the reality of the present moment is what meditation is all about?
I simply was trying to understand how you view meditation. Sounds like I was correct in assuming above that truth isn't your primary goal in meditation. That's fine. Everybody is entitled to their own illusions. Whatever works for you, do it.
Will you now reply to the previous observations and the related questions put to you? Here are a few more: Can you see how you have again in this reply made many false assumptions and made unfounded claims?
No.
Can you see that you have built a picture of what is occurring between us based on those false assumptions AS IF they were 'factual' and 'true'?
No.
Can you see how that appears to be a pattern of behaviour?
No.
UPDATE: I just came across a comment by Sonya that is too good not to share in this post. GSD refers to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Enjoy:
@Chris Why do you keep saying “dissatisfied meditators”. I was very satisfied with my meditation when I followed RSSB and am still satisfied with meditation today. That had nothing to do with GSD. It’s GSD’s stomach churning behavior and the comments I personally witnessed spew out of his mouth as well as his inappropriate behavior that were intolerable.
Maybe you haven’t spent enough time in his close presence to understand this yet. As you’ll see in one of Brian’s recent posts he threw in “allegedly” and made reference to how Stephen Colbert often throws in “allegedly” when talking about Trump.
That made me laugh... All of the other late night TV show hosts repeat the news... (and they don’t even say allegedly) that’s exactly what Brian is doing (on a more serious note). Watch Colbert, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden, John Oliver... they repeat the news and add their own Op Ed to it...
I wish India had an SNL [Saturday Night Live] type show... maybe they do. If so, I’d love to see it because this whole RSSB, Dhillon, Singh scandal has rocked the Indian Media. They like to refer to it as a potboiler... they say it has all the makings of a Bollywood movie with a guru even thrown in! It’s a blockbuster Bollywood film in the making.
You should spend some time watching the News channels in India cover this... get a translator. It’s sadly very entertaining. Or are you more of a Fox News and Info Wars kind of guy/girl? (respectfully, Chris could be either) What made GSD will break GSD.
Posted at 07:31 PM in Comments, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Spiritual practice/meditation | Permalink | Comments (67)