Month: September 2019

For 35 years I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization with headquarters in India. Back then I believed that RSSB taught a semi-scientific approach of uniting one's personal consciousness, soul, with universal consciousness, God.  But now that I've been able to look upon RSSB more objectively, I view it as a cult. Here's how a knowledgeable person defined a cult. I've boldfaced certain parts for emphasis. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated three primary characteristics, which are…

Here's Part 2 of Osho Robbins' (not his real name) tale of what happened to him at a meeting of Radha Soami Satsang Beas devotees at the RSSB Haynes Park center in England.

Part 1 can be read in "Osho Robbins' 'Crime of the Century' at a RSSB Haynes Park satsang."

Part 2 is long, so you'll need to click on the continuation link to read the full account. Here's some definitions of a few words Robbins uses in his report. "Satsang" is a spiritual talk. "Baba Ji" refers to the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. "Sevadar" is a volunteer.

I'm sharing this story because it illustrates the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of religious people, whether of the East or West. When volunteer devotees act much worse than ordinary human beings, and apparently no higher-ups care about their bad behavior, this reflects badly on their religious organization — in this case Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

———————————————————

17 August 2019 Haynes Park
Seven sevadars attack one satsangi,
completely unprovoked and without reason

This account from Saturday 17^th August 2019, describes how I was peacefully walking towards the exit of Haynes Park to leave, and was stopped and held by seven people and dragged to a private spot and then intimidated and punched in the face and then later pushed into the back of a pitch black van to intimidate me further. Further threats were also made.

You can make up your own mind as to whether the actions of those seven people were reasonable. What I can guarantee is that this account is accurate. Furthermore I have no reason to lie because I am not seeking any specific outcome. I am simply presenting the facts of what happened. Beyond that it is not of my concern. I don’t even care about being “re-instated.”

So, I got banned from satsang. How the heck did that happen?

Oh yes, now I remember: it was because I took a mobile phone into satsang and recorded 5 minutes of an English speaker.

But wait a minute… LOTS of people do much much much more than that.

A quick search on YouTube shows there are MANY satsangs / Q&A of BabaJi already online. I stopped counting at 200. Clearly its not a big issue, otherwise RSSB would have done something about it.

Here’s a few examples: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPsz5Z2JvpA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXX6t1F9ZBA&t=113s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2E86eQPNwU

Now contrast this with what the sevadars did:

1. Took my phone, lied about where it was, refused to return it for approx. 5 hours. 
2. Sent a lower sevadar to officially take responsibility for it – if it got lost.
3. Fabricated a story about me threating to “kick a sevadar in the nuts” : something I can prove 100% to be a lie because it’s simply out of character.
4. Forced another sevadar to lie 
5. Banned me without authority because it was based on a lie.

Now I know that sevadars are not perfect, but give me a break.

We’re not talking about perfect here. 

We’re talking about NORMAL, DECENT human beings.

If this is the result of following RSSB for maybe 30+ years, then clearly it’s not working.

“By their fruits Ye shall know them.” Says the Bible. 

But no matter…  Let’s carry on…because the show must go on…

Now we get onto Day 2: the Saturday satsang. There was simply no way the ban was real as it was based on a lie. I also did not think that the person who banned me had any authority to ban me. He also gave me nothing in writing, giving me even more reason to question its validity.

And to add to it all, I had a dream that night. In the dream, I was on the mic, and it was a Q&A session, and BabaJi was saying “Absolutely, the master loves every disciple like his own child.”

I can only guess, my subconscious mind created the dream from the words of the old satsangi I had met that day who had moved me to tears by saying “Does anyone ever forget his own son?” when I had asked him if he recognised me.

Anyway, I took that to mean that BabaJi wants me to attend satsang that day and if he wants me to attend, who am I to fight against that? I am not saying it was some inner revelation – just what I took the dream to mean.

So I decided I would attend satsang that day (Saturday). nThis time I took my own car because I did not want to inconvenience anyone else. I drove into Haynes Park and nobody paid any special attention to me. So clearly I was not banned, because if I was banned, at least some sevadar would have recognized me. 

If I was banned, they would all have a photo of me. So I parked up and walked to the satsang tent. Once again, nobody paid any special attention to me. Even more evidence the ban was a lie.

As I walked along, I saw the same guy who I had met the previous day: Sevadar #2. The one with the short term memory problem. This time he did not ask me “do you know who I am?” so his memory may have improved. A good sign I guess.

He asked me to step to the side of the main walkway, but after the previous day’s experience, I decided to ignore his request. After all, it was only a request, and it was a free country.

I said “No thank you. I am going to attend satsang. I have no mobile phone with me. You can check.”

Then something happened that frankly shocked me.

He started physically pulling me to the side, by grabbing my arm. This was uncalled for.

“Please let go of me, this is assault” I said as I tried to get free of his grip.

Next thing I know, another guy grabs my other arm. 

Now I was getting a little concerned as this was not normal behaviour. If they had an issue, all they had to do was get one guy to watch where I sit and phone the police to get me removed. That would be the legal and proper procedure to follow. Physically grabbing me was going beyond the call of duty.

“Let go of me, and I will leave” I said. Still they held onto me as if I was some criminal, which I guess in their mind I was.