I’ve had lots of teachers in my life. In schools. In sports. In martial arts. In all kinds of other things. The common denominator that unites my teachers, the good ones at least, is that there knew a lot about the subject they were helping me to learn.
After all, what’s the point of having a teacher if they don’t know more than you do about a subject?
That question played a large role in my decision to part company with Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India led a guru considered to be God in Human Form. After 35 years, I concluded that no one in RSSB actually knew anything about God, because there’s no demonstrable evidence that God even exists.
So it didn’t make sense for me, or for that matter, anyone else, to study the subject of God under the guidance of a teacher/guru if there’s nothing to learn. In his book, Depending on no-thing, Robert Saltzman speaks about this in a chapter called “What is a spiritual teacher?” He writes:
No matter what the subject, a teacher of it needs to have mastered it personally. You don’t wonder about a math teacher because, except at the highest levels of mathematical inquiry, which can be quite mysterious, ordinary mathematics is very much cut and dried. One can determine easily if a calculus lesson or a lecture on plane geometry is valid or not, and then determine right away if the teacher is any good.
…A spiritual teacher problem arises, it seems to me, when the teaching involves assertions that the teacher cannot possibly know to be true, but has learned to “teach,” the way a parrot learns to imitate speech without really saying anything meaningful.
The teacher may even believe herself to have attained some advanced, esoteric level or even to be “enlightened.” In my view, that kind of “teaching” is not worthy of respect. However, I do not disrespect spiritual teaching when the teacher limits herself to what she really knows and understands. People may benefit from that kind of teaching.
For example, Elena Ascencio Ibanez, the editor of The Ten Thousand Things and co-editor of the present volume, is a dharma teacher; and I respect her teaching because she speaks from the heart and does not claim to know final answers to ultimate matters. So when Elena leads a group in meditation, she is helping them to calm down, get off the high horse, and, naked and unprotected by spiritual dogma, crawl around on the ground for a while — the ground of being, where she is willing to crawl around herself. That can be helpful for certain people at certain times.
Elena does not say that she is teaching how to attain enlightenment, nirvana, freedom from rebirth, or any of that stuff. Why? Because she does not know about nirvana or how to attain it. Some old texts discuss that, and even map out supposed paths to it; but if Elena taught that, she would be teaching hearsay — which could be nonsense for all she knows.
RSSB is a good example of spiritual hearsay. The organization’s teachings are put forward as universal for all times and places, reflecting the true nature of the cosmos: higher supernatural planes of existence overseen by God and divine energy that can be known by releasing one’s soul from the confines of mind and body, then traveling to those spiritual regions under the guidance of a Perfect Living Master who bears the same intimate resemblance to God as Jesus did.
Nice story. But that’s all it is, a story. A fictional tale that gets told and retold in books and talks, yet has zero demonstrable evidence to back it up and make it truth rather than fiction.
One giveaway that RSSB is engaged in story-telling is how a successor guru typically is selected after the previous guru dies. (I said “typically” because Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current guru, is still alive yet has appointed a successor, Jasdeep Singh Gill, who is basically a guru-in-waiting.) One would think that a new RSSB guru could come from any country, given the supposed universality of this so-called “Science of the Soul.”
But every RSSB guru has come from the same place: the Punjab region of India. And sometimes the successor guru is part of the same family as the previous guru. Which shows that RSSB is not really a science, but an organization dedicated to its own preservation, growth and cultural heritage.
Since it is extremely unlikely that the RSSB gurus actually have direct personal experience of the subject they’re teaching — God-realization — I’ve wondered in blog posts how to describe these gurus. In a 2015 post, “Let’s add a new L-word to ‘Who is the guru?’ possibilities“, I noted that my favorite L-word had been loyalist.
Is there another L-word that better fills the bill? One springs to mind: loyalist. Perhaps when a successor is appointed to fill the shoes of a highly-regarded guru, loyalty both to his predecessor and to the surrounding organization prevents the newcomer from crying out, “Hey, I’m not God! I’m just a man filling the role of a guru.”
However, then I suggested an even better L-word.
But a essay by Michael Shermer in his Scientific American “Skeptic” column suggests another possibility. In “Lies We Tell Ourselves: How Deception Leads to Self-Deception,” Shermer says:
“Trivers’s theory adds an evolutionary explanation to my own operant conditioning model to explain why psychics, mediums, cult leaders, and the like probably start off aware that a modicum of deception is involved in their craft (justified in the name of a higher cause). But as their followers positively reinforce their message, they come to believe their shtick (‘maybe I really can read minds, tell the future, save humanity’).”
Click on the link above to read the full piece by Shermer. I’ll also include it as a continuation to this post.
Desperate to find an L-word to add to the liar, lunatic, Lord, or loyalist possibilities, the best I could come up with after a brief look at some online thesauruses was to substitute “legerdemain” for self-deception.
It seems to fit, as rarely used as the word is.
1. sleight of hand.2. trickery; deception.3. any artful trick.So let’s add a likely option that answers the question, “Who is the guru?” Legerdemainist. Which actually is a word.
The guru tricks himself into believing that he (or she) is God. Or God in human form, after being viewed as divine by fawning followers. This act of self-deception further bolsters his standing among devotees, as Shermer explains.
“As Abraham Lincoln well advised, ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.’ Unless self-deception is involved. If you believe the lie, you are less likely to give off the normal cues of lying that others might perceive: deception and deception detection create self-deception.
So some gurus believe their own lie to such an extent, they don’t even know they are lying. Meaning, even though deep down they know that they’re clueless about God and the supernatural (because they don’t exist), when their devotees bow down to them as God-realized saints, their thoroughly human mind creates the illusion that, hey, if so many people believe I’m God’s best friend, then I really am!
Discover more from Church of the Churchless
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
What is always refreshing in the books that Saltzman has wrote is that he never branches into areas of conjecture. He has no qualms in saying he doesn’t know, particularly when it comes to some of the claims made by spiritual and esoteric teachings. Basically, he says that the one thing he does know without doubt (and so do we if we’re honest), is the fact of being here now, alive and being in this present moment. All else can be seen as just playing the game of life.
What I do not understand is why a person, after leaving the restaurant, for this or that personal reason, goes on and on reading, talking and writing about that same restaurant and everything related to it and even to the catering business as a whole.
Mr. Saltzman woke up in the flow of life and realized there and then that he needed nobody and nothing to be alive ..seeing that a crow can me crow, live and die as a crow without any learning of how to be a crow.
THAT ..would be enough for some gratitude and compasion towards those that do not have it.
And…
Teaching can be like showing how to make bread, by example.
Teaching can also be telling about a treasure and sharing the available information about that treasure.
Um. Saltzman often says he is not a teacher and his writing is self-expression, not teaching. Believe that or not, it depends on how one reacts to his work. Some find self-expression through dance, some through art and others through sport. I have to say that I find writing to be my form of self-expression. I used to write poetry, then prose, followed later by essays. All to just have thoughts and feelings expressed. I guess there are many ways to express yourself.
@ Ron E.
Yes I know what Mr. Saltzman wrote ..he does state he is not a teacher but at the same time he cannot stop passing “judgemends” on what he has left behind.
Call it teaching, call it spreading the word. He must be aware of the fact that even if he is not taking on the role of a teacher, others, based on what he says publicly, “do learn” from him. take his words to heart.
Expressing, is like putting food on the table, not an empty table but there where people are sitting around that table.
and that has the element of “feeding” others ..mental food.
Yes, that can be done in many ways. I am hesitating to state that being able to do so must be a pleasure. Yet inside something is holding me back .. it might be so for others certainly if they are able to express what they intend to express but for my self I just don t know.
As a youth a “knowing” lady called me an artist without art … and .. she was right .. I never found or had an medium to express myself as there was nothing there to express. I vain I walked the streets of the world in order to bring stuff at home but even as an “consumer” I did not manage to get hold on anything.
Often the reason why I write or speak is NOT because I have something to say of my own but because what others put on the table does not corresponds with what they “said before” and THAT is also the case with what I wrote about Mr. Saltzman and often in reaction here to others.
I guess that if people would JUST express themselves and nothing more that that and if WHAT they express corresponds with how they are presenting themselves, I would not react at all … If a person writes that he likes apple pie ..what could I possible have to say to that????
That all said, I like to look over the shoulders from others trying to figure out what they are looking at and trying to understand why ..that is how I look at trees and crows.
Yes. And in this case, the person who ate with the rest, spent decades eating there, pretending to like it. And since he was pretending, he assumes that everyone else eating there have to be lying to themselves as well.
Why would anyone believe what this restaurant reviewer has to say? He obviously isn’t an authority on the matter when he can easily be so self deluded for decades.
Try the food for yourself, folks.
” (I said “typically” because Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current guru, is still alive yet has appointed a successor, Jasdeep Singh Gill, who is basically a guru-in-waiting.) ”
Not accurate, I believe. For the last several months, Jasdeep has been doing all the initiating at Beas. Is he initiating in Gurinder’s name? Doesn’t seem likely to me. Seems more likely he’s initiating full stop, i.e., as a Guru in his own right.
In any event, not sure what point you’re making. You keep quoting a professional Buddhist as an authority that there’s no God. But at the same time, you ignore the fact that while Buddhism is technically non-theistic, it’s still based on the presumption that there is this spiritual reality called “Buddha nature.” I.e., Dharmakaya, that the entire universe is of a single nature, a universal, interconnected reality that transcends physical life and death.
The concept of Buddha Nature presupposes that there’s a spiritual realm of existence the successful Buddhist practitioner aims to reach. In other words, Buddha Nature is the Sach Khand of all Buddhist religions — a domain of eternal personal liberation from the fetters of body and mind.
“Oh, but my Buddhist teachers don’t teach that.” Who cares? The core concepts of Buddhism don’t change because of some zen shingle hanger’s opinions. All the genuine Buddhist teachers of the past believed in a supermundane liberation. That’s why they devoted their entire lives to the intense rigors of Buddhist practice. The Theravadins, the Zen masters, the Tibetan lamas all believed that karma and rebirth were very real things, and life presented a stark existential crisis.
Sant Mat’s gurus view life’s existential dilemma in fundamentally the same way as any genuine Buddhist. One is born into this world of suffering, one realizes that this suffering is partly one’s own creation, and one aims to discover one’s real nature in order to have a better life in a spiritual world after one’s physical body dies.
I find it hard to believe that Eisai and Dogen had no belief in an afterlife, and viewed Buddhism as a cope. Makes them look like crazed fools
All that being said, I agree there’s much to critique about Sant Mat. I’ve lately been reading some of Jaimal and Sawan Singh’s books. So many wild claims and dubious theology. And to your point, one may indeed ask how much of Jaimal and Sawan’s stuff was based on their personal experience and knowledge, or was just empty rhetoric for the sake of bolstering their extreme religious worldview? And so I agree that we do well to ask if a teacher genuinely knows what he’s talking about, or whether his confident declarations are only the stuff of faith.
But I don’t feel it works to keep conflating Buddhism with materialist atheism. To reject karma and rebirth would undermine the very motivation for the Buddhist path, as explained in many foundational texts. And that motivation is hardly different from that of the Sant Mat devotee.
The RSSB web site says this about Jasdeep Singh Gill: “Hazur has full authority to bestow Initiation and to give Satsang. He will succeed Baba Gurinder Singh as Sant Satguru of RSSB in future.” So what I said is correct. Gill is the RSSB guru-in-waiting.
https://rssb.org/teachers.html
Sant64. Primarily, Buddhism is about understanding suffering. The core teaching, the Four Noble Truths, outlines the nature of suffering, its cause (the mind), the end of suffering (Nirvana), and the path to achieve it (the Eightfold Path). Obviously, some Buddhist organisations hold beliefs in souls and the afterlife, but Mahayana Buddhist teachings view Nirvana, or enlightenment, simply as the end of suffering.
As for Buddha Nature, again, Mahayana understand Buddha Nature as not being anything abiding, such as the idea of a soul. In fact, one of the main teachings in Mahayana Buddhism is impermanence; the lack of understanding of this is a chief cause of suffering.
As for Karma and rebirth, karma simply means actions in that all actions have consequences (cause and effect), and rebirth (nothing to do with reincarnation). Zen teaches that what is important is to live in the present. Beliefs of being reborn into another life are just that – beliefs.
In the Eightfold Path it begins with right view and as Buddha taught the middle way (between extremes), either believing or not believing is an extreme view. The important thing therefore is not to live with how it should or shouldn’t be, but with how it is – and act from there.
Well Ron,
You love expressing yourself by writing but are you born to write?! I don’t think so. It has been your choice, and an it has its roots in fathering and consuming food in order to stay alive and survive.
So in that sense it is a PATH you have taken. The choice for other paths and spiritual, are just the same .. it is social and cultural feeding oneself while being here.
It is immaterial whether it can be prove or not whether there is a life after death…what matters is whether one lives according a chosen believe or not …For those that find pleasure in their religious and spiritual practice like you in expressing yourself by writing are walking a path through life .. the path by itself is meaningless and worthless ..what matters is the devotion towards it.
Don’t you think so?!
You love to write, nobody forces you and there is no need to it. … weel maybe if you are working for a publisher.
The only prerequisite for a Love Guru is your personal need for one. Those who wish to be in Sach Kand but can’t ; teach. The RSSB started in Agra then branched out into two. History repeats and so do you.
This blog is a weird dance of
1) Calling out religion for being objectively untrue
2) Then advocating for Buddhist religion as being objectively true
3) But doing so by defining Buddhism in ways that have nothing to do with actual Buddhism.
It’s like, “I escaped from believing in a religion, to believing in Buddhist religious concepts of my own making, and I do this for reasons I never explain.”
Yes, I am new to this blog but I also find this blog so weird that now I can’t look away.
It takes a certain personality type that will admit he was deluding himself for decades, only to turn around and use that experience as a reason to claim that he knows more than others. It’s very bizarre. To speak so matter of factly that God and higher planes of reality don’t exist because it can’t be ‘proven”.
I still feel the resentment in this blog writer’s post. He thrashes this RSSB organization and makes it seem like he was fed bull, but the whole time he was involved of his own free will. Besides stalking the organization, its clear that he’s mad at God for not making things clear. It’s and age old gripe, which I do sympathize with.
Its really not his fault, in a way. He never felt anything. But others do, and that is all the proof one needs.
How can anyone render sound judgments upon any system of belief when they have not mastered that system? They are not qualified to render judgment.
First you must master the subject. In Sant Mat that isn’t theory, it’s experience. So without that, one is left without the basic facts necessary to judge.
Most critics of spirituality, ignorant of experience though rich in intellectual concept, if not a true understanding of that concept, are not qualified to render judgment on the topic.
At best they eloquently display their ignorance and the opinions they have formed based upon that ignorance, rather than accept their ignorance and start from there to look and listen better.
The finger they are pointing points right back at themselves.
Instead, the hand should open, facing upwards to receive what is pouring forth all the time from the inner sky.
No news there. They still haven’t learned the basic lesson of pursuing objective observation.
They sit in poverty next to the unopened treasure chest within. The lid to that chest is their heart, which they keep locked shut to the world.
@ Spence T
>>They sit in poverty next to the unopened treasure chest within. The lid to that chest is their heart, which they keep locked shut to the world.<<
Just ponder for a moment how these words might affect a reader!
[Apart from whether there is a treasure chest or not and if so can be openend.}
Hi Um
You wrote
“Just ponder for a moment how these words might affect a reader!”
I had not considered that. But in retrospect I think it depends upon the reader’s own orientation.
For anyone who believes that there is more to the story, it is a statement of witness. They will see the truth in what I wrote.
For those who know that all we see around us of positive value created by human beings came from within, they will understand the truth of what I wrote.
For those who have found peace of mind putting aside their opinions and just learning to observe without judgment both within themselves and towards this outward existence, they will understand the truth of what I wrote.
For those who understand that understanding is experiential, becoming one with the object of observation, beyond the duality of words and thought, until what they see and what they are together are One, they will understand the truth of what I wrote.
@ Spence
I do not have much problem with what you wrote in the first contribution beside the last paragraph.
Nor do I have much of a problem with the second contribution.
Let me make a side step with regard to that last paragraph:
There is a banquet. Every body well dressed, enjoying the food and the compagnie. Out of the blue one lady adresses another and says .. How lovely that blouse or whatever and continues I just bought today 2 pair for my au-pair .. There is nothing wrong with what she says but….how do yo think that statement, that ” compliment” will affect the lady and the atmosphere??/
The evil of wealth as often put before you, is not in the wealth but in the suggestion that goes with showing that wealth, … the suggestion that one has something, what is sine qua non for a meaning full and valuable life and the other person does not have it, will not have it cannot have it.
That attitude of mind is brought to life the raise of Muslim anger, the russian aggression and the atrocities in other places.
Gurinder singh dhillon is a crook, a land mafia billionaire from laundered and siphoned money through deceptive and dishonest actions. Given his nature and background how can people believe that he is still god in human form. Furthermore this crook has an apprentice , his nephew, who gurinder has taken under his wing. How can people think that camp hazur is going to speak truth when he has been taught lies, and 100% knowing this path is deceptive has decided to take the job anyway. Gurinder mocks his sangat and has in satsang clearly said , for all you know he could be the biggest crook on the planet. Little do the subdued Sangat know is that he was telling the truth in that moment. Gurinder laughs at his sangat as he knows he has them under his control. Gurinder, justice will be served, god never forgives evil and wicked people who deliberately misslead the innocent.
Well Kranvir … that people can believe what they believe is not that difficult to understand, especially with imaginative powers of the Indian people.
IF people in India, after seeing a movie on one of the worshiped Hindu deities, or the Mahabharata etc, go to the house of the actor that was performing that role in the movie, asking to be blessed by him ..THAN why not believe that a human being is God?
Whatever the actor says to convince those flocking before his door, is of no avail.
If people jump from the roof after having seen a movie, thinking that they too can fly, what do you think even a god man will not be able to change their mind.
Kranvir .. It is said that the late MCS, tried to escape in the darkness of the night what was put upon him. A man throw himself before his car ..He got out and said, as the history goes … He has given me to them and they will want to own what was given to them and follow me wherever I go.
Kranvir … When a rocket is launched in your country, religious people come fot the ceremony …. that capacity to invest divine power in ceremonies, statues and persons is nowhere in the world as strong and vibrant as in your country.
It just doesn’t mater what Gurinder does, they do not need him in order to believe in him … He does not have the power to escape the religious will of the masses.
You can go on another year repeating your mantra it will in the end only harm yourself.