Below is another in a series of guest blog posts from Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years, which explains my interest in sharing criticisms of the faith that I also found lacking.
Anon makes some perceptive points about RSSB. Based on my experience, RSSB is like other religions in that after someone has embraced it for a while, they absorb the culture of RSSB without realizing how different it is from normal non-religious everyday life.
Some RSSB members are akin to Christians who go to church on Sunday, because they enjoy singing hymns and socializing, but otherwise their religion isn’t a major factor in their life. Anon is speaking of others who buy in strongly to the RSSB teachings and culture. Then there really can be a marked conflict between the demands of everyday life (work, family, and such) and the demands of RSSB (meditation, volunteering, and such).
Anon’s mention of Extreme Spiritual Self-Policing rings true to me. This can happen to anyone who believes that the human mind is a wild animal that needs taming. You know, the whole “rider who controls the elephant” thing. I encountered many RSSB members who were fearful of being spontaneous, speaking freely, showing their emotions.
They acted robotically. I’d feel that they were playing a role of Devoted RSSB Disciple, but their acting was so bad, I wouldn’t feel that they were truly inhabiting that role, but rather were following a rigid script that didn’t allow for flexible from-the-heart improvisation.
Enjoy….
RSSB: Confirmation Bias Loop
RSSB teaches you to be a way that simply won’t survive in the real world. So when you have bad experiences out there, you agree with RSSB and go running back to the “safety” of the RSSB environment.
This is structured programming and behavioural manipulation, which results in this “confirmation bias” loop.
People who genuinely followed and believed the real RSSB ideology often really struggled in the real world. Those who succeeded in the real world often had strong links to the outside world.
The good news is that it is possible to break this cycle but you have to essentially challenge what you’ve been programmed to believe.
>Erasure of Personal Identity (The “drop in the ocean” mentality/”ego” critique): It makes you feel completely worthless on your own, rendering you unable to assert your own choices, preferences, wants, needs or personal boundaries.
>Enforced Submission and Compliance (Blind obedience to authority): It shuts down your critical thinking, making you easily fooled, influenced, and controlled by dominant figures or toxic people.
>Weaponised “Humility” and Silence (Never advocating for yourself): It trains you to always be passive and silent, effectively turning you into a doormat who cannot handle conflict or stand up to mistreatment.
>Normalisation of misreatment (Suffering viewed as “deserved karma”): It paralyzes your natural self-preservation instincts, conditioning you to quietly accept and endure toxic situations because you think you deserve it.
>Glory of Free Labour (Unpaid seva as a requirement): It absorbs your personal time and energy on free work for a wealthy organization and guru, keeping you from building an independent life outside RSSB.
>Social Isolation (Restricting connection to the bubble): It severely stunts your basic social skills, leaving you behaviorally awkward, isolated, and unable to naturally relate to diverse people outside the group.
>The World as an Evil Illusion (The doctrine of Maya): It breeds deep paranoia and fear of reality, causing you to view normal human experiences, secular success, and outsiders with suspicion.
>Exhaustion Through Sleep Deprivation (Mandatory 2.5-hour early morning daily meditation at the expense of sleep): It keeps you in a state of chronic fatigue, making your brain too physically and mentally depleted to think clearly or change your life path.
>Mandatory Attendance Schedules (Relentless satsang and seva): It absorbs all your free time and autonomy, trapping your daily routine inside a repetitive loop that keeps you from building an independent life.
>Extreme Spiritual Self-Policing (Constant internal thought surveillance): It creates constant anxiety and self-doubt by forcing you to constantly monitor your own internal thoughts, stopping you from acting normal or confident around others.
>Ostracizing Lifestyle Rules (Hyper-strict dietary and social bans): It builds a rigid behavioral wall that physically and socially alienates you from standard parties, dinners, and events with regular people.
>Secrecy culture: RSSB is a rare religion/spiritual path – unlike others it doesn’t want its followers to preach or tell others about it. This creates a sense of isolation with others and you can’t ever really bond with people unless they’re also RSSB.
>The “Elite” Double Standard (Exemptions for wealthy and famous members): Rules are hypocritical, showing that the strict standards are only meant to control the ordinary masses while wealthy leaders, celebrities and VIPs do not follow RSSB in the way everyone else does. However they are held up as “marketing examples” of RSSB success, even though their success came from the real world and not from within RSSB. RSSB uses their real world status as clout to legitimise the group and its activities and ideology.
— Anon
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Yup, hard to argue about this. RSSB is a long way from its origins with Jaimal Singh living in a small hut by the Beas River.*
*not to be confused with Matt Foley living in a van down by the river.
Gurinder lived in that hut in his previous life but you can’t cage a bad character and expect spirituality from practicing austerity. He’s making up for it now in spades.The rifle has changed but not his love for uniformity and the military. Under the right guide the teachings are very practical for living real life. Probably not for the people living at the Dera at present. But just for the visiting dignitaries and westerners. They have so much in common with Jim Jones and the People’s Temple it’s not even funny anymore. I actually accept Brian as a more practical guide and guru than Gurinder any day of the week.
I agree Anon. Looking from the outside RSSB is just a mega cult and at this point the only thing it teaches is ego. Also I’m worried how these members accept a new godman like its nothing. Absolutely pathetic.
No shit
As I see it, there are two avenues of Sant Mat practice: The path of effort, and the path of surrender.
Some Sant Mat gurus emphasize the path of surrender. Principally that of guru-yoga. Attention is given to surrender of one’s will to the Guru principle via guru bhakti. This is the theme of Sar Bachan.
In contrast, I see RSSB emphasizing the path of effort. Particularly so in Charan and Gurinder Singhs’ tenures as RSSB guru.
The contrast is apparent if you compare the satsangs of RSSB to those of other Sant Mat sects. For example, Ruhani satsang, the Kirpal Singh lineage, promotes guru devotion to a markedly greater extent than does RSSB in the Charan and Gurinder eras. Virtually all of these RSSB gurus’ pastoral advice to their followers is that they need to make greater effort. Likewise, virtually every local RSSB satsang is an admonishment to the sangat that they are not making enough effort. Little is ever said by these contemporary RSSB gurus or satsang leaders about the bliss and merits of guru bhakti or trusting in God’s grace.
Anon is addressing a personal issue, the lens by which the world, its organizations, including RSSB are seen.
They are seen through the lens of our own conditioning.
The discipline, coaching, encouragement and rules that helps an athlete win the race, and their liberation into a better life, is the same discipline the drunks at the local bar find enslaving.
Same activity. Seen through different lenses.
OK, what is this lens? locus of perceived control and responsibility.
So long as everything is “their” fault, the “other”, outside of me, I have zero control. life is indeed a prison house. Because “they” are handed all the control by the victim, “they” can never do a decent job managing the victim’s life. And this makes a victim. Getting rid of one oppressor never really works because the victim replaces one tyrant for another. Replacing pain with pleasure, they just feed addiction and are no closer to true liberation. For liberation, blame must be left behind. There is no blame permitted in Sant Mat.
The proof of this is that they never understood there was no tyrant. So r complaint never ends for them. It becomes the basis of their identity.
The opposite is the individual who has an Internal locus of control. They accept who and what they are 100% . This is all they have to work with. And they know that they have limited control over themselves, but more, actually, than anyone else. They are the only ones in this game. Whatever happens now is their own responsibility, and so there is never even the hint of blame or being a victim.
These things don’t exist for the individual with internal locus of control. Everything, every perceived barrier and burden is just an exercise for their own benefit. They can’t control the weather. But they have maximized control over their life. And so they find success and happiness every day in little things. In small progress. They don’t lose any attention to things that can’t help anyone, especially complaint.
The small man
Builds cages for everyone he knows.
While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners.
Hafiz
Meditating 2 and a half hours a day or even more doesn’t equate sleep deprivation, anymore than watching TV for 3 hours equals sleep deprivation. Let’s be clear here. If one really does live within the four vows of RS/Sant life can indeed be enriched. Now this doesn’t mean one has to be cultic and bow to the guru and his missives. No, one can be a critic and still follow the four vows. Nobody is going to knock on your door and force you to go to satsang or do any seva. Yes, be critical, but it is ridiculous to say that meditating for 2 and half hours means you are groggy all day. I think watching TV could do the same, given this argument. The essence of spending time within one’s self is a great thing. Yes, we may disagree with the guru cult, but the four vows are helpful in any context.
Not sure who you are directing your comment to. I commented about a psycho neighbor who preys on me. I mentioned that I am suffering from sleep deprivation because the psycho does not sleep – she is hyper-active all night – probably high on drugs. The fact that I am sleep deprived has absolutely nothing to do with meditation. I am sleep deprived because the psycho makes such a noise at night that I can’t get my sleep. Get the facts straight before you comment on something you have not understood.
Anon’s list is typical of many cults. He adds: “The good news is that it is possible to break this cycle, but you have to essentially challenge what you’ve been programmed to believe.” There is an old saying of Jesuits: “Give me the child for seven years, and I will give you back the man.”
It’s so very difficult to break out of any form of conditioning. From childhood, before the ability to reason, beliefs are inculcated into the child. One can break free from a particular set of beliefs, but invariably the mould is set: the mind is grounded in the anticipation that there is something missing, something special to be found; this base feeling dictates that the search goes on.
It seems to be all tied up with protecting one’s identity. As creatures, our primary raison d etre is to physically survive. With us human primates, we have gone a step further – we have developed a self-structure, a mental fabrication that assumes the role of being ‘me’, of being who/what I am. Feeling so real and important, it demands priority.
A strong feature of the self-construct is that where one has an ingrained belief, even a strong opinion, idea or theory, that becomes an entrenched aspect of ‘me’, of who I am. Abandoning cultish beliefs ingrained over a number of years then becomes difficult. So strong is our sense of identity tied up with our beliefs, we will defend them as though we are being physically attacked. And, we may often accept dubious information and distort evidence to help maintain these aspects of identity.
Very true, the mental conditioning that comes from being very involved in a religious organisation over many years is strong, and difficult to break down. Brian must have found that and it’s certainly the case with me. My mom once said (with some sadness) I was ‘perfectly conditioned’ and it makes me feel sad also.
Anon has clearly provided a list that is very perceptive, but I also think there is high value in the four vows, I just wish it wasn’t all so dogmatic.
Don’t make it dogmatic, sm68.
All the saints ever wanted to do was encourage Meditation. That’s all that matters.
Going within. If they were dogmatic, is was only about the reality we live in, and the reality that lives in us.
When I see the word “Meditation” I see a world of practices all moving from one level to another, one degree of effectiveness to another, to a state of Oneness where we are all together as equal parts in a sea of love.
But other people see other things.
Why look at it the way you think RSSB does? Look at it in the best way you can, and that’s any way that encourages you to put everything aside, meditate, and then consider such things from a more relaxed, forgiving, accepting place. A higher place for us to do our thinking from.
Spence,
This seems like a better way to approach it all.
“The small man
Builds cages for everyone he knows.
While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners.
Hafiz”
This quotation applies to all religious group/organizations including RSSB. People are caged in beliefs, dogmas, hierarchies, but no one dropping the keys.
I
Egomaniacs quote Hafiz lol
We are all living in our own karma, world, destiny. We think we all in the same room talking about the same things. We argue about those things. But they are constructs different for each. The words “meditation”, “natural”, “supernatural”, “real”, “unreal”, “science”, “ego”, “subjective,”, “objective” all sound like words we have used before. We assume what we mean.
But what you mean is something I can’t pretend to know. And what I mean may have nothing to do with what you mean, though we are using the same terms.
We can try to express what these mean for ourselves.
But we cannot with any credibility claim to know what they mean for each other. Still, there is a reason people do this.
I don’t need you to agree, especially to something you don’t understand.
And as you don’t, I can’t take anything personally you write about these things.
Nor can I understand nor have any opinion on that strange and different world you live in. Our language sounds similar, but it is not.
But from what you wrote I most certainly can get a slightly better view of what you see, hear and feel. But only slightly.
There are people in the Path who find out 100% truthful and the only means for their own personal progress.
And there are those who see it as a waste of time.
There are people who find this world strange and alien, not anything like their home.
And there are people very comfortable here.
That is the ideal placed before the disciple.
The reality is: people just pay lip service to all this. They live their life normally. If they have spare time they might do seva, or perhaps once they have retired.
This is just the way people are. They just pretend to be serious. Mostly the followers only get initiated because it is like an insurance policy.
After death, the guru will come collect the soul and it will begin the journey to sach khand. This gives comfort
HI Osho
What if it turns out that your description only applies to 40% of those you see?
What about the others?
And then, if we are all in a large college, one that spans multiple lifetimes, who can say whether you are seeing the first year students or the graduate students?
We are products of our conditioning. But in time, that conditioning has its effect. New conditioning gradually wears away old conditioning. So, if you look and see old conditioning, you are just seeing someone new on the path. New conditioning is also happening.
Raise your vision, so you can see the 4rth year students, maybe even the graduate students. They are looking ahead, not backwards. Their eye is on the goal, and when they look at those who are struggling, they can only encourge them to keep eyes upon the goal. Not necessarily the goal of the entire path, because that may just be too far for many to consider. And not to look back at all they have overcome, because they are better than that now. But to look at just the next rung on the ladder, their next step. And in the case of spirituality, that is always working at the profession of developing their inner peace, inner joy, inner experience, inner connection to all people, and the compassion that comes with it. And this path, this method, this practice is not the one they invented. It’s not a product of their mind. It’s beyond that. It’s a gift given to them by an enlightened soul. We create zero wealth, Osho. But we can become better inheritors of the wealth of or Father, the inner wealth of the Master. Good children receive in humility and thanks what their Father gives them freely. And we are destined to become good children, all of us, because reality doesn’t actually change. The reality of our situation and our work that was given to us, the practice of spiritual meditation, that gift, that treasure, all that we can do is do the work. Nothing more can be said, nothing more can be added to it.
The work that has come to us was assigned to us, and it is meditation.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath your feet.”
Lao Tsze
Not sure who you are directing your comment to. I commented about a psycho neighbor who preys on me. I mentioned that I am suffering from sleep deprivation because the psycho does not sleep – she is hyper-active all night – probably high on drugs. The fact that I am sleep deprived has absolutely nothing to do with meditation. I am sleep deprived because the psycho makes such a noise at night that I can’t get my sleep. Get the facts straight before you comment on something you have not understood.
I see no problem with RSSB kind of lifestyle.its individual choice.
But there should be no hypocrisy.
Hi October
I’ve thought a lot about hypocrisy.
Seems to me we are all hypocrites. Those who strive to be something better than they are, then they are disappointed every day to see they do not live up to their dreams, if they are an honest hypocrite. But how honest can we be when we don’t see reality as it is, only how we wish to believe it is? So it is inevitable, we are all hypocrites.
If they can no longer blame anyone else, then they really see the hypocrisy.
When someone has no goal, or when they have given up hope, perhaps you might say they are no longer hypocrites. But hope creeps in anyway, desire and anger are always there, so then they have not escaped hypocrisy.
It’s a word we accuse others of, but at some point realize it is a universal condition.
But I say bravo to the brave hypocrite who knows they are struggling for what they are not.
And all congratulations to them who work hard believing, perhaps mistakenly, they are indeed special, for though they are not, still, by their effort and their vision, progress happens.
I agree with you we all are hypocrites of some sort
Or other.
Acknowledging it and remain honest with oneself
Is good way to balance it.
Hypocrisy leads nowhere and Truth does.
Think big, Believe big, execute big.
Somewhere there hypocrisy will be there and acknowledge it and move on.
Nice!! Well Said.