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.
What Anon describes about the demands put upon RSSB initiates seems particularly true for Indian members of the organization, whether or not they live in India. The pressure to be viewed as an exemplary RSSB member seems greater when a person’s culture and family connections encourages this.
But during my experience as an American member of RSSB, there were plenty of times when people in our local sangat (RSSB group) would be judged harshly via the RSSB rumor mill. “I’ve heard that ______ is off the path,” someone would say. Meaning, supposedly they weren’t following all of the RSSB rules expected of them. Of course, that person may have been totally content with their spiritual path — just as I am now that I’ve left RSSB.
RSSB ALL OR NOTHING culture
I’ve said before.
There is no casual following with this and it’s all or nothing with them (unless you have the “famous multimillionaire free pass”). It is ALL or NOTHING.
RSSB states you don’t have to give anything up, can follow your religion, and they encourage a normal householder lifestyle. Although RSSB says this – their RSSB requirements end up creating an environment where you can’t really achieve this.
Although they say they encourage you to live a normal life – they monopolise your time so much so that it is virtually impossible to actually live a normal life in order to be RSSB.
RSSB MONOPOLISING YOUR TIME
It’s a requirement to attend satsang regularly. These are long and on the weekend – which cut into your free time. (Frequently a Sunday). Many also have satsangs during the weekday.
SUNDAY GONE TO RSSB
It’s a requirement to attend seva regularly. This is an all day (or sometimes week long) commitment – which cuts into your free time. (Frequently a Saturday)
SATURDAY GONE TO RSSB
Now you have your entire weekend taken up by RSSB and you’re expected to go regularly.
You need to do this in order to be initiated.
WEEKENDS GONE TO RSSB
Once initiated, you must meditate 2.5 hours daily and and you are encouraged to cut socialising and sleep time.
EVENINGS/EARLY MORNINGS GONE TO RSSB
Many satsangs/visits are also held over on public holidays and you’re expected to go.
PUBLIC HOLIDAYS GONE TO RSSB.
You are expected to go to the major satsangs as well abroad and do long stints of seva – it likely means giving up your actual free holiday/PTO/work leave time – in order to spend it at RSSB.
PTO/VACATION TIME GONE TO RSSB.
End result. This means you have no free early mornings or evenings, saturday, sundays, weekends, no public holidays, PTO/vacation leave – if you want to follow RSSB.
You simply don’t have time to do anything else.
RSSB AND WORK
RSSB encourages you to “earn an honest living”. This means in reality “get a job”. This is the one thing they do encourage.
In reality – outside your actual full time job, you’ve got no time for anything or anyone else. This isn’t a healthy life. RSSB seems to think it’s fine. They don’t actually encourage anything else.
The Guru view which he preaches on his podium is typically “DO YOUR DUTY”. In practical reality means work your job and pay your own bills/your kids bills – and it is framed as a “householder duty”. That’s all – don’t go off and quit your job and be a recluse – but largely so you don’t turn around and sue them.
They frame “being a householder” as someone who just has a job and ensures their bills/ family’s bills are paid. In reality – a life is more than just work and paying bills.
A home is more than the bills in it’s name. Life is more than working. They would disagree.
You are also encouraged not to go around environments where you may be led astray. Even if you did have any little free time – you’re not really encouraged to go places really. The outside world is demonised and framed as an illusion.
You are also left with very little time to attend your actual religion. RSSB ideology is different from other religions (chances are it does not align with what your religion teaches) and so they do replace their views with your own. It is also a requirement to read their literature and the expectation is you follow and accept their spiritual views.
The practical lived reality of following RSSB is this: Do Your Job, Pay The Bills and the rest is RSSB.
I don’t intend to diagnose – but this is all very controlling and comes across as coercive control and isolation. They do not actually tell you all this from the beginning. They also do state that you’re here voluntarily – but they never tell you how the goalposts shift. This is very much a “mission creep” scenario that nobody will tell you about.
People in RSSB don’t actually tell you this and they don’t set out what is practically required on their website or at any point during your experience. They say “seva, satsang, meditate” but following all this literally takes over your life to a point that you don’t have time for anything outside RSSB except your work. You are also required to do all this in order to be RSSB and people also don’t really let others leave – it is seen as becoming non-RSSB which is seen as a direct attack on the faith by many and there is a culture of surveillance/policing.
Again, if people really knew – would they go? I went voluntarily but I didn’t know I was signing up to all this.
Good luck out there.
Anon
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Again, this “one size fits all” portrayal is not only inaccurate, it’s wildly misleading. Nobody is kidnapping satsangis, throwing them into a van, and forcing them to surrender their critical faculties at the satsang door. Much of what happens comes from our own minds, our own projections, and, yes, our own tendency toward cultic ways of thinking.
The description is so over-the-top that it almost reads like a parody of itself.
RS, like most religious traditions, is neither all nectar nor all poison. Take what is insightful, useful, or transformative and discard what isn’t. But turning every satsangi’s experience into the same cautionary tale simply replaces one kind of dogmatism with another.
And there’s the irony: if you criticize a tradition for encouraging black-and-white thinking, it’s probably best not to criticize it in black and white.
Nuance matters. Individual experience matters. And sweeping generalizations—whether made by believers or critics, usually tell us more about the person making them than about the complicated reality they’re supposedly describing. Sometimes our criticism is a boomerang that comes back and hits us in the head, only to force us to look at the mirror and ask a wiser question, “don’t project when I have the chance to reflect.” Then and only then can we do the necessary changes… and if that means leaving RS, good. If that means being wiser in what we take in and what we don’t then good.
The carrot of RSSB is what I will refer to has a wet meditation( going within). Is the sound current real? Is it a point that major religions have no idea of? Is it exclusively available to initiates of RSSB? Is having wet meditations on a daily basis healthy for the human mind? Or is it a form of a psychological mental psychosis? Are Satsangi’s who regularly have wet meditations actually mentally normal in the view of psychiatry. Does RSSB validate modern psychiatry’s scientific findings? RSSB forbids the discussion of initiated satsangis openly talking about their wet meditations.
A example of a Satsangi talking about his wet meditation,(the Satsangi having a wet meditation and being told by his master that he will be the next head of RSSB) Is this wet dream a true epiphany or a phychotic episode?
Well, reading many biographical accounts of inner experiences, I got the impression that they were all related to the experience of extreme urgency and or trauma … in case of urgency …. there was a kind of ultimate cry for … HELP.
all the experiences that have been recorded through history and by all that had them from all over the world, … that help was given … given as content in that experience.
Many of these experiences have formed human history to this very day and are operating.
Just think of the revelation of Abraham, the elder of a tribe in dear need of a place for his people to live, the cattle to graze and be left in peace….him was offered land and the protection of the divine as his chosen people.
In its wake it gave birth to three religions and endless bloodshed until this very day.
Of course HEARING of these things people desired to recreate these helpful experiences… artificial and at will….so many practices were developed to manipulate the brain into a state of crisis, trauma.
What matters is the CONTENT of the experiences and how they relate to the experience of living a life as a human being.
Anyway … enough… I need some coffee now
So coffee had … time to reflect….
Based upon what I came to understand of the content of these experiences is of such intensity, that it has been impossible for all that had one not to believe it as a higher level of reality .. so much so that they came to label this live as a dream they woke up from.
Often these experiences are related to epilepsy, so the structures in the brain that cause it are related to these experiences. Epilepsy, everybody can understand is a state of vital urgency.
The saying ” many are called, few are chosen ” tells that lots of people feel the need to follow a path that will bring an final end for their suffering … suffering can be anything …so they practice…each according their circumstances and conditions.
Few will reach that goal as the biographies of those that invested their lives in it…the monks and nuns, the recluse etc …of … these a part will find satisfaction in “walking the path” … others that cannot let go of their need and their goal, will suffer … and might and up here…grumbling …
So … walking any path with the right spirit, finding pleasure and satisfaction in the walking will do …love for and devotion to the walking is what matters …at least if one wants a path …others must wander around … that too can be done with love an devotion…it is the path of surrender, advaita …”knowledge” …or just drink coffee
It doesn’t sound like an ex initiate to me. It sounds like he/she is still there coping with the dutiful situation. And Gurinder couldn’t follow the path so they made him king. Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you a king . I wondered why some of these military type men and women at the meetings seating people and attending, project discipline. But Gurinder is not disciplined at all other than curling his mustache and marching around with folded hands. How hard can that be? What I don’t sense is much love or much fun. So I can get that from anywhere not just from satsangi. I follow the vows religiously but I’ve never meditated two and a half hours at one sitting . I have no set time for meditation although it usually comes naturally when I wake up in the morning. I have to feel the love to even begin to meditate. And like I say I meditate better without Gurinder Singh in the picture. Yes I had those inner experiences that felt that it came from him and yes I never mentioned them to him but he knew about them and talked about them in real life to me personally. Maybe he tries to be such a jerk on the physical plane so people will go inside because inside he’s beautiful and not the same man. So what I should say is I meditate better without the physical form of the master anywhere near. At least not this master. I won’t know whether he lied to me until he dies. He said he was leaving two people in the world to take his place. I just assume it’s because of world war 3. There’s always a practical reason behind everything a real master does. And I never said that this jerk wasn’t a real master. In fact I told Brian that I believe that a narcissistic ego maniac lying sob could still be a actual sound current master. I also said all you need them for is initiation even if it is just psychological. And once you become initiated there’s no way you can become uninitiated. There are no X’s in Sant Mat.
And before you satsangis who are also jerks say anything judgmental just remember who the real Master is. He’s ( It’s) already revealed to me more secrets than you could ever know and reminded me of my shortcomings in ways that you wouldn’t know how. So just mind your own business and everything will be fine. I’m minding mine as I write this. ( The Blues is my business and business is good). An actual sound.
If Anon has tried the two and a half hours per day even if the mantra was “I am not a wet kipper”, then it should give Anon enough resilience to stand on Anon’s own two feet and not be intimidated by such projections as pushed out on Anon’s post. Clearly intimidated and not from a valid angle.
If he or is it she ? does not have enough strength of character to simply refuse all that stuff. If you’re “expected” to attend a Satsang or do seva, it’s your decision Anon. If you’re a man get some balls.
Yes the atmosphere has changed dramatically after 1990 in local, national centre’s and beast.
Yes not all were willing and able to adapt to the emerging time spirit.
When everything dear to me and that was a lot little by little slipped through my fingers I had to let go. … that was not easy in the beginning .
… but it has been proven a blessing in disguise.
Away from the day to day affairs 9f the community i got a much deeper understanding of everything spiritual.
One of the greatest discoveries was that if one does an practice and everything related to it like community.munity work, in the same way an with the same mentality as one uses to do things at home and at work, one is asking for problems.
I had the great good fortune to do community work with “good” people in a ” good” …what made it easier for me to do things I otherwise never would do for nobody … finding that it did not harm me it opened my eyes for what I now call the small path leading to and through the small door …and I do now enjoy the fruits of it .. even for having left everything behind.
It is in frond before all but simple to overlook what forces to continue as one used to and than one might end up as anon describes.
Hi Anon:
I think you know that you have grossly confused your experience for the actual “requirements”, and appear entirely unaware of the benefits of meditation.
But I take it that this was real for you and accept it as such. As we have written before, your capacity to set social boundaries appears compromised. Everyone has to struggle with how to set appropriate, and loving boundaries with family members, friends and significant others. When you do this, you do not need to leave anyone or any place. But it does require that you master your own life. It is a universal condition that we must manage our lives through appropriate limits, based upon self-respect. Meditation can give you that strength, guidance and inspiration.
You most certainly know there are only four vows we are required to take on this path. Let’s go over them in careful detail, just as you have gone over claims that are objectively false.
The four vows:
1. To maintain a strict lacto-vegetarian diet which accomplishes three things. First, we reduce the killing needed for our own survival by not killing animals. That’s an ethical plus. And there are nutritional benefits.
While a diet including meat naturally provides certain essential nutrients like vitamin B12 and iron with less planning than a vegetarian diet, frequent consumption of processed and red meats is linked to a higher risk of chronic conditions like heart disease and colorectal cancer, whereas well-planned vegetarian diets rich in whole foods are consistently associated with a lower risk of these diseases. Ultimately, the healthfulness of either diet is heavily influenced by the inclusion of nutrient-dense whole plants and general lifestyle habits.
So you can’t say one diet is better or worse overall, because it depends on how you balance it. A diet of very little red meat and healthy lifestyle and a similar vegetarian diet both are associated with improved longevity.
What you can say is that you can make a healthy lacto-vegetarian diet for yourself, if you are careful, and you are doing much less harm, in terms of killing animals, and to your own self. And if you do it right, it’s very healthy also.
It’s really the impact on our own consciousness that is the basis of that requirement. A vegetarian diet is much lighter and so meditation, quieting the mind, becomes much, much easier.
When we examine our own lifestyle and choices carefully when we are struggling to improve meditation, we often find diet has a huge HUGE impact, even within the lacto-vegetarian diet. As personal scientists, we can see how greatly varied our meditation is as we make efforts to balance and lighten our diet and our lifestyle even within the vows. What we put into our stomachs affects our thinking, our behavior, even our ethics and morality.
2. No recreational drugs, alcohol or anything made of these. This is just common sense. These things reduce the brain’s awareness and functioning. And for many, as in the case of drug or alcohol addiction, they destroy lives.
Here is what Gemini reports: “While the negative impacts of illicit recreational drugs (such as opioids, stimulants, and synthetic substances) on lifespan are well-documented due to overdose risks, organ damage, and addiction, the scientific consensus around alcohol has undergone a massive shift. Modern epidemiological data has dismantled the old belief that moderate drinking extends life.”
” When researchers isolate lifetime abstainers and compare them to light drinkers with the same exercise, income, and dietary habits, the supposed “survival advantage” of alcohol completely vanishes. Alcohol provides zero net health or longevity benefits.”
“Alcohol is a known Class 1 carcinogen. Public health updates from organizations like the American Heart Association stress that avoiding alcohol directly lowers your risk for at least seven types of cancer, including breast, liver, colorectal, and esophageal cancers.”
” While it was once thought alcohol protected the heart, current cardiology guidance notes that even low levels of consumption raise the risk of hypertension, stroke, and cardiovascular disease. Avoiding it maintains a lower baseline blood pressure.”
“When looking strictly at longevity statistics, recreational drug use (outside of medically managed prescriptions) drastically truncates the average life expectancy of a population cohort.”
“In large-scale population tracking, living completely substance-free is one of the foundational pillars of maximum longevity, alongside a healthy diet, daily exercise, weight management, and never smoking. Health agencies worldwide, including the World Health Organization, now explicitly state that when it comes to long-term health, no amount of alcohol or recreational substance use is considered safe.”
3. Lead a clean moral life to the highest ethical standards, earn your own living, take full responsibility for yourself. Well what more needs to be said? Don’t cut corners, don’t lie, cheat, steal. Pay your bills, pay your taxes, don’t cheat anyone. There are circumstances where we are tempted all the time, and where opportunity exists to cut corners without any apparent repercussions. But they are there. This vow helps remind us that what makes our meditation work is a life free of these weights on our own conscience. People on the path do fall, also. But the Path is there to help us get back up and do the right thing. And meditation can also give us strength, balance when we accept meditation as the center of our lives. The strength to live to the highest moral standards.
4. Meditation. To have a goal to get to and hold to 2 and 1/2 hours per day. When we actually put in the time, it is clear that to silence the mind can take far more than that. It is only then that we have access to that bliss of the spirit directly within. Even getting there, getting to taste that nectar after 2 1/2 hours reliably every day, even that is actually great progress! So, what does it take to make that kind of progress?
No different than what a professional athlete must do: What they eat, their mood, how they deal with others, all that affects their performance.
And in meditation practice we become more and more aware of what condition our mind is in each day. Sticky mind, soft mind, firm mind, spongy mind, quiet mind, loving mind, receptive mind, mind at peace, mind silent.
It’s serious work, with incredible benefits.
There is no requirement to love the Master nor to attend Satsang. They are the reports of those who have made progress. They aren’t in the vows. There is no vow that you must accept the Master as anything at all, and no vow that you must attend any meeting once you are initiated. Zero.
Just the four vows.
We just discover these things, the power and love of Master, his compassion, and the power of Satsang to protect our efforts to build our meditation, as part of our own progress. We often discover these things, as a child learns to walk, by falling. But like a good child, we aren’t insulted by falling. We don’t blame anyone else. We get back up and continue to learn about the process.
You have taken initiation. You may reject the Master, you may fall in any number of ways. You may continue to write hurtful things. But the Master has never and will never reject you. You can leave him, at least in your thinking. He does not have that luxury. He made a comittment, just like you did. But unlike you, he remains steadfast.
Just as an example … the buddha to become.e started out with suffering in this world …NOT… with any other motivation.
it is a common understanding that each and everybody that is satisfied with himself and his situation … and … convinced that he will be able to look after himself, will not take steps to change chance for the better let alone seek help or advice from others. ..divine or not
So all that asked for initiation in the end will have to deal with the things mundane that pressed them to ask for initiation.
The late mcs has made it clear to me that the path he teaches is of no help in any mundane
capacity .. sant mat is to find God to the complete exclusion of everything else.
Only understanding these psychological issues properly one will e able to take the right decisions.
I dear to say that most people are not interested in God…the want their problems solved by something other than themselves.
And .. in coffee house is coffee served an no paint
Anon,
It may be of interest for you to know that no place is off limits to any Satsangi.
In 1978, as a new initiate, working on a mental health team with two gay part time actors, I was invited to march down Hollywood Boulevard in the Gay Pride parade along side them. My friend who brought me to the Path, Tom Curtis, and his wife Maria, joined me. My girlfriend also came along. But once she saw the leather and the skin she, even amidst all the celebration, as a Catholic, decided to walk along the sidewalk rather than join us in the midst of the parade.
It was all inclusive, everyone was invited to join. It was a celebration of free expression. And it was then that I learned, and realized, that Sant Mat is the ultimate in freedom and united in brother/sister/otherhood. You can go anywhere, and enjoy anyone’s company within the bounds of those vows, and fueled by the power of spirit. And that means you can accept everyone also. We are all souls here, going through our different experiences.
Of course good company is best. But my friends, who were openly gay, were two of the kindest human beings I ever had known and to this day, have ever known. What brought us together was an appreciation for all that is good in human beings, in all its varied forms.
From the Sant Mat perspective, grounded in that very center of life that is Shabd, the world is an incredible place of souls each striving for what is good in their own way. And no place is off limits. Learn to master every situation, to become the master of that setting, and then you can, within the vows, enjoy what experience Master brings to you.
Anon
Learn to build that atmosphere of the Path within and around you, to take it with you wherever you go. Master is right there beside you and within you.
Become portable. Adaptable.
Because the Path isn’t a building, a location at all. It isn’t a group of people. It isn’t actually a book of ancient teachings or even vows.
It’s in YOU. The four vows are part of the practice to get you connected to YOU.
Learn to build that and take it wherever you go. Then you enter God Mode: You become bulletproof and no one can sway you. Now you are really standing on your own two feet, making your own decisions, aligned to Truth, the Master within you. And finally, learning to set appropriate and healthy boundaries.
It’s a requirement to attend seva regularly. This is an all day (or sometimes week long) commitment – which cuts into your free time. (Frequently a Saturday)
UTTER CRAP. NEVER BEEN TO SEVA. NO ONE ASKS WHY I DO NOT GO
Many satsangs/visits are also held over on public holidays and you’re expected to go.
NOT WHERE I AM FROM. ONLY SATSANG ON SUNDAYS
You are expected to go to the major satsangs as well abroad and do long stints of seva – it likely means giving up your actual free holiday/PTO/work leave time – in order to spend it at RSSB.
NO ONE ASKS ME TO GO ABROAD. MORE CRAP
End result. This means you have no free early mornings or evenings, saturday, sundays, weekends, no public holidays, PTO/vacation leave – if you want to follow RSSB.
ONCE AGAIN ANON IS SIMPLY DELUDED
I have seen massive work done onsite in Texas from sevadors from as far away as Canada. They bunked them in a dorm for months doing heavy construction. A local sevador pick them up at the airport. Mostly satsangi Sikhs from Canada originally from India. I lasted a half a day being only one of two white men in a bunked workforce of thirty or forty men . But I did do seva there with loving devotion and to spy since I only lived about 20 mi away from that new center I even donated a punch bowl to mix their Kool-Aid in. For real I did that. But I didn’t return to go see Dumb and Dumber when they came last summer to give a two day seminar. Anon is not wrong about that.