Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

If you don’t believe in every religion, you’re doomed

There are lots of reasons to shun religion. On this video, Sam Harris describes one of the best reasons in less than three minutes. It's well worth a watch if you've ever believed that your religion was true, while others are false.    Harris says that Christianity holds that unless you believe in Jesus, you're doomed. Seems like bad news. But wait! Islam says that unless you believe in the Koran and the teachings of prophet Muhammad, you're also doomed. What gives? Even worse, other religions say the same "you're doomed" thing. The India-based faith I followed for over thirty…
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Posted inMystics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Mysticism is as real as fundamentalist religion

Yesterday David Lane left this comment on a recent blog post: Yes, good point you make here about the epistemology of "knowing" in fundamentalist religion versus mysticism. Here is a link to something I wrote that dovetails with your point: https://sites.google.com/site/msacmagazinesparttwo/home/POLITICSOFMYSTICISM.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1 Because I always enjoy what David has to say, I clicked away and found an interesting six page PDF-file essay, "The Politics of Mysticism." Download Politics of Mysticism Here's some excerpts -- the formatting is a bit screwed up, since I copied text from the PDF file. No big deal, since you really should read the whole thing. Perhaps…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

“Satsangi” is a seeker of truth, not a religious devotee

The literal meaning of the Indian word, "satsangi," is someone who associates with truth. However, various religious groups have hijacked the term to mean something else: a devotee of some particular dogma. Unless all of those dogmas are equally true, some of those "satsangis" are more genuinely associated with truth than others are. Going further, a real satsangi is open to truth in whatever form, shape, or manner it manifests. Thus a true satsangi can't allow himself or herself to be limited by any dogmatic religious barrier. Truth has to be followed wherever it leads. These thoughts were stimulated by…
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Posted inMystics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

India’s “godmen” face questions about their wealth

Interesting story in the Washington Post about how spirituality has become a lucrative profession for Indian gurus and yogis.  For centuries, their image was as barefoot ascetics who spent their lives in solitary Himalayan meditation. But now India’s gurus, “miracle workers” and spiritual leaders, often collectively known as “godmen,” have become savvy, powerful figures who control vast philanthropic and business empires, dabble in politics and manipulate the media. There's no mention of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. But he's another good example of the trend toward making lots of money while preaching detachment from material pursuits.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Entertaining email from an ex-satsangi

It's nice to inspect my email inbox when I get up in the morning and find a message like this one. Witty. Intelligent. Humorous. Why, this guy reminds me of me. For 17 years he followed the Radha Soami Satsang Beas party line until... he didn't. Brian,I am also an initiate of Charan Singh's (1975).   Since 1993, I am also no longer following the teachings.  I really enjoyed my time in India, my mostly western US Satsangi friends and I have great respect those who are seekers.An old former Kirpal Singh devotee friend recently teasingly emailed me about how RS…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A guru should know if he is God

Sometimes visitors to this blog ask me, via a comment or email, if I'm bitter about the thirty-five years I spent as a devotee of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) spiritual teachings. Meaning, I guess, do I feel letdown, deceived, or maliciously manipulated by the guru who initiated me in 1971 (Charan Singh) and/or his successor, Gurinder Singh, who became the head of RSSB after Charan Singh died in 1990? The truthful answer basically is no. My feelings about my "divorce" from Radha Soami Satsang Beas are pretty much the same as my feelings about the ending of my…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Indian guru manifests to a dead person

I got an email message from a friend recently. He keeps up on media reports of what's going on in the life of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, a.k.a. "Baba Ji," the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India. Devotees believe that the guru appears to his disciples at the time of their death. So I appreciated the clever one line message -- which included a link to a news story. Who says Baba ji doesn't appear when someone dies?
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

How Sant Mat is moving from duality to oneness

OshoRobbins has put up an interesting series of three videos that explain the difference between Sant Mat 1.0 and Sant Mat 2.0. I've blogged about this in "Sant Mat, version 2.0" and "Has Gurinder Singh revised to Sant Mat to v. 3.0?" Whatever the version number, these YouTube presentations do a good job of making clear how the Radha Soami Satsang Beas version of the Sant Mat philosophy has evolved to become a far different creature from the traditional teachings. More broadly, OshoRobbins points out how a dualistic view of God, heaven, soul, and such can't co-exist with a monistic…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Science

The reasons we give for what we do: are they reasonable?

About a week ago Marina, a visitor to this blog, asked me to explain why I left the spiritual organization that I'd belonged to for about thirty-five years. She then reminded me that I hadn't answered her question, asking again: What made you leave RS [Radha Soami Satsang Beas] – a major thing or a nagging feeling over the years? I pointed her to a partial compendium of posts that I've written for this blog, quite a few of which addressed this question. But something kept nagging at me as I thought about her first three words. What made you...…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Someone asks about my failure to reach heaven

Today I got an email from someone who has a theory about why I've been occasionally critical of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) and the guru of this India-based organization, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. I could have responded to him privately, but I figured that I might as well make a blog post out of his message and my reply. (My responses are in plain type below; my correspondent's words are indented and italicized.) Sach Khand, which is mentioned in the message, is the Sikh religion's "heaven." As described here, Sach Khand is considered to be both a state of consciousness…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Amazing changes in Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings

Imagine the Pope saying, "Jesus wasn't really the Son of God. There isn't any heaven. God is just a state of consciousness. No one divine will meet you when you die." It'd be more than a little shocking, to put it mildly. The head of a religion almost always defends the faith, preserving the core of traditional dogma while merely making small changes in other aspects of the teachings. But reports keep coming in that the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based mystical/spiritual organization with millions of initiates in many countries around the world, has been undermining…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Has Gurinder Singh revised Sant Mat to v. 3.0?

Sant Mat is an Indian mystical philosophy that can be translated as "path of truth." I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), one of the various Sant Mat branches, for about thirty-five years. Back in the old days, the RSSB guru taught that spiritual truth was unchanging. But with a new guru, we've got new truths. To me, that's refreshing. It's probably disconcerting to those who held a rigid fundamentalist view of Sant Mat, though. Five years ago I wrote a post about "Sant Mat, version 2.0." This is how I summarized the changes that Gurinder…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Comments on Gurinder Singh’s “earthquake” letter to Japan

Since Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the guru of India's Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and is considered to be "God in human form" by devotees, perhaps it's presumptuous of me to comment on a letter he wrote to disciples in Japan following the disastrous earthquake and tsunami there. But what the heck! I'll gamble that if God exists, and if Gurinder Singh is God's representative here on Earth (two big "if's"), the Supreme Being enjoys commentary on his missives to humanity. The letter can be read in PDF form: Download Gurinder Singh message to Japan Copying and pasting the text into…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Religious obedience: pros and (mostly) cons

When it comes to the subject of obedience, South Park's Eric Cartman pops naturally into my mind. I'm a big fan of his classic Respect my authoritah! (authority, pronounced au-thor-i-TAH) For quite a while I used that line a lot with my wife and dog, until I realized that it wasn't having any effect. Still, it worked for Cartman in the scene below. And religions are able to get people to believe it. (Click on the video to start it playing.) ChickenloverTags: SOUTHPARKmore...   In a synchronistic moment this morning, shortly after I finished reading the Just Following Orders chapter…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Religions (and RSSB) should come with a guarantee

If a product lets buyers down, consumer advocates -- along with plain consumers -- jump into aggrieved action. Sometimes excessively. I'm amazed that Consumer Reports, a magazine I love and have subscribed to for as long I can remember, still isn't recommending purchase of the iPhone 4 because of a minor antenna reception problem that really wasn't that big of a deal. However, it was a defect that Consumer Reports felt should have been fixed by Apple before the iPhone 4 was released. This makes me wonder: Wouldn't it be great if religions came with a guarantee that salvation, enlightenment,…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

I’m churchless. And as “spiritual” as ever.

Today a friend asked me to explain my current attitude toward spirituality. We haven't talked as much about godly, mystical, and meditational matters as we did back when I was an active member of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). It's always interesting for me to hear what I have to say in response to such a query. I didn't have to think much, if at all, before answering him. After all, writing posts for this blog keeps me attuned to how I feel about spirituality now, as opposed to my previous true-believing past. But talking face…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

If a God-man is just like us, what’s the point?

So what if God was one of us? That's a question Joan Osborne asked in the lyrics of her song, "One of us." That thought came to mind after I wrote about an Indian guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, bringing in over $250 million for himself and his family through insider transactions of Religare stock. Since the shares essentially were gifted to the guru and his sons (the 2006 purchase price was very low, about 1% of the current market value) by businessman relatives who also are disciples of Gurinder Singh, it can be argued that this is nothing unusual. It's…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru makes $254 million

Wow, it really pays to be an Indian guru with the right connections. Check out this story, "SEBI nod for Radha Soami Satsang Beas." (SEBI is the Securities and Exchange Board of India.) The capital market regulator has granted exemption to Logos Holding Company from making an open offer to the shareholders of Religare Enterprises for its acquisition of 19.53% stake in the company. Logos Holding is an investment arm of the Gurinder Singh Dhillon family.Gurinder Singh is the current head of one of India's largest religious sect – Radha Soami Satsang Beas. At Thursday's closing price of Rs 460.95,…
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Posted inBooks Morality Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Sam Harris says morality can be scientific

I love Sam Harris' books. His "The End of Faith" came out about a year after I started this churchless blog in the fall of 2004. It provided me with a surge of faithless energy, validating my decision to do what I could to help rid the world of destructive religious dogma. "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2008) also was a winner, but didn't appeal to me quite as much. Never having been a Christian (aside from pretending to be one in my early elementary school years), I guess his focus on the ridiculousness of Christianity seemed self-evident to me.…
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