Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Saying “the end” to Sant Mat fairy tales

I’ve got nothing against fairy tales. But there’s a time and place for them. Like, when my daughter was a pre-schooler and she was ready for bed. They don’t belong in religion, as comforting as they may be. Of course, some would say that religions are nothing but fairy tales. Faced with the ogres of death, suffering, and meaninglessness, humans have conjured up magical spiritual “princes” who ride to the rescue of the soul. All you need to do is believe. I’m open to the possibility that there is more to spirituality than fantasy. Yet I’m also convinced that before…
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Posted inBuddhism Christianity/Jesus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Buddha enlightens Jesus about the self

A meeting between Jesus, the Christ and Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha. I’d love to be able to sit in a corner and listen in. Maybe even throw in a question or two. Obviously so would Carrin Dunne, who wrote “Buddha & Jesus: Conversations.” Carrin said that she is a Christian with a growing interest in Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism. I enjoyed this short (112 page) book, which was loaned to me by Warren, my Taoist marital arts teacher. He said that he felt Gotama gets the better of the arguments. I agree. Dunne’s book was published in 1975. I note…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas

How I wrote a holy book

Did you know that I wrote a holy book? Yes, indeed. Brian Hines, the unpastor of the Church of the Churchless, is the author of “Life is Fair.” It was published in India by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) in 1999 with a first printing of 25,000 copies. When I first got a copy of the book I enjoyed looking at the back page. There was “Life is Fair” listed in the Books on Sant Mat in General category, right along with such classics as “The Path of the Masters” by Julian Johnson. I wrote the book because I was…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Living in the now

What if this is all that there is? This. Right here, right now. A succession of moments in the physical world. After we die: nothing. No more “this.” As I so often repeat here at the Church of the Churchless, I don’t know. I sure hope there is life after death. As Woody Allen put it, “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve it through not dying.” But here’s another Woody Allen quote: “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to…
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Posted inFundamentalism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Eastern fundamentalism

Last night someone said to me, “So you were part of an Eastern form of fundamentalism.” For a moment I was taken aback. Me, a fundamentalist? On this weblog I like to foam at the mouth about the dangers of fundamentalist religious attitudes. (By the way, did you hear the one about a man who walks into a bar and sits down between an alligator and a born-again Christian woman?) Fundamentalism takes many forms, and is defined in various ways. Scott Bidstrup says: In my view, a fundamentalist religion is a religion, any religion, that when confronted with a conflict…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Does God play favorites? I doubt it.

It’d be wonderful if God favored some people over others. So long as I was among them. Otherwise, I’d be on the outside of God’s Favor Party, wishing that I was part of the in-crowd. As I’ve noted before, and surely will again, it’s amazing how almost every religion believes that its adherents are the only favored ones. Jews are a chosen people. Christians have been singled out for salvation. Muslims are beneficiaries of the ultimate revelation. Eastern religions are less prone to believing in favoritism, but even in Buddhism there is the assumption that following the Buddha’s teachings is…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

A nasty truth, naked and rough

I want to share some thoughts from a woman who emailed me from Europe. Like me, she’s a Sant Mat initiate (satsangi) in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas line. Also like me, she’s gone through some intense soul-searching. I’ve mildly edited her words for clarity, but left her English style intact. (Believe me, she writes infinitely better in my language than I can write in hers). Here’s her first message: Hello, I just found your site and have lovely laugh when I was reading some of your stories. I am your spiritual sister, a so called satsangi. A year ago…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Going beyond religious concepts

Here’s one of the handful of passages from countless spiritual books that I’ve read which truly resonate with me. As I said in “Start erasing your spiritual blackboard,” I’m a believer in writings that say “Don’t believe in me.” This is one of those. It comes from a well-thumbed book of mine, “The Master Answers.” Published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the book consists of verbal questions directed to Charan Singh, an Indian guru, and his off-the-cuff answers. Near the end of my RSSB speaking career, I kept coming back to the following question and answer about the nature…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

The downside of guru bhakti

Devotion, or “bhakti” in Sanskrit, is admirable. But it can be taken to extremes. It seems to me that when a human being is worshipped as God, this is taking bhakti too far. I appreciate the thoughtful comments I’ve gotten on my previous post, “God-man or Asshole? The guru conundrum.” My wife also has thrown in her two cents on the subject via some conversations we’ve had. When Laurel was a practicing psychotherapist she had quite a bit of experience with domestic abuse. The man often wants to be treated like a god. His woman is supposed to do whatever…
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Posted inMystics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

God-man or Asshole? The guru conundrum.

Ever since I met her, I’m been trying to convince my wife that I’m God. It just seems so obvious: I understand Windows XP and can fix her computer when something goes wrong; back when we used a VCR, I could program it to do whatever we wanted; I know how to hang a picture so it is centered perfectly over a piece of furniture. Yet my husbandly divinity remains unrecognized. For some reason Laurel focuses more on such things as: my inability to put the kitchen sponge in its holder, rather than on the bottom of the sink; my…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Another perspective on Sant Mat, version 2.0

Back in January I wrote about the seeming transformation of the mystical philosophy of Sant Mat into an updated version 2.0. I’m speaking not about Sant Mat in general but about the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB, or RS) sect, for there are many contemporary Sant Mat movements and I don’t know much about the others. Recently I got an email from an RSSB initiate who described his own take on genuine Sant Mat, which is a lot closer to my version 2.0 than the traditional party line dogma. Like me, he’s got thirty plus years of meditation under his…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

I don’t go to satsang, yet I do

Satsang is a Hindu and Sikh term that means, literally, “association with truth.” It has lots of connotations, but in its most basic sense satsang is a meeting. I’ve been going to the satsang of our local Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) group for about thirty years. As the RSSB website says, “satsang” also means a group that seeks truth. So the satsang that is a group can have a satsang meeting where truth is discussed. A few weeks ago I stopped going to the meetings. I came to the conclusion that the boundaries of truth are a lot larger…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Theology vs. reality in the RSSB teachings

“Reality.” It’s one of my favorite words. Especially if you say it like Cartman would on South Park: Realitey. That gives it a certain Frenchy sort of snob appeal. But reality, or realitey, really isn’t snobbish at all. It’s the most down-home thing there is. More: it’s the only thing there is. The only real thing, at least. The Greeks considered that something can exist, yet barely be. In other words, there are degrees of reality. Generally we think, “it either is or it isn’t.” However, it could sort of be. And there could be something else with more beingness…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

More skepticism about Sant Mat

Periodically I get email messages from dissatisfied initiates of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. They’ve come to regard the RSSB (or Sant Mat) philosophy with considerable skepticism. Because I believe in the potential of a genuine spiritual science, which requires that the results of spiritual “experiments” be openly discussed, I’m pleased to share these messages when the author gives me permission. Bob did, so you’ll find his story below. It’s well written and provocative. I’m still a vegetarian and feel that I always will be. The idea of eating animal flesh after thirty-seven years of meatlessness turns my stomach. But Bob’s…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

In praise of divorce

Yesterday a friend told me that she found an old book of mine lurking in the shelves of Powell’s Books in Portland. Her email message said: Hey, Brian! Guess what I found at Powell’s today . . . an old copy of The Path of the Masters lurking in the Indian philosophy section -- instead of Sikhism. Since it was an older version smelling of mildew I just had to take a look -- and guess what I found inside, an inscription “To Brian . . . from Sue . . . 1970.” Sue was my first wife. We got…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Go ahead and believe

I’m a skeptic. That’s my nature. But if you’re a believer, more power to you. Skepticism feels right to me. Belief feels right to most people, since belief in a “God” of some sort is a decided majority opinion, particularly in the hyper-religious United States. I understand the allure of belief in a higher power. Faced with the uncertainties of life—death, disease, distress (to name a few)—it’s tremendously reassuring to consider that you’re being cared for and loved by God or some other manifestation of divinity. Such as a guru. In response to my “Who is the guru?” post, Nick…
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Posted inMystics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Who is the guru?

I’ve been thinking about the four options concerning who Jesus was, according to biblical scholar Bart Ehrman: a liar, a lunatic, the Lord, or a legend. When it comes to a long-dead historical figure like Jesus, these options make sense. But what about a modern-day guru who is similarly proclaimed to be God in human form? I was initiated by such a guru, Charan Singh Grewal. I sat at his feet, literally. I had two personal interviews with him. I heard him speak many times. I saw him worshipped by tens of thousands of devotees as a divine incarnation. And…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Wu Project

Tracking the trajectory of my Wu Project

Here’s documentation of my first original quasi-spiritual insight. Today I dragged this piece of paper out of my “treasures box,” where I keep various memorabilia from my youth. I wrote the poem when I was 13 after gazing up at the stars one night from the backyard of our rural home in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It goes like this: Look up to the heavens What is there? Tiny pinpoints of light But is that all? Look past the stars Into the blackness of the void. What lies there, waiting for man’s first faltering steps Into the…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Taoism/Tai Chi

Three laughers at the tiger ravine

Today I came across a scroll, painted by Bangaku, of “Three Laughers at the Tiger Ravine.” This anecdote explains their laughter. "This is an allegory in which three literati realize by accident that spiritual purity cannot be measured by artificial boundaries. One day the poet Tao Yuanming and the Taoist Lu Xiujing traveled to the Donglin temple on Mt. Lu to visit the Buddhist theologian Huiyuan who lived there as a recluse, vowing never to cross the stone bridge over the Tiger Ravine that marked the boundary of the sanctuary. After an evening together, Huiyuan accompanied his friends as they…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Religion should make us more humane, not less

It strikes me as strange that ardent religious devotees often act in ways that are less humane, caring, and loving than a regular person you’d meet on the street. The Mohammed cartoon riots are a good example of this, since normally people don’t kill or pillage if someone offends them. So if an action wouldn’t be acceptable in everyday life, it certainly shouldn’t be acceptable in the name of religion. Spirituality should make us better human beings, not worse. Unfortunately, often the reverse is true. I heartily agree with these comments by Valerie about a religion I’m well acquainted with,…
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