Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

I share a fascinating message critical of Gurinder Singh, with praise of Flora Wood

Below is a message I received yesterday from someone who describes how Gurinder Singh, the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), created a highly negative atmosphere in the United Kingdom after he became the successor to Charan Singh, a much-beloved RSSB guru. The message also is filled with praise for Flora Wood, a long-time RSSB initiate, or satsangi, who wrote a book for the organization and was a positive influence in the United Kingdom's RSSB membership. It doesn't surprise me that Gurinder Singh comes in for such criticism in this message. There's plenty of other evidence that at…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

I respond to a Sant Mat true believer who sent an email critical of me

Yesterday I got an email from someone who doesn't like that I've strayed from the path of Sant Mat, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) variety, that I followed for 35 years.  That made me happy, since it had been a while since I've gotten emailed criticism of me. Gosh, I'd been feeling all neglected, so it was a pleasant surprise to get this person's message. I saved my response for this blog post. No reason to waste the person's message and my reply as being just between us. I've interspersed my responses in italics following their statements in regular type.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

“Perfect” never applies to a guru or other religious leader

In everyday life, I've never heard of anyone described as being perfect. Makes sense. For one thing, how could "perfect" even be defined as regards a person? For another, assuming it could be defined, how would a person's perfection be assessed?  In sports, perfect applies to something measurable. If a pitcher has a perfect game, no batter from the opposing team reached a base. A perfect game in bowling is 300 points, strikes in each of the first nine frames plus three in the tenth. Otherwise, typically perfect means high quality. If a waiter asks a patron how they enjoyed…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Science says we are all vibrations in the same invisible oceans

For 35 years I was a member of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that taught the essence of reality was shabd, all-pervading conscious energy, which could be heard as divine sound and seen as divine light. In the early 1990s I wrote a book for RSSB, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, that described my take on the links between the new physics and ancient mysticism, focusing on how the "all-pervading" and "energy" aspects of shabd were recognized by quantum mechanics, but not the "conscious" part. That's still true, of course. Naturally there have been advances in quantum…
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Posted inMeaning of life Radha Soami Satsang Beas

I bow at the feet of pain and disability endurers

There's a lot to admire about people. Since everybody is different, a truism that holds even for identical twins, each individual has some unique qualities that merit admiration. (To those who consider that some people have nothing to be admired about them, here's an adage that a friend of mine liked to say: "No one's life ever is completely wasted; they can always serve as a horrible example for others.") I find that a good gauge of what I find admirable is emotion. When I'm deeply moved by something a person has done, and I feel tears coming to my…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A Charan Singh initiate says that Gurinder Singh “is not who he is believed to be”

Yesterday Anise left a comment on a churchless blog post from 2022, "Description of Gurinder Singh Dhillon 'secret' video." Since the comment contains criticism of the guru who heads up Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization, and we here at Church of the Churchless absolutely love heretics (more heretic'y, the better), I'm sharing the comment below in order to bring it to the attention of more people.  Enjoy. I've added a few definitions [in brackets] of Indian words that won't be familiar to many people.  Deeply grateful to have found this blog... My beloved Guru, Maharaj Charan Singh…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

How Radha Soami Satsang Beas is similar to Christian dogmatism

I was almost going to skip the book review section in the March 11, 2024 issue of The New Yorker. I could see that it discussed books about Genesis, and I find the Bible about as interesting as hockey. Namely, not at all. But after deciding to see what the review had to say about Marilynne Robinson's writings on Genesis and other parts of the Bible, which are prolific, I began to see parallels between Christian dogmatism and the India-based group headed up by a guru that I was a member of for 35 years -- Radha Soami Satsang Beas…
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Posted inNeuroscience Radha Soami Satsang Beas

I can’t stop seeing religious belief as a placebo

So, I'm reading along this morning in David Robson's book, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change the World, enjoying the "Faster, Stronger, Fitter" chapter, which is about athletic performance, not anything spiritual, and I come to a passage about how a bicycle racer benefitted from an injection of sugar water, which got me to thinking about how religious belief also is a placebo. (I've boldfaced the concluding sentence that struck me most strongly.) This new theory of exhaustion, one that rightly places the brain as controller of what the body can do, helps us to understand the influences…
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Posted inNeuroscience Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Mass hysteria isn’t all that different from religious groupthink

During the 35 years that I was a member of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), one of the things that I liked most about that experience was how I felt like I was part of a giant family. A family not in the usual sense, but in the sense of a group of people who had much in common, who shared a similar view of reality, who trusted each other, who helped each other, who looked up to a father figure -- the RSSB guru, which made us sort of like brothers and sisters. All that…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

The real saints are ordinary people

"Saint" is a word that generally has religious overtones. For example, I used to belong to an organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that was part of the Sant Mat movement, which means "teaching of saints." The RSSB saints were gurus who supposedly were God in Human Form, something I now deeply doubt. The Catholic church has a more expansive view of saints: The saints of the church are a diverse group of people with varied and interesting stories. Their ranks include martyrs, kings and queens, missionaries, widows, theologians, parents, nuns and priests, and “everyday people” who dedicated their lives…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

My book made Shahid Kapoor into a vegetarian. Now he follows Radha Soami.

One of the people I follow on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared a post recently about Shahid Kapoor, a Bollywood actor in India, embracing the Radha Soami teachings that I followed for 35 years. Below is one of the similar stories about this. It comes from The Indian Express. This interested me because Kapoor and I have a connection: a book I wrote turned him into a vegetarian. I'll describe this after the story. In a chat with Quint Neon, Shahid was asked about an incident that shaped up his life, and he immediately spoke about the Radha Soami…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Don’t idealize spiritual teachers or put them on pedestals

There are thousands of religions in the world. But I believe that the one I belonged to for thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), which is headquartered in India, could have the most grandiose conception of its spiritual leaders of any religion. For the RSSB teaching is that not only is the organization's guru God in Human Form, but the guru is greater than God, since the guru manifests on our planet to initiate "marked souls" and guide them back to the highest supernatural level of reality, while God just sits up there, letting the Perfect Living Master do…
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Posted inAtheism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

I’m inspired by Sam Harris’ sharp attacks on religion

Like all of us, Sam Harris has changed over the years. Following the publication of his acclaimed The End of Faith in 2004, Harris became well known as an eloquent advocate for atheism against the foolishness of religion, joining other noted atheists -- Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett -- who were known as "The Four Horsemen of the New Atheism." Since, Harris has written additional books and has fashioned a vibrant online presence through his Waking Up app and Making Sense podcast. He still bashes religion, but appears more concerned with other subjects, such as helping people experience…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Two complaints ask Delhi police to probe wrongdoing of RSSB guru

Well, it's been a while since there's been fresh news from India about the financial fraud scandal involving the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.  But today a commenter on this blog shared a link to a recent story in the New Indian, "As Dabur eyes Religare, Punjab's Radha Soami chief took ₹1006 cr, company to police." I've shared the text of the story below. Click on the preceding link to see the documents included with the story. Some of the story is old news. However, the complaints submitted to the Delhi Police by Religare's current management…
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Posted inFree will Karma Radha Soami Satsang Beas

No free will is the secular version of karma

It had to be. During my religious days -- well, make that 35 years -- I wrote two books that addressed the subject of karma. In God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, karma was secondary to my main theme of spirit being the creative power of the cosmos. But in Life is Fair, the whole book was about this spiritual law of cause and effect. Now, when I've become an atheist, I'm fascinated by the strong neuroscientific and philosophical arguments against free will. What's interesting is that no free will is almost exactly the same as karma. Guess I was meant to…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Spirituality is simple without Self and free will

So why do I enjoy pondering the notion that we not only aren't an enduring separate Self (a central tenet of Buddhism), we also don't possess free will (a central tenet of neuroscience)? Though I haven't heard anyone asking me this question, I heard the voice that speaks inside my head asking it, so I'm pleased to answer myself. Note that the "self" in that second sentence isn't capitalized as the "Self" in the first sentence was. That's to distinguish between the metaphysical idea of Self -- often expressed as soul -- that somehow exists separate from the physical body/mind,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Another strange use of force at a RSSB meeting

Below you can read a message I got a few days ago from someone who attended a Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) meeting in the United Kingdom where volunteers dragged out a questioner in the presence of the RSSB guru. I was asked what I thought about what happened, along with some more general questions, and to share the message and my response on this blog. Glad to oblige. My comments are in bold, interspersed with the message. Naturally I thought about another example in 2019 of heavy-handed RSSB sevadars/volunteers at a center in England that Osho Robbins described in…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Can your religion survive without supernaturalism? Buddhism can.

I'm pleased to present another comment from "Appreciative Reader," a regular commenter on this blog, that I liked a lot. (Not coincidentally, I agree with with what he says.) Appreciative Reader makes a point that, while it appears obvious now that I've read the comment, I hadn't thought of before. Or at least, not as clearly as he expressed it.  Namely, that some religions, mystical practices, and other forms of spirituality can function just fine without supernaturalism, while others require supernaturalism in order for their teachings to be coherent. By coherent, I don't mean that the religion or whatever makes…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB guru makes light of wife-beating and sexual assault

It amuses me, along with disturbing me, when devotees of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an organization with headquarters in India, excuse Dhillon's bad behavior by saying "At least he hasn't been convicted of a crime." Well, that's a pretty low bar for a guru who is considered by the RSSB teachings to be God in Human Form, possessing divine powers. One would expect that a guru who is supposedly so exalted would behave at least as well as a decent ordinary person would. But as you can read below in a comment on…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

If art is separate from an artist, is a guru separate from their message?

In a recent issue of TIME magazine (May 8/May 15, 2023) there was an interesting story by Stephanie Zacharek, "What Lies Beneath: Grappling with how to approach great works of art by bad men in the book Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma." It got me to thinking about a roughly parallel question in the realm of religion and spirituality. Can the message of a guru be separated from how they behave as a person? Before I describe how I see this question, here's how the TIME story starts out. You, me, and everyone we know: whether you're aware of it or…
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