Posted inChristianity/Jesus Gay rights

Salem City Council says “NO” to LGBTQ rights

Last Monday night I learned that it isn't only religious fundamentalists who don't care about the rights of LGBTQ people. (Since this blog is read by people all around the world, some of whom may not be familiar with that term, it's an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning.) I was deeply irritated when the Salem City Council voted 6-1 to approve a lease with the Salem Alliance Church for use of a church-owned building as a temporary public library while renovations are being made to the library at the Civic Center. This has been a fascinating issue…
18
Posted inHappiness Spiritual practice/meditation

Do less, be happier

I believe it was in a comment by Amar on one of my blog posts that I learned about a great book by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, "Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World." I've been practicing mindfulness meditation for quite a while, as noted in Mindfulness has become my meditation and Mindfulness is meditation on reality, not supernatural illusion. The book by Williams and Penman is the best I've ever read on this subject. Very clear, well-written, and creative. A core theme is the difference between Doing and Being. Doing is fine, if what…
8
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Report on a Haynes Park Q & A with the RSSB guru

Here's a message I got today from a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, Osho Robbins. Since Gurinder Singh Dhillon (GSD) refers to the One in the message, this gives me an opportunity to plug my book, "Return to the One: Plotinus's Guide to God-Realization." I wrote it back when I was still an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the organization headed up by Dhillon. The RSSB guru wanted a book about a Western mystic. He gave me some suggestions to choose from, and I chose Plotinus, a Neoplatonist Greek philosopher. The book got close to being published…
236
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Photos I took (except for one) at the Salem Art Fair

Sometimes, well, often, I wish that everyone who comments on this blog used their real name and shared personal details of their life -- much like Facebook does, or at least was supposed to do. But once in a while I like to share some descriptions of my own life, if only to remind people that even though discussions and debates on this Church of the Churchless blog can get hot and heavy, each of us has much more important things going on in their lives. So here's an Adobe Spark web page I made tonight of photos that I…
5
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Excellent letter to the editor about RSSB guru’s financial scandal

Great comments from Church of the Churchless visitors keep on coming to this blog. Here's one by "j" that consists of a letter to the editor about Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) who is deeply involved in a financial scandal involving many hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a great idea, sharing a letter to the editor that can be used by people in other cities where RSSB has a large meeting center that the guru visits. This is a great example of the hypocrisy of religious leaders, since Dhillon preaches in his talks…
55
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB guru (and me!) appear in animation about Singh brothers scandal

Thanks to Amar, a regular commenter on this blog, I learned about this amazingly creative, well-done, and generally accurate animated depiction of the financial scandals involving the Singh brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder), Gurinder Singh Dhillon (the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and a bunch of other characters. I make an appearance near the end of the video. Sadly, the animators used a rendering of one of the worst photographs of me that can be found on Google images. Oh, well, such is life. At least I didn't cause relatives of mine to lose billions of dollars, as this video…
24
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Don’t lie to yourself about the RSSB guru

A well-written, thoughtful, truthful, and provocative recent comment deserves to be made into its own blog post. Here's what Amar said. "HC" refers to High Court of Delhi, which has frozen the assets of the RSSB guru and his family, and garnished those assets. "RSSB" refers to Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the organization headed up by a guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Tushar, you wrote, "One who has experienced the truth it's all useless and rubbish for them." Who is this one who has experienced this Truth? You? Certainly not me. According to almost all of the satsangs I've heard, the…
55
Posted inHumor Radha Soami Satsang Beas

“Gurinder Singh Dhillon” search results feature…me!

Today Sonya, a regular commenter on this blog, noted that the "scary," "evil" photo of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, actually is an official photograph that can be downloaded from the RSSB web site.  But as shown above, in the lower right corner, that photograph shows the guru at a considerable distance. Zooming in on the high resolution screen of my much-beloved MacBook Pro  we get the scary, evil look of Gurinder Singh Dhillon. In the course of searching for this photo, I found that Google Images has another search result for the RSSB guru…
94
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB guru gets some well-deserved criticism

Today I got an email from someone who didn't want me to quote them directly regarding their view of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the Indian religious organization headed up by a guru that I was a member of for 35 years.  But this person was fine with me summarizing their take on RSSB. So here goes. I'll refer to the person as "they" from now on. Pleasingly, they read everything on this blog, but don't leave any comments. They said I'm doing a very good job, and was asked to continue doing so -- which naturally is my intention.…
34
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Support LBGTQ rights by signing a petition I just started

Please sign this petition I just started to support the Salem Human Rights Commission in its stand against the City of Salem leasing a building from the Salem Alliance Church to temporarily house the public library. Click on this link to the Care2 Stand up for LGBTQ rights in Salem! petition. The church rejects same-sex marriage and considers same-sex sex to be a sin. The Commission is calling on City officials to find another location for the library while renovations are made, even if that location costs more and is less convenient. For those unfamiliar with this abbreviation, LGBTQ stands…
3
Posted inChristianity/Jesus Gay rights

Great that Christians are accepting homosexuality as normal

We've come a long way toward accepting LGBTQ people here in the United States. But there's a lot that still remains to be done, largely because of archaic Christian religious attitudes based on pre-scientific notions thousands of years old, now hugely outdated. An email I got recently gives me hope, though. Read on... Hey Brian, I saw the post about the Salem library wanting to use the church property as a temporary place while renovations take place.  Hmmm… It’s interesting to look back and see how much my values and opinions have changed. Growing up in the heart of the Bible…
1
Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 22 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks devoid of substantive content are an exception. Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open…
249
Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Anti-gay church shows absurdity of religious belief

Over on one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark, I've been writing about an ill-considered plan by city officials here in Salem, Oregon to pay the Salem Alliance Church to use a building the church owns as a temporary home for the public library while renovations are being made. You can read why the Salem Human Rights Commission unanimously voted to oppose this idea in my post, "Human Rights Commission rejects plan for library to use church building."  Why? Because the Salem Alliance Church holds to the archaic view that same-sex marriage and same-sex sex are sins. So their…
3
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Straight talk about RSSB guru and dogma

It's great when I start out my morning by reading a comment that makes me smile with delight -- because it is honest, true, well written, and makes fun of religious blind belief. In this case, the blind belief of defenders of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, who is deeply embroiled in financial fraud, death threats, criminal complaints, and garnishment of his assets by the High Court of Delhi. But, hey, everything is going according to God's plan in the eyes of RSSB true believers, who refuse to see the facts yelling Look at me! right in…
21
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Good overview of RSSB guru’s financial fraud involvement

It's difficult to follow the twists and turns in the Bollywood'ish drama involving Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India. About a billion dollars is at stake here, much of it in the form of fraudulent loans that ended up in the pockets of Dhillon, his family, and close associates. Add in criminal complaints, death threats, squabbles with his relatives Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, investigations by Indian financial authorities, and court rulings -- yes,  it gets tough to keep track of what's going on. Today Spence Tepper left a comment on a recent blog post…
66
Posted inBooks Consciousness

What is it like to be you? Impossible to know.

I bought a book written by Sam Harris' wife, Annaka Harris, because the title appealed to me  (Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of Mind), and I wanted to see if she'd disagree with her husband -- a noted atheist neuroscientist whose Waking Up guided meditations I listen to every morning via an iPhone app. As I suspected, this little (110 pages) book didn't contain much that I didn't already know. But Harris did discuss consciousness in an appealing fashion, and had an interesting take on the possibility of panpsychism.  Here's how she distinguishes between prescientific notions of…
30
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Turban tying and Bollywood dancing at World Beat Festival

As a change of pace from our usual Church of the Churchless programming, I wanted to share what I did yesterday: attend the opening day of the Salem World Beat Festival, as I do every year. It's difficult to draw profound philosophical messages from a highly enjoyable celebration of multiculturalism. But that won't stop me from trying. After I got back from the festival, I shared photos and videos that I'd taken in an Adobe Spark web page. You can peruse them by clicking below.   Obviously -- but sometimes the obvious needs mentioning -- there was zero evidence of…
2
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB involved in controversial land deal

Someone sent me a link to an Indian Express story, "Mystery deepens over Pune land deal as Chandrakant Patil defends his actions."  It mentions Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization in India that quite a few visitors to this blog are interested in for various reasons.  Just as Patil claimed that the temple trust had obtained the charity commissioner’s permission to convey the land to the Radha Saomi Satsang Beas (RSSB), a non-profit organisation, in 1998, Jayant submitted official papers in the House to show that in 1963, a local tribunal had ruled that this land wasn’t a…
18
Posted inBooks Science

Give up the illusion of body and mind being different

Here at the Church of the Churchless we worship truth. I love truth. I sprinkle truth on my cereal every morning. I rinse with truth when I take a shower. I brush with truthpaste three times a day. That's why I adore science and dislike religion. And why I'm enjoying Susan Blackmore's new book, "Seeing Myself: The New Science of Out-of-Body Experiences" so much.  Blackmore, a British psychologist, is a spiritual but not religious sort of person. As she notes in the passages from the final Who am I? chapter in her book (which I read first, because the title…
38
Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Stuff happens

Here's what I'd call a guest post, if I wasn't the guest, since I wrote it for my HinesSight blog a few days ago. There I called it, Stuff happens. Things fall apart. Such is life. But "Stuff Happens" is a fine title all by itself. Enjoy. Unless you don't. Which is fine, since stuff happens. Sometimes the most obvious things about life need to be talked about. It's easy to overlook them not in spite of their obviousness, but because the familiar tends to fade into the background, while new stuff grabs our attention. So here's a few obvious…
11