Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Investigations of financial wrongdoing circle closer to RSSB

I'd like to get back to writing about other subjects on this blog, but news about the Singh brothers, RSSB, and Gurinder Singh Dhillon (RSSB guru) keeps coming in from links people send to me.  And it's a fascinating story -- this tale of how a supposedly spiritual sect, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, has gotten deeply entangled in some highly suspicious financial dealings. Today the DNA India site reports, "SFIO may expand Singh brothers' probe to Ranbaxy sale." Excerpts: Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) is looking for a deeper investigation of all associated firms related to brothers Malvinder and Shivinder…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB guru agrees to answer questions about his financial dealings

Well, this is a bit of progress. The guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, says that he will answer questions about the seemingly shady financial dealings he, his family, and possibly RSSB itself (a charitable organization) have been involved in. Today someone sent me a link to a story in The Indian Express, "Upcoming payouts a possible trigger for Singh brothers feud." Excerpt: According to a source privy to the development, some senior members of the sect recently asked Dhillon about his reaction to various news reports regarding the Singh brothers. The source said that Dhillon told…
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Posted inGay rights

India legalizes gay rights. Only took 150 years.

Way to go, India. Your Supreme Court has given gays in India the same rights as anyone else. Here's a screenshot of a video on the New York Times story about this that shows people in India celebrating. The New York Times points out, in "India's Gay Sex Ban, a Colonial Vesige, Is Struck Down," that the archaic rule against consensual gay sex was a holdover from the puritanical days of British rule. In a groundbreaking victory for gay rights, India’s Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down one of the world’s oldest bans on consensual gay sex, putting to…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

I’m part of a CNBC TV 18 program about RSSB and the Singh brothers

Last night I spent a pleasant half hour on the phone talking with Ekta Batra, a reporter with India's CNBC TV 18. She asked if I'd be OK with getting up at 5 am, my time, to be part of a live 20-minute program about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) and a recent lawsuit filed by Shivinder Singh (cousin of the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh) against his brother, Malvinder Singh and an RSSB insider, Sunil Godhwani, who used to run a company founded by the Singh brothers. No, I said, 5 am is way too early for me. So we…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Shivinder Singh sues his brother and RSSB insider

Breaking news from the world of Indian financial misdeeds. The Indian Standard reports, "Shivinder Mohan Singh drags elder brother Malvinder Singh to NCLT." Former Ranbaxy promoter and founder of Fortis Healthcare, Shivinder Singh, said that he has filed a case against his brother Malvinder and former head of Religare Sunil Godhwani in the NCLT court for oppression and mismanagement of RHC Holding, Religare and Fortis. Shivinder Singh said in a press release issued on Tuesday that the action was long overdue but got delayed in the hope that "better sense shall eventually prevail and another ugly chapter of family feud…
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Posted inAtheism God

Oneness is like the Hotel California: you can’t leave it

I'm a big fan of spontaneous, well-written, heartfelt descriptions of how someone realized that atheism is the way to go. And if they've got a bunch of profanity in them, even fucking better! So when I read a comment by regular Church of the Churchless visitor Osho Robbins that met those criteria, I knew the comment should be elevated into a blog post. There's references to Indian words in the comment, but it can be understood just fine without knowing Indian philosophy. Briefly, Sach Khand is roughly equivalent to heaven. Sat Purush is God. And the lyrics to Hotel California…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Religious believers ignore reality, while making up fantasies

After fourteen years of blogging here on the Church of the Churchless, I'm not surprised anymore by this evident fact about most religious believers: They make two mistakes. They ignore aspects of this evident physical reality that conflict with their chosen religious dogma. And they embrace fantasies about supernatural realms that almost certainly don't exist.  Thus religious believers close their eyes to what can actually be known, while making up stories about what is unknown -- such as what, if anything, lies outside the bounds of our universe. Here's some examples of what I'm talking about.  I've written several posts…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Praise for me and the Church of the Churchless feels good

Recently I got a message from a Church of the Churchless visitor that moved me a lot. Even brought some tears to my eyes. I spent some time wondering about whether I should share parts of the message, since it could strike some as egotistical if I did this. But here's why you can read most of the message below. (I left out a few overly personal parts.) We all like to feel like we've made a difference to the world, that we've impacted other people in a positive way. I was talking about this a few days ago, when…
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Posted inGod

Atheism isn’t a belief. It is the absence of a belief.

I don't know why it is so difficult for religious believers to understand that atheism isn't a belief. But during the 14 years I've been blogging here on the Church of the Churchless, I keep hearing, "Atheism is just another belief system." No, it isn't. Atheism is the absence of a belief in theism, which means believing in a god or gods. (See here and here.) Below is a recent comment on this subject by Osho Robbins. I liked the way he described the atheist position, and how he related this to a not guilty verdict by a court. If…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Gurinder Singh Dhillon’s lawyer excuses him in a weird “mud platform” way

I've grown accustomed to lawyers saying strange things, especially in this age of Trump, but this message from Gurinder Singh Dhillon's lawyer is especially weird. Dhillon is the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organization headquartered in India. Recently several Indian business publications have published detailed stories about how the guru and his family, plus RSSB followers, are deeply implicated in shady financial dealings involving the Singh brothers, Malvinder and Shivinder, who are the guru's nephews cousins. [Someone emailed me with a genealogy analysis that seems to show they're the guru's first-cousins once removed.] (See here and…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Business Today reports about Gurinder Singh Dhillon’s suspicious financial dealings

Following in the journalistic footsteps of a Bloomberg story about the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) guru's connections with the financial problems of Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, now Business Today India has released "The Baba, Singh Brothers, and the Squandered Rs $225,00,00,00,000." Download The Baba Singh Brothers and the Squandered Rs 225 00 00 00 000 "Baba" is a term of respect that's often used with spiritual leaders. According to a couple of currency converters I found online, Rs (rupees) $225,00,00,00,000 equals about $3.2 billion in U.S. dollars. So we're talking some real money that was squandered.   Gurinder Singh…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 16 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. 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 Thread that way. So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments. And if you want to use…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Sheena’s “Memoirs of a Seeker” throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon

After someone told me about a book, "Memoirs of a Seeker," that described a woman's relationship with a guru, I purchased the Kindle version. Because I'd been told that the guru was Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization that I was a member of for 35 years, I was perplexed that Sheena, the author, apparently never mentioned the guru's name, from what I could tell from a quick browsing of the book. But the person who recommended the book knows Sheena (not her real name), and separately another person emailed me…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Bloomberg story has led to many more Church of the Churchless visitors

Thank you, universe! You work in mysterious (and also non-mysterious) ways.  After I was quoted in a Bloomberg story that described the shadowy connections between Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru, and the Singh brothers, Shivinder and Malvinder, the number of people visiting this blog has gone up a lot the past three days. This blog has gotten about 13,000 page views in that time, whereas usually it would get about 3,000. Good karma! (if I believed in karma) Here's a link to the post I wrote about the story, "Bloomberg story shows Gurinder Singh Dhillon's shady…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Bloomberg story shows Gurinder Singh Dhillon’s shady business dealings

Today Bloomberg, a business publication, published a tell-all story about Gurinder Singh Dhillon's hugely complicated, and ethically dubious, financial dealings with Shivinder and Malvinder Singh, nephews of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru. The Billionaires and The Guru: How a Family Burned Through $2 Billion - Bloomberg Ari Altstedter wrote the story, "The Billionaires and the Guru: How a Family Burned Through $2 billion." I spoke with Altstedter by phone about the 35 years I spent as a RSSB devotee, and was quoted in the piece. Still, Dhillon hails from a family of major landowners in Punjab, and was himself…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Gurinder Singh completely upends Sant Mat dogma

It's decidedly weird that... (1) Many commenters on this blog are devotees of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed by a guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon; and (2) these same commenters refuse to believe that Gurinder Singh has completely changed the traditional RSSB teachings that they defend so strongly. Hopefully the following will change some minds. Today this message was emailed to me by Osho Robbins, who has previously shared his take on what can be called Sant Mat v. 2.0 and v. 3.0, to distinguish the new RSSB teachings being promulgated by Gurinder Singh from the…
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Posted inComments

Blog commenters have different styles of making their point

People are different. This is a truism that bears repeating, because we all tend to think that other people think like us. After all, the only mind we're directly acquainted with is our own. And even that mind we know only imperfectly, since most of what goes on in our cranium happens subconsciously, with only the tip of the iceberg of our psyche rising into conscious awareness. After fifteen years of blogging, which has entailed reading many thousands of comments on my posts, I continue to be intrigued by the various ways people use to make a point about something.…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Embrace beautiful imperfection. Push away judgement.

Today's Daily Calm guided meditation on my iPhone app was called "Beautiful Imperfection." Below is a transcript I made of how it ended. I really liked the call for less judgement and more connection.This is tough enough to do in real life. It's considerably more difficult on the Internet, where we form judgements about people without having even seen them, much less understood them. That's why I thought what follows is a good reminder that while informed judgement often makes some sense, uninformed judgement should be engaged in cautiously, if at all. It's so often that our mind falls into…
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Posted inGod

Why God is a psychological illusion

Billions of people believe that God is real, even though there is zero demonstrable evidence of God's existence. So there must be something in the human mind that produces the illusion of God. In his engrossing book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even if the Universe Doesn't," psychiatrist Ralph Lewis quotes evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering on why people are so prone to supernatural beliefs.  Theory of mind is mentioned in the quotes below. Heres's how Lewis succinctly describes what this is. Part of people's belief in a higher power stems from our ability to form a…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 15 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. 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 Thread that way. So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments. (Take note, commenter who goes by…
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