CUESTIONES METODOLÓGICAS
Capítulo 7. Metodología de la investigación
7.1. Fases de la investigación
movements in North America which owe their existence, either partially or wholly, to the
Radhasoami tradition of India. The spectrum ranges from immediate connections, as in
Eckankar and the Divine Light Mission whose founders have taken initiation from one of the Satgurus, to associative influences where sects have borrowed (and, in some cases, plagiarized) writings and spiritual lineages from Radhasoami.
All of these new panths, though, have one thing in common: they give significant emphasis to the Shabd, the transcendent power which is believed to be the creative and sustaining force of the
universe (it is also known as the Audible Life Stream or the "Music of the Spheres"). And though there are groups which speak of this Sound Current which are both anterior and exterior to the Radhasoami tradition, all of the
new movements under discussion have based their knowledge and writings on Radhasoami's own
particular interpretation of Surat Shabd Yoga, the practice of uniting the soul with the internal sound energy.
In this article, I will describe the relationship of these American religious movements to the
Radhasoami tradition and then will examine the reasons why there is such a strong tendency in these new panths to deny their living religious heritage.
The Radhsoami Tradition of India
The name Radhasoami has been generally applied to those gurus and gaddis (the seat/residence of a saint, living or deceased) who trace their spiritual lineages back to Shiv Dayal Singh (1818-1878), the proclaimed founder of the movement who resided in the city of Agra, in the Uttar Pradesh
District of India. "Soamiji Maharaj," as Shiv Dayal Singh was called by his disciples, came
from a family of Nanak-panthis and was primarily influenced in his religious upbringing by the
nirguna bhakti poetry of such Sants as Kabir, Nanak, Paltu, and most significantly Tulsi Sahib of Hathras.
What distinguishes Soamiji's teachings (and
subsequently those of the Radhasoami tradition) from Vaishnavism, Tantrism, Goraknathism,
Saivism, and other forms of Indic piety is
essentially the emphasis he gives to three cardinal precepts:
• 1. Satguru, both as the Absolute Lord (nirguna) and the living human master (saguna).
• 2. Shabd, which encompasses both varnatmak (spoken or written) and dhunyatmak
(transcendent melody) expressions of the Supreme Lord (Sat Purush).
• 3. Satsang, the congregation of earnest
devotees of the truth.
Upon Soamiji's death, several of his disciples served as gurus, resulting in a proliferation of satsangs. Today there are at least thirty different Radhasoami centers in India with direct lineage connections to Shiv Dayal Singh. For the
purposes of this paper, however, we will only be concerned with two of the largest and most
influential of these: Radhasoami Satsang Beas and Ruhani Satsang. For it is these two sects which have been instrumental in the development of a number of popular American religious
movements.
Ruhani Satang and its parent Radhasoami Satsang Beas trace their lineages back to Shiv Dayal Singh through Jaimal Singh, Soamiji's only Sikh
successor who eventually settled on the banks of the Beas river in the now thriving farm
community of the Punjab. After Jaimal Singh's demise in 1903, his chief disciple and successor, Sawan Singh (1858-1948), founded a spiritual colony in honor of his guru. It was Sawan Singh who has been the most pivotal force in the spread of Shabd Yoga related panths in North America.
His impact can be directly seen in the teachings
and writings of the Divine Light Mission,
Mishra's Yoga Society, Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind's metaphysical groups, and the Movement for
Spiritual Inner Awareness (M.S.I.A.).
Although when Sawan Singh died, he was eventually succeeded (via Jagat Singh) by his
grandson, Charan Singh, a number of his disciples founded their own movements. Eminent among these was Kirpal Singh who established Ruhani Satsang in Gur Mandi, Old Delhi. Kirpal's
influence on popular Shabd Yoga groups in
America is second only to Sawan Singh's. Both Walter Baptiste and Paul Twitchell (the late
founder of Eckankar) were disciples of the Delhi master and have incorporated his teachings into their respective organizations.
In the following section, we will examine some of the more prominent panths in America which have an affiliation in one way or another with the
Radhasoami tradition of India through the aegis of Sawan Singh or Kirpal Singh.
Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind
In the early part of this century, many Sikhs immigrated by way of Canada to the United
States. Outstanding among these was Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind, who was both a spiritual teacher and an activist for Indian rights. He was involved in the famous 1923 court case "United States vs.
Bhagat Singh Thind," wherein he attempted to escape restrictive racial causes by arguing that Indians are Caucasian.
During the twenties and thirties, Thind wrote a number of books and conducted classes
throughout the country on metaphysics. Thind claimed at that time, as he did before his death in the late 1960's, that his spiritual inspiration came from the Sikh religion. According to Kirpal Singh, however, Thind was actually an initiate of Sawan Singh of Radhasoami Satsang Beas and derived his teachings from him without due reference.
Instead of utilizing Sikh doctrines, Thind was
allegedly borrowing Radhasoami precepts, and in so doing was covering up his real religious
theopneusty. Comments Kirpal Singh:
"When I went to America there was one gentleman, he's passed away now, a Sikh gentleman who was giving talks on
payment. His name was Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind. He married a French lady. He was
initiated by Baba Sawan Singh, I know, definitely. When he wrote his first book, Radiant Road (sic: Thind had written
several books before 1939) he sent a copy to Baba Sawan Singh. He gave it to me. It was a copy of what I had written. I wanted to meet him but he always evaded me. I was in America four months, I asked him for his program but he would change his program.
We never met. He said he never even saw Baba Sawan Singh, and never knew that Radiant Road , his book, is the exact
translation of a portion of the book I had written."
Part of the reason Thind has been accused of
plagiarism over his book, Radiant Road to Reality (1939), was not because he used similar concepts as found in Radhasoami but because of the style and form with which he conveyed his message.
The confusion over which book he actually plagiarized from (Sar Bachan Radhasoami,
Gurmat Sidhant, or With A Great Master in India) sidelights the real issue: Why would Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind wish to employ almost all of
Radhasoami's specific parmarthi doctrines but
deny their origin and his disputed association with
the satsang? It is a question which we will
examine at length in the last part of this article, for the denial of allegiance, as we shall see, is not an uncommon occurrence, especially with certain neo-gurus and movements.
Paul Twitchell and Eckankar
Perhaps the most controversial of the new panths associated with Radhasoami and Ruhani Satsang is Eckankar. Today the group, under the leadership of Harold Klemp (the present "Living Eck
Master") and Darwin Gross (the previous Master) does not admit that their founder, Paul Twitchell (1908-1971), was initiated by Kirpal Singh in 1955, although there is overwhelming
documentary evidence to support it. Rather they claim, as did Twitchell from about 1966 onwards, that their founder was initiated by Sudar Singh of Allahabad and Rebazar Tarzs, a Tibetan monk supposedly over five-hundred years old. Though these claims would usually go by undetected
(from lack of primary materials), this book (1978, 1979, 1983, and 1988) and the SCP Journal:
Eckankar, A Hard Look At A New Religion (1979) have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Paul Twitchell was indeed a follower of
Kirpal Singh, as well as Swami Premananda and L. Ron Hubbard.
Sudar Singh and Rebazar Tarzs, though their existence is factual to some extent as "cover
names" for real gurus, are actually mythological characterizations of Twitchell's genuine and
imagined biography. In order to start a "new"
movement, Paul Twitchell attempted to cover up his previous association with Kirpal Singh (while continuing to use him and the books of Dr. Julian P. Johnson as his primary source) and tried to
create a mythology which made him and his group, Eckankar, a fulcrum for a unique and superior spiritual revelation.
Today, the movement has somewhere between thirty and fifty-thousand paid members. Most
"Eckists," as followers are usually called, have never even heard of Kirpal Singh, Ruhani
Satsang, Radhasoami Beas or Dr. Julian P.
Johnson. According to the materials published by the group, most members are informed that
Eckankar is the fountainhead of all religions.
Though its inception only traces back to 1965, the movement's living masters have taught that, if
anything, Sant mat, Radhasoami, Shabd Yoga, and
other forms of Indic spiritual discipline based
upon the "Sound Current," are offshoots from the ageless path of Eckankar. However, the hidden history behind Paul Twitchell's life and work has recently been coming more well-known to the reading public which will inevitably lead to a confrontation between what is "believed to be true" and what is "actually the case."
John-Roger Hinkins and M.S.I.A.
In 1968, John-Roger Hinkins, a Mormon and ex-high school teacher, started his spiritual ministry.
He was associated with Paul Twitchell and Eckankar, having been a mail correspondent member, and, to Eckankar's records, a second initiate.
In several long, personal interviews with John-Roger at his house in Mandeville Canyon, I learned that he did not see his connection with Paul Twitchell as a master/disciple or
teacher/student relationship. Be that as it may, the fact remains that his group and his teachings are almost exactly the same as Eckankar's, not even excepting particular Twitchellian nuances. It
should also be noted that M.S.I.A.'s organizational
structure is almost parallel to Eckankar's with regard to initiation, discourses, and cosmology.
John-Roger is known to members of M.S.I.A. as the physical manifestation of the Mystical
Traveler Consciousness (a concept quite similar to the Satguru in the Radhasoami tradition and the Mahanta in Eckankar). According to Roger's account, the mantleship of the MTC was passed on to him in or around 1963. During this time, Roger claims to have met Sawan Singh, the late Radhasoami Satsang Beas master. "J.R.", as he is affectionately called, holds that the Great Master of Beas was the previous carrier of the Mystical Traveler Consciousness and passed on the "keys to the Kingdom" to him on the inner spiritual planes. However, "J.R." at that time did not
recognize the luminous being as Sawan Singh. It was only later when he saw a photograph of the guru that he placed the picture of the Great Master with the powerful entity he encountered in
meditation.
John-Roger's group has grown considerably in the last ten years, and now has centers throughout the United States and in several countries across the globe. M.S.I.A. publishes its own newspaper, The
Movement, and runs several sister-organizations, the most visible of which is Insight
Transformational Seminars.
Divine Light Mission
Of all the movements under discussion, the one that fewest people know has a connection to the Radhasoami tradition is the Divine Light Mission.
As Juergensmeyer notes:
"It is reported that the "Divine Light Mission" of the boy guru, Shri Hans Maharaji, is derived from Radhasoami teachings and the Radhasoami
community. According to some accounts, the
father of the present boy guru had been a follower of one of the Radhasoami branches, but split off from them to start his own following."
With the emergence of Balyogeshwar (alias Guru Maharaji), the mission came to the attention of the general public in India and North America. The movement had its biggest impact in the early 1970's when it attracted thousands of devotees.
The initial growth, however, has since subsided, and the group is currently enjoying a relative stability, with neither a significant influx of new members or a substantial exodus.
The most striking parallel between the Divine Light Mission and the Radhasoami Tradition concerns their teachings on the "Divine Word,"
the inner-spiritual melody. Both groups employ meditational techniques for initiates to concentrate their attention on this current of "light and sound"
which is believed to free the soul from its
attachment with the physical body. Though both groups have similar theological teachings
concerning the nature of this "Divine Word," each differ in their own way on how exactly to
approach the Supreme Abode.
Walter Baptiste, Dr. Ramamurti Mishra, and Ray Stanford
There a number of lesser-known individuals and groups which have had alliance with Radhasoami.
Walter Baptiste, for instance, was initiated by Kirpal Singh in the mid-1950's He now runs a yoga facility and a vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco, where his wife gives classes on Hatha Yoga. Baptiste also conducts spiritual counseling, and, I am informed, gives initiation using the
same five holy names ( panch nam ) that all Radhasoami satsangs linked with Jaimal Singh (including Kirpal Singh's Ruhani Satsang) have
given out as their meditation mantra.
Other people have been influenced by
Radhasoami but in less dramatic ways. Dr.
Ramamurti Mishra, the famous yoga teacher, was initiated by both Sawan Singh and Baba
Somanath. But their impact should not be
overestimated as Mishra has adopted many gurus.
Nevertheless, he does teach Nada-yoga (union of the soul with the interior/primordial sound) and lays emphasis on much of the Radhasoami
teachings.
Today there exists a multitude of organizations which reveal a striking compatibility with
Radhasoami teachings concerning the "Sound Current." And though perhaps most of these movements have no direct link, they have
somewhere along the line utilized practices or beliefs from the many Radhasoami publications.
Groups in this category include: A.U.M.
(Association for the Understanding of Man), whose founder, Ray Stanford, was initiated by Charan Singh of Radhasoami Satsang Beas;
Morningland, which appears to have been influenced by some of Eckankar's distinctive doctrines; and Jerry Mulvin, former professional
bowler and long time follower of Eckankar, who now claims to be an enlightened master and
competent to "connect" disciples to the sound current (for a hundred dollars, no less!).
Genealogical Dissociation:
Emergence and Repression in the New Panths An important question arises when one reviews the startling tendency inherent in many of the new panths and their founders to deny their religious heritage--a denial which has taken on the form of name-deletions, plagiarism, and cover-ups. Why?
Though there may indeed be many answers [like SCP's skepticism of Eckankar's late founder:
"Twitchell was a one-eyed man who preferred his own fabrications to the truth"], it becomes quite apparent on closer inspection that there is one fundamental reason. Simply put, it is not that the new panths are in all instances concerned with suppressing their historical roots, but rather that they are overly anxious about their own
distinctiveness as a new movement. It is primarily because of this emphasis on becoming established
as a separate entity that the given group and its founder disconnect instead of integrate the past out of which they arose. This severance, which has its basis in developmental psychology, I have coined as "genealogical dissociation."
Ken Wilber, in his books, The Atman Project and Up From Eden, sees this predisposition
towards disunion as an underlying psychological problem in man's development, both individually and socially. When attempting to differentiate from a particular state of awareness or stage of development, for instance, man has two options:
either integrate the lower order where the emergence takes place or repress it. If it is
integrated, then that stage remains conscious and pliable; if it is estranged or disconnected,
however, then it turns unconscious and
threatening. In terms of the mind/body dualism, Wilber explains it thus:
"The mind/body dissociation was a natural result of the increasing death-terror that emerged with the mental-egoic phase, around 600 B.C. As the mind began to emerge in a clear way for the first time in history, the ego, in flight from death, simply
alienated, dissociated, or repressed the body. And it did this for a simple reason:
the mental-ego is composed of ideas, and ideas seem permanent, unchanging and fixed, whereas the body, composed of
mortal flesh, obviously dies. For example, all real trees grow, live and then die--but the word "tree", the symbol "tree", stays the same. So if ideas seem fixed and
unchanging, whereas bodies are fleshy and mortal, and you're in flight from death,
which of those two do you identify with?
The minds, of course. You identify with
words, symbols, concepts--the ego--and you deny, alienate, repress the mortal body.
Ideas become the new immortality project, and the body becomes the new threat, the new enemy."
Applying Wilber's elucidation to the development of new panths (specifically Eckankar), we can see that it becomes a "fear" of losing that emergence--that step forward--which prompts suppression or attempted annihilation of the lower order where the differentiation first took place. In our case,
historical-religious genealogical dissociation. This disunion in many of the new panths (e.g., like
Paul Twitchell's denial of his association with Kirpal Singh and Ruhani Satsang), springs
forward not so much out of ignorance but out of hope for a separate, distinct and lasting survival--an autonomous tradition. But as Freudisurvival--an survival--and Jungian theories about personality maturation demonstrate, the unconscious or shadow self cannot be disregarded because it is part of the entire organism. It, quite simply, must be dealt with.
Religiously, we can see the attempt for
"integration" in the early history of Christianity, especially with the influence of St. Paul. There was an effort on behalf of the newly emerging Church to include (not obliterate) parts of the Judaic religion and culture. Thus, even today Roman Catholicism acknowledges its
indebtedness to the Jewish heritage. And so is the case with Radhasoami (particularly the Beas
branch in the Punjab and Sawan-Kirpal Mission) towards Sant mat. There is both an acknowledged link and a proud remembrance in Radhasoami and Ruhani Satsang of its ancestry with the medieval nirguna bhakti poet-Sants.
In the context of some of the new panths,
however, there is an endeavor to dislocate, dissociate, and even destroy their antecedents.
Instead of an admission to their actual religious heritage, we instead find a denial of it--even in the very face of incredible contradictory evidence.
Take, as an illustrative example, the case of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar. When the group first started, Twitchell did not completely deny his
association with his guru, Kirpal Singh. In fact, in many articles Twitchell wrote at length about his admiration for the Ruhani Satsang Master.
However, from about 1966 onwards we find an accelerating cover-up. What prompted this shift of allegiance? The answer is perhaps simpler than we might expect: the growing popularity of Eckankar.
When Twitchell came to grasp the significance of
When Twitchell came to grasp the significance of