Spiritual and Disingenuous

It is hard for doting devotees of a spiritual teacher to see any fault in his sayings. And more often than not, what the teacher is doing is just talking nonsense, or building a dependence on himself in a subtle or crude way.

Take for example the following questions and responses from http://www.ishafoundation.org (a website of a spiritual teacher "Sadhguru" Jaggi Vasudev). The Q&A is first presented as-is from the website and then later it is presented with my annotations.

Q: How do I become aware? What support can I seek for this?

Sadhguru: "Unfortunately most people are still lame. They always need a stick to walk. Without a crutch they cannot walk. Support, once again, is at many different levels. If you are physically lame, you need a physical support. If you are psychologically weak, you need a psychological support. If emotionally imbalanced, you need emotional support. On a different level, if you are financially weak, you need financial support - if socially weak, social support. But these are different aspects. When I say support in relation to your growth spiritually, it was connected to all these things in a way.

Some people need psychological support; some people need a physical atmosphere support. When they come to a particular program, they meditate well, they do their Shakti Chalana Kriya well, but if they sit at home, alone, they can’t keep their eyes closed and do any sadhana even for ten minutes. They need support. Physical atmosphere is very important for them. Without support - outside support - for a lot of people, not only their way of being, their awareness, even their sadhana disappears.

Awareness is hard to keep. When I say hard, I am not saying it is difficult - I am only saying that it needs application, it needs awareness. It just needs awareness. When it isn’t there, to be aware or to make an attempt to be aware is hard. Now, awareness is not something that you have to learn or cultivate. The innermost core of your being is awareness. It is just that when people are living on the surface of their life, they are only experiencing the surface of what they are - just the body and the mind. Then awareness seems to be the most impossible thing, so difficult. But your innermost core is simply awareness. There is nothing to be done - whichever way you are, you are aware anyway."

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The question is pretty clear: "How do I become aware?" What it obviously means is how do I become aware of the various levels of my consciousness and become aware of the causal chains operating in me which lead me to remain as-I-am and unhappy.

How does the teacher approach this question?

"Unfortunately most people are still lame. They always need a stick to walk. Without a crutch they cannot walk."

"Support, once again, is at many different levels. If you are physically lame, you need a physical support. If you are psychologically weak, you need a psychological support. If emotionally imbalanced, you need emotional support."

The above is an elucidation of the word "support" as it is used in various contexts.

"On a different level, if you are financially weak, you need financial support - if socially weak, social support. But these are different aspects."

As above.

"When I say support in relation to your growth spiritually, it was connected to all these things in a way."

This probably refers to a talk of his after which this question was raised.

"Some people need psychological support; some people need a physical atmosphere support."

So, the teacher says: to become aware, "some people" need a conducive atmosphere.

"When they come to a particular program, they meditate well, they do their Shakti Chalana Kriya well, but if they sit at home, alone, they can’t keep their eyes closed and do any sadhana even for ten minutes."

So, the teacher says: at home people are unable to meditate or to do the "shakti chalana kriya" but they can do it well when participating in a program. At a program, typically the meditator is surrounded by like-minded meditators and the whole focus of the group and the atmosphere is on meditation. It is an elementary example of group psychology enhancing one's own motivation. Many people find it hard to jog alone, to watch a movie alone, to travel alone, to motivate themselves to do something creative on their own. They will do things if told to do so, or if part of a group. The mind needs an order or an authority figure to dictate to oneself.

"They need support. Physical atmosphere is very important for them. Without support - outside support - for a lot of people, not only their way of being, their awareness, even their sadhana disappears."

Because such people are unable to internalize the motivation. Their motivation comes from outside.

So what should one do?

"Awareness is hard to keep. When I say hard, I am not saying it is difficult - I am only saying that it needs application,"

Okay, so it is not difficult in the sense of being complicated, but it is difficult in the sense of being hard to persevere in.

So, once again, what does the teacher suggest? How to find out what is preventing one from being internally motivated?

"it needs awareness. It just needs awareness."

But that's begging the question. How to learn about and be aware of one's lethargy and the causes of one's un-creative, unhappy, unmotivated life?

"When it isn’t there, to be aware or to make an attempt to be aware is hard."

Of course, that is why the question is being asked. What is the way out? Why am I like this?

"Now, awareness is not something that you have to learn or cultivate."

So, the teacher says, awareness is not something that can be improved upon, since you cannot learn or cultivate it.

"The innermost core of your being is awareness."

You are awareness in essence, the teacher says. The punchline will come in the end.

"It is just that when people are living on the surface of their life, they are only experiencing the surface of what they are - just the body and the mind."

That begs the question: if my core is awareness, why am I living on the surface? Who is living on the surface? Is it the core? How can the core live at the surface? Is it not the core? But then what is it? How to deepen this experiencing?

"Then awareness seems to be the most impossible thing, so difficult. But your innermost core is simply awareness. There is nothing to be done - whichever way you are, you are aware anyway."

Bravo! I am sure the seeker is now clear about what to do.

Just do nothing. Just realize that you are awareness, and stop trying.

(the statement is obviously false because there is no awareness in a coma, state of unconsciousness or in deep sleep).

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Another example?

Q: Sadhguru, you have told us many times that if we have bitter experiences in our life, it is because of our past doings. What type of activities should we do today to avoid future bitterness?

Sadhguru: "Subbarao, the bitterness of any experience is not in what has happened. The bitterness of any experience is in terms of how you have received it. What is very bitter for one person could be a blessing for another person. Once, a grief stricken man threw himself on a grave and cried bitterly, hitting his head against it. “My life! Oh! How senseless it is! How worthless this carcass of mine is because you’re gone. If only you had lived! If only fate had not been so cruel as to take you from this world! How different everything would have been!” A clergyman, nearby, overheard him and said, “I assume this person lying beneath this mound of earth was someone of great importance to you.” “Importance? Yes, indeed,” wept the man, wailing even louder, “It was my wife’s first husband!” The bitterness is not in what is happening. It is in how you’re allowing yourself to experience it, how you are receiving it. Similarly, whatever the past activity or karma is, is also not in terms of action, but in terms of the volition with which it is done.

What is happening with you all, if you are a little open to me or to the teaching, is just that the volition is taken away, so you just do what is needed. That is what awareness means; there is no volition. Where there is no volition, there is no karma. You are simply doing what is needed; that is what acceptance means. That is what unbounded responsibility means, that you don’t have any volition about anything. In every given situation, simply whatever you see as needed, as per your awareness, as per your capability, you just do it. You build karma only with volition; whether it is good or bad, it does not matter. The strength of your volition is what builds karma.

People ask me, again and again, the same question, "What’s your mission?" When I tell them, "I have no mission; I’m just fooling around," they think I’m being frivolous. They don’t understand this is the deepest statement that I can make about living in the world, because there is no particular volition – just doing what is needed, that’s all. In this, there is no karma. Whatever you go through, there is no karma. Whatever you are doing is just happening, as it is needed. So karma is only in terms of your need to do something. When you have no need to do anything, and you simply do what is needed, there is no karmic attachment to it. It is neither good nor bad."

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[ Now the annotation ]

"Q: Sadhguru, you have told us many times that if we have bitter experiences in our life, it is because of our past doings. What type of activities should we do today to avoid future bitterness?"

So, the student is asking: Since our suffering is due to our past actions, how can we stop doing actions in the present so that we do not suffer in the future.

The Sadhguru replies:

"Subbarao, the bitterness of any experience is not in what has happened. The bitterness of any experience is in terms of how you have received it."

Sadhguru says that the experiences are not bitter per se, but are perceived bitterly. I.e., it is all in your mind. One should ask the Sadhguru, is this the advice he would give to a child who is currently being raped by a sadistic father? "The experience is perfectly fine in itself, just don't take it in a bad way."

This attitude is the prime reason people with a solipsistic psyche do not want to improve anything, because they just stop feeling bad about it and that's the solution.

"What is very bitter for one person could be a blessing for another person."

True, most experiences can be evaluated in various ways, but there are experiences, for example, being painfully handicapped, suffering from hate and lust, being the victim of violence, being in a war-torn disease-ridden, experiences which are unequivocally physically and mentally stressful or damaging.

Psychological suffering (as opposed to bodily suffering), however, is indeed due to one's own instincts and conditioning and it is indeed upton oneself to be completely free of psychological suffering.

Let's define suffering as a state of mind or body which makes one unhappy and/or harmful.

Injury, illness, stress, hate, lust, greed, anger, etc., can be considered objective phenomena causing (or being) suffering in a particular individual.

The issue of responsibility is separate from the issue of categorizing an event. If we agree that living stressfully or unhealthily is not a sensible way to live life, then anybody who is living stressfully or unhealthily can be categorized as a suffering individual.

"Once, a grief stricken man threw himself on a grave and cried bitterly, hitting his head against it. “My life! Oh! How senseless it is! How worthless this carcass of mine is because you’re gone. If only you had lived! If only fate had not been so cruel as to take you from this world! How different everything would have been!” A clergyman, nearby, overheard him and said, “I assume this person lying beneath this mound of earth was someone of great importance to you.” “Importance? Yes, indeed,” wept the man, wailing even louder, “It was my wife’s first husband!”"

This joke illustrates only that the suffering can have a cause which is different from the cause perceived by others. The value of this joke in furthering our particular enquiry is zilch.

"The bitterness is not in what is happening. It is in how you’re allowing yourself to experience it, how you are receiving it."

Ok, so I am responsible for my suffering. Fair enough, so what should be done about it?

"Similarly, whatever the past activity or karma is, is also not in terms of action, but in terms of the volition with which it is done.""

Ok, so the karma (to use that word) is based on volitions, not on externally visible (so-to-say) events. E.g., to kill a person is not a "sin" if it is done with compassion (e.g., to ease that person's suffering during terminal illness). That is how karma is usually defined in spirituality.

"What is happening with you all, if you are a little open to me or to the teaching, is just that the volition is taken away, so you just do what is needed."

This is typically known as the surrendering of the will and is a common theme in spiritual circles. After the surrender, "what is needed" is dictated by external forces instead of one's own mind. Needless to say, the external force in this case is clearly spelt out as "me or my teaching".

"That is what awareness means; there is no volition. Where there is no volition, there is no karma."

So, in other words, "surrender your will to me, and stop worrying about any future punishment that you might get if you act on your own."

"You are simply doing what is needed; that is what acceptance means."

In other words, "you are simply doing what I tell you to do, that is what acceptance of me means."

"That is what unbounded responsibility means, that you don’t have any volition about anything."

It is beyond me how a surrender of one's own will can make one "unboundedly responsible." Reasonably speaking, if I surrender my will, I am not responsible for my actions. Only my master is responsible. And presumably, if he is "beyond karma", then he can be as volitional as he wants to be without accumulating any karma. In other words, God need not be worried about the consequences of his actions, but mortal humans should, as long as they haven't surrendered themselves to him.

"In every given situation, simply do whatever you see as needed, as per your awareness, as per your capability, you just do it."

This clarity of thought, where one acts without conflict, requires an extraordinary amount of self-awareness, enquiry and investigation. It is extremely hard, for a normal enough person, to act without any contradiction, confusion or malice.

Unless, of course, one has surrendered. This is the easy way out. Then one need not bother anymore. Just do what one is told to do, or what is required to achieve the ends which have been specified by the master. There is no confusion about the ends anymore. That is why the strange attraction of total surrender: it is the quickest way out of confusion ... and into ... subservience.

"You build karma only with volition; whether it is good or bad, it does not matter. The strength of your volition is what builds karma."

Clear enough.

So the exhortation is to surrender.

"People ask me, again and again, the same question, "What’s your mission?" When I tell them, "I have no mission; I’m just fooling around," they think I’m being frivolous."

In other words, I am God. I am not acting for furthering myself, I have no agenda of my own. This is all a leela (or play) for me.

"They don’t understand this is the deepest statement that I can make about living in the world, because there is no particular volition – just doing what is needed, that’s all."

This is what is called being dishonest about one's motives. If he wants to bring englightenment to the world, he should be forthright about it. Teachers before him have had the gumption to admit that they were world teachers. On one hand he assumes the title of a "sadhguru" (or the True Messiah), and then he says he is fooling around.

One should ask him: is he fooling around answering such questions? And if he says yes, and if people still keep asking him questions in all seriousness, then probably they deserve to surrender their will to him.

And, "just doing what is needed." Needed for what? Why the need for having a marketing website complete with an online shop, and worldwide tours and lectures, and hobnobbing with powerful politicians and having expensive retreats for the rich and the depressed and going to spiritual conferences with other spiritual leaders (or tricksters, such as Deepak Chopra)?

"In this, there is no karma."

"Whatever you go through, there is no karma. Whatever you are doing is just happening, as it is needed."

"So karma is only in terms of your need to do something. When you have no need to do anything, and you simply do what is needed, there is no karmic attachment to it. It is neither good nor bad."

In other words, I am God, and you surrender to me.

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My home theater setup

I have become increasingly fond of studying motion pictures in the last year. Avant garde cinema, cinema verite, the work of "film auteurs" (or art films), documentaries, technically superlative motion pictures, and so on.

This article details my home theater setup. It is not easy to duplicate a full-fledged cinema theater in one's home but I think I have managed to better it in many ways. :-)

Hardware:

Projection system: I use a Sharp Notevision XR-10X DLP front projection system, it can natively display 1024x768 pixels (more than enough for a DVD source). I use a very smooth light wall for projection but might go in for a tripod mounted projection screen in future. The projector is very bright (2000 lumens) and the contrast ratio is a rich 2000:1, so even in daytime, with curtains drawn, the visuals are rich.

Media source: I use standard PC hardware (a Compaq R4000 laptop) as a media source, especially since I keep most movies in MPEG-4 format (my DVD player, Philips DV642P supports MPEG-4 but is not as flexible as a general purpose computer) and also since I like to watch movies with subtitles. The PC has a standard video card, VGA/component out and a region free DVD ROM drive. I don't use the PC's inbuilt sound card since that only has 2 channel output.

Sound output system: I use Creative's Audigy 2 ZS laptop cardbus sound card. It is THX certified, has built-in decoding for Dolby Digital and DTS, supports 7.1 channels, and has 6-channel analog out as well as optical out.

Audio Receiver/Speaker system: I use Logitech's Z5450 digital 5.1 speaker system, with 2 front satellites, 1 center and 2 rear satellites and a sub-woofer. The speakers are again, THX, can produce more than 300watts RMS, and best of all, the rear satellites are wireless for audio connectivity to the main receiver/amplifier. The receiver also has in-built decoding for Dolby Digital and DTS, and has multiple optical inputs, digital co-ax inputs and the standard 6-channel analog inputs.

Software: I greatly prefer Media Player Classic (MPC) 6.4.9.0 on Windows XP Professional with ffdshow codecs for decoding MPEG4 streams (DivX, XviD, mp4, etc.)

I use the K Lite codec pack, which includes MPC and a wide variety of codecs (including ffdshow).

Watching a movie is therefore as simple (sic) as:

- Making sure I have a high quality audio/visual media (preferably MPEG4 or H.264), Dolby Digital audio (if available) and synchronized English subtitles in Subrip format (so that MPC can display them as per my specifications). The combination of these three things is very hard to get right, especially for movies which are out of circulation, but it is possible with lots of resources available on the internet.

- Running Media player classic with the media files

- Selecting the audio settings to pass through any Dolby audio un-decoded to the sound card (Audigy 2 ZS), which performs hardware decoding of the audio stream. Software decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS streams is still in its infancy. One of the best software decoders, ac3filter, which works with MPC, still has a way to go (it suffers from channel amplitude distortion, unnoticeable till somebody tells you about it).

- Choose the subtitles to be displayed

- Connect the projector via the VGA cable

- Connect the Z-5450 receiver with the 6-channel cables from the Audigy 2 ZS sound card. I might use an optical cable someday to decode the audio stream in the receiver instead of the sound card.

- Set the sub-woofer volume and surround volume on the receiver

- Start the movie, sit back and enjoy.

The set-up is very high quality, as far as I am concerned, but is still not very expensive.

Some of the things which can make it top of the line (but suffer from a bad cost-benefit ratio) are HDMI/DVI video (doesn't help much because very few sources are sold in HD format), an optical audio pass-through from the media direct to the audio receiver, and a better speaker system with higher dynamic range (Z-5450 has a dynamic range of around 95db which is actually better than native CD audio dynamic range of 90db), and a lower Total Harmonic Distortion (Z-5450 has a high THD of 10%, but there is no other rear wireless speaker system in the market which offers as much as this system at this price). I am actually very pleased with both the projector and the speaker system.

The projector cost me around $750, bought from a discount retailer on the internet.
The speakers cost around $230, bought from amazon.com.
The Audigy 2 ZS notebook sound card costs around $100, bought from amazon.com.
I already had a laptop.

So, for around $1100, much much less than the cost of a big-screen television, I have a home theater system, with a very big screen and awesome audio which provides me, my wife and my friends, many hours of pleasure.

(well, you also need a big empty room). :-)

Is India beyond hope?

Civic services have reached their nadir in India. What are some of the basic needs of a citizen of a country for which he/she pays enormous amounts of taxes and how are they being fulfilled? (Remember that India is one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world.)

Water: Every home has its own water tank, many homes have their own water pumps. Municipal water is supplied for one or two hours per day in most Indian cities. The water is frequently contaminated, dirty, mixed with sewerage, coloured and heavily laden with chemicals. Almost every middle class home in the big cities has installed its own water purification system.

Electricity: There is no city or region in India where a stable and reliable supply of electricity is guaranteed. Every middle class home these days has an electrical inverter or a generator to be used when power supply is off. Every major appliance needs a voltage stabilizer because of huge voltage fluctuations at times. Politically backed illegal slums and colonies steal power in broad daylight from the power cables.

Air: Indian metros are amongst the worst polluted cities in the world. Unregulated growth of vehicles and rampant adulteration in petrol and diesel is playing havoc with the public health.

Health: Government facilities have almost broken down. There is disease, infection, fungus in dialysis and IV fluids, HIV-infected blood for sale, fake and overpriced medicines, corrupt doctors and surgeons, all have contributed to a fear in the general public of getting sick. Most hospitals in Noida, the place where I live, are notorious for taking out and selling organs of poor patients who come to get operated upon for routine problems.

Food: Even the basic food items such as milk, flour, vegetables, meat, soft drinks etc. all are so polluted that you won't be able to have them if you know how they are being produced. Milk is full of artificial chemicals, pus, hormones and eroding bone calcium of cattle; flour, pulses, spices are frequently seen infested with worms and coloured with artificial chemicals; vegetables and fruit are ripened in mixtures of borax and other chemicals; soft drinks have been repeatedly shown to contain pesticides and "foreign bodies".

Security and Civic services: Surely one must be joking. I have never, ever, seen a policeman patrol a residents' colony. There is absolutely no way, unless one is extremely well connected or knowledgeable, that one can get one's grievance redressed if wronged by an individual or a corporation. Almost all the public servants, especially the police, are busy serving the needs of the VIPs, the ministers and the rich. Every rich home has its own security guard(s). The rich and the influential are carrying loaded guns in their pockets, with an army of taxpayer-funded guards in their tow.

To see the real extent of how bad things have become, read the following:

"Holding up his six-year-old daughter’s picture high in his hand, Sunil Biswas sobbed quietly. He wanted all photo journalists and TV crews to capture the child’s face, hoping against hope she might still be alive and someone, somewhere might identify her.



Ever since Pushpa disappeared in March, Sunil has repeatedly braved the poor man’s fear of the police station.

“I have been to the police station at least 20 times, although I was scared,” he managed in Bengali before launching into a volley of curses aimed at himself for having left Calcutta for Delhi a year ago.

There was a crowd of parents today before the Noida house where the police have found the skeletal remains of at least 20 children in a gutter.

Sunil’s friend Subhrojit Haldar — his daughter Deepali, too, is missing – spoke of the recent dharna outside the Sector 30 police station by residents of Nithari village, the home of most of the missing children.

“We appealed to the police so many times. Children were disappearing every second day, but the police refused to even put up a check-post outside the village entrance,” said Subhrojit, a labourer.

A month ago, after the kidnapping of Adobe India CEO Naresh Gupta’s son Anant, Noida police had set up a check-post outside the home and another at the gate of Sector 15 A where the Guptas lived.

“How come that for us they could not provide any security guards?” Subhrojit asked.

“They had alerted the whole country for one child; here so many are missing and no one cares,” Sunil sobbed.

A tailor with a cotton garments’ factory, Sunil said he used to sew clothes for his daughter.

“We were poor and that was all I could give her — made of scraps of cloth left over at the factory. And she loved them.”

Standing across the road from the Noida house where police officers were totting up the number of skeletons, he broke down.

“It is so ridiculous of me to have any hope left now. She is probably there, with the rest,” he said, pointing at the general direction of the house, his eyes pressed against his sleeves.

Suddenly, he was looking up and running his eyes over the scrambling photo journalists and TV camera crews. He tugged at his friend’s shirt, excited.

A few minutes later, he was holding up his daughter’s photograph as tears ran down his cheeks.

“If not the police, maybe someone who sees her can help me. If she is alive,” he explained to this correspondent. “I will keep searching till I know for sure she is dead. My search will go on.” — Agencies"

The fraud that is IIPM

Found the following posts on the internet:

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4

I have had an inkling for a long time that Mr Arindam Chaudhary is a charlatan of the worst kind. Finally someone has investigated their claims and laid the matter open for scrutiny.

Gteat work, Rashmi and Gaurav. Keep the spirit of skepticism alive!

On Sikhism

Sikhism is an organized religion predominant in the state of Punjab in India. It is an offshoot of radical Hinduism and mystic Sufi traditions pravelent during the fifteenth century onwards.

Sikhism is thought to have started from the teachings of an Indian mystic, Nanak Bedi (circa 1469). Many saints in that period taught against the institutionalization of the Hindu religion and against the hegemony of the priestly classes which divided people based on caste, profession, etc. In orthodox Hinduism, the role and the place in the social ladder of a person is strictly determined by his profession and his caste (which in many cases is also based on race). Orthodox Hindus of that period also had an elaborate priestly class (membership to whcih was obviously restricted by race, caste or lineage) which wanted to maintain its power and control over people.

Spiritual and mystic saints of that period, who had no agenda to divide people, rebelled against these aspects of society. They saw the corruption that institutionalized religions lead to and propagated a message of equality, of personal effort and devotion, of the importance of individual experience, and of the authority of an experienced teacher rather than of books, idols, pilgrimages or rituals.

Most saints of that period were born in orthodox Hindu and Muslim families. Many of them, after having mystical experiences, rejected the lies being perpeterated by the religious and political rulers of that time. They formed a close group of disciples which carried on their traditions. Due to their egalitarian outlook, many people from the working classes converted to their teachings.

One of these mystics, Nanak Bedi (who is reverentially called Guru Nanak Dev) daringly rebelled against the prevailing rituals and exhorted his disciples to chant the God's name to have a mystical experience instead of following any rituals or priests. There were many contemporaries of Nanak who gave the same message but in his case, a lineage started. From his close disciples, Nanak appointed a successor to carry on his message.

The second teacher, Lehna (known after his appointment as Guru Angad Dev) carried on Nanak's message and stressed on divinity within a household existence (instead of the prevailing custom of leaving home and family for the life of a hermit).

Lehna appointed the paternal uncle of his son-in-law, Amar Das Bhalla as the third guru. Amar Das was again born in a Hindu family and regularly went for pilgrimages to Haridwar and Jwalamukhi. He was however, radical in his outlook and gave a message of social and gender equality and the abolition of cruel customs like Sati.

Amar Das nominated his son-in-law, Ram Das Sodhi, as the fourth Guru.

Ram Das, at the end of his life, nominated his youngest son, Arjun Sodhi (reverentially called Guru Arjun Dev) as the fifth Guru. Arjun Sodhi compiled the writings of many mystics including the first four Gurus and his own, into a combined text called the "Adi Granth". Apart from establishing a scriptural text, he put in place many other ritual and institutional measures amongst his disciples: Establishing a holy shrine in Amritsar (now known as the Golden Temple), authoring of prayers to be recited regularly at certain times of the day, founding of the towns of Tarn Taran, Kartarpur and Hargobindpur (the last named after his son), establishing an organizational structure of masands (authorized teachers), etc.

These measures, and some other political acts (such as helping the King's detractors) were justifiably seen as the formation of another political power center and the Guru was imprisoned, tortured and killed by the Mughal King Jehangir.

Before he died, Arjun Dev, nominated his son Hargobind (aged only eleven) as the sixth Guru and exhorted him to start forming an army against the regime. Hargobind Sodhi established the Sikh seat of power, the Akal Takht. He also started behaving like a regular king with a court, royal regalia, etc. Due to his miltiary overtures and some petty squabbles with the Mughal King, he was imprisoned many times and fought many battles.

Hargobind Sodhi formed the distinct identity of Sikhs as a warrior class. He had four sons. The eldest of them, Gurditta Sodhi, died when he was 24. As was common in patriarchy at that time, the eldest son used to be the successor of a King. If he is dead, then either the next eldest son or one of the grandsons from the eldest sons are the next candidates. Hargobind called the eldest son of Gurditta, Dhir Mal, to receive the succession but Dhir Mal did not come. The throne thus passed to the second son of Gurditta, Har Rai Sodhi (who was fourteen then).

Har Rai Sodhi continued to wield temporal power over the disciples and subjects. When time came to name his successor, his eldest son, Ram Rai Sodhi, disappointed him and he nominated his younger son (or the younger son was implicitly nominated after his fathers' death), Harkishan Sodhi (then only five years old) to be the next King. However, Harkishan died of smallpox when he was only eight years old.

Various stories abound as to how the ninth Guru was chosen but the fact that Teg Bahadur was a son of the sixth Guru, Hargobind had an obvious bearing on the matter. He was appointed the ninth Guru amidst much squabbling.

Aurangzeb, the last Mughal King, wanted the Kashmiri Pandits to convert to the Muslim faith. Teg Bahadur helped the Pandits keep their faith (he challenged Aurangzeb to convert him first) and infuriated Aurangzeb. He was tortured and killed by Aurangzeb. He had nominated his son Gobind Rai Sodhi to be the tenth Guru and King.

Gobind Rai was only nine years old when he became the Guru. He was a poet as well as a warrior and fought many guerrila battles with Aurangzeb's army. He had three wives, Jeeto, Sundri and Sahib Kaur (the third one is debated). He had four sons, all of whom died in his conflicts with Aurangzeb. (Polygamy was common amongst the powerful at that time. Guru Hargobind had three wives, Guru Har Rai had seven.)

Guru Gobind Rai instituted the baptising ceremony of Sikhs, gave them a distinct identity of being turbaned with long hair and beards, and instituted many other rules and rituals (giving every Sikh man and woman the last name of Singh and Kaur, respectively).

It is not clear what happened after his death, but since there found to be no worthy successors (or maybe there were too many fights going on for the title), the holy book compiled by the fifth Guru, Arjun Dev, was made (by whom? we don't know) the perpetual Guru for the Sikh community. Sikhs consider it to be their only teacher and it is accorded the status of a living person (e.g. it is covered with blankets and quilts on a winter night, is protected from dust and flies and is always kept under cover and on a mattress).

...

Well, Sikhs had come full circle. From rebelling against priests, power centers, shrines and holy books, they had all these of their own now.

The drive for mystical salvation had become a social, political and military movement. The focus shifted completely from salvation to social justice, which if required, had to be achieved by violence and torture. Banda Bahadur, one of the commanders of Gobind Singh, was a cruel marauder who burnt down Muslim villages and had his army rape and pillage the Muslims.

Today Sikhism is just another organized religion, with its own scriptures, rituals, temples, places of pilgrimage, code of conduct, division between Sikhs and non-Sikhs, a distinct identity, a corrupt priest class, huge donations at the altars for worldly gains, and so on.

Sikhs used to be easily identifiable by their turbans and full flowing beards, but as more and more youngsters are giving up the custom of keeping long hair and the tying of turbans, they are becoming more homogenized in the world (which is a good thing: separate group identities do nothing but promote hatred and bloodshed).

Most so-called true Sikhs protest this seeming devolution of Sikhism (which has been happening right from the time of the Gurus, but is thought to have started when the control of the Sikh temples went to the Akali Dal in the 1970s. Akali Dal is a political party in Punjab which claims to be the representative of the Sikhs.) and want the corrupt priests to be ousted and non-political people to, ironically, occupy the seats of power (forgetting that the fight for power is the exact definition of politics).

There are endless debates about the works of the tenth Guru (called the Dasam Granth) and whether Dasam Granth should be accorded the same status as that of the Adi Granth, whether sick people should be allowed to sit on chairs in Sikh temples, whether one should recite the whole book non-stop oneself or get it recited by paying somebody and reaping the blessings of the Gurus, whether the five rules established by the tenth Guru for having a "fully baptised Sikh" are to be considered still valid or not, and so on...

Nobody looks at the history of the Sikh Gurus, sees the obvious change from a spiritual sect based on the mystical experiences to that of a crass political movement in which the throne was kept within the family, even at the expense of making a five-year old a King, at the non-radical nature of the Gurus' *spiritual teachings* (everybody praises the radical socio-economic doctrine of equality and fraternity but nobody pays attention to what the Gurus said as far as spiritual guidance is concerned).

The basic tenets of Sikh spirituality are as orthodox as that of any other Indian religion: A timeless, formless, eternal God. Rebirth, reincarnation, sins and pieties, singing of hymns and asking for blessings and forgiveness, chanting and reading the holy book as the principle spiritual practices, protesting pedantry and pretensions, having a moral code of conduct, hagiography and miracle tails about the Gurus, intolerance of any criticism, the concepts of baptising, blasphemy, of being an apostate and a fallen Sikh, of holy water and holy baths, ...

And like every other religion, Sikhs claim to have the best religion around.