Talk:Sant Thakar Singh
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[edit] New Image
I made a scan of one of Sant Thakar Singh's books to use for an image since I have not had luck yet getting one from his Mission. The book has no copyright and is in the public domain, so there should be no more licensing issues. If you have a better picture, which you own and would like to donate, that is great. Sevadar 19:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Sant Mat Is Not Hinduism
Despite the WikiProject banner, Sant Mat has nothing in particular to do with Hinduism. Sant Thakar Singh was not even a Hindu, but rather a Sikh by birth. But his teachings were intended to go beyond the world religions (which he called "the dead religions") and bring people into Light through actual experience. However, it is OK for the love of the wikipedia participants to flow in. Sant Mat is a very inclusive concept.
Sevadar 03:38, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
- I've discovered the WP Hinduism tag was most likely placed by a bot so I am removing the tag. STS was neither a Hindu nor did he teach Hinduism, although he was from India and also used references from Gita, etc. when he gave satsang. Sevadar Sevadar 00:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] A few words
I am troubled by certain things in this article. First, the entire "References" section was a mess till I cleaned it up somewhat by seperating citations that link to external websites and citations that use books and other sources. I am going to ask another editor here on Wikipedia for help on this problem.
Second, Sant Thakar Singh is often called "The Master" in the article. Exactly who gave him this title? I have no idea partly because I don't even know who he is. I arrived at this article looking into something else. It is perfectly fine to call George. H. W. Bush "President," because that is exactly what he is (his title), but where did "Sant Thakar Singh" get this title? I am afraid it may not be totally objective.
Third, there should be absolutely no use of first person in editing an article (e.g. "I"). There are several uses of first person in the "Notes" and "References" sections. That is a serious problem and not befitting an encyclopedia.
Overall, I am questioning the objectivity of this article. There's a lot of info in the article, but it should remain something for everyone, not the followers of a particular faith. Stiles 06:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Response: You will find Jesus referred to as "Master" (Rabbi) in the Bible and in that context the word was being used as a term of respect. When I went to prep school, all of the staff were called "Masters." The term is one of basic respect and was not intended to imply anything beyond a person who by his own admission is teaching something about God. In other faiths, I believe there are preachers, ministers, and priests. In Sant Mat there is only the Guru. Is Guru an acceptable terminology to you? What I suspect (sorry to put it bluntly) is an element of Western chauvinism. "Guru" often has a pejorative connotation in the West. Sant Thakar Singh was a Guru, but he was called by his disciples (perhaps two million of them) "the Master." In India there are lots of Saints and Masters. It is not a strange usage.
Regarding the use of "I" you can feel free to edit the article. "I" have no objections. ;-) You say absolutely objective, but, how exactly does one present things which are philosophically in denial of the idea of objectivity? To do justice to the topic you need to approach it correctly. Sant Thakar Singh would not have even considered Wikipedia a form of knowledge.
Sevadar 03:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Sedavar, if you really think that your Masters work can not be appropriately depicted within the Wikipedia framework then You should maybe consider moving your otherwise fine and very informative article to another site. An article that is presented on this platform should IMO first and foremost try to adhere to the wikipedia guidelines. The transcendental nature of Thakar Singhs world view is undisputed. But taking that as a pretext to justify the strong bias of the article is IMO inappropriate and unjustified.
I very much hope that you disagree and want to keep the article here. But then I think it is neccessary to reduce the amount of Sedavar and to increase the Thakar Singh portion in it. Your article tells a lot about Thakar Singh and at the same time it contains much information about a Satsangi who goes under the name of Sedavar. It can be seen that this person is very devoted to his master and that he is very eager to maintain an immaculate remembrance of his Guru. IMO this additional information is not only redundant - in fact it has potential to harm the reputation of the Wikipedia because one has to read between the lines to find it.
Thakar Singh really walked on the surface of this planet. As a result of that there are plenty of undoubted FACTS that could and should be told to turn this perfumed shrine of devotion into what it claims to be: a Biography. I hope you agree.
Andreas Sumerauer 03:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Starting work
Just beginning work on this. Thanks for your patience. 20:52, 5 September 2005 (UTC) Sevadar
[edit] Teachings and Controversies Sections
I added 3600 words on the teachings of the Master and the controversies of the early years. Please note the references are not complete yet. Thanks for your patience. 03:00, 11 September 2005 (UTC) Sevadar
[edit] Attention Tag
Another editor added an attention tag here, but I am not sure how to address it. Please leave some instructions on this page. Thank-you kindly. 01:00, 17 September 2005 (UTC) Sevadar.
[edit] so-called "master"
He was just another initiate parading as a Master.
Tayv, I encourage you to substantiate your ideas with facts. I will ask that you be banned from the Wikipedia site if you can't contribute in a constructive way or work towards the common objective of a neutral point of view. Please sign your comments. Sevadar 19:45, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Controversies Section
Your description of the child meditation controversy does not mesh with the facts. Here is a verbatim transcription of a portion of the circular letter sent to initiates which relates to the blindfolding of children.
<<After the birth of the child, it is to have a soft, white cotton blindfold put gently over the eyes, so the infant will remain naturally inverted inside most of the 24 hours daily, up to the age of five years. The blindfold may be taken off when the mother is breastfeeding the child. She may look into the childn's eyes and he may look into hers. She should especially keep Simran at this time. This is the only eye contact that is allowed to or from the child (with exceptions of the visits from the father).>>
As you can see, the letter unambiguously states that children are to be blindfolded almost all the time.
wbartley
From the standpoint of Sant Mat, the world is an illusion and the only thing that actually is real exists inside of us. Perhaps it is fair of me to assume this is a radically different point of view from your own; but is what Sant Thakar Singh was teaching. He also taught that children are much closer to God and that as we age, that connection becomes more and more tenuous until we physically die--the supporting lifeline from within having been cut down to nothing. Everything comes from inside, not outside. What a child absorbs froum outside is death, in essense; and as we grow and age we absorb not life but death. This was the teaching.
It is worth pointing out this teaching is not for everyone, only those who have been initiated (given a direct inner connection) and thus have a tangible inner experience to enjoy inside instead of the horrors of the outer life. Your quotation, while correct, is from a private correspondence meant only for very serious practitioners (at that time not more than a thousand in the US) and so you are almost certainly taking it out of context by implying the teaching was to generally blindfold people. What I did in the article was to put the teaching in the proper context.
Sevadar, you may need to research your facts better. Don't know who you are or what role you played back then if any at all, but Thakar did imply that it was best to keep the children (yes, the children of initiates only, but then again he also wished the whole world was initiated) blindfolded most of the time until the age of five. Not only is the man dead now but all this brought an investigation in India against him so it's been dealt with already and I don't think we should dwell on it any further.
Pilgrimsoul
[edit] Neutrality
This article requires some attention from a more non-biased viewpoint. The primary author is an obvious follower of these teaching(Which, in itself, is fine). However, that detracts from the neutrality of the article in that it is told from the viewpoint of a believer. A more objective view is needed to improve the article. Jaala84 17:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with your assessment, however I myself will not do that; you can work on it if you like. I think this article is a special case in the sense that Sant Thakar Singh did not accept "objectivity" even as a concept. In order to correctly understand his teachings, they have to be experienced. (I.e., they are entirely subjective in character). Perhaps you will agree this type of approach is difficult to explain in an encyclopedia article, but I did my best. I have heard from others familiar with the teachings and they agree it does a good job to shed some light on things. Also, the fact is people are working against the authentic viewpoint. This article is regularly and harshly vandalized. Under those conditions, objectivity is hard to maintain. This is not an excuse, but it is an explanation I hope you'll consider. Sevadar 19:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Childhood Meditation
I have replaced the paragraph that begins with: "The controversy over these instructions ..." with an actual description of what really was the practice back then. I surely considered leaving the original paragraph in place and to just add the example as an additional information. I decided otherwise for the following reasons:
- the phrase: "... which seems to be an exaggeration" indicates that the author of this lines has no real knowledge of the subject.
- much of the paragraph is a plain attempt to justify the practice. This IMO has no place in the Wikipedia. It might have been more appropriate to give a description of why people at the time did it and thought it was a good thing to do.
The newly introduced paragraph contains links to he source of the description (a report published by the German parlament). Both the german original and an english translation (which is cited in the new paragraph) are available.
Andreas Sumerauer 19:20, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
