Powerful Drishti ...

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Pink Panther

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post03 Aug 2018

Friend,

ex-l’s point is that this phenomenon is not exclusive to the BKs or Dadis therefore is not significant in any objective way other than that it happens.

I have had lots of ‘signal’ experiences while a BK but then again, I have had lots before and after BKs as well.

As ex-l pointed out, this happens with lots of non-BK people too. There are groups forming all over the world which are experimenting with direct eye contact. There are performance artists like Marina Abramovic whose ’'schtick” includes to sit and allow people to sit opposite them and they look into each others eyes - to see/feel what they will.

Read this whole thread, follow up the links. Broaden your sources of information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS0Tg0IjCp4

Friend

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post06 Aug 2018

Panther, you're being didactic again. I got ex-l's point. I never said these experiences are exclusive to the BKs. I just said that they are there and that they're not hypnotism or placebo.

And I am already aware of the Abramovich experiment.

But you forget that the BKs don't always have to look at your eyes to give you an experience. People have them just by being inside of a BK center or, of course, in Madhuban.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post07 Aug 2018

I may be being didactic because you posit in every post that the BK are the place for such experiences whereas i am countering by saying ”not only BK” - and that what the BK do with it is about ”enculting’ rather than freeing the individual. I make no apologies.

The BKs will probably claim they invented the wheel because of the 5000 year cycle.

There’s the saying - "When the student is ready, the teacher appears”.

It's corollary is- "When the teacher is self-aggrandising at the expense of the student, time for the student to disappear".
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ex-l

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post07 Aug 2018

It's not the experience, it's what you do with it afterwards.

Funnily enough, within Orthodox BKism - by which I mean the traditional, Murli based understanding of it, not the sort of New Agey revision - there was a downplaying of "experiences" and a portrayal of them as "the fruit of one's Bhakti". Depending on what Bhakti one had allegedly done over the last 2,000 years.

From a spiritualist point of view, I tend to agree with this view ... that the "experience" had superficial significance.

We'd even speak of them as "unripe fruit" (a Murli reference) if they were valued or enjoyed too much, like you were eating up good karma rather than aving it up for the new Cycle of Time.

As with many other BK meditation recruiters, when I gave the course and initiated newcomers into the eye to eye meditation, many or perhaps even most would have notable experience or visions. Some were frightened by them, others intrigued. The way we would interpret them would be according to what we believed their religion was, eg. Christians would see Christian icons but others, Hindu ones even if they did not know what the meant. For example, the "visions" of faces seen during the eye to eye, or "going out of the body".

But even that's not unique. One of the ex-Scientology guys, a Hollywood actor, spoke about the very same thing. They called it "exteriorising". And I don't think of Scientology as being particularly "spiritual" or even "psychic".

However, it all might be occult ... or might just be stuff human minds do.

I don't know. I admit that now. And I don't invest meaning into it for the sake of the business ... or tribal loyalty.

Caste or tribal loyalty is written into the core of BKism.

Some BK might, perhaps even correctly, argue that it's not all "about the money". I can also agree with that. Not 100%, but has become increasingly so.

However, "clan loyalty", "not showing disrepect to clan elders", "not showing them up in public (for being stupid etc)", "not washing the clan's dirty laundry in public (speaking openly about doubts or problems)" etc etc etc ... was part of their DNA.

How do we understand "vibrations" or "atmospheres" scientifically?

Is there an explanation for them? (Honest question).

Where is the vibration of atmosphere held ... in what medium? The bricks, the wall paper, the air ... I mean that seriously.

Clearly many other places also have it from churches to art galleries.

What creates and sustains it? It's surely not the belief in all the subsidary BK beliefs, e.g. Trimurties and Cycles etc.

All I am saying is we should guard ourselves at extrapolating too much and too far.

It's funny but as a Westerner, looking back, I think the Indians who came to BKism had a much better attitude towards it. They came, had a nice experience, and went without much of it sticking.

They did not get hung up on it being "The Truth, The Way and The Light" like we post-Christians or post-Protestants did.

If I am honest, we looked down upon them, we were encouraged to look down upon them by the center-in-charges, Didis and Dadis as "Bhakti souls" ... "Copper Aged" and so on. We got suckered by our own conceit of being more special and "getting it more".

I think "experiences" feed the ego rather than reduce it which is surely the opposite to real spirituality, no?
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Pink Panther

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post07 Aug 2018

ex-l wrote:How do we understand "vibrations" or "atmospheres" scientifically?
Is there an explanation for them? (Honest question).
Where is the vibration of atmosphere held ... in what medium? The bricks, the wall paper, the air ... I mean that seriously.
Clearly many other places also have it from churches to art galleries.
What creates and sustains it? It's surely not the belief in all the subsidary BK beliefs, e.g. Trimurties and Cycles etc.

In Aristotle’s terms these are in the field of ”Aesthetics” - which literally means ‘the senses” - and implicitly means the effect of what is 'sensed' on the person. He was among the first to analyse and write on poetry, music, dance, theatre etc and he categorised these as part of ”the metaphysics” - that which comes "after the physical”.

In Buddhist terms it's Vedana - the feeling one gets when "internal sense organs come into contact with external sense objects and the associated consciousness”.

The BK beliefs play a part in that they provide the wrapping in which an intangible aesthetic experience can be packaged. Like a master illusionist doesn’t reveal how he amazed the audience, so too a bona fide guru or master will wait for the student to be ready then they will train them to learn to do the trick - and be clear that it is a trick, secondary to the deeper mystery. The cult leaders on the other hand will never say its a trick but rather a revelation or quality of the guru, god or teaching, that it is divine ‘yukti’ - ends justify the means etc.

Friend

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post07 Aug 2018

I don't remember saying that these experiences are unique in the BK world. I happen to know people who had these experiences with Christianity and I've read about experiences with gurus (though the BKs will say that it's because they're new, charged souls). I am just saying that these experiences are there and that you seem to not give them even that.

There is a distinction in the BK world of a vision and connection to God. The visions are the ones that were not encouraged, or at least indulgence in them. Yoga with God is different and 100% encouraged as you all know. But it is supposed to be a subtler experience. I think there are many different experiences in the BK world.
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ex-l

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post08 Aug 2018

Friend wrote:Yoga with God is different and 100% encouraged as you all know. But it is supposed to be a subtler experience. I think there are many different experiences in the BK world.


God, or god spirit, or group spirit (collective conscious)?

The difficult thing with all this is it is entirely unpredictable and then, afterwards, there is abosulately no way to assess subjective experiences.

We used to have PBKs on here who refer to the original unedited Murlis, instead of the revised BK ones. Their take on it was most of the "experience" BKs had were "fruits of Bhakti" and they appeared to have no expectations or values of having any experiences at all.

What you're talking about in internally responses, Pink, but is there anything external out there hanging about in the "ether" to respond too.

How is science doing on that front?

I tend to think there is although it's still beyond orthodox science, however, one has to be careful. Elsewhere on the forum we linked to Derren Brown doing a hypnosis experience where he took atheists and led then to have a "religious" experience - where many broke down and cried, had their breath taken away, and turned "believer" - but it had all been done consciously pre-programming them to do so.

So, we've got both things going on and if I had one criticism of BKism, going back to your "not a Spiritual University" comment, Pink, it would be they apply no scientific discipline and discernment to spiritual or quasi-spiritual experiences.

It's all just about expedience ... whatever works to encourage the individual along or to commit deeper.

Friend, I differential myself from Pink is that I leave a door of possibility open to there being such things as "spirit" or psychic influences, whatever they might be and, within that, that we are initiated into a relationship with a spirit or spirits who channel their energy or being through us. Therefore, I don't draw a line as it being purely subjective or hypnotic but rather just admit what I don't and cannot know.

I rather look at where it all takes us ... "by their fruit, you shall know them" and all that.

There no point having wonderful experiences if all it does it end you up doing BK service 24/7 and handing your life over them ... which is basically what I did off the back of having a few weird and wonderful inexplicable experiences. I ended up encouraging myself into stupidty.

Friend

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post08 Aug 2018

I think we should do what makes us happy without harming others. Some people might enjoy giving everything to the BKs, or the Church or whatever. As long as we're honest to ourselves. If you become a pukka BK because you believe you'll become a King or Queen in the next birth, you're probably going to give up at some point and have major regrets. Do it only if you enjoy it. Or don't do it.

I think the BK meditation is good and many people can benefit from it without becoming BKs.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Powerful Drishti ...

Post09 Aug 2018

Friend,

I understand that reasoning. Where it doesn't hold up is when facing the fact that,

a) the BKs are duplicitous, they start off presenting themselves as a "positive thinking" secular style meditation group then gradually draw the person in deeper until they associate the ”benefit” with the beliefs. And,

b) a person may take benefit but given the entrapment permeating the teachings, it may not be the best thing for the person.

To use medical terms, it can mask the symptoms well enough so that they ”function” and think that is their ”normal” or their happy place, but the medicine is addictive and brings on a blindness to other choices, better options.

The BKs are not open about their teachings and, once ‘enrolled' they do not encourage people to ”graduate” from their ”university”.
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