How to re-market yourself and the BKWSU

Does the BKWSU accept financial donations from these BKs that leave and start being impure, or do they have to give their money to the half-way houses such as Janki Foundation?

In the old days, it definitely would have been against Shrimat to accept money from who was having sex. Or so we were told.

What makes the difference? Maybe she was from upper class or wealthy, or determined to pursue studies and career?

What color is S.E.? That makes a difference. The Indians REALLY love a Doctor ... doctor or accountant ... a "VERY SUITABLE GIRL", to quote the marriage ads. Let's not kid ourselves. The response of the Seniors to a profesional in the BKWSU is on a par with the characturized Jewish mother gloating over a child that is an "-ologist". Even Jayanti is a college drop out.

As regards the "coil-made woman who climbs (quickly) the levels ..." (no idea what that means, bad translation) I think this is all falling into place now and interesting to note.

Yes, abek, I think this is all a very typical patern that other sects have adopted. The whole Est/Gestalt thing did just the samething of moving into the corporate environment with their New Age spirituality. If you do some reading of other cultish organisations, you will find it is a very typical move for meditators etc to re-marketing themselves into "executive coaches" and charge executive rates.

The sad thing is, I do not even think it is a new idea, I think they have just taken it from what they have seen elsewhere ... and I am sure that it must have taken some period of "negotiation" before the Seniors went with it. And, in my experience, the Seniors would have only gone for it if they saw the tangible benefit ... e.g. mics, status or money. Its a good ruse because in a corporate environment they expect to pay and in a sense will only value IF they pay. So folks get paid.

What interests me is this trend we are identifying here. We all know what the Maryadas are and can regurgitate Murlis ad nuseum. What we seem to be highlighting are ambitious and "successful" BKs, (e.g. center-in-charges, guddhi grabbers, public faces) who drop their knickers and break Shrimat, i.e. are defeated by Maya, and then are either given or take a secondary position in what I call a front organization.

Some of them then take what they did in the BKWSU, e.g. being a center-in-charge, the LVEP or SML, remove the whacky cult elements and reinvent it to look good in their CVs ... "blah-blah-blah NGO ... blah-blah-blah Women's Rights ... blah-blah-blah UN ... blah-blah-blah Big International Programme" etc . Women also use the "feminist" angle of the BKWSU.

Now, to be honest, I am sympathetic to them. I too faced the difficulty of explaining away my time in a whacky cult ... the missing years ... the lack of cultural awareness ... the lack of professional development ... and I too bullshitted my BKWSU experience into some "look good" confectionary. I have stopped though.

The ethical question I would like to raise is when the orbit starts to include others like these women's husbands. I remember what happened when the "coil lady" put back on her clothes and returned from her "holiday" from Gyan with "devotee' in tow. The Seniors would not give back her position in the center system. So may be jumping onto something like the SML or LVEP is symptomatic of a sort of status grabbing SOME (not all) BKs are attracted to.

May be the corporate and trust elements is the exit strategies, the sop handed out either consciously or unconsciously to intelligent and professional fallen BKs that still might be useful. What sop is there for a young, simple, unqualified individual that falls out of the system even if they gave up their education and career to join it?

I alone, as mr green has been demonstrating, am nothing and have nothing ... the "black-faced BK" ... the failure ... "lower than the lowest of the low" ... no wonder one is left suicidal with all that in one's mind. But if I grab the corporate elements I am something. My esteem is patched up a bit. I can still do partial service by handing over my contacts to the pure BK Sisters and feel valued.

I too have experience this stage when even though I was leaving. I felt duty bound (or programmed) to hand over all my friendships or contacts and still do "service". Always bound by the mental compression of the End of the World and the one given way out. It was weird and confusing. It was like I was not even allowed to have a relationship except if they were in it and I handed it, the other persons, over to the BKWSU.

In fear, I was always spreading my bets between the real world and their world system.

Please let me know if I have got the wrong impression that amongst all the Academics and authorities the BK sect has managed to pull in to cover its bum, support and credit itself, there are few or no psychologists, psychotherapists, anthropologists or sociologists.

If you want evidence of the truth of this, try and buy a copy of Dr John Walliss's book, "The Brahma Kumaris as a Reflexive Tradition: Responding to Late Modernity". Then look at the Wikipedia page dicussion and see the BKs wriggle and squirm about it. You have it in one.

He is a sociologist with a specialist interest in Millenarianist cults. Does not buy into the religious hoodoo an inch. He sees it all and gets amazing quotes out of them, e.g. supersitious, "irate" and angry responses from BKWSU headquarters when he asks about the PBKs, the craziness of The Cycle, examples of the urban legends that float around the BK family.

There is another paper that is good; Julia Day Howell (1997). Alatered States of Consciousness induction techniques, spiritual experiences, and commitment to new religious movements. [Brahma Kumaris] Sociology of Religion, 58(2), 141-164.

I believe there are more ... the problem is they are not a big enough problem yet so no one is interested. The softly-softly viral approach is working. Until there is a mass suicide in Abu, you will hear very little. "Islam versus Project for the New American Century" is sucking up all the intellectual excess right now.

ex-l. Thanks for sharing. Both posts.

regards,
abe

Boy, it is hard to keep up with them ... another bunch of "creative entrepreneurs with extraordinary ideas" planning to run school events and team up with community groups and companies to raise money for the Janki Foundation by selling 1 million badges for 1 UK Pound each in 3 days ... keeping 50% for themselves!

THE ONE MILLION PROJECT - tbt721

21st to 23rd of SEPTEMBER 2007!!!

We have set ourselves the task of selling one million badges in London over 3 days with 50% of the profits going to 5 charitable causes. I am sure you have gathered by now we are very excited about the prospect of having positive people come together to achieve
this big goal.

50% of 1 million Pounds is ... kaching ... kaching. The BKs actually align themselves with this kind of thing!?! Oh, that is 50% of profits ... I wonder what the "costs" are?

I wonder what the "costs" are?

Not much pence per item for that quantity, expensive lay out cost though, if they were to go ahead and order a million badges ... Suppose they only sold 150?

The MD is quoted estimating donations of £250,000. That equals costs of £250,000 ... plus another £500,000 to the company.

On how much of the work and expertise people can offer for free or at a nominal cost which would equate to more money towards profits, hence more towards charity. Estimated £250,000 split between the 5 charities/good causes. Will you be buying some badges, or are you just asking these questions out of curiosity?

Shahana Yasmin

TBT 721 Managing Director

They are a profit making company who operated a premium rate telephone number charged at £1.50 per minute on their website. Claiming not to be "fundraising" for charity but merely "donating profits" ... when pressed by advisors, the MD found the lengthy dialogue about the legalities "rather condescending" ... (see link above). Nice bedfellows for the Janki Foundation ... like attracts like?

Do they really think that folks will buy their badges without the spin that the money is going to charity ... and will they disclose their profits?

Do they really think that folks will buy their badges without the spin that the money is going to charity ... and will they disclose their profits?

It will be interesting to see the results, to be honest it looks like a scam to me, presented ever so nicely.

I know S.E. from the times she lived in Shakti Bhawan, London. She is definitely not one who had been encouraged by SS to interrupt or underestimate the importance of her studies in psychiatry. Just the other way around! Otherwise, how could she ever become a mic? Not everybody is condemned to dishwashing!

It does not mention the two Janki Foundation trustees are a married couple but they seem to be part of the core group. I am confused ... just a short time ago, I reported how one Dr Sarah was giving introductions to Raja Yoga meditation to the Royal College of Psychiatrists Annual Meeting in July 2001, see bottom. Also in a British Medical Journal 2006 and in July 2006 again, she is "doing BK service".

Dr Sarah Eagger presented two sessions and held a business meeting ... The first was a meditation workshop, run by Dr Sarah Eagger was called ‘Keeping body and mind together: meditation made simple’.

No mention ... or professional disclosure ... of being or having been a Brahma Kumari follower and teacher, nor promoting Brahma Kumari practises and service programmes. You can see how the BK run "Janki Foundation" is used as a respectable sounding clearing house, a firewall, to stop non-BKs looking further into their background and where the teachings are coming from whereas the "Brahma Kumari World Spiritual University" sounds too culty and an obvious con to academics and professionals. The administrator BK is also a long time Brahma Kumari and Janki faithful.

Does this sound familiar?

My practice of medicine changed profoundly when I realised that I do not have a soul, but I am a soul.

This has manifested itself in my work in various ways. I work as a consultant psychiatrist for the elderly in London. I am a trustee and past chair of the BHMA and a medical advisor to the Janki Foundation – a charity that supports a holistic hospital in Rajasthan, India. I am also chair of the Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and have run several workshops on meditation and values. I was co-ordinating editor of Values in healthcare: a spiritual approach. I experience the most joy, however, from the opportunities I have in my clinical practice of connecting with people as souls.

I am not sure that the Janki Foundation "supports a holistic hospital". I think it is the Indian business family that supports it financially. Also, in pushing the Living Values programme into hospitals, we see the usual stuff of "Raja Yoga not being a religion" ...

Although focused on spirituality, the programme has not been directed at any particular "religion". Sarah Eagger says ...

She is also working to integrate spirituality into undergraduate medical curriculum (Date; April 2007) involving with the aim of "experiential" learning of meditation.

I am going into detail on this as it is 'on topic' ... How to re-market and re-invent yourself and the your Brahma Kumari experience. It is not personal and aim at this particular Brahma Kumari follower, I am questioning the system that is at play here and the mode of operation.

Now my confusion is that if one BK can go off and get married - let us presume fulfilling their conjugal duties and rights to their non-BK partner, i.e. carrying on a sexual relationship - yet they can still guide BK meditations practise initiating others into an experience of the Shiva soul AND carry a high position within a BK service organization; why did the rest of us go through all that crap about celibacy, confessions, breaking up from partners, giving up family and so on !?! What was going and What is going on?

Does the practise still work? It appears so. Can a BK be aware they are a soul and express conjugal love and be accepted by the SS and used by "Baba"? It appears so. So what matters any more to the BKWSU? How many sets of standards does it have? Anyway, I hope this is useful to those that are looking for a way out.

Sitting comfortably I begin to observe my mind. I can see many thoughts coming into my mind - thoughts about the day, thoughts of other people, and thoughts about my own activity. Now I begin to step back from these thoughts and watch them. I then choose to let these thoughts go. Each one is not important to me at the moment – they are just passing through. Gradually they slow down. My mind begins to be quiet. The quiet spaces between each thought grow. I become more aware of the silence that there is before a thought even begins. In this silence, I begin to experience a deep sense of peace. Peaceful thoughts and peaceful feelings come into my mind.

I am aware that I am peaceful energy, a peaceful being. As I focus on myself, I begin to feel very relaxed and light. I am just flowing peaceful energy. I am very still ... floating away ... like a tiny star in a sea of peace. Waves of peace wash over me and through me ...

I feel I have reached a very quiet and still place, the home of the mind. This place is like a beautiful silent room where I can just slow down, be myself and be free. This is a very special room because it has no walls, or ceiling or floor ... it is just light and peace. This is my home where there is no fear, just peace.

As I feel comfortable here in silence, I may become aware of another presence. This very benevolent, loving presence is filling me with beautiful good feelings and refreshing my tired old thoughts. I come to know this supreme energy as my friend, a constant source in an ever-changing world.

Sarah then explains that for her, meditation means turning away from the external and taking her attention within. It is here that a special peace, which does not depend on anybody or anything outside, is located.

More BKs re-marketing themselves and hiding the BK connections to get folks in the door of the Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga center to "experience benefit" in disguise. The address is the Norwich, England Brahma Kumaris center.

No mention of the Brahma Kumaris or being BKs. Monica is a life coach and personal development trainer (though her business site form which this came has gone down, e.g. http://www.life-changecoaching.co.uk) and Elaine Horne, another "personal development trainer" pops up lecturing at the Janki Foundation.

So are we all PDTs now and members of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Personal Development University?
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In a funkier mode, at The Beltane Spring Fayre Group ...

BKC is the Brahma Kumaris Collective, with BK Hitesh the peace rapper. BKC and dance group Gold Blend appear as part of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University contribution.

A big shout going out to Sisters from Baba Bhavan, init?

Are you the person that your friends say is aways aiming for the sky?
Are you a go-getter?
Do you believe in you?
Do you always strive for perfection?
Do you know that you will be successful?

Well this badge says all of that. If this badge does anything it says, I believe in ME, I can have, be and do anything I want. YOU'VE come here, read this but ... have YOU got YOUR badge to prove it?" Oh, dear! .

"If this badge does anything it says I LEFT MY BRAIN AT THE DOOR"