05 Feb 2010
Jan, did you ever experience anything new when you took the course? Did you actually take the so-called "7 Day Course"?
"All BK Course" ... do you mean the modern "positive thinking" type of classes? I don't think they even come up to the level of "psychology". They are just "New Age on the cheap", a free give away or "loss leader" to get people in for the "real course" which involves the "direct transmission" and initiation into a relationship with their spirit guides. The words are just bait or wrapping, they could be anything, it does not really matter, it is the "direct transmission" element, the dristhi gazing, the vibes, that is the real business. It is the bit that gets you hooked and starts to give you intense "spiritual" experiences.
Obviously, for a so-called University, there is hardly anything at all of any brains at all. What outstanding intelligence has the BKWSU ever produced? Its leaders are (or at least were in my time) anti-talent and anti-intelligence.
It always surprises me when one finds even BKs who think all the Positive Thinking and Divine Virtues derivative courses are "the real deal". They are not. They are just tools to draw people into the BKWSU orbit and filter out any susceptible individuals who might become adherents.
Is the 7 Day Course "basic psychology"? Perhaps for Hindus. It could have been designed as a sort of 'Hinduism Lite' to hook and keep trapped Hindus, yogi types. A sort of analog (a structures which perform similar functions by similar mechanisms but is entirely different). It provides sufficient parts to keep the mind happy and not having to question any more, simple answers for simple people for all the big questions: who am I, who is God, what am I doing here, why is life like it is, what is going to happen in the future, what should I do with my life.
Then the unwritten "course" of BKism takes over, the oral tradition of dos and don't that are based on decades of fine tuning group and individual manipulation by the leaders and have little to do with what is written in the Murlis.
Yes, some people do have intense spiritual experiences during the Honeymoon Period. I do not refute that. I know it. (Many don't though). I do, however, question them and suspect now that they are
Strangely, I think the BKs do not know enough about those experience, what brings them on, what makes them happen. I think they block too many questions about the psychic nature of the cult out ... which is one of the reason why I doubt it is very high or pure. It seems more to be based on not looking, not asking, not knowing and a craving for some special experience that they had, or were once or often given.
BKs apply onto this experience all sorts of wild and wonderful interpretations. They are encouraged by the leaders to define them in one way and, of course, the is also the inference that the leaders has some part is bring about those experiences and so they inflate and become addicted to the leaders as well ... in the hope of more.
So, perhaps part of the psychology you are talking about and should look at should be the psychology of addiction. Addiction in this case not to obvious drugs but psychically or hypnotically induced experiences which are re-defined as religious.
It might be tough for even ex-BKs to review the period of "experiences" and consider that, yes, they were mind blowing but, no, they were either not of great value or actually of negative value. A hook or distraction.
I do not "know" this as a truth, I am just questioning it all ... because of where it leads. It leads to a kind of slavery, dumbed down stupidity and inversion of values and morality; not liberation, wisdom and real virtues.
