clearernow wrote:... I can only say that while I was reading your experience, I could actually feel something different!
Sure, that's very nice ... but so do men looking at pornography and that is their "opinion". If everything just boils down to sentiments and opinion, how can we value them as more or less beneficial?
And the fact is you do value them differently.
Before this 'love-in' gets all covered in sweet, gloopy syrup, can we just back track a bit to ask "which god", and is the god of the BKs the same as everyone else's?
In the modern day of the self and subjectivity, everyone seems afraid to offend everyone else leading to everything become a grey, indiscernible mush of subjective sameness.
As BKs we were trained to 'accommodate' this, without blinking or reacting, either during service events with other religions, or with individuals while teaching the 7 Day Course ... but is this really an honest reaction?
The BKs have their god, the Baha'is are often competitively multi-faith with the BKs and their have their god; someone else comes along and says, "jogging is my meditation" and then someone else says that they experience god when they have sex (
lucky them, I hope it is Venus or Thor and not Kali or the Virgin Mary).
As BKs, we might say, "yes, yes, yes ..." and treat them like the spiritual baby we are taught to see them as guiding them to ShivBaba. But, Post-BK, can we not afford to ruffle a few feathers and propose a few stiff and probing questions?
My god or your god, many gods or no god? Whose god will win the "Religion's Got Talent" competition this year!?!
How many of you played that game as a kid where you put one hand on top of a friend's hand, and then they on yours, and yours on their each fighting to try and be the top hand?
As a BK, I remember giving some school age kid a "Paramdham experience" on the basis of a few minutes chat and a bit of what I would not call hypnotic induction. I remember well after leaving Gyan, giving a then partner a similar "right out of the body/coming back wide eyed" introduction to BK Raja Yoga just to show them. You would see that as "proof" this was the miracle of god ... for me, now, I see it as hugely irresponsible.
Even back then, I knew it was not "me" giving the experience. I had not a clue how to give the experience. I was not even having "the experience" myself!!! It was out of control. If something had gone wrong, I would not have had a clue what to do or where to go and, as we have seen, neither do the BKs on many occasions. Victims are just whisked away to senior, or sometimes in ambulances. FACT.
So who or what was going on? Was I being possessed and used by some other spirit whether real of metaphorical? Who and how am I to judge what it was? Yes, for sure, I had interesting experiences and so did others around me ... but it was not controlled. It was just happening ... sometimes and irregularly, and for some sometimes never.