The House is Full of Yogis by Will Hodgkinson

Below is review of new book title 'The House is Full of Yogis' in The Times newspaper UK. The book is by Mr Will Hodgkinson, a son to BK Neville Hodgkinson. I think would be a good read.

The House Is Full of Yogis by Will Hodgkinson

Melanie Reid Published at 12:10AM, May 31 2014

Worse things can happen, but this was bad enough. In 1983 a well-off middle-class white family from Richmond fell into the clutches of an Indian religious sect. The takeover was more peaceful than sinister, more humorous than harmful, but it was nevertheless an invasion which, as related in a wry memoir by the youngest child, certainly justifies the subtitle The Story of a Childhood Turned Upside Down.

Will Hodgkinson is the rock and pop critic for The Times, a job for which he has impeccable bloodlines. His upbringing was privileged, liberal and unconventional: his baby-boomer parents were well known newspaper journalists; his mother also wrote feminist books about sex; and he called his Father Nev, not dad. As CVs go, that’s a cool one.

Seismic change came when Will was 12 and his Father, who yearned for a deeper meaning to life than that offered by The Daily Mail, met an Indian swami at a press conference and tried five minutes of meditation. He came home and announced that a golden red light had entered his forehead and “... the bliss that accompanied it was unlike anything”.

But the bliss was to be Nev’s alone. The arrival of the mystic Brahma Kumaris was the end of life as his wife and two sons had known it. Out went fun-sized Mars bars, in came visits from intense people wearing white saris, enforced group meditation, dubious vegetable thali and lumps of toli, “sugary, sticky lumps of oddness”. Will found it strange and uncomfortable and missed the old Nev.

“All I wanted, and I don’t think it was too much to ask, was for everything to return to the way it was.” Instead, it just got worse. They bought a bigger house, where Nev and the Brahma Kumaris took over the ground floor. The mystics preached celibacy and spiritualism; Will tried to meditate accordingly but always ended up thinking about girls instead. Supposedly to escape the weirdness at home, he was shipped off to the progressive boarding school, Frensham Heights, where he merely learnt that his family actually weren’t that odd after all.

Adolescence held special trials. His mother wrote a book called Sex is Not Compulsoryand she and Nev espoused celibacy. They did so publicly, without telling their sons. The first Will knew of it, to his horror, was when they appeared on a TV chat show discussing their sex life, as he and his mates at boarding school were idly sitting watching. As the book created a media storm, a mortified Will sought refuge in music.

There is, therefore, a deep ambivalence at the heart of this charming, entertaining book: while it strives to be laugh-out-loud, what emerges is often more sad than funny. I suspect that in the end it reveals more bitter sweetness, and more of a sense of loss, than the author ever intended.

Love and respect for his parents plainly struggles with regret within the grown-up son who wrote the memoir. “Their selfishness, typical of an educated, post-war generation that put the individual above all else, played into our hands too ... our parents didn’t particularly know or care about what we were up to,” he says.

Hence the humour can sometimes feel contrived and there is an unavoidable, wistful sense of benign neglect. Were his parents really as dreadful and insensitive as they occasionally come across? The journalist mother - fellow writer mothers be warned - who is happy to exploit her family in public as long as it will make money. The self-preoccupied Father who is absent in spirit when most needed, forsaking his children not for another woman but for inner peace with strangers.

Isn’t every memoir, to some extent, either a conscious or unconscious act of revenge on one’s parents? Eventually the Brahma Kumaris got their man and his money. Nev went to live with them full time and Will’s parents divorced. One is left with the impression of a boy who, as a defence mechanism, has tried to turn an odd and sometimes painful upbringing into a cartoon.

Really, how much happier we would all be with ordinary, boring parents.

YOGI.jpg

An excellent review - that the reviewer gleaned such accurate insight about the BKs from the book shows that the author communicated reality well.

The journalist mother ....who is happy to exploit her family in public as long as it will make money.

The self-preoccupied Father who is absent in spirit when most needed, forsaking his children not for another woman but for inner peace with strangers.

Eventually the Brahma Kumaris got their man and his money.

Absent parents - whether physically absent, emotionally absent, mentally ill or whatever - is the cause of much psychological inadequacy in the child and indeed many BKs when asked are survivors of families that lacked ordinary, boring but satisfactory parents, especially fathers. leaving a nice niche for a ”Baba” to fulfil (not just a BK Baba, all the other exploiters in all religions and other walks of life)

One wonders about Neville's parents - particularly the Father.

Time for him to jump on the bandwagon and make a quid out of his experience with this ”not-for-profit” educational and charitable organisation and how it fits into his biography?

Time for him to jump on the bandwagon and make a quid out of his experience with this ”not-for-profit” educational and charitable organisation and how it fits into his biography?

Well, not so much "time for" as "opportunity for" and ... as you say ... financial opportunity and, apologetically, to do more PR for the Brahma Kumaris. To use Will's piece as a springboard to promote BKism again.

As Wilde said, "There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about".

Personally, I see Neville as being so ingratiated into the BKs ... and comfortably rewarded for his investment of time, money, energy and skills - last I heard he has a nice little cottage on the Oxford Estate (how much would it cost in the real world to have Capability Brown gardens to wander around musing in the morning?) ... that I would not wait for anything truly honest from him. I am sorry but during the court case against us, we saw evidence of his influence and his fully committed and involved in their game. Will portrayed him like a right wing politician having a nervous breakdown ... now he's long gone enculturated, and not just fully committed ideologically but a reactionary, active in the propaganda wing of the Kirpalani Klan's Kult.

I never realised that whilst Neville was doing his world saving angel stint - and his wife pumping out tabloid level BK supporting pulp for a buck or two - they sent their son or sons away to boarding school. That puts quite a different spin onto what was happening behind that awfully well mannered but slightly detached glazed face I remember.

It's traditional of the English Upper Middle class and called "dumping the kids". I'd like to work out the years involved ... if Will is 44, his date of birth is 1970, 12 years old in 1982 when Neville became involved in the BKs, so it was right about that time he started investing himself in the BKs, but why did Liz do it? So she could focus her career?

What would interest me is the period of Neville's "life threatening" illness and recuperation in Florida where the BKs seem to have hooked him ... how the ground was set for him to be sucked in.

I don't know your memory of him but I thought he was a bit of a square peg even amongst the white BKs at that time, most of whom were young and hippier. He did not come across as your natural born mystic ... more CoE parishioner.

I always wondered about his attraction to Jayanti and if she was some kind of idealise partner in comparison to the rougher and more materialistic Liz.

"Peace and Purity: The Story of the Brahma Kumaris, A Spiritual Revolution" by Liz Hodgkinson portrays a false reality and that's not a subjective statement. It's a false, manipulated and one sided version which I guess was directed and influence by Neville's interests and adherence in the cult. Both Neville and Liz were perfectly intelligent and experienced enough journalists. They got very close to pulling the lid on the historical truth of the BKs. Currently, I suspect Neville of steering Liz away from it with Jayanti guiding Neville by the nose.

I would accept that at the time it was written, Neville knew little of the BKs' dirt and skeletons in the closet, given what we know now ... anyone with integrity would pull the book off the shelf, not continue to profit from its sale, nor allow the BKs to.

Although I guess she doesn't sell a lot of them, the BKs still sell it.

This is another review from London UK newspaper this is from 'Sunday Times'

The House Is Full of Yogis: The Story of a Childhood Turned Upside Down by Will Hodgkinson

An affectionate, hilarious account of growing up with a Yogi Father in a genteel suburb by Helen Davies, 1 June 2014

There are not many people who can say their life was profoundly changed by a chicken risotto, but Will Hodgkinson is one of them. In the early 1980s, his world was one of semi-detached comfort, Volvos, private schools, microwaves and a gerbil called Kevin. His charmed parents were part of the southwest London dinner-party circuit. Nev (he never calls him Dad) was a medical correspondent for the Daily Mail and his mum, Liz, was a successful journalist, flogging second-wave feminism to Fleet Street’s finest tabloids.

After one of the dinner parties his parents went to, Hodgkinson walked into the dining room and saw the dire results of the fated risotto: “Nev was laid out on the sofa, prostrate… One woman went blind for a week…  Ambulances came.” The hostess had taken two chickens out of the freezer and cooked the wrong one, giving everyone salmonella poisoning. Nev was in hospital for a week and almost died. Hodgkinson’s childhood was never the same again. He was 12.

In The House Is Full of Yogis, Hodgkinson, the Times chief rock and pop critic, has created a My Family and Other Middle-Class Animals let loose in the jungle of Thatcher’s suburban Britain. The result is a howlingly entertaining memoir that is raw, affectionate and, unbelievably, true.

Following his near-death experience, Nev went to Florida for a holiday and came back armed with a Sony Walkman for Will and a new religion for himself: the Brahma Kumaris, a movement founded in India in the 1930s that preaches peace and consciousness through meditation, vegetarianism and celibacy.

Within a year, he had given up his job and held the “inaugural Brahma Kumaris meditation at 99 Queens Road: ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Sturch,’ whispered Nev, just before Dadi Janki’s lesson began. ‘I feel that we’re on this path together.’ Then he stared at the red egg, oblivious to everything else, including me.”

There were no more dinner parties. Or meat. Or wine. Or fun. It didn’t feel groovy, but bewildering, uncomfortable and lonely. And then Hodgkinson was sent off to a liberal boarding school in Surrey.

Hodgkinson is a gifted storyteller. He effortlessly evokes the turmoil of fetid and febrile male adolescence (teenage boys trooping upstairs described as “angle-poise lamps on the production line”) and of grappling with the loss of his Father to a bizarre cult. Then to make it worse, his mother wrote a book espousing celibacy called Sex Is Not Compulsory. It wasn’t until the Brahma Kumaris were about to claim Nev’s money, though — and after Will had done his A-levels (middle-class priorities still ruled) — that Liz demanded a divorce.

Underneath the dysfunction — Nev shooting off to Willesden on his motorbike for a spot of communal meditation, his mother hiding from the yogis behind an armchair — there is a real tenderness. Even years later, Hodgkinson writes, Nev and Liz still grudgingly agree to spend Christmas together. And Hodgkinson himself turns out all right. He takes the seven-day introductory course to Brahma Kumaris, and at 18 makes a pilgrimage to the movement’s World Spiritual University at Mount Abu, a hill station in Rajasthan, but he ends up feeling nothing. Instead, he experiences his own transcendental moment, only it is beer-soaked and sticky and in an old pub in West London at his first gig.

Om Shanti.

HarperCollins £12.99/ebook £8.75 pp326

Buy for £10.99 (including p&p) from the ST Bookshop

With all due respect, Neville never rode a "motorcycle". He rode an emasculate motorscooter ... and I doubt Liz was really a "feminist" as such.

Her son Tom, said recently, I'd love mum to see more of her grandchildren. She's just far too selfish to make time for them. No wonder she dove-tailed so closely to the same women, the Kirpalani Klan in London, who encourage a beautiful and intelligent young woman I knew to abort her child so she could commit her life to the Brahma Kumaris.

I knew she was not the most child-friendly person in the world. After all, she once submitted a proposal for a book called Do You Really Want To Have Children? But this was her own grandchild.

When I put it to her, she reacted with horror. ‘I’m not making any commitments,’ she said. ‘I’ll babysit if I’m free.’

It turned out that she never was free. She was too busy running her own life to help with ours. She would always be working, going out to the theatre, or spending weekends in her Worthing love nest with her boyfriend.

It seems she wrote an article complaining she never sees her grandchildren ... because she got paid for it. Not because it was reality, and these are the values of the individual the Brahma Kumaris leaders feted and encouraged to do PR for them. Tom continued ...

Meanwhile, my Father (Neville Hodgkinson), long since divorced from Mum, always seems to be meditating or travelling round India attending conferences on world peace.

When he moved to Devon from London, his mother came twice to visit.

While I was growing up, she spent her days and nights working and partying in Fleet Street, while the care of my Brother and I was delegated first to my Father and then to a series of au pairs. When we were very tiny, she was known in our street as ‘the woman who hates babies’.

Was it only after Neville met Sister Jayanti that the second son was packed off to boarding school so Neville could "earn his Golden Aged" fortune by serving the Brahma Kumaris? The "man and his money ...".

She indulged [the grand children]. She undid all the good work we do in, for example, limiting their screen time. She allowed them to pig out on TV and computer games. She gave them frozen pizzas and the sorts of food that are banned at home.

Of course she did: it gives her time to go on Facebook with her boyfriends. She has never sat down and played a game with her grandchildren: ‘I hate games,’ was a repeated refrain from our childhood ...

I blame the Sixties. My parents are typical baby-boomers: they had the freedom to do what they wanted, a freedom they grabbed with both hands.

But the downside was that they were not really interested in community, or family, but primarily in their own careers and lives.

Put simply, Mum’s work has always come first. But now she is paying the price with loneliness.

Her original article is here.

my ex-husband Neville [Hodgkinson] and I don't have a cosy, easy family home for our grandchildren.

We cannot offer what they would probably like: a safe, shared refuge, with deep old sofas for them to sink into and memories stretching back into our own childhoods.

We cannot give them the experience of two people who have grown old together, who have tolerated each other's funny little ways, and who speak of each other with, mostly, affection.

Now that our five grandchildren are growing up - the eldest is 13 - it seems a tragic loss for them that they have to visit us separately in homes that are far from child-friendly. It also means, sadly, that they are forced to come to terms with divorce at an early age.

When my husband Neville and I split up in 1988, grandchildren were not even the merest speck on the horizon.

It eventually became apparent that we could not co-exist under the same roof, so the divorce at least brought our bloodcurdling rows to an end. And once divorced, we got on fine ... being divorced grandparents means everything has to be done separately. Once, just once since they were born, we managed to take Will's two children to Cotswold Wildlife Park together - after months of planning and co-ordination ... it was never to be repeated.

I don't think we have ever celebrated a grandchild's birthday together - we've been separated for so long that it would feel unnatural to be together at a family gathering ... Christmases are another difficult time ... I have never witnessed my grandchildren's excited faces as they open their presents.

Look at the pictures ... her in pancake make up as she whores the grandchildren out for the sake of a Daily Mail article which one has to presume she did not write out for the sake charity. Indeed, not. It appears, like the Brahma Kumaris, the idea she was selling was second hand and had been inspired by a report from a charity 'Age UK' that said that lonely grandparents are being abandoned by their offspring.

Someone recalls her saying that her greatest joy as being "a gin and tonic at 6pm with her other childless friends".

Nice friends if you can stomach them ... Kirpalani Klan. My sincere condolences for the victims of their Father road crash into Brahma Kumarism. I suppose you might ask would things have been any better or worse if Neville has not been possessed by the Brahma Kumaris' god spirit and seduced by his handmaidens and committed himself and his skill to their PR campaigns" I cannot say. Perhaps one of them can.

But what I can say it is all a sad reflection on the Kirpalani Klan and underlines both their real 'Living Values' and why they are not a true spiritual tradition. If anyone was to call them media whores, I would not disagree. It's all a bit sad and tawdry.

All the time we read and hear of families being torn apart by their madness and corruption. This is the first time - outside of the Kirpalani family itself - I seen it document down to a second time.

Funnily enough, the Hodgkinson family's fate seems interwoven with the Kirpalani Klans ... Liz moved to Oxford following her second husband's death after her older son Tom gave a talk at Oxford Town Hall in November 2008. That talk was with Neville Hodgkinson promoting Brahma Kumarism, and its near Oxford that the Beakies have their luxury retreat palace and Neville his tithe cottage ... except it's not really a "tithe cottage" because a tithe cottage is 'a house for the poor paid for by the church with money collected from tithes' per se and his is a 'a house for the fete BK bourgeoisie paid for by the poor'.

Although he's probably given as much to the BKs as could afford it ... illuminating again the complex exchanges of gift and services for material rewards that unpins Brahma Kumarism (none of which is written down). He not the only BK who has received back a 'grace and favour home'* or existence but there's only a few of them. And falling out with or challenging the Kirpalanis is the fast way to feel they boot as equal to an old feudal landlord as you could care for.

Correct me if I am wrong. No wonder the PBKs accusing them of being like a corrupt Vatican.

* A grace and favour home is a residential property owned by a monarch by virtue of their position as head of state and leased rent-free to persons as part of an employment package or in gratitude for past services rendered.

It is possible that the term crept into English through the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote of advisers who are ministers per grazia e concessione, which has been translated as "through grace and favour".

Plus ça change ...

I notice in her biography, Liz writes rather coyly ...

... and after the talk, several women came up and asked Liz if she had thought of moving to Oxford. She hadn’t, but a seed was sown and she immediately started looking on websites and making trips to view properties in the city centre.

I guess we can safely say the "several women" were actually the Brahma Kumaris, at a Brahma Kumari event, and the Brahma Kumaris doing their thing of keeping their 'serviceable' (useful) IP (important person) and VIP "contact souls" (supportive non-believer) close to them at a Brahma Kumaris head quarters?

Why do the BKs spend all their time feting such individuals instead of the weak, the vulnerable, the needy ... or even the genuinely worthy of support and association?

From one of the excerpts ... here are a few faces many of you will recognise. I am not sure if we should put names to those that are not public figures as I am sure they all did not give their permission for the picture to be taken and used in a publication ... unless you want to self identify. Those that do promote themselves in the public's eye are fair game.

A private picture of the core of early Western Brahma Kumari adherents in
the BKWSU 'PR spin doctor' Neville Hodgkinson's home

The only "public figure" who promotes himself widely in the Brahma Kumari way is Ken O'Donnell, the BK leader in South America who remarked himself and elements of Brahma Kumarism and BK service as corporate consulting with the Oxford Leadership Academy business (OLA). He is seen slouching backwards, top left. His OLA biography mentions nothing of his Brahma Kumari adherence nor the connection between the two organizations and their products.

The other borderline case is one of the Irishmen who is still promoting Brahma Kumarism. He starred in a recent event where BK Neville Hodgkinson asked Sister Jayanti, "is the currency of kindness central to the Brahma Kumaris?"

In today’s world heads have become hot and hearts cold and it is time to turn this around to warm hearts full of compassion, care and kindness ... one of the benefits of [BK] Raja Yoga is that we begin to emerge these qualities again.

Oops, up comes my breakfast again ...

I know that at least one of the BKs photographed is dead ... and it could be possible to link their death to their involvement with the BKs because of tiredness ([i]more than one BK has died whilst driving due to tiredness)[/i], one had their child sexually abused at the cult head quarters, one split their family and divided their children from their non-BK Father, and I believe one had the cause of their cancer blamed by the BKs on their leaving the BKs. Nice.

At least 7 of the faces have since left the Brahma Kumaris.

Reading further, the book gives some useful insights into the kind of people the Brahma Kumari inner circles attracts to themselves and uses; how they effect them and how they act after becoming a BK. I am remembering the parents of another leading Western BK who said, "the only thing the Brahma Kumaris did was teach out son to lie". What surprised me was how close Neville's wife's initial appraisal of them was to my own.

I am referring to the apparent straw that broke the camel's back and brought upon the divorce from their then celebate marriage which the BKs promoted as a miracle of their god's ... that is, when BKWSU PR supremo Neville went behind his wife's back and attempted to leave his share of the family fortune - a £500,000 property which would be worth several millions at today's rate - to the Brahma Kumaris instead of his wife and sons.

Nice.

Why on earth would anyone disinheriting the mother of their children and family unless that family had done something terrible ... which the Hodgkinson sons were obviously too young to have done?

This is the same BK Father who it seems had packed his youngest off to boarding school to allow him the free time to commit to the Brahma Kumaris.

It seems that Liz Hodgkinson came to the same conclusion I have done in other case, it was as if the Father had entered into an affair with another woman and was leaving half the family fortune to support her and her family ... which, in essence, Neville was. Only except the women were the two Kirpalanis and the family their BK one.

And this is not unusual. We know of the typical BK Will which all surrendered BKs around this time came to sign, which left everything to the Brahma Kumaris and disinherited their families. Why? Because "lokik" or worldly families were considered to impure ... ignorant ... body conscious and giving money to them is consider bad karma. Bad or binding karma with limited rewards, whereas leaving money to the Kripalani Klan would earn the donor multi-million fold returns in the Golden Age which was about to come ... a high status in the Golden Age, more jewels on your golden palace, and more servants in them.

Will writes how the BKs never ask (some) people for money - well, as a teenager cruising in on his "IP" BK Father's white kurta pyjama tails we cannot expect him to recognise that deeply what goes on in the BKs on a practical level - and then unwitting documents how the BKs are able to offer so much for no upfront costs. The pay back coming when day after day, in a semi-hypnotised state, they are exhorted to surrender 100% their man, tan and dhan ... or mind, body and wealthy ... and it works well enough that a Father might go behind his wife and children's back and give away his share in the family's wealth to the BKs.

He does not seem to be able to put 2 and 2 together and realise how the Sindhi BKs habitually operate.

Will mentions how he feels his Father might feel some guilt now, nearly 30 years later, but the BKs still got their man and his money. If I remember right - and please correct me if I am wrong - Neville bought his rare in the religion 'grace and favour' retirement on the BKs luxury country estate by spending his money on the BK Brothers' house in Willesden Green and has worked for them ever since.

It remains a mystery whether Neville, who is perfectly intelligent enough to see what is going on, is just unable to positively influence the Kirpalanis in anyway - to be more honest about their past and more ethical in the present - or whether he goes along with it?

Will end with a note of gratitude to the Brahma Kumaris for their "wisdom and spirituality" which makes me wonder whether he ever got what is going on. I am thinking he confused the label - the marketing and PR they borrow and steal from other religions - for what is going in inside the jar. Surely by "wisdom" he does not mean the stuff about 5,000 year cycles of time and chickens morphing into dinosaurs due to radio-active pollution from nuclear power station bursting 2,500 years ago?

And he buys the "spirituality" spin rather than the most obvious "psychism" the BKs indulge in.

The book is getting good reviews. It could even be good PR for the BKs acclimatising non-BKs to the BKs weird and wonderful beliefs and weakening their suspicions of them.

Amazingly, either Will has purloined or the BKs have allowed him to use the Shiva Baba trademark on the books spine which means in every living room, library or bed side cabinet it sits ... the BKs will have their Baba shining out.

I must put mine in my toilet ... where all my most laboured reading goes on.

The only bit I really enjoy was the bit when he admit he was absolutely thrown off meditation by a really hot Brahma Kumari sitting in front of him staring lovingly into adherent's eyes. Good for you Will. You kept your bollocks and did not allow the old crones to cut them off.

If only your Father would ask for his back now ... (and leave you and his real grand family his money instead of the Sindhi gold diggers).

Another review from the august Daily Telegraph which end with ... "Truly, blood is thicker than soul consciousness".

Given our concern regarding child protection, it's references the section about when BK Neville came to his son school dress in Brahma Kumaris whites, to teach the children there BK meditation.

The House Is Full of Yogis by Will Hodgkinson, review by Mick Brown

A touching account of a family thrust by mid-life crisis into meditation and spiritual awakening

Hodgkinson’s Father, Neville (pictured), a Fleet Street medical writer, joined an Indian religious cult.

There is a moment in Will Hodgkinson’s sweet, quirkish gem of a memoir in which all the embarrassment and confusion of adolescence come to a singularly painful point. Hodgkinson’s Father, Neville, a Fleet Street medical writer, has taken leave of his belief in rationalism and joined an Indian religious cult. Fired with his beliefs in “soul consciousness”, “Nev” – as he is known to his family – has been enlightening his 12-year-old son about the imminent global meltdown that is necessary to usher the world in to a new Golden Age of spirituality.

To add insult to apocalypse, Hodgkinson is preparing for his own personal Armageddon, having been told that while his elder Brother Tom is Westminster material, he is to be yanked away from the family’s south London home and despatched to a “progressive” co-educational boarding school – “an alternative for children who are not as academically gifted”, as his mother delicately puts it. Or as Hodgkinson counters: “a dumping ground for thickos”.

Adolescence is a difficult time for anybody, but reading this one feels a particular twinge of sympathy for Hodgkinson. Happily ensconced in a cheerful four-bed suburban semi, with a “real fake fire” and a steady regimen of wine and cheese parties, the Hodgkinsons seem the very model of the contented middle-class family. Nev earns a decent living writing for the Daily Mail; mother Liz is a tabloid journalist, churning out articles for The Sun and Sunday People on such topics as “How to turn your tubby hubby into a slim Jim”. Will and Tom squabble and fight in the manner of Brothers since time immemorial.

This happy ménage is turned upside down when Nev almost dies from salmonella poisoning after eating chicken risotto at a dinner party. Following a long convalescence in Florida, Nev returns home imbued with an evangelical enthusiasm for alternative medicine, meditation and the spiritual path – more particularly for an Indian sect called the Brahma Kumaris, run by a group of female swamis known as the “Dadis”.

He swaps his corduroy jackets and roll-neck sweaters for a white pyjama suit. Takeaway pizzas and beans on toast give way to nut roasts and dal (“which was a little like Polyfilla”), and the family is pressed into joining Nev and the Dadis in meditation sessions that involve focusing the attention “for an extremely long 15 minutes” on a red plastic egg that emanates a small pinprick of light representing “the light of the soul”.

The Brahma Kumaris advocate a life of contemplation and renunciation, including celibacy – a teaching Nev and his wife embrace with disquieting relish. “It’s one thing to meet a handsome man in your 20s,” Liz says. “But when you’ve got some horrible balding bloke puffing away on top of you when you’ve got another article to write before bedtime, the whole idea of sex takes on a completely different colour.”

As Nev drifts ever deeper into “soul consciousness”, Liz writes an anti-sex tract, Sex Is Not Compulsory. Hodgkinson’s growing mortification is only partly assuaged by the fact that his hero Morrissey also claims to be celibate, “joining Pope John Paul II, John Ruskin, Sir Isaac Newton and my parents on the short list of people who turned not having sex into a badge of honour”.

Nev’s Damascene conversion, and the upheaval it causes, is the backbone of the book. But more than that it is an affecting, and very funny, evocation of adolescence, from Hodgkinson’s fractious relationship with his clever and facetious Brother – “Tom may be more academically gifted, and yes, maybe he does have a sharper mind, but you’re the good-looking one,” his mother reassures him, “and ultimately that’s more important” – to his dawning awareness of a world beyond Scalextric and pet gerbils. Watching a video of David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth at a friend’s house is “like moving to a foreign country for the afternoon”, a series of thrillingly exotic images “which stayed with me for years afterwards”.

Nev’s conversion is an easy target for laughter, but while painfully alive to the horror of his Father turning up at his school in his white pyjamas, “looking like a cross between Nicholas Parsons and Mahatma Gandhi”, to give a lecture on the power of meditation, and the humiliation of seeing old family friends lament him as “a brainwashed fool”, Hodgkinson paints a deeply loving portrait of his Father. Nev’s commitment to his new faith, he comes to realise, is a finer thing by far than the contempt, fear and slavish conformity of his dwindling band of friends.

Hodgkinson even contemplates following the pathway to spiritual illumination himself. “If it weren’t for the apocalyptic world-view, the boredom of meditation, the white outfits, the dull conversations and the thought that I would be denied wine, women and all the other pleasures of the world before I had even tasted them, I would definitely have become a BK.” Instead, he took the road to perdition and is now the rock critic for The Times.

It is not giving too much away to reveal that the Hodgkinson marriage did not survive, or to report that despite everything the family remain close. In his acknowledgement, Hodgkinson thanks his parents and Tom (who is also a writer and now runs The Idler Academy) “for being good humoured and understanding” about the book. Truly, blood is thicker than soul consciousness.

“If it weren’t for the apocalyptic world-view, the boredom of meditation, the white outfits, the dull conversations and the thought that I would be denied wine, women and all the other pleasures of the world before I had even tasted them, I would definitely have become a BK.”

Here he shows himself as the most sensible, sensitive and intelligent of the family. He is able to enjoy feel/take the benefit of meditation, which is a normal human activity found in most cultures in different forms, but is smart enough to know that doesn’t need to wrap himself in the packaging of gilded paper & ribbons of BKism, he is emotionally intelligent enough to know this is not integral to his potential for self-realisation.

I think he had a very lucky escape ... from reading the book, it seems he had a "special treatment" treatment, and not just 'grooming' from his Father but from other BKs, e.g. doing the course. However, it also seems to me that he is a little unaware that he was receiving a bit of a special treatment ... and that Neville had/has at least half a brain and common sense working (which is more than most BKs)

I cannot remember who was living down near the Richmond center at the time ... he says it was a Brother but uses a fake name. Lucky him he was not dumped on Sister Joan or the like. I suppose the BK in question was specially chosen.

To a degree, I think this means that the impression he has of the BKs is a little false and rose tinted; and that the outside is not the same as the inside. I am a bit concerned at his presenting the BKs as "wise" when they have such hugely bampot ideas about the world, a distinct lack of organisation ethics, and are still busy enculting 10,000s of Indian young girls into lifetime cult servitude at the cost of their dowries too.

As time allows, I'll go back and re-read some of the book ...

Will Hodgkinson was rolled out by Father Neville Hodgkinson for a co-promotional video for the BKs.

Did Will Hodgkinson really get what the Brahma Kumaris are all about? Did he see outside his own privileged and protected bubble?

I tend to think he doesn't fully realise how fortunate he was having the BK parent he did ... more of a reflection of Neville's own personality rather than what the BKs did to him.

Will Hodgkinson, both here and elsewhere, affirms to himself the BKs "have a lot of wisdom".

What on earth is he talking about?

Not wanting to offend dad, is he unsuspectingly getting sucked into cross-promotion, the modern BK way of ”service”?

"Not wanting to offend Neville for accusing him of consciously cross-promoting the BKs" ... or "not wanting to offend Neville for being used to cross promote the book by Will"?

I'd say 100% Neville is conscious that what is going on here and using the scenario to promote the BKs. It's a BKWSU UK video shot in GCH for, I suspect, their "About Brahma Kumaris" website.

The question is, how conscious is Will that his innocence of the BKs' MO is being used to benefit them?

And why is he willing to do so?

As Will says, he never fully went for BK and, hence, he really does not know BK.

I think what he's mistaking as "the lot of wisdom" is the 'sales and marketing' aspect of BK, and is a reflection on quality of the BKs I am guessing Neville hand picked and lined him up with (e.g. to do the course) ... he got introduced to the "cool" BKs. He would also, likely, have gotten more careful handling from his BK daddy - a reflection on his Father's own personal qualities - and special treatment from the Kirpalani Klan on the basis of Neville's value to them

I am not 100% sure Will realises this and equates it into his appraisal. Is part of him seeking acceptance from the Father that somewhat dumped him to pursue his "spirituality"?

Note how Neville frames what he was doing as something benign and new agey ... "making more space ... introducing more love". There's no note of the highly conditional element of BKism, i.e. "space" to accept what they teach; and the usual generality of the terminology, e.g. "more love" meaning their god spirit's vibes.

It also sounds as if Will was never really a "spiritual seeker" and so, consequently, would not suffer the disappointment of finding out how much crap there was in the pot when he opened it or question the ethics, as we would, of "promoting Hinduism" or "ancient Raja Yoga" when you are doing no such thing.

And the material comfort of his background, and perhaps class, leads him not to question the Kirpalani's commitment to "alleviating poverty" or the kind of robbing of the lower orders the BKs carrying out in village style centres.

It's funny but the Hodgkinsons, for all their slightly fey and genteel middle class demeanour, are one of the few Western families to have their heads firmly screwed on and actually mutually benefit from their association with the Kirpalani Klan and not be taken for a ride; first Liz and her book and articles, now Will and his. They seem to inherently understand the game of co-promotion ... or as I would call it, co-pocrisy (co-hypocrisy)*.

Of course, the family will have lost all the time and money and, no doubt, inheritance Neville will be shovelling the Kirpalanis' way. But at least they others got something back. Ha ... ethically that's not fantastic, but it has to be admired in a way. Few people escape with their wallets intact after a tangle with the Sindhis BKs.

Of course, one does not necessary make a lot of money from a book like theirs *but* it all adds up cumulatively to one's professional standing and career ... again, something many to most BKs damage or even lose. Liz would have done better with her BK spin off articles on celibacy etc (a commitment she kicked off soon after).

* BTW, I am not accusing Will of being a hypocrite here, or even his Father, but I do believe the Kirpalani Klan go *way* beyond being hypocrites into actual criminality (fraud, undue influence, petty and not so petty crimes etc).

However, I am uncomfortable at anyone lending their own goodness, gifts, intelligence and wit to polish the BK turd rather than hold it responsible for lack of ethics and warn others. Looked at from this point of view, I find Neville's unwillingness to take more of an ethical stand disappointing ... is he just impotent and incapable of having any effect, or is he willing complicit in the deception they are carrying out.

In my opinion, it is a bit of the former and a lot of the latter ... a sort of "Henry Higgins" for the Kirpalani Klan, playing a greater part than more in dressing and tutoring them for "society". And continues to do so.

However "subtle" - or skilful - a front he adopts, he is still a committed believer in the Baba-Baba/5,000 year/Destruction/World Domination plan.

bit of a dick, likes indulging young Kumaris

bit of a dick, likes indulging young Kumaris

Care to elucidate ... fatherly or flirty?

I would not want to become too personally, but I could see why he might want to dump old Liz to hang out with some of the London BK Sisters (for the sake of service), even if he did not get take it as far as a relationship.

Do the BKs allow cross-gender "hugging" yet ... or is it still just staring lovingly into eyes?

I question why Will does not raising any ethical issues at all about the BKs?