Page 2 of 3

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 16 Feb 2018
by Pink Panther
ex-l wrote:Wasn't she Canadian, albeit some spending time in London?

I think, don’t quote me on this, she had parents of two nationalities. Probably a dual citizen. I do remember another Canadian young woman in London in the late 70s who was very dedicated/devout BK and then had a severe mental breakdown, probably bipolar. She had been in London as a BK against her parents' wishes (as I was!) but with her becoming a nuisance because of her condition, her parents were contacted. They came over from Canada and took her home. Never heard anything about her again.
It says she was employed to write a few diploma or, in fact, "degree courses" in BKism that I was going to critique at some point. There are a handful of colleges in Indian that are offering 'distance learning' degrees in elements of BKism that are very much taken directly from orthodox BKism. I don't know what their purpose is, perhaps to give BKs a title like BA that they can use to impress,

One of the criticisms that can be levelled at some University degrees is that you can present a thesis on a subject you know more about than the course lecturer and as long as you present it plausibly, seemingly objectively, they don't know whether what you have written is completely true or not.

So a BK wanting a degree might do a general course then go on to specialise in, say, comparative religion or anthropology, can do paper on BKs, based on what they know and use the course note ”talking points’ supplied by prepared materials as mentioned.

That is, and I am sure this is part of their cunning plan for world domination (in their own minds at least) that their aim is for their PR guff to become the academic literature on the subject. Unlike the sciences where there has to be peer review and verification, presentations like these can become the orthodoxy, at least until one day another more critical study actually does serious objective research and hopefully replaces it. (I mean, how many of those who’d use such course notes in a degree course would state clearly that their sources were official BK study material prepared by the BKs themselves).
I would have to ask how many of the early Western BKs are now financially benefitting from the deaths of their parents (as they have reached the kind of age when they will be dying off) and whether this influx of finances is benefitting them and the BKWSU allowing them to further indulge in the lifestyle.

Many. Many. Almost all of that generation would be by now, or will soon be.

That's why, as per this forum's revelations a few years ago that the BKs' formalised forms and advisories on how to construct Wills.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 17 Feb 2018
by ex-l
Pink Panther wrote:That is, and I am sure this is part of their cunning plan for world domination (in their own minds at least) that their aim is for their PR guff to become the academic literature on the subject. Unlike the sciences where there has to be peer review and verification, presentations like these can become the orthodoxy, at least until one day another more critical study actually does serious objective research and hopefully replaces it

I think that is correct and what I have seen of all BK produced and BK influenced academia.

Here is the latest from Tamasin Ramsay and I am afraid it still fails to meet the mark of objectivity, never mind exploring controversies or criticisms. I'll come back to it later.

Of course, the other big "eye wash", to give it its BK term, is the deliberate confusion between what is the advertising and PR, what is the actual product. As the BKs invest more and more in developing their packaging, more and more individuals, included academics, are deluded that the packaging is the BKs' real message.

I think I was wrong to see Denise as a "BK intellectual". she's more just in advertising executive department.

Has she produced anything Critical and insightful about the cult, or has she accepted the "no dirty linen in public" line of the inner circle, considering it just to be "negativity"?

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 17 Feb 2018
by GuptaRati 6666
Well, well, well! The BKs have entered into the publish-perish race or the academic game of publishing. Tamasin's writings are examples. Qualitative research, and the social sciences and humanities use the approach of inductive reasoning, is still subjected to stringent peer-reviewing. Sure the BKs can claim scholarly publications, however, there is the issue of quality of the scholarly publication, including the results of qualitative research. There is the question of how much evidence-based are the studies. There is the question of the intellectual authority of the BK authors. The social, abstract, and natural sciences will still reject the authority of a writer, if the writer use obsolete or incorrect models to solve global problems.

For example, yogic agriculture can be examined in many ways and demonstrated to have many defects. I do not see in the BK model of yogic agriculture, organic cultivation practices, in which sub-lethal, low-dose contaminants in produce can be removed.

I do recall more than 40 years ago in Mount Abu, Ramesh Shah was head-hunting among the double foreigners for sociologists. He was really searching for applied anthropologists. Now the BKs seem to have them and they have doctoral degrees. There is no doubt that the BKs from Day 1 have been implementing an extensive program of directed change and now they have anthropologists assisting them.

Denise with her journalism background is part of the PR department of the BK machine. I dismissed her as a BK intellectual more than 30 years ago.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 18 Feb 2018
by Pink Panther
GuptaRati 6666 wrote:Well, well, well! The BKs have entered into the publish-perish race or the academic game of publishing. Tamasin's writings are examples. Qualitative research, and the social sciences and humanities, use the approach of inductive reasoning, is still subjected to stringent peer-reviewing.

"The eye cannot see itself” - Ch’an Buddhist saying.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 18 Feb 2018
by Maui
Met her many years ago in the States; bad blood between her and Mohini. Met again in Madhuban where she was very nice 1;1; but during a session, barged in, took over and demanded whatever she wanted be taken care of regardless of the 30-50 souls present attending the group. Totally different affect displayed.

Met again in CA; cold, detached seemingly on a personal mission. Left to live in Germany; although she is now in Madhuban, will be going back to live in Germany. She stated she wanted to write a book, I think of fiction, but not sure. Saw her in lokik clothes for the first time.

I had the opportunity to meet with her again, and declined due to a feeling that she was "above all" constantly saying "you see, you see", and I told her I disagreed with her and it felt like an argument ensuing. Absolutely did not like her vibes; she feels with the new series she started last year with the decoding of the Gita, that she is speaking to the "more educated" ... quite insulting.

I don't know her past, but a dear friend feels she really helped her at a very low point in her life while living in Canada. However, interestingly, there is no longer any contact.

She is cold, calculating and always on the defensive ...

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 18 Feb 2018
by ex-l
Yes, I forgot Denise had a journalistic background ... that would set up her perfectly to turn her skills to organizational PR, ie how to feed and play journalists into writing what they want. That is what PR does, and what the BKs have been doing with academia.

Ex-journalist Neville Hodgkinson and his ex-wife Liz being other influential examples.
GuptaRati 6666 wrote:Well, well, well! The BKs have entered into the publish-perish race or the academic game of publishing. Tamasin's writings are examples.

Tam-Ram, the BK "Queen of the Damned", comes from an anthropological background. Someone once defined anthropology to me as the hippies of the academic world. From struggling to be accepted as a science, I think it's actually gotten worse of late and turned more into "Rough Guides" travelogue territory (my Father studied it). I am not sure if she is consciously doing to service the BKs but rather for herself, using her BK background as an in, an easy subject, as Stephan Nagel did.

Ethically, I was very critical of that, especially in Stephan case as, despite being a very early Western BK, he earned his PhD by getting their history absolutely wrong, doing no original research or fact checking and repeating their myths as if it was independent academia.

Equally, I am critical of what I see as the lack of sufficient objectivity and critical discussion contained within Tam Ram's pieces on the BK. I think they lack sufficient peer-review because there really are none and, to an extent, she is using that to publish weak papers that primarily serve the BKWSU's PR interests.

I think she could do much, much better but guess she is still keep her her nest feathered within the group.

Who could be considered "peers" from an academic point of view, specifically to BKism rather than conforming to anthropology or sociological norms, are largely duped and seduced by the BKs into their false representation of, eg the shameless Professor Frank Whaling being a perfect example. Few have looked under the hood, none have done the historical research other religions, and our understanding of other religions, have benefited from.

I think an academics first loyalty should be to academia and the most strigent principles.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 18 Feb 2018
by GuptaRati 6666
In her defense, Dr. Ramsay can claim that she has been using the emic approach anthropology, which gives her the right to immerse herself into the BK sub-culture and study them using the etic approach, which is objective. However, it is still academic and intellectual incest to the highest levels and not academic work of the highest quality.

Though it is not a fantasy walk to become a PhD anthropologist, in the USA especially, anthropologists are used by colonizing governments to understand and control those undergoing the directed change.

For that reason, graduate studies in anthropology and archeology are heavily controlled by the powers that be. There is a common thread connecting anthropology and journalism: Espionage. Anthropologists, archeologists, and journalists are used as spies. CNN's Anderson Cooper completed internships at the CIA. Wade Davis conducted ethno-toxicology studies on zombification in Haiti in the 1980's. NASA has an interest in using tetrodotoxin one of the ingredients in zombification, for inducing a hypometabolic state in astronaut undergoing ultra-long space flights.

There is a wage received by those who are disloyal to academia, life-long ostracizing. Candice Perth has had to remain on the fringes of academia because her anger inflamed her ego and she reported her mentor and major professor, Soloman Snider to the Lasker Award Committee. Snider did not receive the Lasker Award for his research on opiate receptors and Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Today at John Hopkins, some of the major research on opiate receptors was done, and done by Perth, there is a huge research facility with Snider's name.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 18 Feb 2018
by Pink Panther
Suggested topic for a PhD thesis - Cult members who gain PhDs by writing about their own cult while pretending to be outsiders without any bias or conflict of interest.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 20 Feb 2018
by GuptaRati 6666
Pink,

It is quite an original dissertation topic. However, some one might already be conducting studies on a similar topic or there may be a published paper on the topic you have suggested.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 20 Feb 2018
by ex-l
As with the trend towards selling BKism out as "corporate coaching", such academic PR and whitewashing is a phenomena not limited to the BKs either.

And, as usual, despite their claims to be the root source of all religion and philosophy ... the BKs were not the first to do so.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 24 Mar 2018
by human being
"I must add that I continue to find the BK meditation and mindfulness practices personally useful."

@Arbit

That my friend is the hardest and most unfortunate thing that the BKs and many other cults like these have done to humanity.

I wish I could elaborate more on that but after more than a year of personal ups and downs I feel like I am finally beginning to feel real freedom (subconsciously) from their clutches and my sympathy for BKs is dwindling fast ...

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 25 Mar 2018
by Maui
I am exactly where you are now, human being, even though the BK meditation keeps me stuck at times.

I am more "unstuck" at present, than stuck. However, as they know you are leaving, they "up the ante" and go after you more.

That is my present experience.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 25 Mar 2018
by Pink Panther
A couple of years ago I got a phone call to do some work for the BKs, they even said they expected no discount and offered to pay me commercial rates.

I said, ”I appreciate your call but, to be honest, I want nothing to do with the BK organisation at all".

I was thanked for being straight up and down, and told I would not be asked again.

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 26 Mar 2018
by ex-l
Maui wrote:However, as they know you are leaving, they "up the ante" and go after you more. That is my present experience.

When I was exiting, I was at a large centre and not very prominent or at all important to them, and so it was easier to be more anonymous and just drift off. From memory, only one of my peers actually came after me to see if I was OK, or pull me back. They too ended up drifting off at some point later.

It was different when I was at the small centre, that I left to go to the big one. There was more direct pressure there because "one out of 5 or 6 regulars" is a big hole in their operation and more visible. I remember receiving a letter from the center-in-charge telling me I would "cry tears of blood and grind my teeth like the sound the mustard seeds crushing" at Destruction if I did not come back.

That center-in-charge ended up having a mental breakdown from the stress of it all and leaving not many years after me!!! She had been *really* hooked and landed with the cost of keeping the mortgage on the centre going, holding down a day job, and living in and running a BK centre 4am to 10pm 7 days a week, with no private space etc.

We all must have been nuts - or so desperate to belong to *something*, some community - to do it.

10,000s still are.

I think a big part of it is just "human". Your leaving is a big challenge to them and their faith - because part of them doubts it all, wants to leave too, and give up on all the disciplines - and so they want to keep you in, to patch up and hold together their faith. There's a lot of mutual confirmation of faith going on in a sort of, "I am doing because they're doing ... and they're doing because I am doing ... but neither of us really know why either of us are doing it".

Despite what they say, and despite dressing it up in other words such as "karma", there's actually a lot of attachments between BKs - affections - and those keep up bound in far longer than our conscience or intellect does.

I think the psychic elements of the hooks ... which I use generally to mean the more subtle unseen "groupmind" type influences, never mind anything spooky, something I used the term egregore for recently ... are real and are best weakened by a clear cut. The same kind of clear cut that the BKs themselves use when, for example, two BKs become emotionally or even sexually involved with each other, ie "No contact for ... 6 months/2 years". Complete separation.

And part of that includes taking anything that would trigger BK programming out of your life and if you don't want to chuck it in the bin, then put it all in a box and put the box into storage; eg your shawl, your ring, photos, your white clothes etc etc etc. Treat it like the breaking up of a relationship.

Some people do so gracefully, thanking the BKs and the BK god spirit and bowing out. Others do so destructively, more than often self-destructively.

At some point there generally has to be the voiced cut off, the line drawn as Pink recalled, that you are no longer available for exploitation (to serve them or be open to be criticised and controlled by them), that you will no longer sustain their beliefs, or put up with their ethics. Sometimes a simple letter will do. Some go in person to their senior and tell them directly. I think that takes courage and conviction and they tend to lay on the guilt, fear and disapproval.

In my case, they played it badly. As I started to breakaway and express my own choices, I "had my ear pulled" - taken aside and told off - to try and pull me back into line. Amazing to think that one unrelated adult would do so to another unrelated adult. And then later, when I had broken away and started to have normal relationship but still keep "friendly" connections with them and even still "do service" for them introducing new individuals to them, I "confessed it" to one of the Sisters.

Wow. That was a never to be repeated experience and there sure were no expectations of me after that! The change in the atmosphere was nearly "visible". Like, who the hell did they think there were to be involved in my life. That was the last time I "paid respect" to them and a good point to cut off.

It took me a while to get over the guilt of having relationships and stopping handing over new friends and connections to them. I think part of that was just habit, part of it ego (playing the "spiritual guru" figure), and part of it a "... what if?" confused guilt trip that took a long time to get over.

However, just to put that in perspective, it was during the time when 1986, or "1986 to 1996", was the official prediction for the time of Destruction. Although I left before 1986, I don't think it was until 1996 until I became fully released because I was so deeply indoctrinated into the whole "but what if ... Destruction" gig.

And what is the date now?

Denise was about, what, 6 or 7 years older than me as a BK. She must have known about the 1976 Destruction. I never heard her warning anyone about it, or even telling any of we juniors. Is she warning people/newcomers today that it prove to be false in the past and might not happen again?

Or is she just going a long with it all to pay for the food and lodgings ... her retirement?

Re: BK Denise

PostPosted: 26 Mar 2018
by Pink Panther
Denise was about, what, 6 or 7 years older than me as a BK. She must have known about the 1976 Destruction.

She definitely did know about the 1976 destruction.

I remember her taking classes and doing the apoligist thing stressing how it was not the main thing etc etc blah blah yadda yadda... BUT.. it will happen.

I am quite sure Denise started as a BK around 1973-74, not long after Stefan Nagel. GuptaRati may have a more precise date.