Pink Panther wrote:The BK teaching is all about identifying oneself as BK so as to realise one’s 84 birth immortality.
Something to remember, from reading what original teachings we have from the 1940s and 50s, is that from the beginning, all you were require to do, was to accept & conform. I cannot even write "believe". That is to say, all it took was a single class and you'd made it. You were pure, self-realised, and going to live with Lekhraj Kirpalani in heaven as a gopi to his Krishna ... Even though, at that time, their teaching were entirely contrary to what they are today, eg God Brahma & Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahm).
Although they switched to God Shiva, and developed the 7 Day Course (partly inspired from external influences), they still work on the same principle, and are open to the same general criticism. That criticism being that they did not spend time "studying spirituality" but just working out ways to encult people.
Accept ... conform ... get busy marketing the cult.
There is no point refining intellectually and speculating over such things ... "accept ... conform ... get busy marketing the cult".
is not that just it? is not that what you experienced with them? Did you find any of the inner circle truly intellectual, well versed in scientific, religious or philosophical idea, or that "spiritually" experienced? Or wasn't it all just about nudging you back to the simple core ideas? They certainly did not encourage anyone to study up elsewhere but if you came in with some knowing all they might do at best is listen to it in order to cherrypick whatever might be good for the sake of marketing.
Anything NIH ... "Not Invented Here" ... was deftly sidestepped, not resisted but not taken on board either.
At best, whatever an individual might come out with would be re-interpreted back into a "corrected" form reflecting BKism. Which is pretty audaciously crazy considering how broad a spectrum of unexplained spiritual experiences the world is having (BK response ... dismiss with idea "fruit of Bhakti" and reboot feelings of superiority as only BKs have the most supreme experiences).
Wasn't that the sort of thing Janki Kirpalani used to come down heavily upon?
It wasn't about thinking outside of the box, it was about keeping people inside of the box they had created.
It's not clear to me when they developed the idea of having to purify this original and inescapable "perfect self" that they now have ... not one we have to aspire to but just once to automatically re-emerge. I assume after their predictions of the End of the World failed again and again and things appeared to be taking a lot longer than they first expected (End of the World in the Mahabharata War, aka WWII).
In Aham Brahmasmi there is no self, only the Brahm (aka Divine Light in early BKism) from whence we came and to where we will return.
As to "there is no evidence for an immortal unchanging individual personal being", what do you meant, no scientific evidence? I was surprised to learn recently how little scientific interest and consensus they still is in the area of consciousness.