Humans search for God bring families misery instead of bliss

for ex-BKs to discuss matters related to experiences in BKWSU & after leaving.
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ex-l

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Humans search for God bring families misery instead of bliss

Post09 May 2020

Moved from Corona and/or Krishna?
Arcane wrote:Yes, human's search for the ultimate (God) is the one that is bringing them and their associates misery instead of bliss and happiness since immemorial. The very search is a marriage of illusion and futility!!

Personally, what I feel is, this ultimate that man seeks is beyond (also simultaneously including) the domains of time, space and causality.
    If God comes and goes at specifics of time -------> It cannot be God.
    If God resides somewhere at a particular locus in the space-time fabric and is running all this show---------> It cannot be God.
    If God demands that a certain set of things be fulfilled by man for Itself to be realized -----------> It cannot be God.
The present itself contains and obviously should contain this ultimate or whatever we may call it. This has been my final understanding. I cannot understand why dad (now, retired and at his early 60s) is "running" like this. He is a medically robust man having a sound social health/command/respect as well. There's nothing he needs to escape from but when asked, he gives the same answers that all other robots (BKs) give, the result of a 25-year "BKism" conditioning of the psyche. I have saved myself and others in the family, cannot save him in particular.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post11 May 2020

God is whatever anyone thinks God is.

Theists use that these days to be ecumenical, between denominations or across religions. Everyone has a ”personal relationship”. Every opinion is equally true. Mainly expounded to unite theists in the face of atheism or agnosticism - "because we all believe, despite our different beliefs, proves God exists, in some way. "

Q. Is it their idea of God that is a force for good when they express their good wishes for the other’s right to their God, where once they’d be declaring the other person a heretic, idolater, pagan, satanic, infidel; or is the force for good not their idea of God but their common humanistic tendency to empathise, to co-operate, realising that a pluralistic human society is more accommodating of their need to sustain their belief than the actual, particular belief?

- If :
God can be or do any of the things anyone has ever believed of God since prehistoric times, a river spirit, a whale, an eagle headed man, a thrower of thunderbolts, a four-armed hermaphrodite, a jealous impulsive psychopath, a Jewish mystic carpenter, an unknowable intangible, everything that is both tangible and intangible, any of these a belief so real for its believer that it shapes their reality differently to the others’ realities.

- Then:
We can say God is a mental construct, a psychological manifestation for an ordering principle that counters the alternative, chaos.

When no-one believes in a particular God any more, that God ceases to exist, ceases to have any effect on human activity or human reality. Quetzalcoatl was a very ”real” extant God that shaped the sophisticated societies of million of Meso-American people for over 1500 years.

Q. How many of us today make ethical or practical decisions based on Quetzalcoatl ?
Powerful one day, gone the next.

God has no actual being any more than any other mind-created belief.

As the Tibetan saying goes ”you can have your gods and your demons. Just remember, they are your gods and your demons".
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ex-l

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post11 May 2020

Pink Panther wrote:Theists use that these days to be ecumenical, between denominations or across religions ... Mainly expounded to unite theists in the face of atheism or agnosticism

From having spent a couple of thousand years using their tribal gods as an excuse to murder each other off, there are now so few of them left against the rising tide of materialism, that they have to circle the wagons with each other to protect the concept of having faith, or centring one's life around an invisible friend (... and tormentor).

Late to the party, and still in the processes of reaping as much wealth, land and property as they can, it's not a surprise to find the Brahma Kumaris working their way into not just acceptance but even key positions within inter-faith group, disingenuously presenting their own god spirit in vague terms such as "The One", or "The Light", nudging everyone else to believe that they are refer to their god.
As the Tibetan saying goes ”you can have your gods and your demons. Just remember, they are your gods and your demons".

I am not sure we should even encourage that any more.
Arcane wrote:God comes and goes at specifics of time -------> It cannot be God.
If God resides somewhere at a particular locus in the space-time fabric and is running all this show---------> It cannot be God.
If God demands that a certain set of things be fulfilled by man for Itself to be realized -----------> It cannot be God.

Please allow me to add a few more.
    If God came in the body of a man, -------> he would not allow that man to think he himself was God for 20 years. (There was no mention of God Shiva in BKism until around 1956, prior to that, Lekhraj Kirpalani was God, and God Brahma).
    If God came, -------> he would not make false predictions of the End of the World and then say, "I was just testing you" after they failed, or have his follower erase or re-write them.
    If God came, -------> he would not allow or encourage his followers to lie, cheat or steal, make false visa applications, have false marriages to fool families and immigration departments, nor spend years in court fighting over property claims over other family's properties.
    If God came, -------> he would not allow or encourage his followers to make false claims about their own powers.
And, last but not least, my favourite ...
    If God came, -------> he'd insist his followers learnt to use apostrophes properly (the official plural for Brahma Kumaris, appear to be BK's in their mind)
There is probably a book of them, but that last one is proof enough for me it's not a real god.

Of course, the BK attitude is just, "Well, everyone else is doing so, so why cannot I?".


Arcane

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post12 May 2020

Any wise seeker of the ultimate in the field of Spirituality or in Religion, I would say, ends his seeking one day, being in awe of whatever IS and moves on and acts in the world. The seeking has to go, one fine day. On that connotation, only stupid minds like BKs and many others in their respective paths do get clung to THE SYSTEM they happen to follow. They might justify or defend that with utterance like “Ishwariya bandhan” but that too is not freedom!!!

I find you people in this forum (ex-I, pink panther, guptarati6666, oldbk, and all) really wonderful and wise having transcended the path. You people are doing really great, seriously. I admire that. I appreciate you all!!

Stupid people chase for a goal or two on the path while the path itself becomes a meaningless bondage. Some wise man said: There is no goal on the path, the path is the goal. The path here means life itself for me, LIVING AND ACTING IN THE NOW with no clinging to anything whatsoever. Chasing for the future spoiling the present is the worst of all seekings.

BKs could have done great and could have been admired by a whole lot had they been wise/honest enough since the start. Only thing that always annoyed me was that the founder Kripalani was the most stupid and so down on his intellect. Emerson has rightfully said, “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man” and this one man’s stupidity affected everything!!! No words of wisdom should be based upon lies; everyone abhors lies and deceits in spiritual paths.

Sam Harris, Donald Hoffman, John Hagelin, Eckhart Tolle, Francis Lucille, Rupert Spira and many more seem to be satisfying in relation to their efforts to explain spirituality without religion. Consciousness is our fundamental nature and probably we can never objectify it. We can produce conscious agents including the Artificial Intelligence and all but since Consciousness is intangible to the five senses it can never be objectified, I think we have to live by this truth at the minimum. The effects of Consciousness can be studied objectively but how can we experience the very thing that we are?!

If Consciousness can be called GOD (or the ultimate) that is generating all our individualistic first person experiences (the waking state experience, the dream state experience, the deep sleep state of being when there is no object in Consciousness and just pure blankness, and other altered states of Consciousness like when one is in chemicals, anesthesia, coma, syncope, fainting etc.) then we all are GOD, the Genuine Original Dreamer dreaming through infinite body-minds.

May be, instead of decades of seeking and being frustrated while being on one spiritual path or the other, one shot of Ayahuasca or Psilocybin or LSD or DMT or any such thing that would help generate this sense of oneness in the mind might be helpful. Who knows?! Those who have tried might know.

Okay. We get all the answers and the seeking finishes. Then what is left for the first person individual? Or, does the sense of individuality vanish? That "I-am-God" feeling/wisdom deep down that satiates his/her ego and the “present moment awareness” which is nothing but “modulated” GOD itself with which he/she acts and functions sanely and intelligently in this world?!

In that sense, what Robert Wright wrote (“Why Buddhism is true”) at these present times can reflect the canonical wisdom the Buddha taught 25 centuries ago. But he too does not promote the path but to use whatever the Buddha has said. There is no need to be a teacher again. The teachings can be used and one can move on, forgetting the word “GOD” and replacing it with that better word -----> Consciousness/Awareness.

Also, because the normal waking state Awareness is none other than body-conscious state (locational) of Consciousness except when one is in Samadhi (that Jaagrat-mai-Shushupti; Oh, I don’t want to remember Janki’s body’s obvious senility during that proof by the BKs) what good is Self-realization for an individual?!! As some form of escapism from this apparent waking-state state of affairs?! Or for making it a “spiritual” business just like the top-tier BKs are doing, sucking on the low-tier ones?!

The waking state experience is itself dynamic and unique for every first person individual. My experience of this physical universe is unique and is at all not congruent to the experience of the second person individual. The catenary-reticulate view of Alan Watts for both the physical and the metaphysical/spiritual can be satisfactory in these regards.

If all the objects of experience in Consciousness (including the world out there, the body and the mind are eliminated, just for consideration) and we come to the conclusion that consciousness-wise all humans (let us forget other sentient beings here including the animals for a moment) are the same Consciousness in its unaltered state then a sense of innate oneness can be established.

But of what avail is this going to be? Jordan Peterson’s hierarchical-archetypes theory will hold good and true even if all the humans realize their Buddha nature. Despite the realization of inner spiritual egalitarianism there are going to be inevitable differences on the outside no matter what the degree of realization. Will suffering ever end this way?

Who’s going to establish the truce? The search seems to be meaningless. Or, one day, we may come to the scientific spirituality (which is in the making) and work and act and reap the fruits of our individual actions in this life, with no clinging to the notion of after life. Sounds good to me!!

“God” will always be the reason of inevitable disputes. We don’t need to bring in that concept. But will our Muslim Brothers/Sisters stop on this?! I cannot even imagine. Stupid people should not be made the so-called gurus any longer (Who’s going to check on this?); because of them only the fuel is being added constantly to the fire.

Or, may be Ken Wilber and his 4-quadrant idea and Doshin Roshi and many wise men like them will ultimately help in the rigorous integration of all paths of religions/spirituality. Even if the integration has to happen ultimately, there will always be friction in the maneuvering by the un-evolving “alt-wise” minds. It is going to be very difficult to come to a world-centric spiritual path integrating the ego-centric, mythical, archaic and tribal pathways.

Seriously, are we doomed?! Let’s laugh now. Wish you all a very good day!!

Love,
Arcane.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post13 May 2020

A very interesting post Arcane.
Arcane wrote:ex-I, pink panther, guptarati6666, oldbk and all, really wonderful and wise having transcended the path. You people are doing really great, seriously. I admire that. I appreciate you all!!

Thanks, it's nice to know someone is reading, appreciating and considering. Too many of us take each others’ work as "product”. The simple courtesy of ”thank you” and ”appreciate it” makes appreciator and appreciated better for it.
Arcane wrote:Some wise man said, There is no goal on the path, the path is the goal.

Dzog Chen Buddhist view is, ”The ground is the path is the goal” - if it doesn’t connect to the reality of being here now, then it is ungrounded. If being here now does not result in moving you to a better condition, your ”present" is misguided, misused.
since Consciousness is intangible to the five senses it can never be objectified

The Buddhist model is that consciousness (or mind generally) is the sixth sense. The taste buds do not objectify the ear drum either. Aristotle called the mind in greek "aesthete koine” or in Latin the ”sensus communis” a which we translate to ”common sense” - although with a shift of meaning. Objective reality is when subjective realities agree. We both agree this is a word on a screen. But consider it within subjectivity.

If, for example, what we hear is attuned with what we see etc and these agree with our mental preconceptions largely based on memory, we will proceed to interact with that "out there", the world, reality, maybe to cross the road. If, however, what we see disagrees with what we hear, say, something we cannot see sounds like it’s getting closer very fast, the mind will ”commune” with memory and if it's wise, will stay put or even retreat.
one shot of Ayahuasca or Psilocybin or LSD or DMT or any such thing that would help generate this sense of oneness in the mind might be helpful. Who knows?!

That's putting the cart before the horse. We know that Wordsworth and Coleridge, great poets, took opium and laudanum. However, the chances of any person becoming a great poet by taking laudanum is miniscule.
... the canonical wisdom the Buddha taught 25 centuries ago. ... There is no need to be a teacher again. The teachings can be used and one can move on, forgetting the word “GOD”

BKs like to quote the story that when the Buddha was asked about God he basically remained silent. They, and other theists like to say it was because he knew that he did not know anything about God - with the implication that ”but we (the BKs) do” - and they don't shut up about it!! Your paragraph and this part of what we are discussing is closer to what I understand - he did not talk to that subject because it is not just unverifiable, but how can you verify something that is intangible, and understood differently by each person, and ultimately, a mind-construct?
Arcane wrote:Jordan Peterson’s hierarchical-archetypes theory will hold good and true even if all the humans realize their Buddha nature.

Peterson has become well known but is, at his best, basically reworking and explaining Carl Jung while, at his worst, misrepresenting Jung and often clumsily applying those ideas into fields they don't relate to or were meant to. (Here I refer to 21st century gender politics which he tries to shoehorn into a 20th century abstract model for approaching psychology. They can be related but he tries to regress reality rather than progress Jungian ideas. It makes him notorious and famous and he sells more books etc.
Arcane wrote:Or, one day, we may come to the scientific spirituality (which is in the making) ... Even if the integration has to happen ultimately, there will always be friction in the maneuvering by the un-evolving “alt-wise” minds. It is going to be very difficult to come to a world-centric spiritual path integrating the ego-centric, mythical, archaic and tribal pathways.

The idea of an evolution of the collective so that all individuals within it are ”enlightened"? Not possible. No one can be born ”enlightened” - even those who become so have to be children and be ignorant and stupid, greedy and hateful, because the development of ego begins with self-differentiation and exploring the limits of will, desire etc etc. We can also see how even in these relatively enlightened times we have educated people who believe the stupidest things, who will fit their ”logic” to to an unconscious motive, emotional or other psychological undercurrent. Creating wholeness first requires deconstruction, understanding of parts and their relationships, then reintegrating - etc.

Then, what is clear today becomes cloudy tomorrow. Whatever you focus on makes the rest blurry. Try to see everything equally and you don't see anything sharply, clearly.

When you enter the stream, that stream is ever changing, it’s never the same river. We simply try to understand the principles of water, currents, gravity, energy and others who’re also navigating their way, some more clumsily than others.
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ex-l

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post13 May 2020

Arcane wrote:Any wise seeker of the ultimate in the field of Spirituality or in Religion, I would say, ends his seeking ...

Apparently even women are seeking these days too, so perhaps we should adopt "end their seeking" and other neutral pronouns such as humans, one, they and their? Unless you want to question whether women are actually suitable for such pursuits ... within which whether the Brahma Kumaris are good examples of women seeking spiritual ultimates.

I think the answer to that would actually be no.

I think the answer to that is all the majority of the women within BKism are seeking is statuses within society conferred by the garb of religion.

Of course, within a few - and I would suggest mainly Western female devotees - there may have been such inclines, inspired by reading such authors, but, I would also suggest, that in order to remain a BK, and especially to rise among its ranks, one has to discard such exacting principles and the basic integrity required for such pursuits. For the majority, it is just about marriage and submission to a male authority figure, and a taking over of male roles within the traditional exploitation of the fearful and superstitious that religion does.

The female tendency that is most valued within BKism, is psychic mediumship that is something else entirely.

In addition, I also feel I have to add, that whereas the West hold Buddhism in high regard, cherry pick certain elements of it and deify it; in the Far East, it merely performs the same function, or takes a similar place within society as, say, Roman Catholicism. See above.

It tend to think the best experiment in the field of religion and spirituality is just to ... stop doing it. Preferably for 10 or 20 years. I think the most wonderful experiment would be if the whole of society could, just to see if it made any difference.

The BKs filled us with doom about the future, doom at the idea of leaving, and for many, especially, I admit, young women in India, they are only seeking to escape a worse hell ... but the truth is, life goes on and in many ways get a lot better.

BKism is very, very limited and limiting, despite claiming to be the Unlimited.

As a nice piece of inspiring poetry, and I portray it as nothing more than that, I think it's hard to beat the conclusions of the authors of the Tao Te Ching (and I like the Gia-Fu Feng/Jane English translation of it but it's good to compare others) ... "The truth that can be told is not the eternal truth". Mostly, for me, it's about realising that one, oneself, all one's ideas and opinions, really does not matter so much to the point where it's not worth having any. Not pursuing any and, certainly, not having anyone else's.

Our primary responsibility in that department is to become slaves to as objective facts as possible and to renounce all tribal loyalties that might cloud our vision of them. And if, as it is said the Buddha appeared to argued, something is not knowable and verifiable, then to put it aside.

With regards to BKism, it's not only not verifiable, it is demonstrably false and they have a demonstrable tendency, demonstrated over decades and the entire world, of exaggerating, falsifying, denying and so on. Those are not little things.

So, to end by referring to your other good idea, "If a God was to come to Earth, would he exaggerate, falsify, denying and so on?" If you're answer to that is, as I hope it would be, "no, not all", then the next question arises, "so what is the nature of this spirit of theirs?".

What would a man (Lekhraj Kirpalani) or a spirit (Piyu, Shiva, BapDada) that claims not just to be 'a god' but 'the god', but is not, be?
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Pink Panther

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post14 May 2020

ex-l wrote:So, to end by referring to your other good idea[Arcane], "If a God was to come to Earth, would he exaggerate, falsify, denying and so on?" If your answer to that is, as I hope it would be, "no, not all", then the next question arises, "so what is the nature of this spirit of theirs?".

There is preponderance of trickster gods in many traditions, most obviously in polytheistic systems but also, consider the figure of Satan in the Abrahamic traditions - a latecomer to Judaism, probably after Babylon conquered them, and infiltrating from the Zoroastrian ideas of the two Brothers, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, just in time to be an important counter-balance in Christianity and Islam. Of course there’s figures like Loki in the Norse, Dionysus, Pan, even Eros/Cupid etc in the greco-roman mythologies. Fox spirits in Buddhism and so on. All tricksters.

All are aiming for a model or framework to understand the various impulses and tension that living in a pluralistic complex society inherently gives rise to, and explain why our reason is swayed or even abandons us due to emotional or unconscious motivations and we do or experience things that aren't right. The BKs do away with any idea of a real figure, no other gods or demons or spirits - they take the names from traditional scripture, Kumbhkarn, Asuras, Maya etc and say that ”of course” they are all metaphorical, just names for misleading psycho-emotional tendencies but their God spirit is real. - any positive impulses, behaviours, characteristics are from god - as they describe him/it/her.

To not have a supreme authority figure is to give all autonomy to the individual, and that's no way to build a system that will support you. Once you have an intangible supreme authority figure you need an intermediary and there begins hierarchy, and that's how you establish a kingdom!

So, if there is an actual entity, spirit or spirits, behind the BKs (not my view, but for the sake of argument) can we not know them by their works? What does all that manpower, money and time result in, where do the benefits flow? Are the outcomes and eventualities aiming to enslave or liberate? Would a liberator offer promises of future liberation while demanding more and more of you in the present?
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ex-l

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post14 May 2020

Pink Panther wrote:There is preponderance of trickster gods in many traditions, most obviously in polytheistic systems but also, consider the figure of Satan in the Abrahamic traditions

Of course, and one would have to include the Krishna who Lekhraj Kirpalani and the BKs modelled his character on in the early days, but none of them are Supreme Gods or Beings. One expects better of a Supreme Deity, doesn't one? Hasn't he been remarked as all pure, all wise, all benevolent, if not all knowing?

No answer for that, to many Indian BKs, is actually no they do not. They adopt and import ideas from the Hinduism around them, of god tricking them. Perhaps the idea of God testing followers faith is also a Judeo-Christian thing? What of the habit of making excuses for their failings, eg explaining away why Shiva is not all knowing ... despite being "Unlimited"?

Seems like an awfully 'limited Unlimited' to me.

Would a god, coming to Earth, not have a little curiousity to discovered what was going on ... beyond watching Mickey Mouse movies? (There was a reference to Baba watching Mickey Mouse movies in the Subtle Region). Makes him look like some crazy Kim Jong-un character.

Now we know their was no God Shiva in the BK religion until after 1956, and the whole 1936 story is made up, honestly, what god would allow his chosen medium, Lekhraj Kirpalani, to spend 20 years being worshipped as a god on his behalf; and why would he choose a medium that cannot tell 'The God" is within for 20 years?

Going back to the title "Humans search for God bring families misery instead of bliss", I think part of it is specifically the mechanism that works. That is, many of the disciplines and sacrifices of religions including BKism, do actually cause a misery - an emotional craving - that can then be manipulated into some kind of cathartic, orgasmic "bliss" at the end of them.

For example, within BKism, of cutting off all and any physical and emotional interaction with other human beings, and severely limiting all other normal activities, such as the sharing food. Of course, the mind ill crave and possible create or imagine compensation pleasures, in the same way a starving person dreams of eating food ... a dream so real that it used to drive sailors suffering from scurvy to their literal deaths.

Now, when you take one person putting themselves through such a rollercoaster ride, and put them in the middle of a family who are not, of course it will create huge upsets and dissonances.

Let's face it, 99.9% of all "searching for God" has proven to be nonsense dreamt up by gurus and temple owners etc for whom the suspension is the source of their income. And for the 0.1% who do have some sort of supernatural experience, 'the chosen ones', it generally happens beyond their control or intention anyway.

So why bother beating yourself. Just get on, master as much of the here and now as you can, and look after yourself.
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ex-l

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Re: Humans search for God bring families misery instead of b

Post14 May 2020

There's an old Arab saying I like, I don't know if it comes from Islam or not, but ...
Trust in God ... and tie your camel down

You don't walk across a desert and go to sleep at night "trusting" your camel to remain where you left it. Trust in your god ... if you must (I'd argue it is a neurotic waste of energy) ... but also tie your camel (means sort your life out and take care of yourself).

In BKism, that would translate to,
"Trust in God ... and give us your camel*, and in the future you'll have multi-million fold camels!!!"

* (Oh, and BTW, you're going to have to walk the rest of the way by yourself)

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