Politics and Religion - hard to separate

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Pink Panther

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Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post05 Dec 2013

Many of you will have heard or read about the three women who recently escaped from a house in London after 30 years of being kept as "domestic slaves”. The word ”cult” started to be bandied about but no more detail came of it just then, but more is now emerging.

An article by an academic who has followed the permutations of the far-left political groups in the UK:
Excerpt: There are two things worth noting about the Workers’ Institute and their decision to go underground in 1978.

The first is that other revolutionary groups, such as the Weather Underground in the USA, the Red Army Faction in Germany, and the Red Brigades in Italy, reacted in a much more violent manner when confronted by the police.

By contrast, the Workers’ Institute’s decision was to wait in secret until the “great victory” was unveiled, closer to the mindset of a religious cult.

The ”great victory” referred to was a belief (there’s that word again) that the Chinese Communist party had agents everywhere preparing covertly in advance, just waiting for the signal that would lead to a world-wide proletarian revolution and workers’ paradise. The date came and went (still not clear if other dates for ”the great victory”
were later put forward).

A definite parallel social dynamic to various cults, and the early Om Mandli seems to fit this pattern. Much more will emerge on this over the next weeks and months I am sure.

I came across this article after hearing the author on radio earlier today. He made an interesting observation ”when a group of people closes themselves off from the world and talk only to each other, they can talk themselves into believing just about anything”

Article : Inside the paranoid Maoist cults of 1970s Britain
Radio interview with other guest as well: London slavery case (highly recommended - goes into cult mentalities & recovery etc).



PS Jim Jones, leader of the People’s Temple that committed mass suicide in Guyana, told some of his closest followers that he was (wait for it) - a reincarnation - of Lenin!
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Pink Panther

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post10 Dec 2013

BK Mbbhat on brahmakumarisforum.net wrote:Nelson Mandela, etc are not given any high responsibility in drama. But God and his children are given.

Technically true - Mandela was not given any responsibility by anyone, he saw what was needed for making a better society and he took responsibility, took action, got involved - and helped create one of the few smooth, relatively bloodless ”transformations” of a deeply corrupt and unjust nation of many millions of people, without needing to destroy it, or the perpetrators, first. There is much still to do to make it better still, but no-one wants to go back.

God does give responsibility to BKs (they believe) - which is to forget the world because it is a hopeless cause. Participate in it, even with your family and friends, as little as possible - except for income and PR purposes.

The only task a BK has is to let everyone know how wonderful I (God) am, and for those who recognise this to spend as much time as possible doing so, and telling others to do so. Only they will experience true peace and contentment, knowing that others, and not they, will suffer when the ‘transformation” takes place.

(NB ”transformation” is the euphemism du jour for the previous term used ”destruction” - both mean ”the end of the world as we know it” through calamities, civil wars, thermonuclear world war - where 99% of humanity is destroyed and only BK adherents move into a paradise on earth. The BKs are, by their own admission, not! a religion nor an exclusivist, fundamentalist apocalyptic sect).
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Pink Panther

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post10 Dec 2013

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice.

Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”
― Nelson Mandela

Surely poverty, slavery, apartheid are all because of karma - and karma IS justice? said the BK (Religion and politics enmesh again).
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ex-l

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post11 Dec 2013

It's about time the BKs were just honest and made "putting a holy facade on anything" was a divine art. Mandela would have had a good laugh at the idea of him being "divinised". Are not examples such as his, and even Gandhi's Brit's Out of India, good examples of the benefits of trying force first and then, once you get as far as you can, performing a volte face at the right time?

What the BKs will have done is a "keeping up with ... or getting in with ... the Jones", sending some pithy letter, an expensive (white) floral tribute flowers, some other Shiva branded gift in a mercenary attempt to be seen, and keep being seen, in around the corridors of power and influence. Expect some BKs somewhere to be pushing to the front in their trademark saris attempting to be seen.

That's the other problem with such expensive status climbing ... you invest all that time, money and slippery pole climbing ... and then the person in question dies off, is killed off in the ridiculous case of the Nepalese royalty, or is voted out of office.

What is the point? The Buddha would not be impressed. Worldly power is impermanent.

The point, I think, is to keep up the charade to impress the adherent who keep the Kirpalani Klan in new saris, central heating, luxury retreat centers, and international business class airfare. The revolving doors of power create a kind of static electricity that charges and exited adherents reinforcing their faith that all their sacrifices are somehow worth something because Dadi Janki once swopped platitudes with Nelson Mandela for 15 minutes in a day when Mandela probably saw a daze of 100 people all of whom wanted a slice of his pie too.

And yet the BKs still believe *they* are serving those "shudras".

It's also illogical because, by their own philosophy, those powerful "shudras" are just new born, one or two birth-er souls have their Golden Age at the "fag end" of the world .. worthless by BK values.

The old souls are meant to be powerless, weak, tired and run down ... are the BKs really serving them?
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Pink Panther

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post11 Dec 2013

Mandela once said that he should not be ever called a saint, unless a saint was a sinner who kept trying.

Many people think that Buddhism and vedanta are just variants of each other. But vedanta’s philosophy permeates and supports the caste system - which is just a more complex form of apartheid, and Buddhism destroys it.

Buddha’s ”political” activism was twofold - not playing the social-political hierarchy game by fully renouncing his rulership and becoming a bikkhu/beggar and, secondly, through deconstructing the rationalisations for that unjust system, i.e. the whole idea of atman - a logically necessary part of the whole caste paradigm, developed to support the rationale of the hierarchy status quo; the sub-continent’s version of "the divine right of kings".

leonard

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post05 Jan 2014

BK Jayanti was on tour to Austrelia last few weeks. She did an interview on TV. She has helped popes and President Obama to relax.

You can see full interview and meditation commentary: Network Ten: Finding your inner peace.
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ex-l

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post05 Jan 2014

leonard wrote:She has helped popes and President Obama to relax.

Really? Popes with a 's' and she actually met in person Barack Obama? How did that happen ... and what were they after?

Has the BKWSU changed the picture of The Tree to Obama and Putin ... and stuck in his face for the Nuclear War between Russia and American? Did she tell him he's expect to deliver the Minutemen rockets on Russia to purify the world. Do the BKs still even think Russia is still going to fight the USA ... now that the Soviet block is over and America's attention is on China?

1940s ... Truman and Stalin

5_cats_1.jpg
5_cats_1.jpg (80.62 KiB) Viewed 16092 times

1960s ... Eisenhower and Khrushchev

religio-political.jpg

2010s ... Obama and Putin?

Of course, one always has to double check with reality what they have really done ... I never when her CV said that she "had worked with the Dalai Lama" but when I contacted the Dalai Lama's office, they had never heard of her ... so is that what she is saying? One of the Popes, she and Janki just met in a huge crowd of people and stuffed a picture frame in his hand. They don't appear to realise they would just be 'being patronised'.

Personally, I think such meetings are of more value to the leaders of the Kirpalani Klan, who use them to con their followers they are doing something useful, rather than to the targets of their perpetual social climbing.

I am not sure I can bring myself to watching her speak ... I'd say there is more morality in watching a porno video than listening a Brahma Kumari fake their performance.

One earns their money honestly, the other does not.
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Mr Green

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post05 Jan 2014

hahaha Melissa Milano verses Jayanti!
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Pink Panther

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post06 Jan 2014

Obama and Putin?

No. By the looks of them, it’s Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin.

OK The video from Australian TV indicates a couple of things.
    1. The meditation is a simple technique that is practiced by many people - it does not need God Shiva, Brahma Baba, reincarnation, celibacy, destruction, hierarchies (current or next life), 5000 your identical repetitions, denial of science ... or the rest of the contractual baggage that being a BK demands.

    2. Anyone can reflect on their inner thought-feelings, their content, their creation. They may even like to consider them as ”soul” or the intangible aspects of self, without getting caught up in the contractual baggage (listed above) that being a BK demands.

    3. The BKs, and Jayanti in particular, are adept at using ”generalities” and basic human abilities (to self-reflect) to simply remind people of these and to make time for them ”in a busy world” but they present in a way that let’s them appear ”special”, as holders of some secret, keepers of the flame, whatever. (Showbiz? The ol’ razzle dazzle?)
I like Jayanti as a person. I dislike that she, a talented and intelligent individual, has bought into the sham that her role demands and what that requires of her. But ... she agreed to the contract, has the contractual baggage, and has become the top salesman, with all the ‘perks' that brings. Few could walk away from that.

On one hand, she presents as the voice of reason and modernity at the top of the BK hierarchy (for example, she acknowledges in some forums that false predictions were made then explains them away ‘reasonably’ to her target constituency, Western BKs) but, on the other hand, she daren’t risk her position by demanding the Indian BK majority be freed from the burdens the false promises in the BK contract places on them.

The BK egregore - the collective BK identity - is born of these false promises and false ”knowledge” and at the same time depends on them to exist.

If they were dismantled, an admission saying "yes, our god/source is fallible, has made serious mistakes, is changeable and erratic as to what is "true", we can’t guarantee more "corrections" won't be made, BTW the Kalpa is a vestige of the early musings of our all too human founder" etc - if such things were said honestly, not couched in equivocal terms, taught repeatedly until understood by all, what would happen?

The state (the BK monster) would fade away. It’ll be subsumed into the general morass that is Hindu-Vedanta.

Politics is "the organisation of the many”. Yes, this religion is very political.

If you love somebody, set them free.
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ex-l

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Re: Politics and Religion - hard to separate

Post06 Jan 2014

Obama and Putin?

I, corrected the order to make my point more clear (the titles are above the images) ... even on the "god" instructed and corrected teaching posters, they put the faces of the Soviet and American leaders of the day. They're dead, the predictions failed, the Cold War ended, and the Soviet state collapsed ... now Obama and Putin are on the thrones, so who are the BKs saying Destruction would be between?

Or will it just happen consensually after some Appreciative Inquiry and Self Management Leadership chit chat? Will it spring from the spiritual font of Values Education ... all the world's leaders sitting down, lighting candles, holding hands and dumping their payloads in harmony?

For the 75 years of their religion ... 50 ... 35 ... 25 years after their predicted End of the World ... China - its politics, religion and culture and 20% of the world's population - has been an invisible nonentity which the USA is now encircling it and it would appear a far more likely flash point target. Are the BKs going to risk another re-write? Or are their posters going to become even more vague? Which "monkeys" do they think are going to fight over the butter now?

Are they even going to remove the idea that 7 billion must die like flies ... and is everyone going to get to Heaven, albeit with the BKs still as bosses?

What's the world from inside?

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