Spirit Possession and the Brahma Kumaris (BK Tamasin Ramsay)

An interesting paper delivered at the 'Medical Anthropology at the Intersections', an international conference of the 'Society for Medical Anthropology' at Yale University, USA. See: Spirit Possession and the Brahma Kumaris by BK adherent Tamasin Ramsay. It seems to be a chapter of her rambling PhD thesis, which I guess we will probably see re-worked as a for sale book, as it will make for good BKWSU PR if tidied up.

Elsewhere, the PhD thesis is available in full ... see: Custodians of Purity: An Ethnography of the Brahma Kumaris complete with a quote from BK (or ex-BK now?) Anthea Church and a dedication to BK leader Prakashmani. Tamasin Ramsay walks the path trod originally by BK Surya of Germany (Dr Stephen Nagel), the original Western BK, of turning BK Knowledge, Service and lifestyle into a PhD qualification and career promoter. Interestingly, for those that have followed our early discussion, she introduces some of the original publications from the British Library made public by this site.

Tamasin Ramsay even quotes other BK "academics" such as BK Surya, herself, Wendy Smith and, laughably, Sister Sudesh! (A lovely old lady perhaps Tamasin but, no, a BK Senior Sister ... not an academic). It covers all the main points of The Knowledge ... so any reader will no doubt be able to claim their Godly inheritance if Destruction comes ... and glosses over or ignores most of the main controversies ... as one might expect.

Frustratingly, Tamasin gets religion, and her religion, wrong in a few places that jump out straight away. Worse than that she actually goes as far as to obfuscate various truths of Brahma Kumarism, even introducing heresies from the point of view of an orthodox BKs.

This site get a bit of a bitchy mention from about page 94, including a quote from a post which is in full, here: again scattered with as many factual errors and some fairly heavy weight editing and she claims this site was well received within the BKWSU. Ha! No mention of the legal action the BKWSU started against it around the same time to shut it down? Strange oversight not to mention.

We get the usual institutional "disgruntled ex-BK" excuse, which we have come to expect from BKs. It is also common amongst cult apologists in academia. And we get the usual subtle smite of stuck up academics ... poo-poo-ing someone else for making "errors" on an internet discussion forum without clarify how (typos perhaps?). Mine, of course. How could I ...?

Ditto, Tamasin Ramsay also appears to have used images from this site without any credit. Her contributions on this site are here: Ms Orange.

Custodians of purity : an ethnography of the Brahma Kumaris - Ramsay, Tamasin. 2009

This thesis is an ethnographic study of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (Brahma Kumaris). The Brahma Kumaris is a millenarian new religious movement (NRM) established in Northwest India in the 1930s in 2009 and is located in more than 120 countries.

I define members (BKs) of the Brahma Kumaris as social ascetics. BKs live a life of rigorous purity, based around their central practice of meditation. The disciplines of these social ascetics are designed to free the mind, through mastery over the body, culminating in self-sovereignty. While some BKs live in ashrams in moderately cloistered communities, most live at home with their families and conduct normal lives according to their environment, culture and circumstances. For this reason, BKs endure and moderate unique tensions as they arbitrate leading a life that is spiritually meaningful while maintaining authentic relationships and fulfilling their worldly responsibilities.

Over a period of fifteen months, I conducted fieldwork in New York, USA and Orissa, India in an attempt to understand how BKs actualize their beliefs in traumatic circumstances through a variety of disasters including a flood, cyclone and act of terrorism, as well as personal battles and a case of spirit possession. BK theology rests on the belief that each person is an immutable, conscious and inherently valuable eternal and immortal soul, an infinitesimal point of light that dwells in the forehead of the physical costume of the body. Originally pure and embodying peaceful and joyous states of awareness, all souls have gradually lost their original purity and associated happiness and peace through taking rebirth in the physical world.

BKs believe the world we live in today is the result of that spiritual demise. The present time in which humanity is living is the time when the lowest and highest points of human and environmental history converge, and is known as the age of confluence or Sangam Yuga. It culminates in liberation, peace and happiness for all souls, and restoration for the world.

NB: No mention of the death of 6,000,000,000 and the Nuclear Holocaust ... nor the 25 years left to build heaven and make baby Krishnas by the power of the mind then!?!

The research shows that within Brahma Kumaris philosophy, acts of war and environmental demise, political unrest and financial collapse are expected and understood to be the natural order of things, as the impurity of the world comes to its zenith. BKs normalize what the world considers to be ‘disasters’ through their theology.

This thesis explores the ways in which BKs respond to environmental disasters and acts of war, as well as threats to physical and spiritual purity. BKs say that it is purity that will restore balance, value and peace. I analyze how BKs’ focus on purity influences the ways in which they manage traumatic circumstances, and the ways that they discuss those circumstances and engage in acts of care.

For BKs purity is the seed of peace, happiness and world restoration. Impurity is the cause of the world’s decline and the associated horrors and sorrow. Therefore, for BKs, a threat to or violation of purity is the most significant disaster. Ultimately the thesis argues that BKs live with daily tensions that may make them a potentially valuable and calming, non-proselytizing resource for the broader community during disasters.

This can have further implications for the ways in which faith-based communities are utilized and may enable disaster managers to more courageously integrate the spiritual skills of faith-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their members. It also exposes difficulties that spiritual practitioners must manage, in a world in which people may be oblivious to unusual forms of tension.

Another chapter turns up as "Changing a Mountain into a Mustard Seed: Spiritual Practices and Responses to Disaster among New York Brahma Kumaris" elsewhere.

See also: 'Managing and extending the global reach of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (BKWSU)' at International Symposium on Management and Marketing of Globalizing Asian Religions, 10-14 August, at National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan.

Ramsay, Tamasin (2009). Spirituality, the United Nations and climate change: A call to action. Paper presented at the Parliament of the Worlds Religions, Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Australia, 3-9 December 2009.