The Raja Yoga Caste Syste

Abuse within the Brahma Kumaris - posted by eromain on June 17, 2004

The Raja Yoga Caste Syste

Another component of the Raja Yoga ideology – indeed cosmology too - which shapes their thinking on all manner of subjects is their metaphysical caste system. Each soul is forever a member of particular caste. Not just in this or that life but even up in the so-called Soul World. And Raja Yoga illustrations and imaginings of the Soul World show the each soul on an inverted tree. God is at the top, a the tip of the trunk, followed by the highest Raja Yogis, then the middle rank, and then the lower Raja Yogis. Below the lowest Raja Yogi positioned at the beginning of each of their own branches are the so called prophet souls Christ, Buddha, Abraham etc. Below these are all the souls of their respective religions and again the best come first, followed by the lower and then the lowest.

One’s position in this hierarchy is fixed. If you happen to be a Raja Yogi soul you are blessed, compared at least to the members of the other religions. In your cycle of births and deaths down on earth you are predestined to be a Raja Yogi just as you were in your previous cycle. There is no risk that although you were a Raja Yogi in the previous cycle you might get relegated to being a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. Likewise even the best of the other paths cannot hope to gain promotion into the Raja Yoga elite. Nor can they enter the only true heaven in Raja Yoga theology namely the Raja Yoga one. The souls of other religions at best have a kind of relative heaven in the midst of Raja Yoga hell. They have no true i.e. absolute heaven.

Within the constellation of Raja Yoga souls there is of course also different levels – reflected both in position in the Soul World and in the quality and quantity of lives on Earth. Closest to God and indeed in many practical ways virtually inseparable from God is the founder of Raja Yoga. There are seven other souls making up the highest quality of beings – the only human souls who could be truly said to attain perfection. It is universally agreed that most if not all of these positions have already been taken by the current senior Raja Yogis. But there might just be one place so you could squeeze in if you really try.

Below these is another hundred who whilst perhaps not attaining the absolute highest level of perfection came very close and as a side effect of their efforts helped the whole of humanity by simultaneously spreading the word about Raja Yoga and purifying themselves through their own meditation thereby triggering the nuclear holocaust which ends the world thus ending another round of hell. Many of the thrusting ambitious Raja Yoga teachers secretly harbour hopes of making it into the legendary 108. And one should stress that this kind of ambition is encouraged. It is all part of the ‘greed is good if it’s the right kind of greed’, enlightened self interest ethos at the heart of Raja Yoga karmi philosophy

Below the ‘Rosary of the One Hundred and Eight’ is another sixteen thousand. This may sound like a lot but, when one considers that there are currently several hundred thousand members of the religion, the rush for seats is going to be pretty tight. And below these is nine hundred thousand, the official number of souls who make it to heaven. These would be souls who became Raja Yogis but ended up doing rather poorly. They didn’t do much service, their meditation was erratic and ineffectual.

If a Raja Yogi has sex, leaves Raja Yoga, or defames the institution, he is still technically a Raja Yogi soul and so will get to heaven but he is guilty of spurning an opportunity not presented to the vast majority of souls. He has rejected or ignored the direct teachings of God not inadvertently but consciously. He has allowed his latent vices to re-assert themselves during his one incarnation as a Raja Yogi to the point where the sins of the flesh or the arrogance of his ego make him indulge himself, his own desires, his own opinions rather than what God has instructed him to do. From being a potential god sitting at the top table of celestial and earthly deities, living and loving with other members of the elite 108 Rosary for the whole of eternity he has thrown himself off the fifth floor irredeemably destroying his chance of true greatness. In his incarnations whether in heaven or in the later ages when heaven has yet again deteriorated into the relative hell he is destined to only looking at the great from afar. If he is lucky he might gain proximity to a medium quality soul say of the sixteen thousand by being his servant. The closest he would get to the hundred and eight is as a cremator. He will burn their bodies, because during his Raja Yoga life he was consumed by the fires of lust.

I have merely touched upon the iconography at work here there is a great deal more to it and the effect is all compounded by the daily repetition of these images in the morning class to which all Raja Yogis must attend and in the extremely vivid relationship to his concepts the Raja Yogi develops. Like medieval Catholicism the beauty of divine grace in all its exquisite depictions is matched in the mind of the pilgrim only by the horrors of hellish failure. Meditation makes both sides of The Cycle hyper real.

The Raja Yoga notion of metaphysical caste has like very nearly all Raja Yoga concepts been ‘borrowed from Hinduism. That Raja Yoga should seek to revitalise or re-interpret a way of looking at people which many modern liberal Hindus find to be abhorrent is unfortunate in the extreme. The Hindu caste system in its worst manifestations is comparable with slavery, Nazism and Apartheid. Although Raja Yoga is critical of the traditional caste system it uses not only the basic concepts (although one must re-iterate again they are reinterpreted) but also the very terms. Hence the names of the traditional caste levels, Brahmin etc all have taken on new Raja Yoga significance. The cremator status in heaven that is the destiny of bad Raja Yogis is a direct reinterpretation of the untouchable role of the leatherworker and the body burner.

The term ‘Shudra’ meaning someone of extremely low caste – someone who a good Hindu of higher caste is disallowed to even touch let alone socialise with or befriend has become in the Raja Yoga lexicon a label for those souls who impurify themselves with sex or who leave Raja Yoga. Think of the worst swear words you know – I would contend that ‘Shudra’ to the Raja Yogi has something of this level of potency. Interestingly amongst ex-Raja Yogis the term is being reinterpreted such as the was that young African Americans are now referring to themselves as ’niggaz’, and the gay community has re-claimed the term ‘queer’, and modern urban women have wrestled control of the term ’****’ from purely misogynist ownership. So now the attitude of some ex-Raja Yogis to all of this is to laugh and declare, “yes I’m a Shudra”. But that is partly posture and partly a defence against what remains a highly potent, insulting and damaging concept. Fifteen years on it still stings because we know they mean it.

And part of the problem Raja Yoga has had with my input on child protection is that in their eyes I am ‘Shudra’. It is deeply offensive to some Seniors that I might have something to teach them, or even that my current involvement in the management of their organisation might be one of God’s mysterious ways. If it turned out that I was rewarded for my efforts by a place in the 108 it is very doubtful that any of the others would agree to turn up.

The effects upon the young Raja Yogi of this ever present categorisation of the people one meets are manifold. I have already mentioned the inevitable isolation of narcissm. It also has a very strong tendency to stimulate an uncritical and overly venerative attitude towards the Seniors. They are after all synonymous with the very notion of ‘the eight’. The different caste tiers are each tight networks of inter-birth relationships and relations. One clear sign that you are destined for obscurity would be poor personal relations with the members of the higher caste levels. You will have spent your births interrelating with your own category of soul so if you are not comfortable with the elite, or they with you this is not a good omen. The metaphysical caste system finds its locus in the physical world in the form of the Seniors because their position is already ‘known’. The Seniors are members of the eight so one way or another if you want to make it to the top table you better not damage your relations with them Please them on the other hand and all other factors remaining equal you will do well. Hence like all ‘theoretical’ caste systems it is the control of behaviour that is the inevitable real effect.

The malcontent at the back of the class is less plausible as a role model simply because he does not pay his dues with his Seniors. No matter that he may actually be more sensible than the rest of the class put together. The tendency to stigmatise, isolate and ultimately loose the ‘bad’ Brahmins is subtle because Raja Yogis are almost universally friendly and well meaning people. It is also part of the culture to show love and respect to all. But you neither show nor actually feel the same quality of love or respect for those you categorise as ‘good’ and those you categorise as ‘bad’.

A central tension at the core of this is that whilst all Raja Yogis are certain of the factuality of the metaphysical hierarchy they do not know the one piece of information that really matters – where their place is. Raja Yoga folklore is littered with stars that shone brightly and then faded away. The high turnover of members mean that in a large or medium size centre there will definitely be Yogis you previously admired and aspired towards in your early years who have since – here is that image again - “thrown themselves out of the fifth floor”. Or as one friend of mine put it about a mutual friend who had disgraced herself in the most serious way a centre Sister can –‘she has ripped her own guts out, she had gutted her cycle’. It is heartbreaking when someone that you thought you would share heaven with turn their status from that of one of the blessed into a ‘Shudra’. And if such and such a person who you thought was a great Raja Yogi can fail maybe you are next.

The pressure and self examination this causes can become all pervasive. Every thought, every action is potentially the beginning of one’s decline. Every mistake one can look back on is a trigger for self mistrust and loathing. And as I have intimated this has already proven itself as something more than some Raja Yogis could bear. And it does not help that Raja Yoga insists on repeatedly using images of self destruction as a metaphor for this type of failing.

How does one learn to handle failure when that failure irredeemably changes all of your future births? How does one hold on to ones positive self image when the occurrence of that failure means that even in your past you could not have been one of the truly successful Raja Yogis? The belief system here coupled with cultural elements such as the iconography, the language, semantic frames, the pedagogic style and the meditative and mystical practices acts in the young or vulnerable to effectively place a curse upon the transgressor. The curse is arguably self inflicted or arguably installed by the religion, but what is undeniable is that it uses the tools, jargon, images and concepts of Raja Yoga. It is usually ‘pre-programmed’ during the happy early years when hope of ascendancy is at its strongest and fear of failure at its most fervent. It lies within and only emerges or is triggered after the young student comes to define, or is persuaded by others that he must define, his actions or indeed whole selfhood to have failed in Raja Yoga terms.

Most of the toxic after effects of this do not emerge except over an extended period of time, frequently when the student has distanced himself from the Seniors – or indeed they from him – or they have left the organisation. The leaders of Raja Yoga know quite a lot about the range and seriousness of psychological problems ex-Raja Yogis suffer. They have so far given no indication that they feel the organisation should share any responsibility for this.

Administrator inserted note:

* This is an excerpt from a post made by eromain. That post was itself excerpted from a Report on “Child Abuse and Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (Raja Yoga)” by eromain.