Anomalies and Inconsistencies

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Anomalies and Inconsistencies

Post02 Jun 2008

Anomalies and Inconsistencies - posted by Jim Brady on August 18, 2005

A word of thanks firstly to those who set up this much needed site and also to the many inspiring contributors.

Came into Raja Yoga back in 1983. Why did I join? Probably for some of the same reasons as you all did. The philosophy appeared to be quite unusual, original and convincing, initially. There were no fees involved and the elders were not swanning around in Ferraris, lording it over the hoi polloi. The social aspect was welcoming, people were very friendly and decent, and the ideals within the movement appeared to be the highest possible, with God apparently behind it all. And with not much else out there in an at times depressing and empty world, Raja Yoga offered self-preservation in this life and beyond. I felt special and very lucky

In the beginning, I found the philosophy re The Cycle, Karma, God etc quite ingenious with unlimited potential, totally unlike any of the vacuous nonsense I had heard before. I was enthralled by it and it appeared water-tight, and I was greatly encouraged by the fact that the teacher giving me the class seemed quite open to discussing anything and everything. The whole skeleton of The Cycle seemed eminently plausible with just the finer details to be ironed out. But as the years went by and the intermittent Murli attendances were chalked up, I gradually realised that the gaps were not going to be filled in. We were going to have to make do with our own fanciful speculation. The Seniors were either inaccessible, disinterested in discussing certain issues, or too busy disseminating information on the vaguer stuff. The deity himself apparently couldn’t be bothered addressing any of the issues or commenting about any of the anomalies. Disappointment and frustration set in and, since I wasn’t getting mind-altering experiences in meditation, I began to drift further and further away.

Here are the main issues that bothered me right from the start, which I perhaps foolishly let go:

1 The ridiculously short Cycle, the history of which obviously cannot be stuffed into so small a box. Unless the Minoans were Silver-Aged, and the Atlanteans, and when one considers the size of the Assyrians kings’ list, and the dynasties of the Pharaohs, and the Chinese pre-Taoist kingdoms, and the history of Israel from Abraham to Jesus, including wars with Syria, Babylon and Rome, the fall of the first and second temples, the captivity in Babylon until the emancipation by Cyrus, the reign of Saul and Solomon and all the kings after Jeroboam, the disappearance of the Ten Tribes, the long prophetic period, the early Talmudic period leading up to Jesus - you just can’t fit it all into less than 500 years from the end of the Silver Age.

It would appear to me that Brahma who came from a very poor village had little education and had little knowledge of ancient history, had just conjured up the figure himself. It simply tied in with some of his Hindu beliefs. I have never come across any scientific writings (apart from a small section of musings by Velikovsky) that would allow for such a short cycle. I’ve always thought that a 10,000 year cycle would sound reasonable, but a 5,000 year one was just plain daft and simply not credible. It contradicts almost everything that we know, historical, archaeological and cultural evidence. I was always puzzled as to why the Deity never spoke on the issue, and was never questioned on an issue that is so fundamental.

It’s almost as ridiculous as saying that The Cycle is a few hundred years old. Out of thousands of Murlis (most of them repeating the same old points in the same old boring fashion) with not one word on the issue. I can’t be the only one who has been troubled by such silence. I was always told from the start that the scientists will gradually come round to cyclic time, that all the evidence is moving in the BK direction, it’s only a matter of time, alas not so. To quote a guest on this site: “I was always busy - from the beginning - in researching all the science in it. I always thought it was a matter of time before I would hit on some plausible theories ... they never came.”

2 I remember sitting in front of Gulzar/Shiva having being told that if I wanted to ask any questions in English they would have to be translated into Hindi so that “God could understand!!! Periodically this one used to really bug me.

3 Throughout approximately 10 years in the institution, I never really got to find out much about this inscrutable God person. What exactly does he do apart from a bit of lecturing/teaching? Too many simple questions were never answered about the being. Does he meet souls each time they die? What does he do for people of all the other religions or the non-religious? Is he responsible for miracles?. Is he little more than a warm fuzzy feeling that we sometimes get in life? Does he communicate with souls in the Soul World? Does he tell each non-BK at the end of The Cycle that they happen to not belong to the elite and they can now say bye bye to heaven? If he loves us all, what does he do for us all, how does he show that love?

This Shiva might give some kind of introduction but the introduction for me was, and is, minimal. For 2,500 years he says he does nothing but as regards the other half I am no wiser. What involvement does he have in other religions? Does he intervene in people’s lives? Does he put ideas into people’s heads? Does he answer prayer? Does he know everything? Does he know what I am thinking? Why is he so revered? What has he ever done for humankind?

According to the BK’s he never even made the world. It’s tricky trying to think about someone all day long when you don’t know much about them. I think if most BK’s were honest they would say that their best meditation experiences occurred when they visualised idyllic scenes/interactions - i.e. the experiences were of their own making and not due to any mystical interaction with a Deity. Similar experiences can probably be got elsewhere in other faiths or practices.

Also the logistics of meditation are never explained fully by the BKWSU. Souls cannot think or act outside the body, yet Shiva who is identical in form apparently can. In order to become pure it is necessary to visualise God as a form of light and a point of energy. Somehow, this is meant to bring magical and cleansing results, whereas other forms of contemplation of God as practiced by other faiths, e.g. sincere prayer, are deemed to be quite ineffective and worthless.

Apparently the moody Deity only responds when you call him by his correct name, he is strangely peeved and hard of hearing when someone gets his name wrong or is confused as to his real identity. Also the obscure wavelength of communication with Shiva is strangely only one way. Even when the mind is made still and peaceful rarely do you hear of BK’s honestly describing God contacting them. I remember myself sitting in front of “God”, locking into the experience and waiting to be hit by a thunderbolt of love/peace/ecstasy/whatever I couldn’t have been more focussed or more soul-conscious, but nothing happened. What an anti-climax! On all the occasions when I practised meditation, I almost always felt that it was me creating my own experience. There was no outside force trying to get through to me

4 Was always troubled by the lack of evidence of a Golden Age. Everything associated with it appears to have conveniently disappeared, everything totally destroyed, palaces and vimans vaporised! And again at the end of the Iron Age all evidence is wiped clean again. How? And with such destruction going on twice every cycle, how does anyone survive to propagate the species? I never got any answers on this kind of stuff. Is the Ocean of Knowledge more pond-like in nature?

I once was told that everywhere on the planet from A to Y gets pulverised at the end of the Iron Age. Those living in Z then migrate to somewhere from A to Y (the animals probably following two by two). Then Z gets pulverised. As usual no more detail is provided to explain this convenient and childish stop-gap.

5 Those souls who suffer dreadful pain and deprivation in the early days of the Copper Age (lepers, for example) well, who are they? They couldn’t be new souls, and they couldn’t be BK’s since BK’s only start getting a hard time at the end of the Iron age, so who are they? One of the Seniors I spoke to on the issue hinted that they fell into another category, but then clammed up completely and said that she didn’t want to elaborate.

Next, here are some secondary issues. They never bothered me as much:

1 The dreadfully boring Sakar Murlis. Time after time, I went to class with pen and paper, ending up with just a blank sheet. It’s puzzling how a Supreme Being can only come up with rather banal prose. I never went to class with any sense of excited anticipation as to what was God going to talk about today. It was just the same old rambling rhetoric, a hotchpotch of praise and threat, insights into Hindu trivia, and the 7 Day Course hammered and re-hashed again and again.

I was told that the same Murlis are recycled every 3 years ( it is approximately 5 - editor’s note ). All the old writings are not available for BK consumption. This would mean that over 90% of God’s words between 1936 and 1969 are deemed by some authority to be not worth examining. My guess is that the Sakar Murlis were the thoughts and ramblings of Brahma and/or a bodiless guide, and after a while he ran out of things to say and resorted to just repeating himself. I always thought they were ungodlike, needlessly repetitive, poorly structured and guilt laden. I don’t know much about Brahma’s life story but the naivety of his letter to King George of England telling him about the End of the World, the length of The Cycle and the Coming of God really beggars belief.

2 The waffly, rambling Avyakt Murlis - I couldn’t get much from them. And why are they so different from the sakars when they are meant to be spoken by the same person? And why the change of voice? Is it that the Avyakts are simply the ruminations of Gulzar or some other bodiless guide channelled through her, different from Brahma’s “guide”?

An old ex-BK who wishes to remain anonymous described them once to me as follows: “The Avyakts are classic carrot-and-stick operations. First you are praised to the sky, then you are undercut completely. You are the light of the world – but on second thought, there are three kinds of light, and the kind you happen to be is so filthy and rotten, that you are a light in name only. But there is still a chance for you – if you are perfect from now on and come to class every day – maybe. Meanwhile shut up and do what the Dadi tells you. To those who are the real lights of the world, love, remembrance and namaste, yours truly, God.

Some of the Murlis do contain tantalizing hints of deeper information – but the promise is never fulfilled – and the Dadis will never follow up on the hints, and if you push them they’ll tell you you’re not pure enough to understand.

3 I could never understand why God only appeared or appears a few times a year, the visits over time, as far as I know, are becoming less and less frequent. With very little time left you’d think he’d be coming more regularly. Is he too busy to visit Madhuban? If the visits have simply diminished in frequency due to Gulzar’s health then it merely bolsters the case that BapDada is only Gulzar.

4 I have seen it stated in many Murlis that:”There is no need to remember Brahma and no need to keep pictures of him”. Yet every centre seemed to make him overly prominent.

5 All the so-called trivia: flags on the moon and space probes finding their way back to earth; carnivores, insects, mosquitoes and venus fly traps in the Golden Age…Dinosaurs…reproduction by humans in the Golden Age…reproduction by animals in the Golden Age…decay of animal carcasses in the Golden Age…the mechanics of Dharamraj…purpose of sex organs in Golden Age…karma for animals…whether trees have souls…advance parties…animals surviving destruction…extinct species getting re-introduced…the planet speedily recovering from radiation poisoning…aliens…ghosts…in-between body states…the death experience…profound differences between races. No clarification on any of this stuff. Not even a brief comment.

6 Could never understand or get information and insight into the Soul World (never mind the Subtle Regions) - a world of peace and quiet. Does any thought exist there…does any action occur there…is it just a state of nothingness? I never heard anything but the briefest of explanations.

Again, another filler-in. An ex-BK describes it as follows: the Soul World is perhaps an expedient solution to the problem of where do souls come from before they enter The Cycle. Just a fix to make the whole Cycle/Tree philosophy work and - from a reason/purpose point of view - utterly useless.

7 The 1976 controversy and the ‘Shankar Party’ brushed under the carpet. Nothing published by the BKWSU institution on the matter. The plebs are again forced to speculate.

8 The trivialization of other faiths: Christianity, Buddhism, Islam etc. They have no place in Heaven - they have had their day and are destined to just fizzle out at the end.

9 The BK philosophy is unpublished and generally speaking unchallenged as a result. If time is so short then what are they so afraid of? Is it that the 5,000 year cycle would be ridiculed by the scientific community? And why the sneaky covert approach, disguising it as some innocuous relaxation course? Why the subterfuge and the elaborate smokescreen? Why not make the whole philosophy transparent and let the media have a good look at it all? What have they got to lose?

1 The BK practice of not eating onions, garlic and eggs. Very wishy-washy reasons given for this. It would appear to be something just borrowed from an ancient custom of the Brahmin caste.

1 The unwillingness to answer questions and encourage a questioning mind, and the fanciful speculation and dishonest manoeuvrings that dominate. To quote ex-BK Atma on the dinosaur issue: “I wish that BKs would have the humility and honesty to be straightforward and say: “We really don’t know. We really don’t have a feasible explanation for this issue”. Instead, they either shrug it off as being inconsequential - which it certainly is NOT - or bluff their way by giving some pseudo scientific, unconvincing, hocus pocus answer. They know that those “answers” can’t bear scrutiny. Hence, the total absence of BK texts on the subject. In any case, with “God” as your source, why the need for conjecture and theory? He has been speaking to them for nearly 70 years. Surely he has had adequate time to give an answer to this question…..but he has not.”

On inadequate responses - Gyaniwasi: Quote: “What is important to recognize, however, is that having started on the path to salvation or “Jeewan Mukti” that first faith……must be able to accommodate and rationalise any contradictions that may arise as a result of our unfolding civilization. If it fails to do so then “as children” we have a right to ask our “Heavenly Father” for explanations or answers - just as a child in growing up deserves a better answer than “the stork dropped the baby from the sky” in response to questions about the origin of a baby. If the parent continues to give the same answer as the child grows older then the child would lose faith in the reliability and integrity of the parent and would go elsewhere for answers.”

12. Trance messages. Permit me to quote ex-BK Paul: “The practice of offering Bhog on Thursdays still goes on but the trance messages have been discontinued. I enquired discreetly and eventually found out that a directive was issued to discontinue the practice because some of the more junior trance messengers were giving ‘mixed messages’ - i.e. Maya interference or putting their own thoughts and “spin” on the messages. Things like this make one wonder how ‘perfect’ is the source and the system. Surely, an all knowing entity would have foreseen this development and only appointed mature and accurate trance messengers. Anyway….where’s the salt shaker?”

13 Again to quote Paul: “Gyan says that the language of the Golden Age was / will be Hindi. How can that be?!!! That would mean that Hindi precedes Prakrit and Sanskrit !!! Tell that to any Indologist, world historian or linguistic anthropologist, and you will be laughed out of court. Simply put, to say that Hindi existed and came before Sanskrit is ridiculous. It is just further evidence (as if more was needed) that the “knowledge” is nonsensical, unhistoric and illogical.”

14 Then there’s the whole fear trip. Paul again: “Fear of suffering for past bad karma that is not burnt off. Fear of punishment for displeasing Baba in one of innumerable ways. Fear of not measuring up to his impossibly high standards. Fear of not making adequate “effort” resulting in a low “status” in the Golden Age. Fear of not even making the Golden Age, and starting one’s first birth in the less attractive Silver Age. Fear of failing the test “in the final moments”. Fear of painful bodily suffering during the terrible time of world destruction by nuclear war and natural calamities. That “time of destruction” is hammered home in Murlis and hangs like a malignant cloud over your head. Fear of punishment even after leaving the body - one begins to hear about the “Tribunal” that will review one’s actions in this life, pass judgment and then dispense stern punishment. This, coupled with the 24/7 commitment and demands for constant “remembrance” and “service” begins to wear the soul down. After a while, the price of “going to heaven” seems to be a bit much.”

15. The inequality of it all which has little or no effect on the Indians. Atma: Quote: “I have a theory, and here I don’t mean to upset anyone…just being frank, that’s all. I think that because of the deep seated place of caste in Hindu history, culture, religion and psyche, Hindus are, for the most part, quite comfortable with a world view of human inequality. It has become ingrained in their nature. So much so, that they accept the inherent unfairness and inhumanity of the scheme as laid out in The Knowledge. It doesn’t trouble them in the least. They don’t give it a second thought. They don’t bat an eye.”

16 The whole philosophy of karma is not explained. Just a brief reference to reaping what you sow, but again no detail. Do rapists become victims of rape in a future life? Do murderers get murdered? The mechanics of karma are not scrutinised. The deity appears to be indifferent to the debate and chooses to stay out of it. And the BKWSU have nothing to explain sickening and apparently pointless suffering. What does it achieve? Since all the religions of the world have been perplexed at various times by obscene levels of pain you’d think that an organisation with God as a living mouthpiece would have a bit more to say on the matter. Apparently no.

I See elsewhere on this site the link to Eugene Romain’s epic on child protection, obligatory reading for anyone interested in knowing more about the BKWSU.

After 70 years the BK’s are not making a big impact in India and still have not made any real inroads in the West. In my own city I could question 1,000 people on the street and be lucky to come across just one person who had even heard of the BKWSU, never mind know something about their philosophy. There does not appear to be any Golden Age just around the corner. The Cycle appears to be little more than an Indo-centric, myopic, naïve, romantic idea.

Lastly the incidental stuff: power trips, bullying, lack of acceptance of where others are at, hassling and hustling of students to get to class, get up early in the morning, do service etc., licking up to VIP’s, excessive and nauseating use of BK-speak, Dadi worship, unnecessary adoption by Westerners of all things Indian e.g. gaddis, rituals, food, saris, baggy pj’s, shawls – most of this is to be expected as it’s simply down to over-eager, well-meaning or fanatical individuals.

Since I became an ex-BK, another major anomaly has surfaced. World population is now 6.4 billion According to the BK’s the max figure is 5.5 billion. This gives a percentage discrepancy of over 16%, way outside a 5% error which is usually acknowledged in standard statistics. Each day that passes world population grows making the BK’s definitive statistic even more untenable. The simplest argument is usually the correct one i.e. that the BK philosophy is just romantic thinking

2 Responses to “Anomalies and Inconsistencies”
Paul Says: February 6th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

Wonderful dissertation! I just left the BK a week ago and was going through a lot of sorrow. Reading your article made it all disappear like magic. Thank you, than you!
Ardhanarisvara Says: July 22nd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
This article presents many of the critical points about the BKWSU that I had in my mind. I was always too afraid to ask. And I even had a bad conscience for having these questions, for not believing (”knowing”) enough to make them go away. It is a wonderful experience to read that others - who obviously spent more time with the organisation - had the same experiences.

This applies to most of the articles in this section. (”Classic Posts”) - A big thank you to the writers and to the server providers!

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