Fed up of how ambiguous BK meditation is

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ex-l

ex-BK

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Fed up of how ambiguous BK meditation is

Post10 Dec 2011

Thank God people all over the world are starting to see through the BKWSU. I guess they alway did, they just did not publish their view before. It is remarkable how they keep coming up with the same view that we have expressed here.

I thought this comment was very fair and honest to the truth in that it also speaks of early experiences which the author is positive about.

From Yoga Forums, here and here.
Surya Deva wrote:I have been involved in two of the cults ... Brahma Kumaris and Sahaja Yoga.

Brahma Kumaris

...

Nothing really notable happened in my life again until the age of 21-22. I just got on with it when I returned to the UK, my mother who was overprotective would not let me play with the kids outside, so I stayed in most of the time. I had only one best friend, but I was a year older than him, so we ended up being in different years at school and drifted apart. I rejected religion around the age of 17-18, stopped going to the Gudwara(Sikh temple) and stopped believing in god.

I hit a period of depression and suicidal feelings and become nihilistic. It is at this point, somehow I got in touch with a spiritual group known as the Brahma Kumaris. They taught me meditation, and I could accept the meditation, but their dogmas were anthema to me. They repeatedly told me to pray to god and accept god, and being an atheist I cannot just do that without proof. Im my solitude I use to scream out, "GOD, I CANNOT JUST BELIEVE IN YOU WITHOUT PROOF, IF YOU ARE THERE, GIVE ME A SIGN" and of course I was greeted by silence. After a while though, things started to shift.

Hearing those Brahma Kumari tapes constantly citing, "I am a peaceful soul, Om Shanti om" seem to have made some impression. I got quick beginners gains and had my first OBE. The most unexpected thing that has happened to my in my life. It was as if I was lifted by some loving invisible hand out of my body into the celestial skies and great joy was felt, but then all of a sudden a feeling of guilt arose in me, I thought to myself, "I do not deserve this" and the moment that thought came upon me it consumed me and I fell from this grace I was receiving into a total darkness, an absolute abyss, total void and nonexistence. I fell deeper and deeper into it, like it was some bottomless chasm. It was suffocating me, I felt like all my life was sucked out of me and I felt terrible fear and the presence of immense evil there. I knew where I was - I was in hell. I knew why I was there because of my beliefs of nihilism and atheism, misanthropy. I pleaded, "Please give me one more chance, just one more chance" and then all of a sudden I rose from the abyss and I came back to waking life.

...

I am very indebted to the BKs because it was through the BKs that I had my first spiritual experiences. At the time I got involved in this organization, I was a hardcore atheist and nihilist. Originally, I got involved in the BKs to learn meditation and because I was directed there by family friends with the promise they will answer all my questions. When I got there the first thing I realised was that this was an outright lie, they do not let you ask questions, but instead ask you to surrender everything you know by visualizing putting all your knowledge inside a box and throwing the box away. Then they proceed to teach you spiritual philosophy and Raja Yoga meditation for which you attend once or twice a week the residence of your local teacher for one to one tutorials and group courses, as well as occasional events.

At that time I was not very aware of Yoga, but I soon learned that what they were teaching me was hokey. The first dogma I spotted was when they were teaching me about their eschatology showing me the diagram of The Tree with all the religious teachers Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Guru Nanak, and their founder at the top. They claimed that their leader was the most complete teacher yet and revealed the full truth. When I attended a picnic, I met the teacher of another lodge who told me he burned his degrees when he became a BK teacher, and proceeded to tell me how the BKs had the most complete knowledge by presenting me a dubious analogy of watching a play, some people have been watching the play longer and some have have just come in, the people who were there from the start have the most complete knowledge. I quickly realised this was dogma.

I soon became fed up of how ambigious their meditation technique was. I was told to simply "go up there" meaning to focus on my third eye, while they played a guided meditation tape recorded in a pretentious sounding voice sayomg "I am peace" I soon realised that nobody I met there seemed to radiate peace, in fact the Sisters seemed very miserable. I also found the philosophy course juvernile, I was learning no philosophy, but being preached to and soon found my preacher was trying to control my life and if I asked too many questions, they would threaten abandoning me.

When I met one of their success stories a man who they said was a paranoid wreck and drug user in the past, but they transformed him, it was enough to drive me away. Indeed, now he was a manager at boots, but he sounded utterly brainwashed. He told me was celibate, he was learning Hindi because it was going to be the language of the world in the coming Golden Age, and the whole world will perish, except India. Nothing he said convinced me I was speaking to an independent person. He sounded like a robot.

The final nail in the coffin was when tedium set in with the group meetings. I realised there were people coming there for years to listen to the same damn lectures every week. They all had a very brainwashed quality about them. I asked them what was the need to repeat the same lectures every week, and they told me repetition was needed to install the teachings. But for years? I knew I was not going to develop with the BK's, so I simply stopped going. Occasionally they invite myself and my family to events and we attend out of courtesy, but none of us go to their weekly classes.

Now, a lot more knowledgeable, I realised the BKs were a highly dubious and watered down version of real Yoga. They did not teach Raja Yoga at all, but some new-age stuff that they called Raja Yoga. They falsely advertise that they teach Raja Yoga.

They are relatively harmless though, the only flaws I could see was that they were naive and gullible and did false advertising, but I saw no evidence of foul play.

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