dany wrote:raistlin
It would be interesting to know what really triggered your exit from BK cult ... Your exit journey must have been difficult, but it could also benefit others to learn from the experience ..!!
Dany, what really triggered me to exit, and then escape for the sake of my life out of this damn cult as fast as possible, were three things:
1. When I visited Madhuban (even though I did not complete fully 6 months in Gyan, they let me go, because the Seniors were so impressed in my, so called, progress) in 1995. On Shiv Jayanti, when "Baba came", I felt nothing but a huge, deep disappointment. I felt nothing special, nothing "unique". My spiritual Brothers and Sisters, from the whole world gathered in the hall seemed almost in a somehow religious extasy, with tears in their eyes, trembling ... For me, there was no God Shiva there. It was just Dadi Gulzar sitting on the scene and whispering in such a weird manner. I was sitting for many hours on the ground, with my legs crossed, my back started aching me as hell, I was starting to have some stupefying legs, goosebumps. Generally, I was finding myself in a real physical discomfort, and it really wasn't helping me to be fully focused.
Besides, the celebration of BapDada's coming ended for me in the Global Hospital. I had a fever, was exhausted, and tired that I had to go to the hospital for one night (it was just a few days after I recovered from the flu I caught, just in few days of our [Polish BK group] stay in India, or later when for a day or two I was living in Gyan Sarovar, where it was really cold in the night, before they moved us to Madhuban, and, I was still weak).
Dadi Gulzar started to go in trance about, let's say, 4 or 5 pm, or just like that, and, through many hours long meeting with God, till after midnight, there was no chance to drink some glass of juice or water (the lunch was rather spicy and and it was the last meal on that day).
I did not even notice
ANY MEDICAL STATION in the hall in case if someone would faint or would need just first aid - there were over a thousand of people gathered in the Meditation Peace Hall (or more)!
Next day, it was Holi. The doctors in the hospital let me go back, as they did not find anything serious. When I was getting back to Madhuban I saw many Indian people, men and women, wishing anybody they met a "Happy Holi Day" and playing with the colouring powders and pouring some water, as in the similar Christian tradition of Easter in the West.
I saw them really joyful and cheerful. It struck me like a thunder. It was not a fake happiness that like any other feeling is (obsessively) controlled by the students themselves (I used to control my feelings and emotions too, and even now I still have the problems with expression what I feel or just name it), or their real meaning is re-created just to fit to the BK teachings.
What I saw when I was going back to Madhuban, was such a big contrast for me, between the so called "zeal and enthusiasm" and "be happy be rajyogi" demands and just an ordinary human feeling of some joy because of the traditional celebration. I was feeling like living in some "parallel reality", that you can only watch the other reality, but you cannot get there as the invisible wall between those two "worlds" doesn't allow you to do so.
I was trying to find out why I did not experience no God on Shiv Jayanti. I tried to talk to anybody about it, but everybody was just so deeply intoxicated that I was only suggested "to go to Baba and tell Him about it". Can you imagine, that every BK I met there was giving me the same piece of advice! On and on ... like parrots or some robots. "Go to Baba, go to Baba ...".
I left alone and filled with doubts and questions. I did not feel to meditate at all, to go to "Baba's Hut" or somewhere else. I was not in the mood of having any damn Yoga! I was just looking for someone who could explain to me at last, what the hell happened that I had no experience of the presence of God on the meeting with him, which was the only one aim of my visit in India!!! That's what I needed.
So I stopped to seek the answers to my doubts. I started to pretend that everything is OK. I mastered masking my true emotions ... but I wasn't a "pukka BK" anymore. That visit in Madhuban, I visited only once and never after, made me to memorize how to be critical and doubting. I probably started to get back my common sense. The questions rose day by day inside me, "Why?" And the veil from my eyes and mind started eventually to fall down. This was for me just like awakening.
2. After I got back from Madhuban, I started to continue my school - the center-in-charge encouraged me to study IT, as my ambition was to make the whole Polish BK environment very modern and high tech. And, at that moment, the only one BK center and the main address in Poland, in Warsaw, was equipped with computers and laser printers. Even though in Poland there were four or five BK centres in the biggest cities, not somewhere in the province, the only contact with them was through the telephone, so I felt that this is not fair - the BKs in Warsaw are "richer" and "smarter", than the rest of the Polish BK family.
During my BK life, I was a "media BK", responsible for copying BK audio materials, and taking care of all that sound stuff in the BK programs in the city I was living. Besides, I was a "pukka BK" - my life was fully based on Shrimat, Maryadas, I attended Murli classes every morning, I did very often service in the BK centre ... I had observed the BK lifestyle almost for year and a half.
When I started to interact with "people from the outside world", e.g. my classmates, my transformation continued. And when I started my school I began to "forget" about Murli classes; firstly, very, very rarely, and then more, and more often. When I wasn't coming to the BK centre, the centre-in-charge used to phone me and asked me what happened that I don't come to the centre, that I am absent in the morning classes (after I finished my secondary school and joined the organization, I used to prepare the proper music or songs, so I had to be in the BK centre first, to have the enough time to verify any thing in the smallest detail and calm myself, and sit in meditation, so my "disappearing" was noticed immediately and they had to manage all of this stuff themselves), and that there are so many cassettes to copy, it is MY duty, and so on, and so on ...
I apologized her for my "vacation from BK", felt very ashamed of that, and promised her to remember to go to Murli classes, and don't forget about my duties anymore, and I was go back to my BK family.
But it was stronger ... Some time later it happened to me again.
That time I was just a half BK and a half ex-BK actually, but because I had no friends among the BKs, I started to hide the thing I am a "questioning BK" and on the good way to be become "exiting BK".
I started to take some "lokik" habits. I even let myself to go out for a beer with my mates occasionally. Of course, nobody knew about it. But when I was coming home, to those four white walls with that big red poster of ... you-know-who, I was feeling like I committed a sin. I am not worthy.
I wasn't able to enjoy my life at all. Neither in BKWSU, nor in the world outside the cult.
The centre-in-charge still had an eye on me and phoned, and phoned but the worst thing was, that my own mother was another 24/7 sentinel to me. If the centre-in-charge failed in bringing me back, my mother with her sweet manner was giving me the message that in the BK centre "there is a Baba's work to do". I very often even did not have a chance to finish my meal, or to have a nap during the day. When there was a phone from the BK centre, my mother, who is 21 years in the BKWSU at the moment, was so arrogant that she even was able to interrupt my nap and was telling me that the center-in-charge is calling ME so I had to get up, get the phone ... and, of course, every phone from the centre-in-charge was of the HIGHEST PRIORITY. It lasted very long when I heard of "deprivation of time" first time ever, and I realized that it also happens in the BKWSU.
Therefore, after the whole disappointment and feeling of being deceived by the whole "God Shiva is speaking through Dadi Gulzar" bunch of lies and somehow fooled (at that moment I did not realize that the real name for such behaviour is: "manipulation"), I tried to exit from the BKs few times but I failed. I was trapped. I am a BK, my mother is a BK. My Father is helpless. My family don't care at all. My mother keeps an eye of them to serve them and keep them completely unaware of the facts. I am in a jail and there is no help.
In 1997, after I finished my school and making my IT Diploma, I got back home and there was nobody who was interested with whom I can share with my happiness. My Father had gone on holiday, my mother only left me a note as usual:
"Om Shanti. I am in Warsaw. I'll be back in few days. Om Shanti". This was very sad celebration,
OK, it's time to get used to it ...
I tried to create the email accounts for the BKs but they were force, probably by the management, to delete it. I had no idea that there had to be a special permission to do anything. Even the center-in-charge did not say a word of objection when I was creating an email account for the BK centre. Not her personally but for the BK centre I was from. I really had good intentions. That was a "faux pas". The time wasn't right. Today, every Polish BK connected to Internet has got it's own email address, and every BK centre in Poland has got it's own email account as well.
3. In 1999, I was beaten by some hoods who called themselves football fans. Five of them, against one of me, a few minutes before midnight near the bus stop (I was waiting for the night-bus), and I had to get to the hospital with my jaw broken. In hospital, I realized that it was I who provoke them - the whole crap I heard in the BKWSU from the Seniors about that "when you practice meditation, you will be eventually so powerful light, that no one would ever dare to touch you".
I was freezing and suddenly one of the hooligans attacked me (the other four were trying him to just let me go). I did not even yell, "HELP!" (as BK teach that yelling is a sign of violence as well) or run as hell from them.
I LET HIM hit me in the face and broke my jaw.
It happened near the taxi stop and there were few taxi drivers in their cabs, who just observed the whole "spectacle". No one reacted. No one did anything. No one helped me or even called the police ... but, that's not important. I completely lost or let the BKs make my instinct of self-preservation put to a deep sleep.
IT WAS THE BK SICK TEACHINGS THAT MADE ME A HOPELESS VICTIM, UNABLE TO REACT PROPERLY WHILE THERE IS A THREAT OF LIFE. (For the rest of my life, I will remember that horrible anecdote the Polish BK Seniors used to tell about how Jagdish Bhai rescued his life when he was in New York, and he did not want to go back to the hotel or a centre where he lived from the place where he was giving a lecture - it was quite distant - choosing a safe but long way to go, and instead, he decided, very irresponsibly, to choose the dangerous but much shorter way through Bronx.
Jagdish was lucky enough as the bandits did not do him any harm - they told him to dance, as he was from India, and because he was dancing so awkwardly, they started to laugh, and when they were almost crying and laughing, watching how clumsy he was, he was eventually able to manage to escape from them.
Unfortunately, I heard about "how Jagdish was entertaining the bandits in Bronx" after I get back from the hospital).
When I was in the hospital, I started to think and prepared a plan of my ultimate escape at any cost from that whole sickness once and forever. (I promised myself even that when I get back from the hospital, and when I'll get rid of all of that horrible stuff from my jaw and teeth, I'll visit some fast-food and buy the biggest Big Mac or something like that, they have. Unfortunately, I did not found any
Burger
King in Poland as I planned, but I did it anyway :)). But my escape was just started to happen ... :).
What was luck for me was that I ended up in the hospital at exactly the same moment the whole Polish group was just on their way to Madhuban (it happened in the February 1999, less than two weeks before the end of the month), so literally
there was no one who could destroy my plans, and let me not to escape. Even my mother was at the moment on her way to Madhuban. This time I successfully escaped ... physically but mentally I was still in BKWSU and even now I notice sometimes that I act or think or speak like a BK.
That's really horrible.
When they came back from India and my mother saw me, with my violet-and-yellow cheek and neck because of some internal haemorrhage and my jaws after dentist surgery with that whole dentist "equipment" like wires and rails, she absolutely did not care about it. She was completely unimpressed. Her reaction was just shocking for me - when I told her that I was beaten up and my jaw was broken, she just smiled and congratulated me on it with a handshake, and then she took her luggage to her room and started to unpack it.
During her absence, I went back to a normal diet thanks to my Father who was taking care of me at that time. When she realized that, she just offended with us both and then was not willing to have anything, anything at all with us (she was thinking of me as a traitor at that moment and my Father as a my supporter who helped me to betray Baba and the BK family). She used to pin to on her cloth a big, coloured badge with the word, "Silence" on it. It was the message for me and my Father, that my mother absolutely doesn't want to interact with us and we are not allowed to disturb her as she is practicing "Silence" at the moment. It really made us not only angry, but we were just ****** off!!! And she was fully aware of what she was doing. She wanted to punish us. It had to be painful, and it was.
But even after a year of my escape I wasn't able to fully forget about BK teachings and BK lifestyle. It was until 2000, when I was sitting in the last meditation ever and during the meditation I started to go in trance. I lost control completely. I saw the blinding golden light and me inside that light ... trapped. Actually, it was a wall made of light, that started to close around me ... first slowly and then more and more faster. I jumped out of that at the last moment. I felt a piercing pain inside my head and fainted. I was completely alone in my flat at that moment. My mother was in the centre, and my Father had gone somewhere.
When I got back to my senses, I noticed the lines of blood from my nose and I had a terrible headache. I had never gone in trance when I was meditating. It happened just once. I was completely unaware of how I was starting to go in trance!
The same year the doctors discovered that I suffer from depressive and fear disorders and while on the psychotherapy. I got suicidal and was trying to commit a suicide. It was my first contact with the mental hospital so far. I told about my trance weird experience only to my psychiatrist and then he told me, that I was in a grave danger. From 2000, I have never ever come to the BK centre and attend any classes or lectures but even after 4 years from my escape I was not able to refuse the BKs when they asked me for some tech support, like when they had some problems with their computers in Warsaw in the summer of 2004. I bought a ticket, jumped to the train and went there to the BKWSU's main Polish seat. I did not even demand from them to be paid for my services. I wasn't that brave. I just couldn't!
I think, the BK management was and still is fully aware of that some people's self-respect is very low and they just let others for being exploited.
One day, somewhere in 1999, or later, I also saw the first restrictions about controlling the BKs' access to the Murli. I saw one day, while in the BK centre, we had at last a computer, that the Murlis that came to the BK centre's email address are secured with the PGP/GPG.
In 2002, I found the AIVV website in Polish and found out that there is an "Advanced Knowledge" I had no idea. I also had no idea of the AIVV existence so far! I was completely unaware of the big war between those to organizations in the BK movement, as we had never ever discussed that matter when I was a BK.
In 2005, after my Father's death, I dropped accidentally at the "bkwsuwatch.com" website and read about BK Ranjana's death. I was shocked. I couldn't believe what I was reading about!
In 2006 or 2007, I found the BKinfo and read more and more about the "dark side of the BKWSU", which I had just shyly suspected in the past but had no proof for that. I did not realize that it could be THAT bad. I felt sick and ****** off! It was also the time when I admitted to myself, very loudly, that I am a victim of a cult ... a mind controlling group.
Two years later, I registered in BK.info.
So, all these signs, that happened after my escape from the cult are, for me, enough proof that my escape from that madness of the cult of individuality, from the spiritualism, hypnosis, teaching people about extremely, unimaginable selfishness, and mind control, which they call Raja Yoga, was the best decision for me.
If I could haven't done this at that moment I had probably the one and only chance, you would probably reported about the suicides in Poland too, because I could succeed in committing a suicide eventually.
But would it have changed anything in the organization? I don't think so. They don't care about the people who suffer, of the members of their own family, like they call that society. To hell with a family like that!
End of the story.
27 May 2013