Starlight

Scientific challenges to the beliefs promoted by the Brahma Kumaris so called "World Spiritual University"
  • Message
  • Author

Terry

ex-BK

  • Posts: 389
  • Joined: 04 Jan 2009
  • Location: OZ

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

This might belong more in the thread about "How did we fool ourselves into believing the Brahma Kumaris?" but anyway ... I got around the 5K year Cycle this way (har har) as I churned my buddhi to bits in '76 ...

1) no matter what the universe does, time still might be a linear thing, that's irrelephant you maharatis, but when souls return home to s\w they then incarnate first birth "back in time" like this:

We hop into the first body, reincarnate along the base line of time, then at "the end" pop out of time, to pop back in to the same first body, same time (imagine a triangle with Soul World at the apex△.

i.e. there is actually only one Kalpa that is experienced repeatedly, not infinite repeating ones, it's like a scratched record, the needle/soul jumps back again and again. So cosmological facts don't have to get in the way! Objective and subjective realities are both "true" Remember you heard it here first folks, my patent - conceived January 1976, copyright Ⓒ17th Feb 2009. Hands off you PBKs. (Hey, anyone want to join my splinter group?).

2) After visiting a Jain temple somewhere, was it near Indore? It had a statue of a Tirthankar, with mirrors on both sides, so you get the reflections going off into infinity. The thought came that life experience is one, but it "feels like" or is "as if" it repeats repeatedly, like these mirrors, or like echoes (always preferred Jain temples to the mainstream Hindu ones). Remember you heard it here first folks, my patent- conceived january 1976, copyright Ⓒ17th Feb 2009. Hands off you PBKs.(You can join via PM - send bank details including your PIN).

Had other ideas on this too, won't bore you any more - but you may remember I talked about how Dadi Janki refused to discuss Gyan with me after a few private sessions - well, these were a couple of the ideas I brought up. She reacted like I was offering her some roast pork that had been half-eaten by a feral dog from Ferozepur!
User avatar

ex-l

ex-BK

  • Posts: 10661
  • Joined: 07 Apr 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

terry wrote:Dadi Janki refused to discuss Gyan with me after a few private sessions ... She reacted like I was offering her some roast pork that had been half-eaten by a feral dog from Ferozepur!

Nah ... she just realised that,

    a) you did not have any money
    b) you were hooked anyway, and
    c) you were still discharging by all that LSD you took.
So there was no point in talking to you. As worthless as I think conceptualising things beyond any practical application ... reported widely elsewhere, the Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'.
The number of stars points to there being many rocky planets. There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard. Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms (whilst speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science).
User avatar

eromain

ex-BK

  • Posts: 110
  • Joined: 09 May 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

Postulating a series of infinitely and Identically repeating cycles is exactly the same as postulating that there is only one cycle. You are correct, but Terry you are going to get sued by Liebniz's heirs. He got there before you with "the identity of indiscernables" - if two things are truly indiscernable they are not two things - they are the same thing.

But whether there is one cycle or infinite you still have a cosmological problem at the end/beginning moment of it/them. Zillions of photons of light have to scrabble around getting magically from one part of space/time to another. Light that is older than 5k years disproves there being one cycle as much as it disproves infinite.

Another way of putting it is to say that a 5k cycle requires that the light hitting my eyes tonite from a star which is two hundred million light years away or whatever must simultaneously be precisely 5000 light years away and simultaneously 10, 000 light years away etc. It must be in these different places at the same time so that it can reach my eyes at the same moment each cycle. Or, there must be a giant reset button which sends it back to its starting position each cycle so that it only appears to have come from its source star -but actually never came from it.

Postulating a 5k cycle requires that nothing currently existing be more than 5k years old. Anything older than that by definition means there is no 5k cycle.

Terry

ex-BK

  • Posts: 389
  • Joined: 04 Jan 2009
  • Location: OZ

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

You are probably right about point c/ that you made ex-l ... but I can give some credit to the Tramalfadorians for inspiring these insights).

My dear eromain - Leibniz has been dead too long and is out of copyright!

I cannot believe I am entering into this discussion but ... The point of my first conjecture was: the light in your example can keep travelling for whatever billions of years it wants to, it's time line is its own.

The idea there was that, say, when you take the first of the 84 births, and look through your Sat Yugi telescope, you see the light particle entering the edge of the Andromeda galaxy. Then after 5,000 years of embodiment, the light is pretty much leaving that galaxy. When one returns to s\w, then starts again, it would subjectively experience the same light particle just entering the galaxy, exactly where it was last time, but in objective reality, in real time, the light has moved on into deep space. Next Kalpa, its experienced the same, but in real time the light has moved another 5,000 light years into deep space (which is how my tummy feels right now).

So, the reincarnating soul is "stuck" inside an endless loop that intersects with reality for a 5,000 year period, then leaves time/space continuum, then jumps in again at the same point it did last time. With such a view you need not worry about that beam of light, or the flag on the moon or voyager satellites. The universe could go through big bang after big bang, but timeless souls only ever experience that blink of a 5000 year eye! It' s a great way around those sensible questions with a totally unprovable hypothesis!

I don't watch that much TV, but for some reason, if there is a series of 12 episodes, I miss most of them, but when they are re-run I always seem to see the same 2 or 3 episodes I saw the first time. Proves The Cycle, huh? Does that happen to you? A theosophist said to me once (and he was into cyclic time) if the BK cycle of rebirth is 84 births in 5,000 years, its because they karmically set themselves up for that. All I could do was ask him what happens in that episode of Fawlty Towers that I keep missing.
User avatar

eromain

ex-BK

  • Posts: 110
  • Joined: 09 May 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

But light can only be seen when it reaches ones eyes, a telescope doesnt "see" light anywhere but on its lense. The light I see tonite either with the naked eye or a telescope is not anywhere out there, it is hitting my retina. If we see then it is light that we see, if the light we see is not really here, but elsewhere then we are just imagining.

And Liebniz is not dead he is just very old and very still. You should respect that. :-)

Terry

ex-BK

  • Posts: 389
  • Joined: 04 Jan 2009
  • Location: OZ

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

Now you are being pedantic.
User avatar

eromain

ex-BK

  • Posts: 110
  • Joined: 09 May 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

lol, by pedantic you mean correct right?

Terry

ex-BK

  • Posts: 389
  • Joined: 04 Jan 2009
  • Location: OZ

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

My turn
eromain wrote:a telescope doesn't "see" light anywhere but on its lens

What!!?? And the spelling!
User avatar

eromain

ex-BK

  • Posts: 110
  • Joined: 09 May 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

OK, OK put aside the spelling and the pedantry please and address the substance. If I am wrong tell me how. Call me sad, but I am interested in this stuff.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you, or maybe I am being even less clear than usual. I thought that you were distinguishing between where the light objectively gets to and our experience of it. My point was that the only place light can get to for us to experience it is in our eyeballs. If that is pedantic then obviously I have misunderstood you. I thought that by postulating the light moving off into deep space and yet me continuing to think I see it in each successive Kalpa you were leading us inevitably to solipsism. If the actual light no longer causes my image of it and yet I think I am seeing it, isnt this solipsism? And if this is true of this Kalpa wouldnt it have to be true of all previous kalpas - by which I mean we have to do away with any notion of real light altogether and just have consciousness endlessly replaying the same 5000 year long hallucination.

re the telescope, I realise that telescope's do not see that is why I quoted "see". What I meant is that a telescope receives light passively - the light hits it, so anything visible through a telescope must be located on its lens. And just as telescope's cannot reach out and grab light millions of miles away, nor can we. Anything we see is by definition located on our retina.

Me, pedantic? I take it as praise. :-)
User avatar

desi_exbk

ex-BK

  • Posts: 95
  • Joined: 06 Feb 2009

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

Looks like Eugene's goal is to hit atleast 9 pages on this thread :D. Hey, I am only helping.
User avatar

eromain

ex-BK

  • Posts: 110
  • Joined: 09 May 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

:-) Yeah, sorry.

It is exciting for me because I think starlight actually categorically proves one of the main pieces of BK knowledge cannot be true. Most such things are a matter of belief, personal choice etc but I think this is of a different order so I am keen to test it out on everybody here.
User avatar

joel

ex-BK

  • Posts: 529
  • Joined: 01 May 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

eromain wrote::-) Yeah, sorry. It is exciting for me because I think starlight actually categorically proves one of the main pieces of BK knowledge cannot be true.

Hi Eromain,

The starlight thing makes sense to me, appreciating as I do that the math and accumulated research by the astronomy/astrophysics people.

So do tree-ring dating, ice cores, carbon dating and much other evidence.

But when you're bonded with someone whose authority you accept, all that doesn't matter. You just listen to whatever mommy-figure and daddy-figure tell you is true. Scientists are lacking knowledge of the soul, they say, and argue that due to scientists being tainted by body-consciousness, they cannot untangle the nature of reality.

Jagdish helped the BK cause by making sustained (if not convincing) arguments against scientific consensus on issues relevant to BK cosmo-mythology. As long as followers believe there is some argument alive, they avoid conflicts on scientific issues, which they see as irrelevant to their sudden attainment of peace and enlightenment. Those attainments, to BKs, are proof of the superior status of BK knowledge.

Joel
User avatar

ex-l

ex-BK

  • Posts: 10661
  • Joined: 07 Apr 2006

Re: Starlight

Post17 Feb 2009

I once had a discuss with a Christian who told me that dinosaur bones were place as fossils in rocks by the devil in order to confuse and seed doubts in the minds of humanity (evolutionists). Most recently, I read that the position of the "theologians" had changed now and dinosaurs did exit in The Ark, only to have died out shortly afterwards.

No explanation was offered as to how Noah and his family inserted their bones into varying level or rocks on a global basis, nor how long it took give he had to do it all on foot. Nor how much an Ark was required to house them, (the Argentinosaurus huinculensis was 115-130 feet long and weighed 80-100 metric tons), nor how they kept the Tyrannosaurus Rex away from the sheep pens.

No need to explain why I use these examples of religious logic ... but I do remember BK Julian Boles, now Director General of the British Gemmological Institute in London, telling me how 2,500 years ago Indians were running around shooting them dead with high powered weaponry. Dinosaur bones ... gem stones ... there is an obvious connection here. Julian also reported receive personal help from the deceased Lekhraj Kirpalani in gaining his jewel stone qualifications.

I suggest The Cycle is indeed much shorter. Only 30 odd years. It starts when Terry starts dreaming of his Brahma Kumari experience in 1976, conceiving of his space-time continuums and engaging in this identically repeating conversation with Eroman, and it ends in 2009 when this forum finally cures him. Only for him to return to 1976 and it all start over again.

Or perhaps it all fits into an intense 4 hour LSD trip somewhere back in early 70s. Either way, would the rest of you please remember that you are only a manifestation of his inner being, elements of his personality that he cannot experience during normal consciousness. Please behave as if you were part of him and do not disagree ... otherwise this discussion might go on eternity. Wow, it is so hard to tell apart reality from illusion, man, but look at the pretty colors!!!

On a serious note, funnily enough, conversations such as this are repeated ad nuseum, and for no practical purpose, across the Brahma Kumari movement as adherents struggle to convince themselves enough to believe. Please see the other topic, How did we fool ourselves into believing the Brahma Kumaris?.

To the early Sindis, the majority of Hindis, and even BK supporter and author Liz Hodgkinson, none of this matters and what God tells is logical and must be true. to beleive it is true is a sign of faith and rewarded y the leadership. To question it, as terry did as a young, enthusiastic BK is punished and censored. No explaination of how the cosmos works applies. Stars are mere "lights in the sky" to enhance "The Drama" because Baba says so. Nuclear war in the West, civil war in India, the continents sink and, bingo, heaven on earth with golden palaces, nuclear power and flying machines.

What do we suspect? That "God's creation", or the recoiled state of perfection in "Drama" included light that "apparently" looks like it has come from a star 200 million light years ago ... but, in fact, only started, created and hanging magically in space, at the last 5,000 year light year point. That is to say ... light must have been produced and created 199,995,000 light years away from its actual or apparent source.

What can I say? Its logical, is not it ...

    Light was created out of darkness in order to confuse and seed doubts in the minds of humanity.
Put that metaphor in your hash pipe and smoke it.

Terry

ex-BK

  • Posts: 389
  • Joined: 04 Jan 2009
  • Location: OZ

Re: Starlight

Post18 Feb 2009

Ah, ex-l , nice! You got me laughing! anyway, what year is this again?

I heard it was God, not Satan, who planted the fossil record, to "test" the believers. Some would argue they are one and the same - or "Brothers' as the Zoroastrians would have it.

eromain - I am not trying to debate the 'truth" of The Cycle. Last thing I'd want to do is convince someone it actually happens that way! I was merely sharing a concept I used at the time, that allowed for the physical scientific view to coexist with the Gyan, and was impossible to disprove.

Leave aside the light thingy - too complicated to talk about (time taken from actual event until it reaches the eye that sees the event, etc). Let's leave light speed and come back to a human scale - let's look at the Voyager space probe, something we know about but cannot see. Launched in 1977, it has left the solar system. It's travelling at 3 AU a year (1 AU is the distance of earth to Sun - and here in Sydney, you cannot even get into a taxi for 3 AU).

In 5,000 years, based on an objective clock, it will be the year 6977, and Voyager will actually be 15,000 AU away, but in that new Kalpa experience, the reincarnated "yadavas" will be launching it FOR THE FIRST (AND ONLY) TIME. It is only ever launched once. All of this is referred to in the famous documentary, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979).

The Tramalfadorians see time like we see a landscape. Billy Pilgrim, after his encounter with them experienced life like a needle jumping around randomly on a record. (Which brings us back to D'oh! - Fate vs Destiny vs Freewill)
eromain wrote:Call me sad

I don't want to, but as you wish - "you are sad".
User avatar

eromain

ex-BK

  • Posts: 110
  • Joined: 09 May 2006

Re: Starlight

Post18 Feb 2009

We shall never know how we would have reacted if it was pointed out to us how contentious, dodgy, unlikely, contradictory or downright impossible a lot of the BK knowledge actually is. We lived in an extremely mono-cultural enviroment in which other points of view were so rubbished that we quickly forgot about them. And it was this rather than any personal desire for self delusion which led to me being fooled by the BKs.

I, personally, reject the phrasing, "how did we fool ourselves into believing the Brahma Kumaris". That is a bit like asking, "how did we fool ourselves into believing there were weapons of mass destruction". The truth is we didnt, we were fooled. To believe in something which turns out not to be true should not be assumed to be self-delusion. I didnt delude myself into believing in WMDs, I watched Colin Powell at the UN with his photos which apparently demonstrated them.

Likewise with the BKs, I didnt fool myself, I was fooled.

If one of the purposes of this site is to help others with information we could have well used then I think that the documenting of these different types of errors or falsehoods or mistakes or whatever you want to call them - these numerous ways in which the BKs were/are wrong is a valuable part of that.

The BKs are wrong about so many things, in so many ways. And certainly some are more important than others. And I agree that logical mistakes are perhaps not the most crucial failures they are guilty of. Probably their moral failures are the most important, and it is correct that this site attends to those the most.

They have organisational failings, intellectual failings, social, political, psychological, legal etc etc. They have got a lot of things wrong. And in amongst these various categories of mistakes is this starlight thing which I think is a logical mistake - logical in the sense that the idea never made sense (in this universe at least) in the first place.

I cant help wondering if there is a couple of nerdy little BKs somewhere for whom this particular revelation might save them a couple of wasted years.
PreviousNext

Return to Scientific questions for BKs