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proy

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whacko

Post08 Feb 2007

ex-l wrote:The woman was whacko ...

I have been thinking about this one, and another time I was told about my being inaccurate in a post. The thing is, this forum is my main source of information about the BKs. I had the rather odd experience, when I first read parts of this forum, of finding out more about the BKs in half an hour of reading stuff here than I had been told in a year of going to the BK centres. Then I had the even stranger, and frankly alarming experience of talking about what I had read here with other BKs. They did not know anything about most of the topics on here either. Some of them had been BKs for decades. I do not think they were lying, it seemed to me that they really did not know. I asked one Sister who had been a surrendered BK for 5 years what she thought about the 1976 destruction that did not happen. I am convinced that she had no idea what I was talking about.

So if I get things wrong occasionally then I apologise, but it is only by reading and posting here that I will learn. I could just read, and wait until I know everything before I post, but that could take forever considering the amount of information there is here.

So, ex-l, I am not too proud to be corrected, either on this or the other time you said I was being inaccurate. I will only learn if you tell me where I have gone wrong.
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ex-l

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Re: whacko

Post09 Feb 2007

Beam them up, Heidi - Remembering the Las Cañadas suicide sect scare
ex-l wrote:The woman was whacko ...

OK. I will eat humble pie too.

I was too fast and too hard with that remark. It was unfair on her and you.

When I saw Heidi Fittgau-Garthe she would be both going through the Honeymoon Phase AND being "lovebombed" - although the term and CONSCIOUS practise does not exist within the BKWSU - by the Seniors. During that period ... we all go a little mad, lose our grounding becoming "intoxicated". Older English people have prejudicial sanskars against perceived cranky Germans, so pass it via that filter too.

What I did feel was that right from the beginning, she did not really get Gyan or had her own spin on it - which was new at that time and we were all taking and teaching "The Hindi Course". Western BK service was in it "Golden Age" when we were, "all speaking a pure form of Hindi" and it was all very original. She seemed to be allowed extra privileges without following full principles because she had wordly status, like being able to incorporate Gyan into her expensive paid for psychological seminars. If I remember right, she was doing expensive psychological seminars for professional business people and so she might have been seminal in later BK developments.

Of the UFO cults stuff and the ISIS Center, I do not know the real story. Most of what we have is taken from anti-cult websites and tabloid reporting of that time. She was good news for a few days in the standard "whacky cult" mode following Heaven's Gate. A more recent review is below. It is said to be a stitch up by the daughter of a "follower" but has all the classic hallmarks of New Age cult dynamics. Read Stanley Cohen "Moral Panics"

Heide is still alive. It would be great if she could be found and invited to come on this forum to discuss her BKWSU experiences, why she left and what she learnt. It would probably take only a couple of phone calls via the local newspaper.
Tenerife News, Jan. 4, 2007 wrote:It is nine years to the week since Tenerife suddenly leapt to international prominence, swept the prime slots on all the 24 hour news services and hogged the front pages of a host of newspapers around the world. Bad news is good news in the media and Tenerife was hot news for all the wrong reasons as far as the tourism authorities were concerned that week in which the island became the focus for an unprecedented feeding frenzy.

The BBC report filed on January 8 1998 put it like this:

"Spanish police say they have prevented a possible suicide attempt by members of a cult based in Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands. The authorities in Tenerife say the 31 members of the cult, who are mainly British and German, were planning to commit suicide later today. Police have detained a German psychologist said to be the leader of the sect ..."

The garbled accounts of that strange night relied heavily on police reports with a good deal of imaginative hearsay and unconfirmed rumours thrown in for good measure.

The police issued a statement which said the general belief among the cult members was the world would end at 7 pm on January 8. They intended to gather in a pre-arranged spot in Las Cañadas, confident that a space ship would put down to collect them – once they had all committed suicide.

In the nick of time – or so the general public were led to believe – the police were tipped off and, in the early hours, a veritable army of state police in riot gear descended on the streets around an ordinary terraced building in the La Salud district of Santa Cruz. Dozens of people were taken into custody.

Among those detained was a German psychologist, Heidi Fittkau-Garthe, a ‘new-age’ figure believed to be the ringleader of the so-called sect. She was arrested and charged with organizing an alleged attempt of mass suicide.[...]

In the end Dr Fittkau-Garthe was detained in custody for twelve days before being released without charges. Since then she has kept a remarkably low profile, living in rustic simplicity on a finca in Arico, involving herself in esoteric studies, working for the Foundation for World Peace and growing lettuces.

Interviewed by a local daily some time ago, she told her interlocutor:

"The group was no sect and I have never worked in one. I was accused of planning the suicide of a group of friends who had merely come over to spend Christmas in Tenerife ...

“What actually happened in 1998 was the result of an act of a daughter’s vengeance on her mother who was one of the group. Six months before they had had an enormous family row and it was the daughter who contacted Interpol and told them her mother and another hundred people were in the mountains of Tenerife intending to commit mass suicide
."

The daughter, she said, had informed the authorities that the group was a destructive sect.

"What happened was terrible. And the worst of it all were the lies that were told concerning children.[...]

In the meantime there is a slim possibility the name of Heidi Fittkau-Garthe may surface in the media once again in the coming year: she is said to be trying to organize a peace rally to coincide with the Beijing Olympics.

It will be held in the mountains of Mongolia. High places still seem to hold a fatal fascination for the peace guru of Arico.

Source: Beam them up, Heidi - Remembering the Las Cañadas suicide sect scare, Tenerife News, Jan. 4, 2007.
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proy

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Re: whacko

Post09 Feb 2007

ex-l wrote:I was too fast and too hard with that remark. It was unfair on her and you.

No worries. I expect debate to be robust. My dilemna was whether I should educate myself by reading, and holding back a bit, or by posting and making mistakes. I think the latter is the better way for me and for readers of the posts, so I am OK with being corrected. In fact, if I take that method I will be relying on people who have been around longer than me to correct my mistakes.
ex-l wrote:When I saw Heidi Fittgau-Garthe she would be both going through the Honeymoon Phase AND being "lovebombed" - although the term and CONSCIOUS practise does not exist within the BKWSU - by the Seniors. During that period ... we all go a little mad, lose our grounding becoming "intoxicated".

Yep, been there, done that, got the badge. I realise now that I was as mad as a dunny rat, and used to live my life trying to please the Seniors. I was sick from the brainwashing. I have to accept that now, fool though it makes me feel.
ex-l wrote:Heide is still alive.

This was my big mistake. I remembered the newspaper story, well actually I saw it on the BBC web site. My memory was not 100% (seldom is) and I thought she actually had killed herself. Hence the roll of honour idea. I thought anyone depressed enough to take their own life must have had a BK induced illness.
ex-l wrote:It would be great if she could be found and invited to come on this forum to discuss her BKWSU experiences, why she left and what she learnt. It would probably take only a couple of phone calls via the local newspaper.

Good idea.
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ex-l

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Re: whacko

Post09 Feb 2007

proy wrote:My dilemna was whether I should educate myself by reading, and holding back a bit, or by posting and making mistakes.

Me too. If folks are made to be afraid to make mistakes it is the end of honest growth through asking.

But, at least, it is better to ask than make a statement.
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proy

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Re: whacko

Post09 Feb 2007

Interviewed by a local daily some time ago, she told her interlocutor: "[I]The group was no sect and I have never worked in one".

Oh, Really!
I was accused of planning the suicide of a group of friends who had merely come over to spend Christmas in Tenerife

Sounds like quite a party!
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proy

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Mail on Sunday

Post11 Feb 2007

I went to the shop to buy the Mail on Sunday today and when the man at the checkout passed the bar code through the computer he said the computer was asking for my ID. I had to be over 18 years old to buy the paper. This is the first time either I or the man in the shop has known there to be a lower age limit on buying a newspaper. Having convinced him I am over 18 I thought, well, there must be some hot news inside.

Don't get excited though. It was nothing about the BKs. Only a Joan Collins DVD. For a minute there I thought that my local newspaper shop had been visited by "White Saris". 8)

jann

friends or family of a BK

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Post11 Feb 2007

If we don't give anymore signs to the media, BK will never be in the paper or other media with some more bad news!

So go ahead sent some mails ? And keep the item HOT HOT HOT!! Tell the media about a brainwashing cult , that is interesting! Just send a email with this site ... that is a good start. TV shows, news. etc.
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proy

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Re: Daily Info

Post10 Jun 2007

proy wrote:There is an interesting discussion going on at Daily Info's Get Help for Anything Forum entitled "Brahma Kumaris meditation course - is it dangerous?". This is a link to it - www.dailyinfo.co.uk. I have done a search for it on this forum and I did not find any result from my search, so I assume no-one else has posted a link here. There is already a link to this forum on the Daily Info's Get Help for Anything Forum.

I posted this some time ago, when BK Karuna was posting on the Daily Info Forum. Re-visiting the site yesterday, I saw that Luis Riveros is now posting THERE under his own name (well down the list of pages, very recent posts). The link to this site that I posted there has been removed. Interesting reading again ...
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