Free Speech wrote:Are all brahmakumaris (teachers) virgin?
No. Dadi Janki for one had a child (whom she abandoned, left with someone else to care for, and it later died apparently). The ”sex is evil, body conscious, worst thing any person could do” not only curses each BK’s parents but also means that a hypocritical glorification of virginity has to take place. This false moralising on this basic human instinct for sex and relationship (and the spiritual evaluation of what people eat - another basic instinct - as satto or tamo etc) gives power and control.
In direct opposition to the BK values and goals are the concept of a pluralistic, secular, democratic society celebrating personal liberties, freedom of expression, personal responsibility, the rule of law, redistribution of wealth to minimise inequality, basing education on historical facts, mathematics and the sciences, and the other things social democracies value.
BKs value and work to create a world based on established hierarchy and monarchy, not democracy.
They give regard those who practice
their morality and see others' moral values and ethics as inferior (lokik). They give regard to those who surrender their personal liberties to serve the organisation, who give over personal responsibility and authority to the BK hierarchy and take instructions from them. They give most regard to those who also give over their wealth. They disregard those who question and they will defame critics and whistleblowers, only responding responsibly when forced to..
They believe in their own caste system, i.e. they have, with a word (and in their own minds) usurped the caste born Brahmin to make themselves ”true Brahmin. They call democracy ”the blind leading the blind”.
They use the law only when it serves them otherwise they too will cheat, bribe and circumvent it when it suits them, even encourage petty theft if it is for ”service” (I heard this myself from a most senior ‘Brother’).
They will ignore even much of their own professed values including ”equality under god” to give favour to the rich or famous while treating dedicated BKs from poor backgrounds badly. (If you are rich and become a BK and follow all the codes, you will be given good positions and placements with senior BKs etc and have influence. Same if you are rich and not a BK. A poor, working class lifelong dedicated Indian BK however ... is taken full advantage of and treated menially.
Science is mistaken, the scriptures are more reliable references for knowledge - but not always. But if a BK child can use secular education to rise in society to become ”serviceable ” i.e. able to make contacts in society for PR purposes, they are encouraged o do so.
Finances are not publicly disclosed. They claim to be a "religion” to gain charity status in some countries, but not a religion when they publicise themselves. They claim to be an educational institution, a ”university" no less, but don't come close to fulfilling the legal requirements to be called that. They don’t even have a library, except for their own publications which they sell.
You’d expect a ”spiritual University” which is supposed to teach the true history and geography of the world (as they claim) to have a library with copies of Plato’s dialogues, the Dhammapadda & Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, Patanjali’s Yoga sutras, a history of Western philosophy, the Koran and Hadith, the Tao Te Ching and Analects of Confucius. Not one non-BK book. But most BKs, including most of the teachers, have never heard of these, let alone teach them "comparatively” or as alternate views of the world.
What they understand is based on what their founder knew, a bit of Gita, a bit of Koran, a bit of Guru Grantha, some Jainism i.e. a parochial view from 1930s Sindh. The rest of the world is irrelevant.
Instead, they beleive that Lekhraj is not only Prajapati (later Prajapita) Brahma but in his 'next life’ becomes also both Krisna AND Narayan, AND KIng Vikramajit in his 22nd incarnation etc - the fairy tales the delusions of grandeur are transmitted to needy followers who ”sense" they are more special than the rest of humanity.
Is this awful? Maybe not, but it ain’t right.