Other modalities of meditations/philosophies you like

We all live our lives based on our knowledge, perception and insights ... we may differ in our beliefs based on our experiences but we all have a right to live according to our beliefs .. the beauty of life enfolds when we live and let live harmoniously.

It sounds like you are also very sensible and have your feet on the ground. Indeed, you even sounds like a 'high flyer' type professionally. I congratulate you on that sincerely. You are far more sensible than I was when I "surrendered" to the Brahma Kumaris.

I mean that, I am not flattering or patronising you. However, I suspect you encountered the BKs first at an older age than I did ... and that BKism is in a more "refined" form than it was in my day.

However, I would be a little concerned - on past track record - that the BKs are treating you in a preferential manner because of your professional/familial background (i.e. potential of big donations) and not telling you their real beliefs, as that is their habit.

Your views are more positive and hopeful than the BKs' but your own, not theirs!

The BKs have never portrayed their god spirit's prediction of "Destruction" as simply a potential. It has always been an absolute and unavoidable conclusion. There's no schism between the BKs and PBKs in this matter. I don't think it's fair to portray the PBKs as "meditating for destruction" and the BKs "meditating for transformation" ... that's just a recent marketing device that started in the BK West.

"Destruction" lost them followers, supporters, and credibility in public ... it made them appear like a crazy End of the World cult (which they are) ... so they remarketed it externally - and dishonestly - as "Transformation" to outsiders. It means the same ... the death of 7 billion humans, nuclear war, sinking of all continents etc.

Think of the impossible of all the continents in the world except India sinking below the oceans and how much disturbance that would cause to weather, to ocean currents, to the tectonic plates etc ... and it still would not resolve all the problems, e.g. how to deal with all the metals we have sent into space etc.

The "divine intervention through ShivBaba" is not one that avoids the destruction of humanity, it is the intervention that causes it, e.g. he says, "I come to destroy all other religions" etc.

FYI, the Law of Attraction concept is not new, nor Abraham Hicks's originally (nor a law). It has its roots in the 19th century 'New Thought' movement, e.g. "believing makes it so", including figures like Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) author or 'Think and Grow Rich' or William Walker Atkinson's (1862-1932) 'Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World' (dated 1906) and women like Florence Shovel Shinn (1871 - 1940) 'The Game of Life and How to Play It' (Your Word Is Your Wand etc).

I think you'll like her work. She deserves more credit than gets these days and has been largely forgotten. She belongs to a much purer, much less commerical time. Many of the modern mediums are just recycling old material and making a fortune from selling books, courses and readings to curious people, like you.

My time is short today, so I will re-read your posts and reply later.

If we accept the "50 years rule" then we have probably have an extra 100 years, e.g. 50 years off 4 yuga ... but I don't believe in the BKs 5,000 years and simple imagery. I just wanted to point out how much the BKs accept without thinking or questioning ... which is *precisely* what Dadi Janki tells them to do, "Don't think or don't questioning".

Thank you. More later ...

... we may differ in our beliefs based on our experiences but we all have a right to live according to our beliefs ...

I don't think we do.

I think those of us living the modern, Westernised world have the *liberty* to belief what we want ... but that we have a responsibility to constantly check and refine our belief system to ensure it is as objective true as possible.

Everyone wants rights these day, few are willing to uptake the responsibilities that go with and earn those liberties.

For me, the BK leadership - like many religious leaders - are just those who cannot admit publicly that their beliefs have failed and are erroneous, and cannot move on because selling them is how they earn their food.

I suppose your view is rooted in a pluralistic Hindu world view. Not all Hindus are. Some are rigid, fundamentalist and patriarchal ... "you think and do what I say".

BKism presents itself as pluralistic in public, saying things like, "take what you want, or whatever works for you" ... but such an idea is also new and borrowed from the West/New Age. Their core is still very rigid, fundamentalist and patriarchal ... "what Baba say is true, everyone else is false, all other religions are degraded, none lead to salvation or liberation, do what he says ... Do not even follow your own mind".

For me, that last part is the greatest danger and the danger within any spirit medium movement. Instead of developing your own mind, your own intuitions, your own connections, learning your own lessons ... you are encouraged to give them up and trust in the spirit guide/s.

Unlike any human being, the spirit guide/s are non-physical and consequently unaccountable for their mistakes and screw ups. You cannot sue a spirit guide if they screw up your life, nor hang them up on the near tree!

Manmat is all about not resorting to evildeeds to fulfil our carnal desires, it doesn't mean do not follow your mind. In fact, meditation itself is 'buddhiyog', i.e. connect to ShivBaba through intellect, i.e. may be contemplating about ShivBaba's gun (virtues), gnan & shakti (power) - remembering that we are also points of light like him so can become like him by purifying our sanskars-thought patterns and instincts in his remembrance and radiating the energy of bliss, knowledge, peace, love, happiness, purity and power. 'Manmanabhav' is about deliberately engaging our mind in contant remembrance so that our lower instincts are easily identified compared to benchmark seed stage of soul - from this seed arises sprouts of benevolence and benediction (sadashiv always kalyankari hain).

We all interpret based on our conditioning, context & personal bias ... so there is always variation.

I found your posts very rich in logic, facts and reason, so not sure I can match your standard, but just an attempt ...

In many posts, I found your words having subtle, toxic and sometimes even blatant critisism, but I felt you were kind to me, thank you for that, I have liked and earnt a lot from all of your posts but my favorite post was about sakshatkars/visions other BKs got when you were conducting meditation, also I have read somewhere that you were identified as 108 so your insights were very valuable to me, thanks again for your time and posts.

Thanks for the high flyer compliment. Yes, I am ambitious and believe in the concept of blessings doing wonders so please bless me.

What is your profession, seems you are unmarried after leaving BK org (I am a great fan of you and read many of your posts back in 2012, I read others got married like mr. green and some others but I felt you were single. I also wanted to 'surrender' to BKs but my parents were very adamant so I couldn't surrender, got married ~1.5yrs before and have a 9 month old kid now. It's never late to get married and you can always adopt kids if you feel like having kids or can go for surrogacy. I mean, I feel its good if a legend like you passes on their genes .. since you were there with BK surrendered during failed prediction ~1980 you might be in your sixteys now. It is just my concern due to my personal experience of prefering an unmarried life after BK life .. the influence is indeed very strong ... sorry if this is a bit personal but I have a genuine curiosity.

No kids (but not in 60s yet). I live alone ... but I have adopted 3 street cats in the last few years! Actually, I adopted two, one adopted me. One died but had a much longer and better life than if I had left it to starve in the graveyard it had been dumped to die.

I don't think genes are an efficient way to pass on whatever I have might ... so I pass on my memes instead. I was damaged very badly by the idea of Destruction being in 1986, and then 1986 to 1996. It destroys a logical, rational approach to planning one's life, having children and relationships, further education etc. We were encouraged to act as if the End of the World was no more than two to three years was the Shrimat we were given and I think I got stuck in that loop long after I had left the BKWSU.

Imagine ... 30 years ago and still no Destruction. They never told us about the 1976 Destruction generation, let alone the 1950 generation. They have stolen lives from 10,000s of people. Literally generations.

And please downgrade me from "108 status" immediately!!! Oh, how much the BKs would laugh at that ... I must be on their list of '108 top demons' by now. I don't think I ever was ... and there are far too many iconoclasts on this forum to allow me to stand on a pedestal like that!

Funnily enough though, I was thinking today about how a "high spiritual status", according to ShivBaba's terminology, could only be achieved by rejecting orthodox BKism and the control or the BKWSU leadership ... by taking back one's own power and finding one's own path.

In Western BKism, "manmat" is defined simply as "the dictates/directions of one's own mind". Perhaps we were taught a wrong superficial definition of it? Is that a BK view you wrote, your own enlightened view, or a general Hindu one?

Western BKs come from different backgrounds to Indian BKs and have different mentalities ... some from Catholic, others from Protestant/Puritan background. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

I think many Indian BKs are luckly to "believe and not believe" at the same time, whereas for Westerner it is more absolutist, "believe or not believe". This might be based on our Christian cultural heritage, or based on the influence of Janki Kirplani ... I don't know.

if u r in ur 50s, please give a thought about marriage, u'll definetely find a compatible partner(beleive in law of attraction)...
finally our contributions both verbal and non verbal(vibrations, angelic stage, good wishes) contribute to our rank, we never know how much change we brought to the world so its always good to have a high aim

what r ur thoughts about Shankar..

1. Manmat, and
2. what are your thoughts about Shankar ..

All these terms need clear definition and agreement of how they are to be understood and discussed, otherwise conversations go nowhere.

A term like manmat obviously means something different to a native speaker of most Indian languages than to a westerner, then it means something else to a follower of a teaching where the teacher instructs students what it ”really” means.

I have developed a major interest in etymology - understanding a word by chasing back its change of usage to its origins.
”Man” we all know is ”mind” - a second order noun naming the process of creating ”meaning” from perceptions, i.e. many ”nouns” are actually names for activities and processes. ”Meaning” is old English and German (meanan) for what arises in mind in response to something (”What does that mean to you?”).

In fact, modern physicists are concluding that there are no ”things”, no objects, therefore no nouns. Every thing is a process, everything is undergoing change, we merely consider something a nameable object because it is slow changing. What difference other than time frame is there between a mountain and a ripple on the ocean? One is a slow rise and fall of the earth’s surface, the other a rise and fall on the ocean. Even the word ”thing” has ironically become a shorthand for ”object” when it comes form an Icelandic/Norse word for a point of debate in the Icelandic parliament. An ”issue” is an abstract - for soemthing which emerges from ... the language is filled with tricky metaphors.

The way of seeing it (the mountain, the ripple, the subatomic event, whatever) is the” Mat” - literally the same root as our term ”matrix” > metre > measure. By what parameters are we viewing things, are we viewing it in terms of classical or quantum physics, chemistry, aesthetic response, social implication, epistimology or ontology?

Believing anything is by definition manmat. Deciding how we will consider something is manmat. Giving something the status of "sri mat” is still ”man mat”. If you try to go to any such "unpacking" with senior BKs, they tell you not to. Like ex-l said, Dadi Janki especially and most others will say, "stop thinking and questioning, just remember Baba". They usually say that when they are incapable of taking the conversation outside their narrow cult definitions.

So to Shankar. The question is - which Shankar?

The name has changed meaning over the centuries and even today, changes meaning according to who is using it and for what purpose. Within the BKs it has a certain meaning, which they can take to a certain number of different levels and will discuss within those parameters, within their ”matrix" . Outside the BKs, Tantric hinduism, for example, sees Shankar very differently, and that has changed over the centuries too.

To say ”what are your thoughts about Shankar?” is like asking ”what are your thoughts about Hermes?” (or Odin, or Leonardo’s 'Mona Lisa', or the figure of Karna in the Mahabharata).

I’ll ask you Sukhshmbindi - what are your thoughts about symbols and archetypes?

Thank you for your response. Actually, I am a fan of you also and another Avyakt Brother. I would read posts of all three of you. In your posts, my favorite was about label and its effects on the content say sugar, you wrote does it make a difference if the same word is written in different languages, i.e. how many languages can the sugar read. That was classic.

In fact, the language does effect the content since same word in different languages is associated with different vibration due to difference in vibration of that culture.

When I was regularly reading Murlis, in my early BK days, I was always surprised that there was a lot of description about Brahma and his role in establishment of Yagya (BK mission) which is played by Brahma Baba; and good enough reference to Vishnu being the symbol of Satyug, where both shri lakshmi and shri Narayan are portrayed in a combined form of four shoulders of Vishnu implying equal importance to both genders in that age and the governance being shared by both.

Also reference to Vishnu puri tells it is abode of dieties and Brahma puri abode of angels, but no reference to Shankar puri. During Bhog sandesh, the trance messengers go to Brahma puri, does Gulzar Dadi go to Brahma puri while channeling Avyakt Murlis, and sakshatkars/visions are from vishnupuri (my assumption) - is vishnupuri not just about golden & Silver Age dieties or other Hindu dieties like hanuman, vaishnomata, durga also reside there, i.e. the energetic forms of our soul stage symbolically stored there?

But there is almost no reference to Shankar except for the line 'Shankar has no role'.

In Hindu mythology, Shankar is associated as always in penance stage (semi closed eyes), third eye, burning of love god manmadha (cupid), arthnareeshwar (body half-male & half-female), natraj (great dancer), pralay tandav (dance of destruction), bhola Shankar (easily pleased and giver of great boons), living on kailsh parvath covered with ice, ganga from his hair locks, crescent moon on his forehead, smeared in ash, roaming in smashaan (graveyard), bhootnaath (king of devils/evil spirits), neelkanth (navy blue throat due to intake of poison which came out during Sakar manthan [churning of ocean]), white in complexion, wearing tiger skin, snake as garland around neck, wearing rudraksh, trishul (trident), dhamaruk, nandi his vaahan (vehicle), three horizontal vibhuti (ash) lines on his forehead ... will describe in detail soon ...

In Murlis, Baba refers to a bhagawatgita quote, 'kaam maha shatru hain' meaning lust is the greatest evil and always told five vices namely lust, anger, greed, attachment, ego are our enemies portrayed symbolically as 10 headed Ravan with five heads of woman and five heads of man, i.e. the presence of 5 vices in both genders is the cause of grief so our purusharth-efforts should be to kill ravana, i.e. kill the vices in us, but not to kill the people infected with vices.

Similarly destruction of old world is destruction of vices in old world hence he says 'pahle stapna phir vinaash', i.e. first establishment of divinity which will automatically destroy the evil tendencies in us since the slogan has always been 'world transformation through self transformation' and being swadarshan chakradhari, i.e. attention towards observing self and transforming self through efforts ... so I believe Baba never intended us to destroy others.

In fact, in one Avyakt Murli ~2008, he said never condemn/think negative of others - it becomes 'shraap' (curse) to them instead have goodwishes and blessings towards them which will help them in their progress and transformation ... it has always been removing darkness through light but not about destroying people in darkness or elements in darkness ... I personally beleive transition into Golden Age can be smooth and harmonic without the need of cataclysms and wars (both civil & nuclear) if we all live in love.

what are your thoughts about Shankar.

I was not sure whether you meant the BK concept of Shankar, or the leader of the PBKs who I believe is sometimes called Shankar. I think "Shankar Party" is an insult invented by the BK leaders for the AIVV. I am not a student of theirs nor I do know the complete history of the schism. Let's ignore him for just now.

From an (ex-) BK point of view, it's an interesting question. I would say the most truthful answer is we really did not know and it was not discussed much, therefore any memory or impression I have is likely to be based on my own manmat ( ha).

I think the way we saw it was as symbolic of the human soul, fully realised (or as the BKs would say "purified" and soul conscious), stripped of all body consciousness - hence his symbolic nakedness - and in the highest realm (or as I guess you would say "vibrational" region) of the Subtle Regions. Shankar Puri they called it.

A "spirit world" where souls did not even have ghostly or angelic bodies.

We used to teach "The Trimurti" as a lesson in my day even to Westerners ... "Destruction of Old Vicious World through Shankar" with Lekhraj Kirpalani's face on the naked yogi's body. Quote-unquote ... "God Shiva gets destroyed this vicious, irreligious, unlawful, violent world, called hell by atomic world war of Mahabharat fame, for bestowing mukti".

Originally the BKs were confused about the spirit beings they encountered in trance and mediumship and thought they were separate being. Perhaps they are. I don't know if they thought "Shankar" was a separate being or a part of Lekhraj Kirpalani. I am really sorry, I don't know the history of that development.

I think largely, it was just them co-opting Hinduism and putting their face upon it literally. It was just re-marketing. "Correcting" ... aka branding ... the common religious symbol of "Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva" to "Brahma, Vishnu and Shankar".

Funnily enough, they've even legally trademarked the Trimurti now.

I suppose having chosen the name of Shiva for god around 1955, they have to come up with a new and unique explanation for the "Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva" or "Shiv-Shankar" mythology to avoid confusing.

I am most interested to find out how and when they chose the name of Shiva as it is the biggest secret or lie they tell. (To lie about god is surely the worst lie, no?).

If we can stick to the BK interpretation ... I would say the way it, and Shankar's "destructive" power was interpreted in the BK West, was as a concept of spiritual purity and intensity bringing about Destruction by a sort of counter effect. Not directly pressing the button for the Nuclear bombs.

However, it may have just been whitewashing for the West, as the early evidence showed they *did* directly encourage the military marshalls to carry out Destruction, and elsewhere they still talk about inspiring and "giving courage to the scientists" to use the nuclear weapons.

In the 1970s posters it actually says, "I get the most part of the Iron-Aged, irreligious world destroyed through Shankar by goading Yadvas (i.e. the scientists of Europe etc) and Kaurvas (the body-conscious people of Bharat).

"Goading" is a pretty strong term ... since whitewashed to "inspire" or "give courage to" ... now some subtle New Agey "Transformation". It means, "provoke or annoy so as to stimulate an reaction, e.g. to goad someone into a fight". With Lekhraj Kirpalani's face on their "subtle deity" as the BKs call him.

Perhaps Sister Jayanti re-interpreted goading to inspring for us? One would have to go back to the original Murli transcription to see what words were used.

I think we saw "the Shankar stage" at the highest one could reach before entering the Soul World ... all body consciousness having been burned away in the fire of Yoga.

What do they tell you it means now?

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... the slogan has always been 'world transformation through self transformation'

... I personally beleive transition into Golden Age can be smooth and harmonic without the need of cataclysms and wars (both civil & nuclear) if we all live in love.

Firstly, the slogan has absolutely not "always been" 'world transformation through self transformation'. That's a relative new one.

Secondly, you may personally believe in smooth transition but it's ABSOLUTELY not what the BKs teach and have been teaching ... except as a facade to outsiders recently. And that influence has come from the BK West, for whom Destruction was a great obstacle to promoting the religion.

It is possible, however, with the likely failure of Destruction predictions yet again, that the BKs are remarketing themselves in this way at present.

I gave you one example about. If you read the earlier publicity, Lekhraj Kirpalani and Om Radhe very specifically encouraged the Military marshall to carry out physical destruction, and that kind of ranting went throughout the 70s and 80s by which time ShivBaba had been introduced as the chief god spirit.

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A little knowledge of Hinduism's history would be useful. Just as the Roman's did with Christianity, so did various Hindu rulers do with numerous different local and tribal gods ... bundling them all up into one god in order to pacific and unite people, and make them easier to control.

The figure of Shiva as we know him today was built up over time, with the ideas of many regional sects being amalgamated into a single figure. How the persona of Shiva converged as a composite deity is not well documented.

According to Vijay Nath:

Visnu and Siva ... began to absorb countless local cults and deities within their folds. The latter were either taken to represent the multiple facets of the same god or else were supposed to denote different forms and appellations by which the god came to be known and worshipped. ... Siva became identified with countless local cults by the sheer suffixing of Isa or Isvara to the name of the local deity, e.g., Bhutesvara, Hatakesvara, Chandesvara."

Nowadays, the old gods have been replaced by Fortune 500 companies.