TB Death at centre: PBKs face abuse allegations

From: 'Life stories' by Larena, 24 Jul 2012

I spent over 2 years in a PBK center and approximately 8 years as a student in PBK. What I saw in PBK centers and what I experienced as a PBK student dramatically destroyed my life, my family and any faith in God which I ever had in my heart. I followed directions given me by Baba completely blindly without a single doubt that what he orders is sacred.

Results are shocking for myself; almost deadly disease experienced during a stay in a PBK center due to carelessness of Sisters, managers and Baba's orders, split in my family, loss of job, loss of qualifications, loss of money, loss of health (due to serious overdose of medicines directed by Baba's doctor), loss of sense of life.

One thing left a particularly serious stigma with me - I witnessed how PBKs, directed by Baba, lied. They caused a death of a surrendered Sister (a young, approximately 18 year old girl from Calcutta area), because they treated her TB by fasting. When she died, the local doctor stating her death (a PBK Brother, who also worked in an important Indian hospital), cried furiously at those Sisters in the center, shouting at them and asking them how they would explain this to the girl's parents, how they would explain that they treated her serious deseas by fast and never took her to a hospital?

That doctor expected the worst; police, a trial ... when the Father of that girl came to take part in a ceremony of burning the body, the official delegation from the center, elected by Baba to meet that Father, swore that the dead girl received the best treatment from the best doctors and hospitals in India. Baba certified their words.

I was present in those meetings and heard all those words. I was so shocked that I couldn't eat for few days. I was also scared. Four years passed and till today I cannot recover. I tried to go back to a normal life and work. I took part in a humanitarian work, but I cannot recover.

Those people starved a surrendered girl who suffered from tuberculosis and hide everything. Then they called it "Shrimat", God's law.

Can we really lock the Brahma Kumaris in a nutshell merely by talking about; abuse, misconduct, corruption, mismanagement ..etc, or by deconstructing the fragile and vulnerable ideology and philosophy of BK cult ..??

"... by their fruit you will know them".

I think to someone that has been hooked by the BKs, no philosophical argument will awaken them. I don't think people fall for The Knowledge (I think, in the West, BKs don't even really believe in it all or find it a bit of an embarrassment).

They fall for the experience which, to some, is very deep and intoxicating, at least to begin with.

People say that the PBKs are made up mainly of disaffected BKs. BKs that have had some bad experience in the BKWSU but still want to believe and live the lifestyle. Their leader Virendra Dev Dixit offers a different interpretation of The Knowledge and they try to make sense of all the apparent ambiguities and contradictions and they still defend it as being "The Truth" 100%.

It's just that they believe God speaks through the mediumship of Virendra Dev Dixit now.

In such instances, perhaps it is good for them to look at and ask why, if this is God, such failures happen. Perhaps a basic human reasonableness can be re-awoken through disgust at someone so obviously wrong ... like lying to parents why their daughter died.

However, one needs to be careful. Their are some in the BKs who are livid at the PBKs and a very ungodly war of disinformation and accusation has been used them for nearly 40 years.

According to the BK "God" and The Knowledge, the BK family is one and yet here it is ... split in two. According to the BK philosophy, this cannot happen, they are the only pure religion from which all other religions are inspired. And yet, here they just like all other religion splitting into schisms.

The PBK situation interests me because it also highlights how the BKWSU leadership desires a total monopoly over their faith and does not tolerate dissenters and even reformers. One could argue that Virendra Dev Dixit was at least a reformer, trying to take the BK back to its roots ... if only another fallible human being. On the other hand, you could just say he is another broken victim who has gone a little mad and has become the BK's madness projecting himself at Lekhraj Kirpalani's successor and the current medium of God ... or someone that saw a chance to set up his own gurudom by mirroring the BKs' model.

We've covered the BK philosophy so many times. There is so little to it that all that is left is to keep documenting the terrible and stupid things they do in order to warn overs and give them a complete, non-PR impression of the cultic religion. The BKs are good at PR and bad at covering up what goes on inside.

"... by their fruit you will know them".

I think to someone that has been hooked by the BKs, no philosophical argument will awaken them. I don't think people fall for The Knowledge (I think, in the West, BKs don't even really believe in it all or find it a bit of an embarrassment).

They fall for the experience which, to some, is very deep and intoxicating, at least to begin with.

People say that the PBKs are made up mainly of disaffected BKs. BKs that have had some bad experience in the BKWSU but still want to believe and live the lifestyle. Their leader Virendra Dev Dixit offers a different interpretation of The Knowledge and they try to make sense of all the apparent ambiguities and contradictions and they still defend it as being "The Truth" 100%.

It's just that they believe God speaks through the mediumship of Virendra Dev Dixit now.

In such instances, perhaps it is good for them to look at and ask why, if this is God, such failures happen. Perhaps a basic human reasonableness can be re-awoken through disgust at someone so obviously wrong ... like lying to parents why their daughter died.

However, one needs to be careful. Their are some in the BKs who are livid at the PBKs and a very ungodly war of disinformation and accusation has been used them for nearly 40 years.

According to the BK "God" and The Knowledge, the BK family is one and yet here it is ... split in two. According to the BK philosophy, this cannot happen, they are the only pure religion from which all other religions are inspired. And yet, here they just like all other religion splitting into schisms.

The PBK situation interests me because it also highlights how the BKWSU leadership desires a total monopoly over their faith and does not tolerate dissenters and even reformers. One could argue that Virendra Dev Dixit was at least a reformer, trying to take the BK back to its roots ... if only another fallible human being. On the other hand, you could just say he is another broken victim who has gone a little mad and has become the BK's madness projecting himself at Lekhraj Kirpalani's successor and the current medium of God ... or someone that saw a chance to set up his own gurudom by mirroring the BKs' model.

We've covered the BK philosophy so many times. There is so little to it that all that is left is to keep documenting the terrible and stupid things they do in order to warn overs and give them a complete, non-PR impression of the cultic religion. The BKs are good at PR and bad at covering up what goes on inside. Until we came long, the general impression of the BKs was completely controlled by them and even academics had swallowed the whitewash.

Re: Life stories by Larena » 25 Jul 12

I am not Indian. I come from CE Europe. I used to be a BK before becoming a PBK. My experience with BKs were bitter. They caused many problems in my life. They tried to defame me even in front of my husband. When I came to PBKs I thought that I really found God. I was ready to do everything exactly what God said. He – Baba in PBKs – speaks in a specific way. Of course, he doesn’t force to do anything but he shows certain choices, decisions in such a way that someone who wouldn’t do what he says may feel that he is worse. I felt like this.

I can’t describe all cases, but I can give you examples. For example eating food prepared by someone else or touching each other or woman working in the world. He taught that we shouldn’t eat food prepared by someone else or we shouldn’t hug each other or that a woman shouldn’t work, the work is a slavery. He taught these things in such a way using such words that I had feeling that if I let my husband touch me or if I continue to work or if I eat food prepared by my husband I will become inferior, bad, sinful.

I wanted to follow all directions. So these and other directions were sacred for me. Of course these examples which I gave might sound silly to many people. But what I want to say is that all these small things make life, make a family. And if one day someone changes the rules of marriage like I did following God’s directions, he may expect the same from the partner. My husband suffered a lot when I didn’t let him even hug me. A hug – a simple expression of human cordiality!

Baba spoke very bad about working in lokik. His words were so sharp and full of disdain for the work in the world. After listening to him I couldn’t work normally any more. At work I felt like in a schizophrenic grip. So I decided to spend time in the center in India. I discovered there after some time that most of people living there were somehow incapable in life. Girls and women mostly hated studying, school and work and they repeated that Baba made them free from all that. They could spend days doing nothing sitting closed in the center.

Lack of fresh air, lack of balanced physical effort, lack of proper intellectual effort, lack of greenery, lack of open space, lack of walks, lack of healthy discussion, small packed rooms, laces --- this was the reality I saw there and I don’t think it was the result of poverty. I saw many poor places. And to my great surprise I found there many people showing symptoms of psychic unbalance or even psychic disease.

For me, many were 5-7 in a center. They were only females. I wondered why this happened. Healthy happy girls or mothers suddenly become psychically unbalanced. Probably I’ll never forget faces of some of those girls – they came to me and begged me staring at me with mad eyes to open the main gate and let them go out.

When the center managers considered them as too dangerous (I remember one or two of them tried to kill themselves), they kept them locked in small rooms. All these images come to me for years – sometimes I can’t sleep at night. Many girls and mothers in the center had TB. I remember app 10. TB there had many forms. In my opinion they were not properly isolated from the others. Once I was ordered to sleep with girls with TB in one room. I was appointed to guard them at night as girls cannot sleep alone.

I wished sincerely to follow all directions and live the life in the way Baba says and remain far from what he called inferior world, but I now I think I deceived myself. I always valued studying, reading, traveling. The honest everyday work was a great value for me. I denied and rejected all these things, because I understood from Baba’s teaching that they are bad.

Unfortunately, I had nothing instead. I never experienced a healthy discussion in the center, a spirit of study and discovery. In fact, for me it was a replay of BK. I don’t think that so called discussions with Baba so widely propagated in PBKs are real discussions. I tried to discuss with Baba. In my opinion he doesn’t discuss. He repeats certain sentences and when he cannot find convincing arguments or proofs he uses special tricks. Many of ideas he taught simply didn’t come true. I presented some of them to him directly with hope that he would help me to understand. He didn’t. The only thing I heard was ‘Baba says so that’s why it’s true.’ The same as BKs.

Another thing that scared me was the way they teach girls how to give courses. I came to know that method. I wouldn’t call it neutral. Girls were taught to give the course in a special way in order to influence a listener in a certain way. They were strictly instructed which words and which point should me mentioned and which should be hidden.

A listener can only listen to a certain part of Gyan – only about the Trimurti – then he is asked to sing the oath. Unless he sings he is not allowed to listen to more Gyan. Of course PBKs quote hundreds points from Murlis showing that this procedure is the law set in Murlis. I feel very bad about this procedure. When I came to India for the first time I faced the same – unless you sign the oath we won’t let you to listen to more Gyan. It was so bitter.

I wish I could meet the parents of that girl TB girl who was starved. I would have to go to India and look for him. Would anybody in the center give me his address? I don’t believe. Naturopathy is a method of healing. OK. But not in the case of TB. One Brother – doctor in the center said it clearly when he came to that girl in the day of her death. Only she among dozens girls with TB wasn’t treated with antibiotics. She couldn’t decide herself to do it, because she was a surrendered girl and she did what they told her to do. Even if she chose naturopathy, why they deceived her parents? I can’t understand it.

Years are passing and it’s still sitting in me like a heavy stone. I can’t forget those people telling lies to her Father that she received the best medicines from the best doctors and the best treatment. They even said “antibiotics”. What they said was directed by Baba. Years passed and those lies still sound in my ears, I can see myself sitting there in that meeting with the girl’s Father. I can see his face, his eyes full of tears and PBKs from the center sitting in front of him saying, ‘She was taken to the best hospitals, to the best doctors, she received the best medicines’. And I can see two doctors who advised in the center - one was responsible for naturopathy in the center, another one was responsible for allopathic therapies. Both equally scared.

I had a heavy form of TB in the center. I was treated with antibiotics. The doctor in the hospital gave me a certain dose, the doctor in the center doubled it. When I came to my country I came to know that the double dose wasn’t necessary and could destroy my liver for good. I have to hide the fact that I had TB. When I go for regular checking doctors ask about diseases in the past. If I revealed I had had TB, I would be stigmatized here.

After my experience as a PBK I lost faith in God. I decided to write it here not with the aim to receive words of sorry and compassion. I think that I am responsible for where I am and what I feel. My aim is to reveal what still lives in me and disturbs me. Maybe it will help someone. I introduced to Gyan some people; I lost contact with them. I came to know that they also suffered and had bitter experience in Gyan. I feel responsible for this somehow. Maybe they would read this text one day ... Let them accept my words, ‘Sorry for the bad to the extent I caused it.’

Two years ago I wrote a book about my story in PBK. I published it in my native language. People can read it in the Internet. I did a lot to go back to so called normal simple life – to find a job, to rebuild in my life the value of the work, study and simple human relationships with people around me. Besides of my sincere efforts, I bear in the heart a great burden which doesn’t let me experience peace.