Disassociating general meditation practice from BK method

Related to 'Watch your language! Why not to use BK language' and further illustrating this (maybe more specifically than "verbal" language).

Many people on this forum, even those declared ex-BK, seem unable (or find it difficult) to disassociate meditation practice in general from the method taught by BKs.

However, just as the parents of a thief are not necessarily responsible for their child's actions, so too the techniques and experiences used by BKs existed before they "clothed" them in a BK costume and re-labelled them.

I believe one arrogance of the BKs is their attitude of ownership of people's experiences in meditation, and their sales technique of convincing them that they are dependant on the BKs (and Gyan) for such experiences, rather than accepting it is a human potential that has been realised by many people in many ways at many times in the past, and will continue to be.

Just as language needs to be deconstructed and seen for what it is, so too meditation methods and experiences.

I hope to soon return and expand on this, hear others views etc when I have a bit more time.

Many people on this forum, even those declared ex-BK, seem unable (or find it difficult) to disassociate meditation practice in general from the method taught by BKs.

However, just as the parents of a thief are not necessarily responsible for their child's actions, so too the techniques and experiences used by BKs existed before they "clothed" them in a BK costume and re-labelled them.

I think you are making a big mistake to frame this as a truth, or even a statement, rather than to question it. I'd go as far as to say it was arrogant and risky, as you may be in error.

The question you should have raised first is,

"Did the Brahma Kumaris' techniques and experiences exist prior to them and did they just re-market them as their own?"

You are asserting that they did and that in some way the BK method is identical to others or just a universal one. I'd argue against that. I would also say that it would be very, very difficult to support or evidence such a claim. The only suggestion we have off it is the evidence which states Lekhraj Kirpalani paid some sadhu a large sum of money to learn some technique from him ... but no one to date has managed to find out who the sadhu was, to which school he belonged, or what technique Lekhraj Kirpalani was initiated into.

I don't "find it difficult" nor am I "unable" to separate BK techniques from other techniques ... which is a little condescending of you state of others ... I'll go as far as to say, the actual technique, the initiation of the individual into a relationship with their spirit guide is different.

I agree that many people are having different experiences in meditation, even that they are doing different kinds of meditations whilst in the group, and that the BKs largely have no idea what is going on inside individuals and just bundle everyone up as long as they conform to their social norms. But I will disagree that their method or techniques are a universal one.

One of the reasons for this, and strangely at this point I will seem to be in agreement with the BKs, is that in general the experiences the majority of ordinary people have with the BKs are stronger and more pronounced in nature than with other methods.

I think your problem here is a problem you also had whilst you were in the BKWSU ... and you have written about or admitted before ... put simply, that is that *you* were mostly doing your own thing and were mostly in a tangential or obtuse relationship with the cult, its leaders, its practices and even its philosophy. In short, you always had your own ideas about what was going on and were in your own mind. And they mostly rejected them.

Now, do human beings have many potentials which have been realised by many people in many ways in the past, and will continue to be in the future? Yes, of course. Are the BKs expert in or even experience in or aware of other practices? No, not at all. And, as we have discussed here before, many BK or ex-BKs have admitted after years that they were not even having any experiences at all !!! Do the BKs care? Not as long as they are contributing donations to "Baba's Box".

There's then the related problem of whether once one is initiated into Brahma Kumarism, can one detach from it and have a different experience, i.e. even after many leave, they keep doing BKism and having BK experiences.

Has anyone invented a "Yoga-o-meter" to determine whether Zen or Metta Bhavana practise is the same or not as BKism, or even to confirm whether a BK is having BK Raja Yoga and not just sitting there day dreaming? Sadly they have not.

Until they do, we are stuck with our own intuitions about it.

So, I ask you the question, how can you prove or tell that the BK Raja Yoga method, initiation and experience is the same as other practises?

I think there are dangers in adopting such a position when one does not know ... and, perhaps, cannot never know. Firstly, it is basically an apologist's position which seeks to normalise Brahma Kumarism. You are asserting that Brahma Kumarism is just the same as everything else ... when it is clearly not. Does that not, in essence, just validate BKism and make it acceptable ... the same as other religions? Is it not doing for the BKs exactly what the BKs want to happen (... except also to be the boss of all other religions)?

What if it is not the same? What if it is something that is indeed not as benign as it paints itself?

Should not we be cautious?

However, if what you are talking about are all the 10,000 spin offs that BKs are inventing to sell CDs etc, then I can accept that there is very little difference between them and any other New Agey hypnosis or relaxation tapes.

Lastly, I would have to ask, on the basis of what authority to you base this judgement ...

Are you the master of many techniques, if so which ones?
Do you belong to specific school or master which has examined other practises?
Where does this idea come from?

I will answer more fully later. For now, in brief as I have other things needing my time, just to say: your points are valid.

However, I was not saying "all" people nor was I saying "all" techniques, "every" meditation experience ever had by anyone, and so on. Just for those that do relate.

I will endeavour to examine meditation techniques to see commonalities, and of course, differences.

Exploring these similarities and differences is exactly the discussion needed, as part of any deconstruction process, to see what it is we did (and are doing) in meditation, and to be able to reclaim that which we want without concern of contamination.

BK meditation is based on a method of affirmation-response, or active abstract visualisation and affirmation.

It is not a detaching, objectifying process of clarifying reality but one of actively, purposefully creating a subjective reality.

It is predicated on the idea that experiencing reality is primarily done psychologically (being conscious, intellectual and emotional activity etc) It then extrapolates that as mind, intellect, memories and traits are intangible, and that through these we "understand" and "choose" (make intelligent decisions), therefore we are somehow separate from that reality. It is the victory of subject over object, of self-identification over non-self, essentially of ego over non-ego. They then call it "soul" - not just that "feeling" side of ourselves which we might call "soulful" but in that religious context of eternal entity.

Sometimes to understand a word or concept, it helps to look at how & why we differentiate it from its correlates, and why we've named it the way we do. Sometimes it's good to check for mistakes in our formula. Have we subtracted when we should have added?

BKs like the word games of "I & Mine". So let's play, let's look at - What is a "body"?

"Body" is a collective noun. Like "group" or "herd". It is singular abstract for a collection or aggregation.

What I call "my body" is pretty much everything contained within my enclosing skin, and a few things that feather out from it, like hair, nails, dandruff! It also contains far more non-human organisms and non-human DNA than human.

And these non-human organisms not only keep us alive - we actually cannot live without some of them - they also greatly affect our physical and mental states.

We might also include as being "within the body" short term chemicals (medicines, food, particles, & other things) that are within for a few days or weeks, and even cosmic microwaves that are within for seconds or nano-seconds. It is in constant flux.

Internally, the body extends (intends?) as far as the alimentary canal and airways. It is in fact like a convoluted tube!! That hollow tube is like the axle around which we are continually evolving - i.e cellular regeneration!

Our digestive tract, lungs and airways connect us to the world the way a plant's roots and leaves do, where transference of oxygen, nourishment and by-products occurs, one function that keeps the organism alive. Breathing and eating and drinking is an ongoing exchange of this part of reality (me) with the rest of the universe (not-me)

Our senses are like antennae, like cat's whiskers, extending our points of contact. The mind-organ is a sixth sense, the sense common to the others that interprets and correlates the information from the other five.

Minding is to brain what seeing is to eyes, what digesting is to stomach. no one thinks Digestion is other than a noun for a process, the verb "digest".

Digestion, as the prefix "di-" implies, is a sorting out of what is to be "ingested" and what is to be excreted (which includes other waste delivered back into the alimentary canal through other organs like the kidney and bladder

Yet no-one (except a rabid Platonist) ever thinks Digestion exists separately to the stomach, the things in the stomach and the activity that the interaction of the two instigates.

Fortunately, digestion, breathing, cardio-vascular activity etc all proceed autonomically, requiring no conscious acts. Imagine how easily people would get sick and die if they relied on our consciously making them happen?

Mind-ing, think-ing, feel-ing etc are processes, responses to what is taken in through the other senses. We are mentally sorting out what has been "eaten" through the senses, ingesting and rejecting etc, responses(thoughts and feelings) arising the way gastric juices do, according to stimuli, which then trigger the next responses. Just like some foods or drinks are pleasant while others sit badly, even make us "vomit" or pass out, so too with sensory input -our mind-ing reaction is : we like, we dislike, we drift off!

Just like if you take in different combinations of food you stomach responds differently, so too the different combinations of external 'data" received through the external organs create a reaction in the brain, where the nervous system sends it all to. It is the "Sensus communis (literally "common sense" in Latin) - a philosophical term originally used to refer to the perceptual power of binding the inputs of the individual sense organs into a coherent and intelligible representation. The term originates with Aristotle (sensus communis is the Latin translation of Aristotle's κοινὴ αἲσθησις). It is used in a similar sense by Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes."

There is the autonomic functions like pulse and digestion and cellular regeneration. There is autonomic mentation that is called the "unconscious" or 'subconscious".

The organism can survive for a short time well enough without any "conscious" activity e.g. planning or discrimination, but for the species to "live long and prosper" being "conscious" (verb) or having consciousness (abstract noun) and its nominal tools intellect, foresight, interpretation - evolved. The more consciousness is developed (all other things being equal) the more "prosperous" and "successful" we can be.

If we are unconscious of signals from, say, our digestive tract or pulse, we do not act with foresight to change the conditions that will "allow nature to right itself".

But to believe that to be always tyrannically 'standing over" our heart's pulsing or manipulating all conditions, like an obsessive- compulsive control freak, believing thats' the only way they'll be what they should be is counter-productive, I am sure you'd agree.

People who "live to eat" are misguided, you'd agree? After becoming habituated to having certain things and amounts in their stomach, they feel lacking if they're not eating or preparing to eat.... And it becomes unbearable to consider otherwise.

When "consciousness" become habituated disproportionately - to memory, attachment to certain self-differentiation (ego) - it too becomes imbalanced, and cannot bear to consider a time when "I" can not exist. One is the digestive function, the other is the consciousness/ego function that just desires to keep on keeping on.

Then, when consciousness is manipulated to the point that the minding function believes itself to exist separately from "the body" of pre-conditions that gave rise to it, that is hubris. Awareness of life is not itself 'the life principle".

Like believing the "principle of Digestion" also incarnates and reincarnates.

First up, shouldn't your comment be prefixed, "In my opinion ..." ?

Secondly, are you talking about the meditation experience or the religion as a whole? I tend to think you have skipped very quickly past the actually experience which identifies the Brahma Kumaris to talk about the religious practise as a whole, e.g. the constant repetition of "I am a soul" and the conceptualisation of being separate from the body.

I'd like to be very precise here.

What captures people is generally a series of new and inexplicable experiences which I think, without wishing to insult you, you come no where near explaining at all.

As I write I am thinking of a young Indian woman I once spoke to many years ago who would not have a clue about what you are writing and responded to questions about the BKs simply as, "ah, yes, they make you feel very light". That is to say, weightless (... or dizzy from a rational point of view). For her, and I suggest most people, it was the sensations they 'felt' which defined BKism.

I would say those 'new and inexplicable experiences' ... which I am using rather than the loaded "psychic" or "spiritual" in order to give you a chance to explain then ... are the core BK experience and the rest ... all the self-affirmation etc that you refer to ... are superficial. Whether they are just used to remind one of the core process or experience ... note the role remembrance has within the religion ... or whether they support and engender one having the core process or experience again, I cannot say. In most cases, the ability to have those core processes or experiences appears to dwindle once the individual is habituated to the religion (... I lack statistics to support that last statement but anecdotally it appears to be true and the cause of people leaving).

Lastly, I have to say that you are not going to run a cult with such complicated ideas as those ... you seem to stray from an analysis of BK methods to your own 'bodistic' polemic about us only being the body and there not being a soul etc.

I'd rather re-wind and look just at just those core experiences, experiences which hook people to Brahma Kumarism and which identify Brahma Kumarism as being different and special from other meditational practises or religions, and ask how they happen.

Note, I intentionally wrote 'bodistic' not boddhistic. Yours would appear to be a body dharma.

HI ex-l,

I agree my last post does not examine the BK method itself closely. That can come later. Or you may wish to reply on that. I actually wrote that last post for a topic elsewhere on the www and adapted it for here as I thought it was quite relevant.

My understanding of the topic's purpose is based on "disassociating".

Most readers already know, or know of, the "BK method".

One step in 'disassociating' is to break the nexus that believing spiritual experience is "supernatural" or quantifiable or rationed out "numberwise" (from the most to the least 'special") or under copyright by any single person, group, religion, culture. Spiritual experience is one aspect of the human experience. What brings it on or where it comes from should not be singularly identified as the "source" or granter of it. Thats the mistake I think we (who became BKs) make.

First up, shouldn't your comment be prefixed, "In my opinion ..." ?

It's of course my opinion, or "my understanding". Why would I write someone else's opinion? They can do that for themselves! I am not referencing anyone else (except where I did).

Secondly, are you talking about the meditation experience or the religion as a whole?

See topic title. But the latter (religion) is built on the former (meditation).

As I write I am thinking of a young Indian woman I once spoke to many years ago who would not have a clue about what you are writing and responded to questions about the BKs simply as, "ah, yes, they make you feel very light".

Only the literate would be reading a forum like this with any depth of understanding. And the standard of literacy and comprehension is not what it used to be. I am not going to write in an overly dumbed-down way with such a person as your "young Indian woman" in mind (who probably doesn't think analytically or never reads such material), trying to be all things to all people. People will take it or leave it.

That said, as for "they make you feel very light "... Whether someone is meditating for themselves or is a newcomer listening to a commentary tape, the process is one of setting a mood, then putting forward a suggestion (to oneself or from the commentary) and an 'acceptance" of that suggestion, going along with it and imagining the suggestion, letting the associations with those words (along with any music and visual aid) create an inner environment where an experience is had which is different to what would have been had otherwise.

What "opens up" can differ from person to person, but given most people have a similar idea of what certain words mean, the experiences (if had at all) will tend to be similar.

How readily someone can go into that different experience, or how "intense" it is, will, of course, depend on many things - how readily they can change "direction", how nervy they are, whether they are used to introspective thinking or imagination games or going along with a 'story", how easily they sit (I mean without physical discomfort or pain) etc etc

Lastly, I have to say that you are not going to run a cult with such complicated ideas as those ... you seem to stray from an analysis of BK methods to your own 'bodistic' polemic about us only being the body and there not being a soul etc.

Me run a cult?! Now there's an idea! Or do you mean the BKs?

That is my point. BK teachings and methods (and cults generally) supplant the complexities and subtleties of reality with a very simplistic wishful-thinking-cum-ego-fulfilment. (Yes, you are special!)

If you examine the Gyan and the meditation BKs do, it is all about constructing an identity and paradigm that is other than reality, i.e. it is an artifice. Which can be useful for a time, like a crutch is to a wounded man, but becoming dependent on an artifice is, well, dependency, it's limiting, a narrowing of potential, a crying shame ...

If you examine the Gyan and the meditation BKs do, it is all about constructing an identity and paradigm that is other than reality, i.e. it is an artifice. Which can be useful for a time, like a crutch is to a wounded man, but becoming dependent on an artifice is, well, dependency, it's limiting, a narrowing of potential, a crying shame ...

I find your very last paragraph the easiest to understand and agree with.

To be quite frank, at least 99% of what I consider to be "core BK teachings" is complete and irrelevant garbage which they appear to use as a form of testing individuals' faith, complicity and conformity ... in short a way of filtering out individuals are are gullible enough to them go on to exploit for life; some a little, some a lot.

I suspect that the experiences had within BK meditation could be had without all the garbage. We recently had a BK supporter on the forum telling us that they had campaigned to remove the garbage, and in Neville Hodgkinson's review of the new Frank Whaling book on the BKs, and the book itself, there are suggestions that elements within the BKWSU are also preparing to ditch the garbage ... if and when they can.

By "garbage" I mean the 5,000 Years, imminent Destruction, all the numbers, their understanding of karma and a lot of the Hindu elements etc. The tenets of faith, or intellectual badges, that they use to identify themselves from other cults and religions.

But when it comes to this stuff, I am really not a lot smarter than that young Indian woman and I tend to reduce it down to such simple responses ... and what I feel or sense.

After leaving the BKWSU I found I was unable to do other meditation practises because I too easily fell into sensations that I had and associated with the BKs and so I stopped doing so. I could not disassociate from the BKs experiences or stop having them. I do not think this is a good thing but I have not had anyone explain to me what they experiences are, how they happen, what they mean.

Now some people have extra-ordinary experiences with the BKWSU. Most BKs have at least one or two, e.g. "bodilessness", visions of light, weightlessness, other visions etc, which appear utterly beyond their control, i.e. are done to them rather than achieved of their own efforts. Or as they say, "Baba gave the soul the experience of ...".

General "religious" experiences, such as "waves of love" or "peace", emotional responses and so on, I can believe that they are actually quite easy to trigger in most people but some of the other more unique experiences I find hard to explain. I don't, however, immediately jump to claim, "God done it!".

In my own case, the general experience was not so profound or interesting, just a strong pressure on my forehead mainly. I find it irritating and an obstruction to other forms of meditation. If one was to believe ... one might say it was a chakra issue or something (but I don't know if I believe that either).

So I'd like to be able to do other meditations but find I am blocked from doing so.

I would also like to say, of my time in the BKWSU, that I don't believe anyone really knew what was going on, e.g. who was having what experience, who was having any experience, what they all meant and so on. No one had studied it, you could not ask questions about it ... and if you did you got put in your place, considered to have Maya and shut up.

So I'd like to be able to do other meditations but find I am blocked from doing so.

I went through that phase. I just did other things that were beneficial in terms of awareness - creative activity and reflections etc - and getting on with things I'd always wanted to do.

But getting back into meditation, the simplest is to do one's preparation - there is good reason why most meditation traditions do Yoga or other physical preparations before meditation - posture-ology! - then just sit and observe one's state of being.

How does it feel? What is happening if I let myself settle? Ignore the "content" of the thought, maybe just observe the frequency with which they arise, or the 'hum' that lies below them ... and settle on that, or let it go - meditation without expectation or goal other than itself.

It's like a dance - the aim is not to get to the end of the dance, it's to enjoy the movement and flow. Whether you dance well or not, or even if you dance well each time, it is never going to be the same.

There's no denying that BK influenced concepts come in mind and might upset the apple cart, but that becomes a meditation in itself. Can I see through the Gyan "hair net" to a deeper more universal sense of "being" without Gyan's prescribed word-definitions? Gyan lays intellectual definitions and limitations over things of the 'heart" , directing them to particular ends. Strip back the labels and discard them, but not the jar they were stuck on.

is not this moment of calm in itself worthy of being untainted by "wanting" it to be more than it is?

Breathe. Return.

Like a love affair gone wrong, getting back into the game takes courage.

Courage: ORIGIN Middle English (denoting the heart, as the seat of feelings): from Old French corage, from Latin cor ‘heart.’

On a forum run by BKs primarily for BKs but on which they allow me to contribute despite stirring the pot (probably because it keeps it more interesting for them!) there's been a "little debate" about the value of doing physical preliminaries before any meditation.

Now, we all know you can "meditate" anytime anywhere. We all also know that the quality-feel of meditations differ a lot, depending on time and place and what's going on around you and if you are well or sick etc.

The BKs who supposedly teach "Raja Yoga" are the only group that I know of that supposedly come out of a Yoga tradition but do not include any physical preparations for even their 'deepest" meditations, never more than a cursory "make sure you are sitting comfortably"... Theirs is a "fast food" approach versus the "slow food" traditions which understand the importance of hand picked, properly prepared ingredients cooked slowly, with attention at every step.

I am sure some of us did like to do some such physical preparations occasionally (I did) or knew people who did (many of the Madhubaniwassi Brothers were keen runners and hatha* Yoga practitioners - and dare i say seemed grounded, balanced and healthier in comparison to others).

* "Hatha" is a specific name & tradition of Yoga which, nominally, is not as old as many other schools but I am using it generically to mean postures and exercises that go along with the spiritual practices of different Yoga schools.

This primary difference of (literally) approach to meditation is very revealing of what is at the heart of their whole philosophy (and I believe what is revealed is an area in which that philosophy is grossly lacking , leading to some of the many problems people develop inadvertently through becoming BKs - and sometimes share on this forum).

The word "comfort" means "very strong" -you cannot stay in any position very long if there is no strength in it.(Latin com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + fortis "strong")

The word "asana" means "an easy posture" (practically meaning to do it until it becomes as easy as it should be if one is a "unconstricted" human being!) The "asa" part comes from the same PIE (proto-Indo European) word from which we derive "ease" and " arse" - that is, to sit is to be at your ease....("buttocks," Old English ærs "tail, rump," from Proto-Germanic *arsoz (cf. Old Saxon, Old High German, Old Norse ars, Middle Dutch ærs, German Arsch "buttock")!

We derive nourishing strength and energy (both gross and implicit) from that which we "exchange" with the universe - and what we can live without least is breath. We easily use our proper lung capacity when our rib cage is open i.e. our spine correctly aligned, which aligns the rest of us in an "attitude" to the earth via gravity.

Anyone who does a proper series of asanas then enters a proper meditation posture immediately feels the deep yet effortless breathing and the comfort of that posture, the accompanying presence of mind, the unity of body-mind (which mind will disturb before body does - hence the need to "just keep sitting" and get back on track !), the calmness of thought and the space between thoughts more apparent - allowing for easier "observation" of thoughts and easier lengthening of stillness which is the ''gaps" between any thoughts.

As most meditations aim to 'see through' the mundane ego to a less filtered reality,one more easily feels the point of contact with what is "not I" when one is fully conscious of the whole body-heart-mind (Body is the boundary within which is included all aspects of an entity - eg "body of knowledge", "heavenly body", "regulatory body")

Externally our senses create that point of contact and definition of where "I" ends and "Not I" begins (i.e "the world").

Internally, the thoughts generate a sense of I (ego), and the "end of a thought and the beginning of the space between the thoughts, stillness, the bit before even the impulse for a thought arises, defines where "Not I" begins.

I believe that BK Raj Yoga undermines the insight of practitioners because it utilises ego function to create false word associations - "names" - for what is really reinforced, if sublimated, ego. (Granted even BB and Avyakt BapDada called it Pure Ego sometimes!)

Gyan calls even the "not I" silence as "soul" and any temporary thought either side of that silence as "I" is called "soul" as well....

At last the vedantists had the good sense to distinguish thinking/karmic "I" (ahamkar) from non-karmic "atman".

That is, the BKRY experience is very real and very similar to other deep meditation states (and before you ask, i practiced different meditations before BKs and after, and 'during' to be honest!) but the nomenclature - (how the aspects of experience are named) - is erroneous and misleading.

It's as real as fast food is real food too, which will nourish, but if made a mainstay of the 'diet" will have longer term consequences, because it definitely lacks balance.

This needs elaboration, but too much talk is counterproductive, so I leave this with readers to think over and I will come back to this later.