What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to followers?

for discussing revisions in the history of the Brahma Kumaris and updating information about the organisation
  • Message
  • Author
User avatar

Pink Panther

  • Posts: 1885
  • Joined: 14 Feb 2013

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post01 May 2019

Here’s a word for you to consider vlakshmi,
Prapanca ( sanskrit) o if you prefer - Papanca (Pali).

Look, there is something behind the BK experience otherwise we would not have been drawn in and stayed, nor you nor anyone. What is behind it is basic human potential and what many would call ”spiritual” or religious impulse”.

If that is the substance behind it, then what is in front is a front, a facade, the wrapping and ribbon, a new fashion of of clothes and vocabulary.
User avatar

ex-l

ex-BK

  • Posts: 10661
  • Joined: 07 Apr 2006

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post01 May 2019

oldbk wrote:As I have said before, since you are trying to stick to the BKs, PLEASE go for another 7 Day Course and, IMPORTANTLY, take the class from a different Sister, other than the one you are interacting with now. Preferably a different center too, for your own benefit.

I understand your point, OldBK.

Vlakshmi, if it at first appears harsh, actually it is not. There may be a chance that if you have money, social and professional status, there is a chance your local BKs, or BK contacts, may be allowing you to think things just in order to keep you close and the relationshp sweet (and profitable). This is a bit of problem within BKism, but also why people are attracted to it as a release from real life ... a lack of critical peer reviewing, the allowance and encouragement of child-like thinking/fantasying. It may be they are not that good or deep thinking as a BK either?

They enjoy such creative word play and giving things new meanings as well, eg, from the middle period "GOD = Generator, Operator, Destroyer".

You must have had a brain in order to have become what you are. BKism is a place to give critical faculties a rest for a while. However, perhaps there is a bit of you that is still hungry to really think and analyse that is stiffled and cannot find expression within BKism?

vlakshmi

BK

  • Posts: 83
  • Joined: 17 Apr 2019

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post02 May 2019

ex-l wrote:“Perhaps there are internal difficulties from your past that you want to escape or fix. What BKism offers is a kind of mask - a temporary mask - to wear *WHILE* you work on fixing or healing those issues. For some it can simply be a way to escape their family's influence. For others the culture of their birth etc etc etc. Each case is similar but a little different.”

In my case, what you said does not make sense. I revolted against all of my family traditions and beliefs AS AN INFORMED PERSON. I have enough money, good social status, and no depression, no tension, or any personal difficulties whatsoever to escape from. But I was not satisfied with the teachings of main-stream religions. What attracted me into BK-ism is the high quality of life BKs are leading which is inseparably connected with their teachings.

In the case of my BK friend (an internationally famous one, a self-made man, materially very rich ... etc) too what you said does not make sense. He told me he came to BK (not because of any negative situation to escape from but) because of a simple incident in his life. Every week-end he goes to his farm house to relax and never carries its key with him as Watchman is always available there. One day as usual, he was preparing to leave for his Farm house — and somehow he felt he should take the extra key of Farm house. To his surprise he saw, when he reached there, that Watchman had gone to his village on some emergency and he could not inform his boss about this. My friend wanted to know what would vouch for the premonition he received. He put on the TV to his another surprise—Sister Shivani was explaining about the powers of atma, and also of premonition. That was the beginning of his journey towards becoming a BK.

2) You also wrote:
“But, be warned, there are no great scholars of sanskrit within the BKs leaders.”

Scholarship in any field is like a vehicle which you can use to travel or to hurt/kill others. For example, the philosopher-cum-professor who unwittingly directed me to BKs is one of the great Sanskrit/Hinduism scholars in the world. Yet, he blindly believes, like other scholars, that God is omnipresent—which can obviously not be right. If they are right it would mean the force actuating the mind of all victimizers and their victims is God [because effect of God Almighty cannot by thwarted by inferior fleshly bodies or even by mind]. But will all holocaust victims agree that Hitler was acting under the inspiration of God? Will you agree that same God is behind this forum and BK-ism?
User avatar

ex-l

ex-BK

  • Posts: 10661
  • Joined: 07 Apr 2006

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post02 May 2019

And that scholar rejected BKism? (He also did not know/understand BKism ... his comments re restoring Hinduism were incorrect).
vlakshmi wrote:In my case, what you said does not make sense. I revolted against all of my family traditions and beliefs AS AN INFORMED PERSON.

How about in the sexual/emotional/relationship arena?

That you "revolted" suggests that not all was well in your family. What aspects were you revolting - rejecting strongly, one presumes - about?
God is omnipresent ... all holocaust victims agree that Hitler was acting under the inspiration of God ... God is behind this forum and BK-ism?

Well, firstly, let us remember that for the first and most spiritually vigorous 20 plus years, Lekhraj Kirpalani and the Om Mandli believed that God was omnipresent ... which raises many questions about its methodology. They call it Divine Light. It was only around 1956 that they introduced a separate God Shiva.

I think you don't understand the concept of "god" as held by those who believe in its all pervasive presence which - as with your arithmetic abilities - make me question how "informed" you really are?

Presumably, you are "informed" about geology, archeology, world history; you might have even seen fossils and evidence of dinosaurs, as a psychiatrist you might have has a reasonable background in physics, and so on. Have your renounced being informed to become a BK, or still read journals and newspapers, eg. 160,000-year-old hominin fossil found.

I'll come back to your personal experiences shortly, however, a day or two ago, I asked you how the photons travelling from distance stars, stars more than 5,000 light years away, stopped, then travel backwards in space, to start again, to fit within the BK concept of time (the perfect repetition of the universe).

Another simple problem we ask is, how do the BKs remove the flag and all of the junk left on the moon and in space, even that orbiting out of our solar system ... in order that all of their materials are back in the same place, deep underground, to be mined and moulded to be sent back out into space next Kalpa?

You know the god of the BKs' theory of how the world is purified by nuclear war and restored to an atomically identically state every 5,000 years ... then explain how.

If every Kalpa 10,000 of tonnes of metals are sent out into space, and not replaced, then in relatively few cycles, there would be no metals left on earth. Ditto, if they are not removed, space would become full of them.

If you can start to address such simple issues, then I will respond back to you about personal issues. However, I will say now that I too supported the BKs for many years after I left *because* of exactly the same facade as you have highlighted. The facade of a "religiously" disciplined "Brahmanic" life.

I, too, used to say that I no longer believed in BKism but at least I thought they lived a dedicated life. Of course, firstly we discover that that facade is not always true. That it is just a facade. And, secondly, we have to question for what purpose did they develop it, and do they keep up that facade.

In short, it was an impression based on a false value of what is a virtuous life ... and ignorance and denial about what the BKs get up to *behind* that facade much of which had been hidden from me while I was a BK. The purpose of it was to make money and gain status for appearing "religious" by conservative Hindu values.

I understand the "god" of the 'omnipresent god theory' to be something like energy in the zero-point energy of quantum physics and therefore, yes, it was equally present in Hitler, the victim of the Holocaust, and the typhoid that killed them.

Do you, as a BK, believe that all the victims of the Holocaust suffered and died because of their own bad karma in previous lives?

Rita

  • Posts: 77
  • Joined: 25 Sep 2018

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post02 May 2019

@vlakshami

I can’t believe that your friend (Sanskrit scholar) is a BK follower. Whoever understands Upanishads and Vedas will never believe in these organisations.

I have met 100s of Sanskrit scholars and I keep meeting them whenever I visit Haridwar and Rishikesh.
User avatar

ex-l

ex-BK

  • Posts: 10661
  • Joined: 07 Apr 2006

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post02 May 2019

One of the more unusual claims Lekhraj Kirpalani, or the BK Baba, made about Sanskrit was that Sanskrit was a development *from* Hindi, and not the other way around as is generally accepted.

(Modern Hindi only evolved towards the end of the 18th century).

I wonder what vlakshami's friend would have made of that?
User avatar

Pink Panther

  • Posts: 1885
  • Joined: 14 Feb 2013

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post03 May 2019

Sanskrit is itself an artificial language, an attempt to ‘clean up’ and formalise the vedic culture’s various languages including the local popular Prakrit versions. It is an artificial language, as is Urdu - a language many Sindhis are familiar with, or Esperanto (which failed to gain widespread acceptance).

Given the importance of language to consciousness, and as the topic is "What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to followers?”, you'd have to ask the question how is it that a University and organisation of ”spiritual education” has no clue about semiotics, linguistics, philology, or for that matter, even a decent library?

Instead the BKs rely on, even enjoy the superficilaity of, all kinds of contrived ‘slang’ and silly acronyms while regularly being anti-intellectual.

If they show any respect or regard for true scholarship, science, or research, it is disrespect and disregard.

Except when it happens to serve their cause (eg using climate science to lend weight to their catastrophising rather than using it to seriously work through their political contacts toward political action to prevent this potentially civilisation-destroying process*).

( *But it's not earth-ending unfortunately, dear BKs. Climate change won't kill off all of us 7-8 billion shudras, it will just make life harder and increase suffering for more and more people.)

vlakshmi

BK

  • Posts: 83
  • Joined: 17 Apr 2019

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post03 May 2019

Pink Panther,

Does "climate change" threaten the future of mankind?

Acording to some scientists, this is the greatest threat that humanity faces. Climate change is an issue that affects the whole of humanity and the future of humans depends on it. The global warming process has reached its highest level in the last 30 years. Will this rising air temperature continue with this intensity? How can we stop it?
Many plant and animal species are exposed to extinction or extinct. The Arctic glaciers recede more and more every day. The sea level is raised every year. Droughts have increased. The frequency of extreme floods has increased. The hydrological cycle of water has changed and affected agriculture.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_ ... of_mankind

Japnese scientists are already on record saying adverse effect would only precipitate and effects will be more than predictions--becoming more and more intense. It is like putting a cold butter piece on your frying pan. Initial speed of meting will be slower, then its speed increases. So is the case with Polar Ice melting, and air pollution ..etc
User avatar

Pink Panther

  • Posts: 1885
  • Joined: 14 Feb 2013

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post03 May 2019

Read what i wrote a little more carefully. It's clear.

Even your "Brahma Baba" was smart enough to know that natural calamities etc would not be enough to wipe out humanity, it needs a perfect storm of those plus diseases plus both hemispheres experiencing massive nuclear wars etc etc... or don't they teach the full Gyan about Vinash anymore either?

That is, Life is resilient. nature bounces back quickly after severe droughts or floods - maybe not ideal for humanity but who says we are the one life form that matters? (Only us). Try living without bacteria for a week!

I am optimistic that even though the warnings about irreversibility are serious, Nature has a way of self-correcting quicker than expected. When the human species is extinct and the rest of nature can do its thing unimpeded, that would probably be the true Golden Age for planet Earth.

vlakshmi

BK

  • Posts: 83
  • Joined: 17 Apr 2019

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post03 May 2019

Mainstream scientists are either funded by self-centered Governments or industries. Hence true picture will not emerge. Here is one (James Lovelock) who is fighting a lone battle.
"For decades, his advocacy of nuclear power appalled fellow environmentalists - but recently increasing numbers of them have come around to his way of thinking. His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report deploys less dramatic language - but its calculations aren't a million miles away from his."

He made the prediction in 2008--and now we are experiencing them.
User avatar

ex-l

ex-BK

  • Posts: 10661
  • Joined: 07 Apr 2006

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post03 May 2019

Update: James Lovelock later changed his mind, Climate Prediction: "I’ve grown up a bit since then" (2016 - from the same paper you chose), see also; 'Gaia' Scientist Takes Back Climate Change Predictions.

Or to put it simply, 'I made a mistake': Gaia theory scientist James Lovelock admits.
The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included
He added that other environmental commentators ... are also guilty of exaggerating their arguments.

The admission comes as a devastating blow to proponents of climate change.

So which James Lovelock do you want to believe?
I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t crazy, this climate change ... it’s a religion, really, you see. It’s totally unscientific.
"Anyone who tries to predict more than five to 10 years is a bit of an idiot, because so many things can change unexpectedly.” But isn’t that exactly what he did last time we met? “I know,” he grins teasingly. “But I’ve grown up a bit since then".

"CO2 is going up, but nowhere near as fast as they thought it would. The computer models just weren’t reliable. In fact,” he goes on breezily ... "You’ve only got to look at Singapore. It’s two-and-a-half times higher than the worst-case scenario for climate change, and it’s one of the most desirable cities in the world to live in.”

Are the BK clambering onto Climate Change discussion as a way of depressing, making afraid and controlling followers now? Is it official, coming down from the top, or just self-confirming chatter among the more educated BKs?

Like we've written, it's nothing new - it used to be called Global Warming - and I am concerned about its use as regards its effect on the depressed, the gullible, the vulnerable and those with a tendency to catastrophise within BKism. Just as they used to use the Cold War on us (in the West, we were perfectly aware of such environmental issues from the 1960s onward).

As an past-academic with scientific mind, have you read the counter reviews of his work?
Like all the claims in his book, his premise is impossible to check because he provides no references. Though the book is full of strong and often extravagant claims about science, technology and policy, not one of them is sourced.

And as someone who has study psychology to some degree, do you know - and erect a filter to protect yourself from - the phenomenon called confirmation bias?
Confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea/concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views (prejudices) one would like to be true.

Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it. Confirmation bias suggests that we don’t perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices. Thus, we may become prisoners of our assumptions.


Pink Panther wrote:Sanskrit is itself an artificial language ...

But with roots back to 1800 BC, and before that we have the Indus or Harappan script produced between 3500 and 1900 BC and first published in 1875 by the British. It's likely Lekhraj Kirpalani never knew about it and, perhaps, the earlier civilisations of the area.

"3500 years before Christ" is what we knows as the 16th Century according to the Brahma Kumaris.

vlakshmi

BK

  • Posts: 83
  • Joined: 17 Apr 2019

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post04 May 2019

Hi ex-l,

You are asking me, “So which James Lovelock do you want to believe?”

The case of James Lovelock is a case of peer pressure. To displease their sponsors, mainstream scientists would dilute the facts and would exert tremendous pressure on any scientist who dares to say the truth about Climate Disruption. James Lovelock should not have diluted his position, in 2016, on the adverse effects of pollution because nature has only increased its retaliation through increased number of natural calamities which is always proportionate to the internal pollution of the minds of inhabitants of earth. This you can know from the statistics of Natural Calamities from 2016 and before 2016. (Look at the alarming number of Cyclone the world experienced only in 2018. We had a deadly Cyclone Kenneth in Mozambique just three days before, and today Cyclone Fony in North-East India and Bangladesh.

The latest (15-year) study results published by NASA on April 17, 2019, would definitely disappoint Mr. James Lovelock. NASA used two scientific methods, "Both data sets demonstrate the earth's surface has been warming globally over this period, and that 2016, 2017, and 2015 have been the warmest years in the instrumental record, in that order.”

Nature will continue its fury because humans continue to be more and more divided and their minds are becoming polluted more and more which will attract more and more disasters from the nature.

There's actually no such thing as a natural disaster

Are natural disasters man-made?

Rita

  • Posts: 77
  • Joined: 25 Sep 2018

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post04 May 2019

OK, don’t worry about the planet. It is self sustaining. We are part of nature and nature will do whatever it feels OK. But the question is, who is dividing human beings? These religious beliefs?

Your organisation is collecting money and using it for spreading false propaganda instead of acting on the climate change, and what are you doing to combat climate change?

Sending positive energy?

If planet will go on again 100 years you will say that it’s because of BKs positive energy, and if it does not stay, it will be because of BKs predictions. You have both the answers ready.

One way you are sending positive energy to the universe; and other way you talk and talk negative about everything. Who here in this forum is talking negative? And all of your brainwashed people say, "I think positive and get positive outcomes and so on".

I am sure you will be reading only negative in newspaper and watching negative news on TV and just the opposite of your preaching. You are no less than brainwashed religious people and, on the contrary, you think you are superior than most of them.
User avatar

Pink Panther

  • Posts: 1885
  • Joined: 14 Feb 2013

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post04 May 2019

Rita makes a very good point about how divided against themselves the BKs are on such issues.

On the positive side, many BKs do care about nature, they have installed solar panels and other renewables. But that begs the question - why do it, why go to the expense and trouble when the world is predicted to end, no matter what anyone does, becuase their God said so?

If our actions can prevent the disaster, then why preach the inevitability of disaster?

The old saying is, ”they’re having a shilling each way"

What I read in the quotes from Lovelock was that in the earlier years the data was minimal, so the different modelling was ranging between much wider extremes hence the sensationalism, but now that two decades more data has come in in, the modelling is far more reliable; the super extremes are less worrisome, but still worrisome. It is less "out of control” because we know what is happening and what we have to do. I don't think he is at all saying there is no need for action, I think he is saying to not be as alarmed and let’s act sensibly. He too is a human with emotional responses.

He is but one of many scientists. Let's follow the peer reviewed climate science consensus, which is that if the world achieves the Paris agreement targets it's still only a 50/50 chance we will keep temperatures below a 2 degree average rise. Let’s exceed those minimum targets

We have agency. Even the BKs will agree, given their investment in renewables (whilst still disproportionately appropriating water resources).

The world will not end, but the way of life we have become accustomed to could. I prefer to bless the next generation with effective climate action taken now along with the the positive legacy of the technological achievements needed that will come from that sincere action; rather than curse them by promoting a life-crippling religious fatalism.

vlakshmi

BK

  • Posts: 83
  • Joined: 17 Apr 2019

Re: What are the Brahma Kumaris trying to communicate to fol

Post04 May 2019

Rita,

I was not worrying about planet. I was answering to the question ex-l put to me.

Regarding your allegation about "speaking negatively/collecting money," I have this to say:

In big picture, we can see positive has no meaning without negative just like we can say there is no lotus without mud. BKs do not divide people. They publicly admit that they were shudras (from the root shok, sorrow) the sorrowful once, and now are joyful ones because of elevated teachings of Baba, hence became Brahmins (Brah=broad, open + ma = mind); thus Brahmakumris would literally mean daughters of broad/open-mindedness because they see EVERYONE as child of God. Even their motto is “One God, one world family.”

As for taking money — they take money from the contribution box into which fellow BK members put their contribution out of love for Baba and the world depending on their capacity — absolutely self-motivated. This they do because their realize no organization can run without money.

However, in the case of Surrendered ones are different -- they may feel to contribute more (even from their family inheritance) in various forms because they are not going back to their family, no child to care for in the future as their single -- how much they contribute is also their choice. I know many surrendered ones who have contributed in varying degree -- from 100% to 1% with some varying in between.
PreviousNext

Return to The BKWSU