BKism vs Hinduism

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oldbk

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BKism vs Hinduism

Post21 Jun 2019

BKism is not the same as Hinduism. Actually, as many would know, BKs Murli clearly state this. However, this is not brought up during conversations with other "Hindu" religious leaders. Call it deceit, cunning, opportunist ... whatever.

Here is the Murli from June 13, 2019... Will the BKs soon start rewriting this too? Another revision, and who would know, when the "old" Murlis are mysteriously lost. Like the recent server crashes and only selected information could be retrieved (wink wink) !

From June 13, 2019 Murli
Not all Hindus become deities.

In fact, there is no such religion as Hinduism. The original eternal religion was not the Hindu religion. If
you ask anyone: "Who established the Hindu religion?”, they become confused. This name has been given out of ignorance. Those who live in Hindustan call themselves Hindus. In fact, its name is Bharat not Hindustan. It is called the land of Bharat, not the land of Hindustan. It is Bharat, and yet they don’t even know which land this is.
... However, there is no such religion as Hinduism. It was the foreigners who gave this name of Hindustan.
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Pink Panther

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post22 Jun 2019

This is pretty basic understanding, doesn't need any god to say it.

The thing is though that ”Hinduism” includes all the beliefs and philosophies of the lands east of the Indus (Hindustan), in all their plurality, diversity and even direct contradictions and oppositions to each other, vedic, non-vedic, monist, dualist and so on.

However, the BKs believe in a form of what's called the Sanatan Dharma (the BKs call it the Adi Sanatan Devi Deva Dharma) / Let's see them debate their version of the Adi Sanatan Dharma with other religous-nationalist groups and historians who also hold to it!

Try telling them that Bharat is only 5000 years old and Lekhraj is the vehicle of Shiva who becomes Krisna and Narayan etc.
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ex-l

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post22 Jun 2019

It's all demented, idiotically simplicist ****.

I am sorry for being so blunt but it really is.

It is irritating because it starts with a huge fallacy, a fallacy Lekhraj Kirpalani himself goes on to state is false, and gets worse from there.

Question: If there is no such religion as HInduism, why would it need a single individual to establish it?

I don't know when this "yukti" entered BKism but it has been their con trick to hook people for decades.
"Who was the founder of Hinduism ... ah, you don't know, see ... we do ... our god man spirit is!!!".

See how it works by knocking people into a position of doubt and not knowing, then sticking their hook in.

Let's break it down further.

Firstly, the BKs have a theory that every religion must have a "divine Father" (as originally stated), which is an idea stolen from the Abrahamic tradition, probably even just the Christo-Islamic continuum because Lekhraj and his inner circle did not know anything about Judaism and did not even name it in their tree of religion.

Therefore, ”If Christians have Jesus, we must have Lekhraj".

But, as Pink states, there is no such religion as "Hinduism". There are a multiplicity of religions (and irreligious/athiestic traditions) within India, all with their own schools, founders and - most importantly - lineages.

Nor did the Islamic or British rulers, who named it as Hindusim, consider there to be one such religion. It was just a shorthand for "not Christian/not Muslim" or whatever. People who lived in the Indus River area.

India was not called Bharat. Again, there was not such single nation, pretty much until the British made it so. There were many kingdoms.

At that time, to those people, Bharat meant the whole world ... but emperor Bharata, after which it is named, probably never existed. In mythology, Bharata was supposed to be the ancestor of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas in the Mahabharata (in another version, the "Bhāratas" were a prominent Vedic tribe in the Punjab at the time of the Rigveda, circa 1500 and 1200 BC when, according to BKs, they could not have existed).

It's all based on jumbled mythologies, of which Lekhraj Kirpalani really did not understand or know much about, dosed with his own brand of Indian nationalism, and then manipulated to his and the cult's own self-interest.

Bhārata was only selected as the name of the country of India in 1950, from which I am guessing we can date Lekhraj Kirpalani's adoption of it.

Earlier uses, such as Bhāratavarṣa or Bharata Khanda, in a geographical sense, applied only to a restrained area of northern India (part of the Gangetic Valley West of Magadha) or to "the known or inhabited world" (after the legendary emperor Bharata) not India. There's interesting discussion of its roots, here.

Something else in it interests me, how Lekhraj Kirpalani swung from adoring the British rulers (and calling Gandhi a traitor and insulting Congress as "the Crow Race" who were only going to experience temporary status ... because crow **** looks big but disappears quickly) to becoming anti-foreigner, as stated here ... after the British royalty, to whom he sent numerous books, posters and presents, and government ignored his godhood.

"Bharat Mata Ki Jai", was actually the slogan of Hindus participating in the freedom struggle that he criticised!

The problem with Hinduism is it is as huge and messy as one might expect of 1 billion people scattered over a huge sub-continent and thousands of years of different traditions, so Lekhraj Kirpalani and the BKs "win" by teaching uneducated, stupid or, quite simply, lazy minded people a rudimentary kindergarten version they call "The Truth". (The Knowledge™) thereby excusing them from having to make any effort to understand, to study, to learn, to think, to accept the confusion of conflicts and contradictions that is life.

Hindu is just Persian for Sindhu (the Indus River region), so one might even see a little Sindhi supremacism present in the cult at that time.

* NB, all the above, however, is also merely just one partial view, and a tiny sketch of a broad and ancient discussion. It is just a handful of scattered bullet points.
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ex-l

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post24 Jun 2019

History is generally always complicated, extensive and messy and it's clear that Lekhraj Kirpalani liked and offered simplistic order and symmetry in his thinking.

One might ask why?

The problem is, people, we all as BKs, invested ourselves, our sincerity but also our egos, in believe that it was all true and regurgitating it without question.

Unlike real history and philosphy where one is encouraged to question and test ideas, and reform them as new evidence and data arises, in BKism we were strongly encouraged not to think, not to question, and insulate ourselves from any external sources of evidence and data that would challenge his and their authority over us.

Lekhraj Kirpalani and the leaders actually used to say in the Murlis that we had to become buddhus, or idiots, in order to become divine and focus instead on unverifiable "experiences" to validate their ideas.

What did that mean? To bathe ourselves in comforting fantasies, probably.

oldbk

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post25 Jun 2019

The problem with Hinduism is it is as huge and messy as one might expect of 1 billion people scattered over a huge sub-continent and thousands of years of different traditions, so Lekhraj Kirpalani and the BKs "win" by teaching uneducated, stupid or, quite simply, lazy minded people a rudimentary kindergarten version they call "The Truth". (The Knowledge™) thereby excusing them from having to make any effort to understand, to study, to learn, to think, to accept the confusion of conflicts and contradictions that is life.

If this was the only issue, it would be a minimal issue as the "uneducated, stupid, lazy" people do not spread the wrong or pseudo message around. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as we see many (only in quotes) "educated", "smart", "active" following these type of organizations and using their power, wealth to spread the wrong message and along the way enhance further their power, wealth and social standing.

This is the situation in India, internally and externally to the BK organization. For the other countries, the BKs still wield power, wealth, social standing ... but more in a narrow space within the BK organization.
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ex-l

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post25 Jun 2019

OK, I'll stand corrected and suggest "intellectuall lazy", as in not checking the facts.

How would you better define them? Middle class social climbers? Fantasists, egotists? Is it a big thing for them to think of themselves as the true "Brahmins" or "rajyogis"?

Something I have taken from my cultic studies is the importance of lineages, or having a superior teacher to whom you are liable to and an organisation of peers around to keep you accountable. Lekhraj Kirpalani had none of them. He made it all up for himself and, hence, was able to get away with anything having surrounded himself with very largely, entirely uneducated and utterly dependent women.

He paid for the intitiation with the Bengal saddhu we have read about ... but then went off on his own and became his own god. I think truly spiritual people would say that he did this prematurely in his development and, on the basis of them, developed a religion around him that reflected that ego and that encouraged the same kind of delusions of grandeur.

Your criticisms of that assessment, please.

GuptaRati 6666

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post26 Jun 2019

Another term used is peerage, especially in academia. A classical illustration is models of the atom developed almost 100 years ago or more.

After J.J. Thompson won the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the electron, his brilliant, graduate student, Ernest Rutherford, demonstrated the existence of the nucleus and was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Neils Bohr from Scandinavia, did his graduate studies at Rutherford's laboratory at the University of Manchester and advanced the model of the atom to the Orbit Model or Bohr Model and would also win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In each case the student advanced ideas developed by his teacher. The same can be said for Yogananda and his teacher or Bruce Lee and Ipman.

There are blanks, question marks, and red flags on the peerage chart of the BKs.

oldbk

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post27 Jun 2019

How would you better define them? Middle class social climbers? Fantasists, egotists? Is it a big thing for them to think of themselves as the true "Brahmins" or "rajyogis"?

In earlier days, we would have been able to associate these individuals with all idiosyncrasies that are specific to the BK ideology, beliefs and practices. However, the transformation that has taken place over a period of time and continuing to take place, that we are all witness to, makes me look at it differently.

BK organisation has become like any other pseudo-religious pseudo-spiritual organisation, with pseudo-gurus Jaggi, Ravishankar, Nithyananda, Armita ..., Ramdev, Sai, Bangaru (South India) and many more. The main difference is that BK organization is like a Pizza Hut, McDonalds, who have franchises all over the world.

The BKs too have "franchises" all over the world. Each franchisee has a lot of freedom to run their unit, within the overall rules/regulations. They don't have one single head (guru) unlike the others mentioned above. Then, they also have the structure of a pyramid system (ex: Amway), where the top tier reaps the benefits from the labor of the bottom class. The more the bottom class works and generates revenue, recognition etc, the more the top tier gets a bigger portion of it and so it goes.

Looking deeper into this, and with some "introspection" would be amazed by this now existing business model. No place for truism, sincerity, "guru less" etc.

Unfortunate reality is that it is continuing to be a successful business model and will continue to do as the misery and suffering of people increases and the search for quick solutions (without effort) intensifies.
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ex-l

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post27 Jun 2019

Do you think there has been a change in the quality and nature of the male adherents supporting the Kumaris now?

It's purely an anecdotal impression for me but in the early days, they attracted a hippy, new agey, traveller type (of Western males). Now I get the feeling there are a lot more nerdy, IT types.

And where do all the middle aged and elderly professional types fit in? Is it just a status thing now, or a less demanding retirement activity?

GuptaRati 6666

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post29 Jun 2019

One lady friend a decade ago told me of a male BK on the West Coast of the USA an IT chap who was conducting classes and assisted by a BK Sister. The middle age and professional types used to be called dadas.

oldbk

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Re: BKism vs Hinduism

Post30 Jun 2019

ex-l

There is certainly a change in the composition of the BKs, of both genders. We still have the traditional BKs from the economically weaker and/or less educated (worldly), and then we have the Neo-BKs who are economically stronger, working class, who also have college education including Masters degree etc.

Now, where does this difference come from?

We know about the traditional ones, the byproduct of ground level work, including booths at village fair, programs in small towns (may be even in bigger towns too) and so on. This has been going on for quite some time, and this generates the "free labor", the obedient "servants" and the "foot soldiers".

Now comes the Neo-BKs who are a byproduct of the New Age marketing strategy - through Social Media in all forms - Facebook, Meetup, YouTube Videos, and many more. On top of that, the real "money generator" is the Programs organized at or for the Corporate, Government entities which are well advertised even in BK website. Of course, the high value targets are generated through the BK Television channel, high profile speakers, government channels through lobbying.

So, what is the result here?

The "old" BKs are then subservient because they lack money or education or both. There are also other "old" BKs who are well-off and well-educated (like Doctors), who continue to contribute (aka milked) because of guilt feelings that they are not fully following the "Maryadas" and also because they don't have the guts to acknowledge their failure to their family, in this venture. They continue on and off, and try to cleanse their "sins" and "disobedience" by contributing to the centre (Sin Tax). To the minority, who might be sincere in their efforts, it is "shut up or leave", so they just shut up, and cannot leave, for the same reasons mentioned above.

The Neo BKs are those that "have to have" an association with some such spiritual organization, the names listed above. It is a status symbol to say, "I practice mediation, <xyz> Yoga, follow <abc>", and don't hesitate to attend Camps, Retreat etc, drop "moola", have a good time too. Since these programs are blended with "masala" to make it entertainment

These situations for "old" and "Neo" BKs can be translated to the Western BKs with very little change. The change is more in the flexibility than in the process or approach.

Net result, these organizations continue to thrive, expand, their "gurus" and "senior leaders" enjoy a luxurious life and comfort. The ones who have the guts, courage and conviction DO come outside and move on (look at this website), provide support as a support group to those on their way out or looking for a way out.

This long rant is not to reflect pessimism but to espouse reality and then to move forward with optimism.

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