The Brahma Kumaris and their World Spiritual University

6.
We can actually check to see how they are rewriting and revising their messages from God. These were 5 years worth of messages in the 1960s which they say are the only messages that God gave at that point and of course, they are chopping and changing them to suit themselves as predictions fail. That’s not something that has been made generally known to the public. So we can actually see side-by-side the changes they make. We have an extensive download section that we are building up. It’s a 1.5 gigabyte of information, so far. People can go to different sections. Again we have the Murlis to download. Now the Brahma Kumaris will not even allow their own followers to have these messages, they won’t let them take them out of the centres, they will only be allowed to read them in certain places and we actually have BKs emailing us, desperate to have these messages because they’re in love with this spiritual being that is God. We’re building up the place of all the academia that has ever been done about the Brahma Kumaris so that everyone can get everything straight away. Partly, this is because of a war that we have had on the Wikipedia proper with them. We are, of course, also looking at their finances because at the bottom line where does the money go?

 

Wikipedia article: If anybody wants to know who the Brahma Kumaris really are look at the back end of the discussion pages, the arbitration committee, the moderations. We have had a two year war with them in order to present the truth and not a PR version of what we do and even now it is modest, verging on academic. It is not a polemic, it’s not pejorative. I have tried to do well but you should see the deviance, the manipulation, the lies, I cannot express what we have been through with these people just to get something that’s accurately honest. At the bottom of it there is a set of references about this long struggle because we have had to fight over basically every word to get it up there. So this is our website!

What was the BKWSU’s^[4] response to it? The same week that they sent a letter to the United Nations telling them how the U.N. and how the leaders of the world had to act and listen to criticism and take on the views of common people they started legal action against us to shut us down and I joined the ranks of the people who had been sued by a cult and thankfully an even smaller club of people that won. They tried to knock us out. It was a horrendously expensive and painful, mentally and emotionally. The level of deviance they got up to, I would never have expected it!

 

Betrayals: they have an international spy ring. People, ex-members, talk about the Brahma Kumaris in terms of the “mafia” that’s not hysterical. The closest thing in terms of “business models” to the Brahma Kumaris is the mafia. They have a series of reputable, seeming respectful, even legal fronts but inside that it’s a completely different game, an international game, as some of the speakers said today.

 

Now this is actually an appeal. You’ve seen the website. You can see the concept behind it. Most of the ex-cult groups fall into the “anti-ex” profile and I think they defeat themselves in that, because they get caught in the polemics, the Hegelian dialectics of two sides fighting. Our website is held together by bits and pieces of free software.  It looks good, but behind it we’ve had to fit all these bits together because nothing existed which was accessible to us.  It has absolutely broken the Brahma Kumaris open and it is actually helping them to improve and what we are trying to do, what we are doing, is to lobby them directly to implement duty of care and reform programmes. We are not antis, we are not attacking them. I think this could be taken as an example and used for other groups and in fact. I think there should be an international data base of all groups using this model. Largely because the people concerned themselves contribute to the work. You don’t have to do the work.  You put the forum up and it happens. There exist commercial operations which carry out what we call “social networking” in the internet world, this is just one example which has all the parts that fit and work together. Ours could be improved. I would just like to make a call to somebody among the universists to speak to some software developers in the open source community who provide software for free to work on some model like this to apply to all NRMs.

 

The Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University: This is what they say about themselves “The BKWSU is a Non-Governmental Organisation, affiliated to the United Nations, working towards world peace through personal change.” The Brahma Kumaris are in love with the United Nations. If I could ask for anything, I would like to separate them from that. If you look on Google you will discover that there are something like 77,000 pages connecting the Brahma Kumaris with the U.N. They have actually been punished by U.N. for over using the connection, over exaggerating it. They have relentlessly used this connection to validate their teachings, but the United Nations know nothing about such teachings. You can look at the BKWSU International web site: very sleek and well marketed. The Brahma Kumaris have invested a tremendous amount of money, energy and time into becoming something at the U.N. which really comes down to a table and a chair. They have a dedicated Brahma Kumaris at the United Nations web site. Now the purpose of the United Nations association is that the groups that associate with U.N. are meant to be doing what the U.N. wants and I think we all have a basic idea about what the U.N. is about. We presume that the U.N. are trying to bring countries and nations and people together. This is actually a quote from the Brahma Kumaris own web site: “During the tense years that preceded WWII, a group of spiritual men and women came together in the East, united by their commitment to the welfare of humanity as the founding fathers of the United Nations formulated a blue print for world peace and security, the founding members of the Brahma Kumaris were researching universal core values which they considered as necessary to restore individual worth and human dignity.” This is the wonderful sort of padding that they are capable of. That’s what they say they were doing. Luck had it that I found a text in the British Library of what they actually had said at that time. This is a new find. Nobody in academia has gotten to this until now. Brahma Kumaris in 1942 wrote to the Military marshals of the world, in the middle of WWII, and they are telling them “to suspend civilian law to enable martial law and practise a scorched earth policy”. So in 1942 Brahma Kumaris were writing to people like the Viceroy of India, Gandhi, Kings, and this is the sort of messages they were sending out telling them to basically destroy the world…  They actually believe that they are destroying the world they believe that WWII was a manifestation of their purification ritual of the world and of course they are going to inherit the world. So, typical of their predictions, the Indian Government is going to hand over power to the Brahma Kumaris soon, the whole world will recognise the Brahma Kumaris as God’s own instrument and that God has come to earth.
 
The Thar Desert which is this vast desert around their headquarters on the Pakistan border is to be full of millions of people, devotees coming to worship them. These people, their devotees (the words they use for worshipper or devotee is actually “baggot” which is a disparaging word) they would not use this word to describe another Brahma Kumari because they are Brahmans, they are enlightened, they are self realised, they are pure, you are impure not self realised, unenlightened…. All of you, everybody, every other religion…they are the only true religion.

 

So, what do the Brahma Kumaris actually believe behind this kind of New Age “Peace and light”? Destruction! The announced death of 6 billion impure untouchables to make way for a Golden Age of heaven on earth for 900.000 of their faithful followers.

 

I would like people to separate the leadership of the Brahma Kumaris from the followers. They like to say they that they are all one – they’re not. There’s a tight little personality cult within the movement that I really call the Brahma Kumaris.  We are at present trying to analyse who they actually are. What they do believe is that they have started this destruction and that they’re going to make it by their Yoga Power. As a reward for that, they are going to get the best seats, which means that they are going to become the deities of this Golden Age world. And they will have a very specific hierarchy: emperors, kings and queens, subjects all the way down to cremators, depending on one’s efforts, what you do and don’t do, you’re going to be reborn. Of course these little old ladies that we know as the Brahma Kumaris are going to be the ruling class and if you stick in with them you might become one of their family or perhaps their courtiers or if you do something wrong such as going off and falling in love and having a relationship, well the best you might become is an undertaker – a body burner. So what they encourage people to do on the basis of this, is surrender their mind, body and wealth, everything. Dadi Janky, who is a star in New Age circles, has made jokes about this “the Brahma Kumaris say: we give our teachings for free but once you’re in we will take everything” and they really mean that, I’m talking about everything not just physically but also mentally and spiritually.

 

This screen shows one of their old themes which is how they picture present day earth as a hell and the destruction of it by a war between America and Russia. The big joke is that they’ve denied this in public. However we are collating all the media as they come along and they’ve denied that they actually believe this any more, they call it a transformation – Its OK guys, the world is going to be “transformed” – by nuclear wars, civil wars, natural disasters, continents are going to sink, the only places that will be left apart from India will be places where there have been Raja Yoga centres and they’ll become picnic spots for the deities, for the reincarnated Brahma Kumaris, to go to in their nuclear powered flying machines. I am not making any of this up; I am actually toning it down to fit in time.

Well take a step, a step back, here we go again: “Wild science-proud Christian cats”, that’s us guys “fighting for the butter of world sovereignty” they’re doing this, picking a lot of Hindu metaphors and churning them up with their spiritualistic messages.

 

So what do they teach? They teach a 5000 year cycle. That means that in 5000 years time we will be sitting here among each other again, you will listen to me as you are doing today. This screen is an older version of the cycle, what the cycle means is that the first 2.5 thousand years was heaven, 2.5 thousand years was hell and somewhere around 2.5 thousand years ago the dinosaurs existed. They teach that there are three worlds. That God exists in the top world. We are a soul and instead of evolution they teach devolution. Humanity has come down from a Golden Age state to a hellish state and we see the Brahma Kumaris saving the world. This talks about 1976 destruction they’ve since removed this poster. Who is teaching this? God himself. And this is Lekraj Kripalani being possessed by God. The little point in his eye going red he is Adam his Brahma Kumaris partner was Eve. He is also Brahma, Vishnu and Shankar (which is ridiculous to a Hindu) he is being slowly deified. Their God is the God of all other gods. You can see how they are building these images: drawing in all religions to their religion. There are various different versions of the same message of course they are the supreme religion. This is the medium and in the middle here we have Dadi Janky feeding God which is one of their little shows that they have put on before. On this screen what is going on concerns various sorts of mediumships of previous members, of deities from the Golden Age, of deceased Brahma Kumaris. Actually, I think that the Brahma Kumaris are being possessed or overshadowed by spirits, whether real spirits if you believe in that, whether subconscious energies. From my own experience I would accept this. They have very powerful visions and lights and so on and though I don’t understand this and I don’t think people do but if people want to start understanding channelled beings they should look at two books which are the best ones on the subject – Joe fisher^[5] and M. Scot Peck^[6].

The 8,000 branches of the Spiritual University are actually houses that people live in. There is no university. They say they are not a religion yet their founding articles say that they are there to ordain and maintain clergy. They say they are a Spiritual University and a registered charity to alleviate poverty. They have an income of £1 to 2 million a year, in the U.K. assets of £16 million and they have never distributed any wealth at all. They say they are promoting Hindus. They teach that they are not Hindus that Bakti Hinduism is ignorance.

I went to a lot of trouble here to actually show people that the Brahma Kumaris life is relentless. Every hour from 3.30 a.m. thru’ to 10.30 p.m. is taken up with meditation class, meditation, meditation, that’s a seven-day a week schedule, 7 days, 52 weeks there are no holidays. You don’t just go to church on one day a week. It is every day of the week. No sex, no touching, segregation, showering after going to the toilet, washing genitals after urinating, only keeping Brahma Kumaris company, no gods apart from theirs, no practises apart from theirs, no novels, no cinemas, no medias. You can only eat food that’s cooked by Brahma Kumaris, you can only eat vegetarian no eggs no onions and then inside that single day, your day is then broken down to hourly sections. This is a chart they use each week, cut into daily sections each month and then it is set into annual sections. So, I think if we were to look the standard definitions of cults they would score fairly high.

8.

 
This is actually their own copy of their principles. All through this talk we are relating to original documents, nothing made up. One of the things I am most concerned about is that in India, they’re actually requiring parents to hand over the dowries of young girls who want to join them in their teen ages so that they don’t run away and that their parents are not dumping unwanted daughters on them and to me that’s tantamount to slavery.

They are not teaching Raja Yoga. They claim to be teaching ancient Raja Yoga. It is not, it only existed after 1950. I want to tell you about was a friend of mine. This is all that’s left of her, it’s a death certificate. The coroner’s report says she died of multiple injuries consistent with a fall from a height. What he didn’t know is that she jumped from a five storey building. She killed herself on her second attempt after falling in love with one of the other members. The symbolic version of that is that God says that to have sex is like falling from the fifth floor of a five storey building and she killed herself in this way.  We are tracking suicides within the organisations. People hanging themselves in God’s house, women burning themselves in their houses, people that have financially given to the organisation killing themselves. One beautiful one in Delhi where someone killed himself in Baba’s room, that’s Gods room and then the sister in charge locked the door, went off to give class for one hour and a half, offered food to God, fed the people and then went back to take care of the corpse that she had left. On our website we list all of the names of all of the different fronts that they use and we are keeping them up to date. What we found luckily were some documents from the 1930s and 1940s which show the hidden truths of their religion. They had destroyed them, luckily I found them: letters to Gandhi, Queen Elisabeth, Viceroys of India and these original books and teaching posters. The significance of this is that they utterly contradict what they are teaching now. And among examples I’ve given, the biggest one is that for the first twenty years of their existence there was no God Shiva. So for twenty years they had a different God and nobody knows anything about their transformation. What happened was completely hidden and I mention this quickly really in order to question the credibility of the leadership and to show their modus operandi. It’s a fake history.
NOTES

^[1] Comments from here onwards are directly concerned with screens of the website.

^[2] Lawrence A. Babb, “Amnesia and Remembrance in a Hindu Theory of History”, Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1982), pp. 49-66.

^[3] Murlis : according to Wikipedia “mediumistic messages”

^[4] Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University

^[5] Fisher, Joe, Hungry Ghosts: An Investigation into Channelling and the Spirit. World. Toronto: Doubleday Canada Limited, 1990.

^[6] Scott Peck, is a Psychiatrist he wrote a best-seller 'The Road Less Travelled'," Brain/Mind Bulletin, 26 May 1986

6. Brahma Kumaris: A New Religion?

http://www.cesnur.org/testi/bryn/br_kranenborg.htm

By Reender Kranenborg, Free University of Amsterdam, 1999

A preliminary version of a paper presented at CESNUR 99, Bryn Athyn (Pennsylvania).

1. New Religious Movements and New Religions

The expressions ‘new religious movements’ and ‘new religions’ are mostly used as synonymous terms for one and the same phenomenon. On the one hand, this habit can be justified. After all, a ‘new religion’ is always a new religious movement. On the other hand, however, is every new religious movement a new, that is, independent religion? Of course, every ‘new religious movement’ is religious, but is it thereby also a ‘new religion’? I would like to argue that the two concepts should be distinguished and not considered as synonymous. The term ‘new religious movements’ refers to the many different groups that are found within the different religions and traditions. ‘New religions’ should be used to refer to groups that offer something new with respect to religion in comparison with the tradition from which they emerge and in the end become a separate organization. ‘New religions’ are, in fact, ‘new world religions’ (note: I do not mean new world religions in the sense of New Age, but world religions that are presented as new.) It is a separate category.

I will explore this further. In 1970 Needleman published The New Religions. Was this book actually about new religions? With respect to content one must say no. He mentions Zen Buddhism and the Tibetan Vajrayana which, as is well known, are both very old religions; he discussed Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, Transcendental Meditation and Meher Baba, which are indeed new movements but not really to be characterized as ‘new religions’, for these persons and groups remain emphatically within existing religious traditions. He also mentions Subud, which is perhaps the only one which could take the predicate ‘new religion’. Needleman used the concept ‘new religion’ in a purely formal way in the sense of new in America. Indeed, that is what they all were: it was only recently that they are to be found in the United States. I do not view the expression ‘new religions’ in this way.

When I speak of ‘new religions’ I mean a specific category which is clearly to be distinguished from that of ‘new religions movements’ by means of a number of criteria. I use the term ‘new religion’ only if the phenomenon in question displays the following characteristics:

a) The group presents something new with respect to content, something that was not found previously in the tradition in which it originated. This ‘something new’ is not only a renewal of old truths or a revival of old forgotten practices: it is something essentially other.

b) This leads to the group deviates clearly from the existing views and practices within the tradition in a decisive way. Of course, the group will take over much from the tradition, but these beliefs and practices are not decisive.

9.

c) A consequence of this is that a break with respect to content and practice is noted both by the group itself and the tradition within which it originated. If any group whatsoever breaks with the tradition on its own initiative, this does not have to entail that it becomes a new religion. There does not have to be any break concerning content. This is clear from the many groups called ‘sects’ in the sense of the classical sociology of religion. Neither can we claim that we have to do with a new religion if the tradition itself initiates the break, for the group can participate to a large degree in the tradition as far as content is concerned and does not, in many cases, recognize its excommunication from the tradition. We encounter this in what traditionally have been called ‘heresies’.

d) In addition, the group must have an all-encompassing, complete program. It must, regarding content and practice, encompass all aspects of life and doctrine. If, for example, a certain groups offer only a new method for self-realization via regular sessions, this is, in principle, too limited.

I will illustrate this with a few examples. We can begin quite simply with Christianity, which arose within the tradition of Judaism. Here something new is offered, namely, the belief that a certain person was very God himself. In this or because of this great differences in views (for example, on reconciliation) and praxis (the law was no longer valid) arose and the break was established at a specific time by both sides and young Christianity had clearly a complete program. Behold the birth of a new religion. Another example is that of Bahai, which originated within the tradition of Shi‘ite Islam. Here certain revelations were received, something that was both formally and materially new and here also various differences arose as to what must be believed or done and both sides signaled a break (the Shi‘ites could not view Baha’i as Islamic nor did Baha’i itself want to be called Islamic). The movement also had a clear, all-encompassing program, as can be claimed right up to the present.

If Baha’i serves as an exemplary model, in most cases it is difficult to determine whether we have to do with a new religion. Take, for example, the Unification Church. In the first instance it is, I would say, a ‘new religion’: it arose within Christianity, but it does present something new: Moon as the returned Jesus, in combination with a new book, The New Principles. One can claim that there are essential differences in teaching and practice with Christianity. It is also clear that Christianity broke with the Unification Church, but it is less clear as to whether the reverse is true, because the Unification Church is inclined to see itself as the true expression of Christianity, i.e. as it was essentially intended to be. Finally, the Unification Church has a complete, all-encompassing program. Is it therefore a new religion? Yes, but with this proviso: the Unification Church’s view of Christianity can lead to its becoming continually more ‘christian’. It is very much conceivable that after Moon’s death the church will assimilate itself more into the whole of the Christian tradition and will thereby become a ‘new religious movement’. We can indicate something similar in connection with ‘The Family’.

We can conclude that most ‘new religious movements’ are by far certainly not ‘new religions’. Very different groups like Hare Krishna, the Order of the Solar Temple, the Family, the Branch Davidians, Rajneeshism, New Age, etc. can be characterized as ‘new religious movements’. They remain within their own tradition, the deviations are too minor, what is presented as new is not specific enough, and the break is not fundamental. Thus, there are not very many truly ‘new religions’. But they do exist. In a certain respect, we must also include the modern groups in the category ‘new religions’, which, as it were, originated out of nothing. An example is the Heaven’s Gate. It had the potential to become a ‘new religion’ but died because of its exclusivity and extremism. In this connection Scientology could also be mentioned (if we take its religious claims seriously). It did not originate within a certain tradition and there can therefore be nothing said of deviations or of a break, but it does offer something new, both with respect to intention as well as to views. In addition, it also offers in principle a complete program. The converse, however, is that it can be considered as an exceptional variant within the gnostic-esoteric tradition—and is thus ultimately not truly new—and that the group has the tendency to orient itself more and more to the technical aspect, thereby neglecting other aspects.

In short, I hope that I have shown that it is worthwhile to introduce a separate category ‘new religions’, which is clearly to be distinguished from the broader ‘new religious movements’. And it is clear that the number of ‘new world religions’ is not large in comparison.

On the basis of the preceding I wish to present a case study of a possible ‘new religion’. It concerns the movement, Brahma Kumaris, which originated in India. My question is whether Brahma Kumaris represents a new Hindu religious movement or whether it is more proper to speak of a ‘new religion’? If the latter is the case, why?