ex-l wrote:So, the difference being, in an average church or mosque congregation you have the social and psychological (the 'archetypal' terry talks about).
"Myth is
[to ex-l] the other person's religion" - J Campbell (my parentheses ).
In the Brahma Kumaris you have the additional, active, unseen and independent influences upon our psyches, invoked at their mass seances in India and centers locally. Those meditation experiences are not just you doing them.
What ex-l is saying is in his last couple of posts is - "
yes, we who became BKs are more special and more intelligent than all others who joined other sects and beliefs, mainstream or otherwise, so special in fact that it took the unique power and influence of spirits to affect us, otherwise we would surely not have been so easily fooled." He, of course, overlooks the actually named "Holy Spirit" that "enters" all Christian 'born agains', or gets people talking in tongues etc, and other phenomena.
As for Krippner' s experiment with the channeller - based on the excerpt to hand, all it says is that the responses recorded on the
polygraph measurements were not fake, they were genuine reflexive responses. That is ALL it shows - everything else (including what caused them) is conjecture. The next step in the scientific method is to consider different possible causes, and test, so as to prove, or eliminate any
which can be thought of, i.e. they may not think of the right cause to test for.
(Like the earlier comment somewhere about one scientist saying that an electric light bulb will never work, while Edison was busy going through thousands of experiments, over ten thousand if I recall - and he almost gave up, until he suddenly intuited the solution - the need for a vacuum). Until the proof of cause, rather than measure of reaction, is conclusive, you can postulate spirits if you like and no one can prove it wrong.
BTW - this whole "spirit influence" idea - even when sitting in front of BapDada, we all mostly acknowledge we can feel a powerful presence. But I know this for myself. Having had one-on-one, face-to-face encounters probably 6-8 times (when we used to get individual blessings), and another 6 or so meetings as a group, getting toli and so on.
Most times, I had to work darn hard to keep a sense of a higher consciousness, and to feel any "power". That is to say, it was often more my effort that gave the experience than "power" from BapDada. It was always easy to be distracted, or to find yourself just looking at Gulzar, and then concentrating harder so not to waste this "opportunity" (what about you guys?). Most of the experience seem induced by faith, expectation and so on. If it was a conniving entity from beyond who wanted to take me over, he sure lacked "punch" in his own right. Some BKs express disappointment at their own lack of "stage" at the time, others have expressed anger at the facile "blessing" they were given. I have spoken to some non-BKs who were brought before BapDada, and they had no experience (of course, that's their part in drama we'd say).
I used to do Third Eye meditations with friends
before Gyan - they were just as powerful - light, auras, sparks - and I knew even less at that time.
deccani wrote:(Re Jonestown) - I hope you are not suggesting that we should be happy that BKWSU did not organize mass suicides and made our parents shove 'Kool-Aid' down our throats!!
I have heard Avyakt Murli live, personally - (within 1976-79 seasons, around same time as the Jonestown massacre actually) where the spirit entered the bottle of Dadi Gulzar and actually said [paraphrasing], "faith in the Sat Guru should be such that if the Guru asks you to jump off a cliff you would do it without 2nd thought. Hands up those would do so if Baba asked". (A number of hands went up) - followed by "of course, Baba would not ask such a thing, but faith should be such etc etc ...".
I recommended that documentary
"Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" because it is a great study of human nature and the religious impulse - all most of us know is the end of the story. It shows how ordinary, intelligent people get involved, experience great happiness and achieve great things, then how suddenly it all turned into a nightmare - an extremely well made documentary that has interviews with survivors and family members, lots of actual live footage, lots of history that I did not know about. Real people, each had their own life, their own story. It brought tears to my eyes. It was mentioned to reinforce the point that we are no different to others that are
fooled.
There was the recent stuff with Heide Fittkau's group, the Russian Orthodox sub-sect last year that holed up in a cave expecting the end, it is going on all the time. Deccanni is right that this is more of a Western tradition (we should say Abrahamic, i.e from monotheistic traditions? And many have noted Lekhraj's Islamic influences.
Also Deccani, I was saddened to hear of the 3 suicides you mentioned. There is a thread called "Honour Roll - suicide" - have a look. The people you knew can be added there, and any story that you can add to humanise them for the reader more would be valuable.