Is it significant that both were Jewish?
(Remember also key foundations in BK UK developments, Maureen Goodman and her husband/financier David). At the same time, I am thinking of other key contemporaries, such as Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass), Dharma Bum Allen Ginsberg, etc who helped bring Eastern spiritual traditions to the West, New Age business leaders like Marianne Williamson today.
In the US, they've even coined a word JewBu for someone with a Jewish background who practices forms of Buddhism, meditation, chanting or spirituality.
Looking at Robert dressed in Whites with a white shawl, just like the BKs, he could be a BK; but he could also be a rabbi or orthodox Jew wearing a Tallit (Prayer Shawl).
Just as BKism offers access to religious status to non-Brahmanic cast individuals, does Eastern spirituality offer access to guru/rabbi status to Jews who otherwise by birth, sexuality, or experience would be excluded for it. Or does it just appeals a much softer, easier path? Something to which their heritage of intellectual tendencies can be applied to.
It's an tendencies that many Jewish within Judaism have questioned, eg 'THE JUBU IN THE LOTUS: WHY DO SO MANY JEWS BECOME Buddhist?' or 'Of Tao and Torah: New Age Beliefs Are Making Serious Inroads in U.S. Jewish Life'. My off the cuff answers would be because, a) it's a way to become religious without being religious, especially for those who reject the patriarchy/orthodoxy. (One found a similar disproportionate preponderance among Marxists), and b) that it appeals to intellectual heritage. What the article above says is, it's a way for them to ditch the historical baggage (and other tribal groupthink) of being a Jew.
But, going back to Robert as a BK and guru, it's not clear to me whether,
Apart from a few fake marriages for the sake of vias, only their god Lekhraj Kirpalani has been allowed to do that.
Robert, like Lekhraj Kirpalani, has chosen not to be part of an establish lineage or tradition, but rather start their own ... to some degree. Both borrowing heavily from their past but starting their own business using the pieces.
Has he bettered BKism? Has he a new, improved, better developed product?
And how is he handling the difficult issue of accountability without Seniors or peers to go to?
(Remember also key foundations in BK UK developments, Maureen Goodman and her husband/financier David). At the same time, I am thinking of other key contemporaries, such as Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass), Dharma Bum Allen Ginsberg, etc who helped bring Eastern spiritual traditions to the West, New Age business leaders like Marianne Williamson today.
In the US, they've even coined a word JewBu for someone with a Jewish background who practices forms of Buddhism, meditation, chanting or spirituality.
Looking at Robert dressed in Whites with a white shawl, just like the BKs, he could be a BK; but he could also be a rabbi or orthodox Jew wearing a Tallit (Prayer Shawl).
Just as BKism offers access to religious status to non-Brahmanic cast individuals, does Eastern spirituality offer access to guru/rabbi status to Jews who otherwise by birth, sexuality, or experience would be excluded for it. Or does it just appeals a much softer, easier path? Something to which their heritage of intellectual tendencies can be applied to.
It's an tendencies that many Jewish within Judaism have questioned, eg 'THE JUBU IN THE LOTUS: WHY DO SO MANY JEWS BECOME Buddhist?' or 'Of Tao and Torah: New Age Beliefs Are Making Serious Inroads in U.S. Jewish Life'. My off the cuff answers would be because, a) it's a way to become religious without being religious, especially for those who reject the patriarchy/orthodoxy. (One found a similar disproportionate preponderance among Marxists), and b) that it appeals to intellectual heritage. What the article above says is, it's a way for them to ditch the historical baggage (and other tribal groupthink) of being a Jew.
But, going back to Robert as a BK and guru, it's not clear to me whether,
- i) he still conceives of god and soul in the same way as the BKs do,
ii) he still conceives of god and soul in the same way as the BKs do ... but presents it to his followers in the monist, "Everything is One" kind of way they expect (as indeed the BKs do in public), or
iii) he believe that he knows better than the BKs and that God is the monistic "All is One" kind of god.
Apart from a few fake marriages for the sake of vias, only their god Lekhraj Kirpalani has been allowed to do that.
Robert, like Lekhraj Kirpalani, has chosen not to be part of an establish lineage or tradition, but rather start their own ... to some degree. Both borrowing heavily from their past but starting their own business using the pieces.
Has he bettered BKism? Has he a new, improved, better developed product?
And how is he handling the difficult issue of accountability without Seniors or peers to go to?