How great your mind is in fooling you

for ex-BKs to discuss matters related to experiences in BKWSU & after leaving.
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jann

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How great your mind is in fooling you

Post17 Jan 2014

Another chance to see how great your mind is in fooling you.

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Pink Panther

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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post18 Jan 2014

A Negative of a positive image still has substantial detail.

Jann, you don’t even need that much detail to "fill in the blanks” when there are pre-conditioned iconography & responses to stimuli.

Check this one out. All it is in reality is some black shapes and squiggles, but what do we see afterward?

Note step one is - staring at dots! - if at step 4 if you don’t see anything, I suggest more rapid & frequent blinking ...

jesus vision illusion.jpg

jann

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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post18 Jan 2014

Very funny ... "staring at dots! - if you don’t see anything, more rapid & frequent blinking ..." Repetition. More meditation, more service and more detachment.
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ex-l

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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post18 Jan 2014

Although it is fair to suggest and question this kind of simple influence ... and, specifically, one should be questioning about the Janki Kirpalani enforced ritual of staring at backlit photos of her lover boy Lekhraj Kirpalani for 45 minutes each day at 4am ... I don't think such rationalist explanations explain away all of the experiences had while subject to the influences of BKism and their spiritualist practises.

I think one has to accept that individuals do have more intense and inexplainable experiences than is normal, at least to begin with, but see them with an overview that asks how they are used and where they take individuals.

Yes, people do have experiences; no, we don't know how; but, big deal ... however weird or wonderful they might be they lead to a lifetime of being led around and exploited with endless false promises and threats of Destruction doing little of any real value for soceity.

The connection between the face of Lekhraj Kirpalani and the experiences, as in affirming his total responsibility for them all is, I think, more relevant. Although the BKs put Lekhraj Kirpalani's face on god ... and we know thought was god for 20 years ... there is no real guarantee that he is the source. I am tending to think he was just used and deluded and run around too.

The face of Lekhraj Kirpalani as BapDada could equally just be a benign "Wizard of Oz" kind of projection.
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Pink Panther

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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post18 Jan 2014

I don't think such rationalist explanations explain away all of the experiences had

No, but it is one aspect in this peculiar puzzle which is all about how people "join the dots” of experience, conditioning, assumptions, beliefs to see the picture they see, have the experience they have, and their understanding of it. Slight adjustment and the picture or experience changes, the understanding shifts, the meaning is not the same as it was.

Image

"This algorithm can be equivalently thought of as taking a certain ordered sequence of points in the plane and then joining them with straight lines —playing "connect the dots" basically. Different arrangements and sequences of points in the plane would produce different patterns when connected with lines."

Every guru, philosophy, science or description is just "different arrangement and sequences” of joining dots (aspects of reality & experience) to create meaning - some are more intricate than others, some are more ”mesmerising” than others, each has its "resonance" - but no single pattern (single way of understanding) can be all-encompassing.

So to think there can be a single explanation of the BK phenomenon - and what we got/get from it - is just as inadequate as the BK phenomenon itself. But it’s what we do as human beings ...
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ex-l

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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post18 Jan 2014

Pink Panther wrote:Every guru, philosophy, science or description is just "different arrangement and sequences” of joining dots (aspects of reality & experience) to create meaning ...

Yes, but - excuse the BK pun - I don't see the point in your statement.

I think many people who were not infected by the BK germ, who were not susceptible to its psychism, find the appeal very difficult to understand. I've read and heard this many times.

I know of individuals whose families have been split up and torn apart by the Brahma Kumaris sit down and, for example, stare at a BK Shiv Lingum attempting to experience what the BK adherent is experiencing, but feel nothing. The conceptual or intellectually element of BK is very, very low. There basically is not any ... unless you are a completely uneducated Indian, or the kind of flat earther who are willing to believe chickens were irradiated by exploding nuclear power stations 2,500 years ago to become Tyrannosaurus Rexes.

It's the, dare I say it, visceral part of BKism that sucks people in. The feelings ... (that a bit of a paradox because of the debate in BKism of what "feels". Is it the nerves or is it the soul?).

I think many non-BK BK critics struggle with this because they never felt the feelings or sensations BKs have ... and, probably, that's equally true of other intensely cultic religions.

As I write, I am thinking of a pretty but not very bright Indian girl I met decades ago when I was a BK who had no grasps of what BKism meant and, ultimately, was not sucked into it, but summed up BKism as, "Oh yes, the Brahma Kumaris ... they make you feel very light". Meaning weightless and floaty. She had no interest in becoming a BK, and was already on the Hindu female conveyor belt of "child - marriage - child bearing", but had had "an experience" with them.

That "experience" is, of course, what the BKs hope people have with them and use to reel them in like fish.

It's generally some kind of experience; weightless and floaty, out of the boy, visions (as someone else raises recently) etc and then the "intoxication" ... the falling in love period. Although I am without doubt a BK critic and not just doubt their world view but have gone further than most to disprove it as being true ... I would still say that psychically induced experiences probably are more common and more profound within BKism than most other religions. But that still doesn't mean it is god. Quite the opposite ...

That it is an "Easy" and quick route to such weird and wonderful experiences, for some, is true. There have been other such explosions of psychicism in history without a doubt; Kardec and Mesmer are good examples, so are the Shakers and Quakers. The Toronto Blessing is another more recent one. Tromba mediumship in Madagascar is another one.

It's a useful and interesting question to ask why such experiences are not universal ones though? Why when 100% of the people perform the same activity, do some have "experiences", and some don't, however much they try?

I am not sure it is all our mind fooling us. I'd love to know how Mesmer mesmerised people or even how hypnotists hypnotise ... I am absolutely convince, for example, that hypnotists hypnotise and that hypnotic victims are not just fooling themselves and others.

I am not saying there is a right and wrong answer here but I do think we should keep attempting to understand the mechanics of how these "psychic explosions" happen. It's like some kind of poltergeist behaviour but on a societal scale.

Of course, the social enculturation that happens afterwards is a common phenomenon and the same as other groups. You'll here Supreme Master Ching Hai or Sai Baba followers spout exactly the same about their guru/group and, in that, there probably are elements of fooling oneself.
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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post21 Jan 2014

ex-l,

I agree that the psycho-emotional aspect is the larger, hidden part of the iceberg. Especially hidden from non-BKs (or non-participants in the case of other groups).

If the iceberg is the individual, with the psycho-emotional inner experience the larger part below the surface, and the apparent ‘teachings’ and outward practice the apparent part or what’s visible above the surface, the group or religion they belong to is the current and ocean they are "floating" (!) in and being carried by.

You did not say as much but implied it - but I don't think it’s right to say that these deeper, richer inner experiences are not common or not found in mainstream society or religions. They are there, even if they manifest differently. The deeper, inner experience is what is meaningful to people. (The premium or priority placed on "Personal Happiness” as the preferred ”inner experience” is a modern phenomenon, one could almost say it’s a modern luxury).

I was at a memorial service yesterday and many in the church, as I looked around, were quite intensely ”inward” looking. Now some may say the traditional Christian experience is not joyful, (whilst the newer sects like Pentecostals etc are more ecstatically oriented) and many of the intense expressions I could see seemed to come from on some sense of burden, pain, suffering, yearning etc - but you don't need to be joyful to be feeling something ”deep” and meaningful.

The word ”mundane” - even though it means ”of the world” has become synonymous with ”superficial”. These experiences - and places/groups that provide them - are all responses to the superficialities of the mundane. Even an Emo (short for "emotional”, Emo’s are a youth sub-culture) relish the depths of their melancholy for it is emotionally ”substantial".

Reality is greater than any individual can comprehend or deal with. Our human senses only pick up a small portion of what’s there. Our human rationality notices certain things more than others (the dots), seeks patterns, forms, comprehension of the sensations (joining the dots) and creates meaning.

Meaning is literally "what you hold in mind” - what sign-ificance something has - as in ”what does this mean to you?"

The recognised patterns and forms that meanings are born of come out of cultural and social circumstances. Then we can chase that down to individual psychology - what shape the psyche of a person takes.

Given reality is so vast, any moment has infinite potentials, how does a society, a culture, a family, an individual see it and respond to it?

The ”different arrangements and sequences” that are noticed are mostly those which we are taught to notice, the meanings given are those mostly taught to be given.

A stockbroker’s son will grow to see the world partly as a response to how his Father reacts to different economic news, while a fisherman’s son may be far more attuned to the weather and seasons than a stockbroker’s son. An indigenous native of a forest will see the forest differently to an arborist, and a geologist sees the landscape differently to a landscape artist.

Add to these ”mundane” analogies the inner psycho-emotional capacities and sense and we get a certain predisposition to join certain dots and adjust them in meaningful ways ...

A joke illustrates this ”how we see the world” idea nicely:
A patient is shown some Rorschach inkblot images.
The therapist holds up the first one and asks: What do you see?
Patient: I see a man and a woman having sex
Therapist holds up another one: Now what do you see in this one?
Patient: Another man and woman, they're having sex too.
Therapist (holding up a third) : And this one?
Patient: It's a different couple but they are also having sex
Therapist: hmm, when do you think this obsession with sex began?
Patient: What do you mean ”my obsession with sex”? You‘re the one with the dirty pictures!)

The BKs (and others) teach a certain kind of ”feelgood” ego-satisfying affirmational meditation. Pardon the pun but - it connects certain dots in a way that generates a certain pleasant feeling (the bait), and packages it in, or with, a pre-scribed meaning (the hook). The stronger the association made between the ”feeling” and the designated ”meaning", the more the person identifies with the whole package.

Now we’re all "fooling ourselves” to some degree or other all the time, whenever we adopt or prioritise one view of reality over another. It is an evolutionary necessity. By doing this we define our options better, rather than being overwhelmed by infinite possibilities.

Ego (self-identification) as a psychological mechanism helps the organism to self-sustain. Mortality (dissolution of ego) is a clearly defined event that fits into a clearly seen pattern, the dots are clear, the pattern obvious.

Desire for immortality is the shadow of acceptance of mortality. The spaces between the lines of the pattern, the gaps, leave lots of room for ”interpretation”, or spaces to be filled with ”meaning”.

And what is a more attractive ”meaning” for the ego (consciousness-of-self) the very aspect of self that makes you ”you" and keeps you motivated to keep on keeping on, than the notion of an ever-continuing self?

What meaning suits ego better than a promise of immortality, and a meditation that is about affirming this pleasant ”you” that you now feel deeply is/can be forever, and it’ll be even better than this?

By necessity, this is a brief overview of "the point of my previous statement” as you asked - but hopefully enough food for thought?
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ex-l

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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post21 Jan 2014

Pink Panther wrote:I agree that the psycho-emotional aspect is the larger, hidden part of the iceberg. Especially hidden from non-BKs (or non-participants in the case of other groups).

Define "psycho-emotional aspect".

This is likely to stray away from "How great our minds are in fooling us" ... I think the greater part of that fooling happens not amongst the visions and dreams but in the self- and mutually affirming social aspects as one becomes enculturated into the group ... the "Stockholm Syndrome" element where, probably due to nothing more than evolutionary influences, we start to empathise, bond and become subject to our captors.

This definitely happens in all religions, as the god or leaders are constantly affirmed as being the sources of all wonders, and in the replaying of the religion's archetypes, e.g. Christians replaying their persecution syndrome (it's good to be cruxified!), the BKs adopting and reliving their founder and leaders' dramas as if they were more real than their own family's dramas ... (even thought the dramatic version of the BKs' stories are largely fictionalised).

Certainly the rewards of the emotional investments and psychodramas of BKism are not unique ... but their religion also included this other element the ghostly or angelic "Subtle Regions" which, in essence, rather than "up there" somewhere, like some Victorian etching of heavenly realms, is really all around us. The Subtle Regions said to be another dimension or world occupying space and time through which BKs, and other beings, flit around this world and messengers can "pop up to" to get messages from their god spirits who "drops down" to meet them ... and, they claim, through which both living and deceased or "transcended" BKs can possess other living, down to earth BKs and 'do stuff' through them.

This is what their teachings say ... that Mama or Dada or some other "ascended" BK can possess or overshadow (non-BK terms) BKs give them visions, make them feel, boost their auras (non-BK term) or charisma to influence the world around them, inspire their words and actions.

Now, skeptics might just respond and say, "they are fooling themselves" if they believe this other element and phenomena exists. And they might be correct. I don't know. Or we might ask, as many questioning BK has, where is this element? Is it "up there" or, perhaps as you are suggestion, "is it in us"? If it is "in us", is it individual or is it shared ... a shared psycho-emotional world into which any sensitive attuned BKs can drop?

Really what I am adding is the suggestion of real external influences the BKs believe in, whereas I think you are suggesting it is all internal to the individual.

The Subtle Regions, the BKs believe, "only exist during the Confluence Age". They are not the 'other worlds' (ghostly, demonic and angelic) of esoteric Buddhism, Hinduism or Spiritualism etc. BKism make no mention of them.

How do you account for these? Time and time again in mystical messages, the BKs.' god spirits use the metaphor of a "movie screen" in the Subtle Regions where they are able to protect visions for the minds of the BK to see. And they believe they, "Baba gave the soul the vision ..." etc
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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post23 Jan 2014

ex-l: Define "psycho-emotional aspect".

You use the term later in your last post, indicating you get it, but it is worth exploring.

Jann’s post, the article on the sixth sense goes to this in that it looks at unconscious signals that influence us. But it is very hard to formulate laboratory tests for such things. Not impossible, but I don't think it has ever been done satisfactorily to date.

Let me reply more along the the theme of the last few posts in this topic, although it links to Jann’s.

Psycho-emotional motives determining how we reason and rationalise decisions is well-recognised in Western psychology. The Stockholm Syndrome as you’ve mentioned is one of those manifestations.

The sixth sense is talked about in Western literature as something ”supernatural” partly because of our tradition of thinking in terms of of 5 senses linked to 5 external organs. But it was not always so.

Buddhism talks about people having Six Senses - it includes the mind as the ”common sense”, the one that links all together.

It was also thought of in this way by the classical culture of Greece and Rome, with Aristotle naming it - κοινη αεσθεσισ/koinē aísthēsis - and the Latin form sensus communis. Buddhism and Greek/Aristotelian philosophy encountered each other when Alexander and his Hellenic successors (including the Romans) ruled over that whole region from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and when Ashoka sent ”missionaries” to the West.

Buddhism talks of Vedana (feeling tones) arising from our contact with the world, in three ways.

Here ”feeling” is in the primary English meaning of ”how do you feel (emotionally)” rather than the ”tactile/touch” sense of a "feeling on the skin”. Most other languages have separate words for these. (Language is important for it shapes our ”logic” - logic being synonymous with "words" and "word sequences”, and how we articulate things to ourselves ).

We define things, including ourselves, by their boundaries. We end where our contact with the world begins.

All contact comes from a threefold relationship between the sense organ, the sense object and the relationship (the sensation arising) between them.

The feeling tone arising is either a) pleasant, b) unpleasant or c) neither pleasant or unpleasant - the intensity hard to quantify but not necessary for this (and indeed, that which is pleasant at one time can be unpleasant another time, or become so).

E.G. the taste organ (tongue), the taste object (food) and the relationship (taste sensation) - which gives the feeling tone of a), b) or c).

In Pali, these are verbs, not nouns, for the actions of sensings - there is no noun "taste” but there is the verb ”tasting”. Just like we have the word ”run” as both verb and noun, but a "run” does not exist unless someone is running!).

So, with senses, just as sight does not exist unless there is an ”eye” (organ) that is ”seeing” (relationship to) that which is ”seen” (object) - a tri-fold relationship.

So, too with what we name ”Mind” as a noun, there is a sense organ (brain) - that which is sensed (the object) via the other 5 organs or arising from itself (memory, idea etc) and the minding (the sensation that gives a feeling tone. Mind is, in essence the feeling tone/response to all ”sensations arising from all sense organs, including from itself".

(And - importantly - just as external sensations stimulate a mental/mind response, so too the mental organ can stimulate/influence the external sensation. And, yes, Buddhism also uses the term sankara/samkara - in a more nuanced way than BKs do).

The Sixth Sense, Mind, takes from, and gives to, the other 5 organs and has a relationship to them, as well as from ideas and memories etc. Hence it is the sixth sense - the ”common” sense. It too responds with its own ”feeling tone” to what the external senses present - and, more to do with topic - even a "feeling tone” to the idea of something.

Psycho-emotional responses and drivers are very much related to this IMO. What is pleasant is agreeable and attractive, desirable and we want more of. So too the converse, the unpleasant, is disagreeable and we want to avoid it.

Life is a Rorschach inkblot - a chaos that we give form to by what we define the formlessness with, the patterns & language we have to work with… the feeling responses and more ...

Infinitely complex and complicated and layered, Life is multi-multi-faceted. We identify and work to patterns of things we'll ”allow” or even ”make happen”, and of things we'll avoid or prevent happening.

It gets more complicated when things are desirable for one reason but undesirable for others. It is even more complex when we include the samkara - unravelling the templates/patterns used till then by which we ”make sense” of our world.

It is at this point we get into the complexities of fooling ourselves.

    A single idea or feeling may need thousands of words and many experiences to be conveyed.
    A single word can give rise to thousands of ideas.
    A single experience can give rise to ideas and words which are inadequate - reliant on the cultural , social, educational milieu of the person struggling to make sense of it.
The choice now is often determined by psychological, emotional factors - which include or responses to social, familial and other externals as much as anything. The child of a religious parenting is more likely to seek emotional fulfilment from religion or religious-like activity (and this ”religious=like” emotional experience is the basis of and precedes ”formalised” religion).

(Let’s not kid ourselves. Any of these words in the last paragraph are a book or a series of books, in themselves - and the theme of this post is still being worked out in centuries-long traditions. This is but a forum post!).

Tangentially - the whole 3 worlds versus other traditions’ super-mundane world you mentioned: to me, these are what I referred to in previous posts as creating patterns from various points, many of which (points) are to do with non-tangible experiences and ideas. Different names for essentially the same ”patterning” process.

To me they have more in common, generally, in how they attempt to shore up a certain pre-Enlightenment ”logic” as they attempt to rationalise human experiences than they have differences in their particulars. Mostly they tend to invent new ”reasonable” (according to the belief being supported) explanations for what they no answers for, trying to build a cohesive philosophy, usually with a faulty foundation.

Recently, a friend who is a very successful stock analyst decided to finally buy a house, stating that although it made better logic financially for him to rent and invest money elsewhere, as he was having a child with his wife there was an emotional reason to owning a home that overrode the financial logic.

A very successful estate agent friend told me that selling homes rather than commercial properties was his forte because homes are an emotional decision, whereas commercial properties are bought almost entirely on market-based decisions - yields, potential growth, percentages etc.

A belief system you choose to ”live in” is more like buying a home than it is renting premises for business or deciding which mechanic to use. And many belief systems have highly skilled and successful ”agents” able to work on any psycho-emotional aspects they spot.

Those who emotionally latch onto ”buying that house” don’t look in the basement or ignore the engineers’ reports, because of psycho-emotion reasons, rather than rational ones. The same way hostage victims identify with their captors - there’s a ”feel-good” feeling tone that overrides reason.

And there’s a very ”unpleasant” feeling tone that arises if one has to admit major errors or admit (to oneself or others) that one was indeed ‘fooled” or fooled oneself. This unpleasantness is naturally to be avoided.

How long do we avoid unpleasant decision? Except for the wisest, usually it is until 'continuing the avoidance' is more unpleasant (to the point of painful) than the unpleasantness of acknowledging or making the admission.

BK-ism is not about freeing the individual through educating them in the understanding the nature of patterns/samkara/minding/vedana/ belief works.

It merely says "our patterning etc" is better, and "if you impress yourself more and more with it, it's even better still" - a surefire way to be psycho-emotionally kidnapped by a particular form of belief.

It’s akin to either understanding contract law, or being asked to sign on the dotted line and accepting fully one contract ahead of another, without understanding what exactly it is you are doing but, gee, I want what it promises!!

(FYI - I have never signed a contract that I did not understand fully for myself, I never left it totally up to the lawyers!).

(Sorry for the ramble - hope I answered the question and talked to topic)
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ex-l

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Re: How great your mind is in fooling you

Post23 Jan 2014

Pink Panther wrote:You use the term later in your last post, indicating you get it, but it is worth exploring.

No, I did not use the term ... I used and tend to use psychic/psychicism to refer to all the spiritualistic stuff the BKs are into and consider to be real, e.g. ghosts, channelling spirits, visions and other worlds etc. Stuff which, from a few conversations now, you and the skeptics/materialists think just doesn't exist full stop.

I and I think most people would use the term "Sixth Sense" for these psychic or spiritualistic abilities, not common sense. Is what the references you are discussing saying is that such claims or abilities ... which I agree are hard to substantiate and hugely unreliable, but for which endless circumstantial evidence is claimed ... are down to perfectly "normal" abilities to read small differences? How would that explain the ability to read, see and travel to "other worlds"?

For the record, I think the most common sense as possible answers are far better than psychicism ... but I cannot help admitting all this other stuff does also goes on. I just don't think it's good to accept a religion made out of it.
... there’s a ”feel-good” feeling tone that overrides reason.

How long do we avoid unpleasant decision? Except for the wisest, usually it is until 'continuing the avoidance' is more unpleasant (to the point of painful) than the unpleasantness of acknowledging or making the admission.

And, I guess in that is reference to why,

    a) people stick to the BKs *way* beyond the rational point of leaving, just because it has become familiar and comfortable ... and these days it has become a far more open, broader and more comfortable experience, and

    b) why people leave when the experience of remaining within the BK movement ... e.g. putting up with the hypocrisy, social structure etc ... clashes to greatly with their own conscience or level of awareness or disturbs them too much causing them sufficient psycho-emotional pain to make them want to run.
BK-ism is not about freeing the individual through educating them in the understanding the nature of patterns/samkara/minding/vedana/ belief works.

It merely says "our patterning etc" is better, and "if you impress yourself more and more with it, it's even better still" - a surefire way to be psycho-emotionally kidnapped by a particular form of belief.

This I have to agree with and we have discuss it often.

The official cure to the majority of problems individuals suffer from BKism ... is to do more of it!!!

How many times have we heard that!?!

The old school leaders especially seem to consider that further impressing that which is causing the problem will cure them.

I also think it is why it is appealing especially to the Indians, because as a conceptual-social model ("We are the real Brahmins, they are the real Shudras ... and, look, it must be true ... look at all the famous, power, attractive people we association with") it is better than they old, meaningly, stuck or impotent lives.

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