Redstone wrote:She regards the 5000 year cycle as symbolic as opposed to being literally true. She does however believe in the whole Kirpilani-as-god routine.
I did the same for years.
It’s rationalising it and all the other discrepancies and contradictions in whatever way you can. We do this because the only authority ”divine revelation” has is the authority given to the revealer. If you are to believe the ”divine authority" of the one who has given such revelations, that it is capital ”G” God as self-acclaimed ... or rather, if you are looking for ways to continue to
suspend disbelief thinking that’s the only way to continue enjoying the ”buzz" of the "story”, well, the authority of that source has to be unimpeachable. It can’t be false, mistaken or ignorant. You will psychologically do what is necessary to maintain cognitive cohesion. You'll look at it and say ”it’s symbolic, it’s numerology, it’s poetic licence, it’s only told that way to appeal to the Hindu culture” ... so on and so forth. Even the great anti-intellectual slap-down, ”I don't know, I don’t care to know, it makes me feel good”.
But, if one examines the source material for what it is, as written - it is very definite, spoken as literal truth. Many Murli paragraphs actually state that history and science are false knowledge arising from ”stone intellects” and "body consciousness” . F*ck the maths, shove all your evidence up 'you r soul’ because ”This Is God".
That is, in Murlis there is never - repeat never - any indication that it is to be considered symbolically or any other way other than literally true.
For every 1000 categorical statements saying this is all to be taken literally, that it is the one supreme God speaking and the ”Gyan” is God’s truth, how many categorical statements will you find saying to maybe think about it symbolically or poetically are there? Cor-strewth and cor blimey. None.
The compartmentalising of it all is ”normal’ human behaviour, and actually played on by those drawing others in. Take what you like, keep coming just for that.. but its well known that we'll tend to increasingly identify with those we spend more time with.
No, she was raised in a secular household and both her parents were teachers and non-religious. Though from a Protestant background. Her mother traumatized her childhood through constant yelling and general craziness (something she herself admits). Her Father was a very kind gentle man with whom she was strongly attached and devoted (and who left her mother when she was 16), and who died a few months before the BK thing started, so along with her anxiety and health problems, you can can see the stepping stones which led her to the BK door.
From what you’ve described, it sounds that her ”relationship with Baba” is not a substitution of religion but a substitution of Father figures, an appeal against mortality, a mechanism to deal with or avoid grief. And with her mother not providing a model of mature, well-rounded womanhood, that is something not ‘known’ or seen as desirable. The well-mannered ”nuns’ of the BK convent present a more desirable way of being a woman.
Absent fathers and Father substitution is a common characteristic among many BKs I have known, just as much as lover substitution is. God as ‘Baba’ can be a Father to the infantilised, the Krisna romantic ideal to the Gopi fantasy, the projected wise ”senex” to those whose consciousness is in arrested development for any reason ... Like any intangible and ideal, God or a ”Baba" can mean to you whatever you want it to, the relationship can be whatever you want it to be. You’d be amazed how different the ways are that BKs consider who it is they are ”remembering”. It is actually, literally discussed in that way - make Baba your Father, your mother, your friend, your lover, your child, your baby.
Some get the buzz ‘remembering' the abstract, the point of light conceptualisation of Shiva, some the anthropomorphised ideal presented by the long dead but supposedly present angel of "Avyakt Brahma", some swoon over Krishna ... and so on. If you ask someone like Janki which is the true "object of mind” for highest Yoga, usually it will be said that all of these will be equal. Occasionally a class will have one of these presented as "better” but then another class will have another one said to be better.
Mere mortals cannot compete. Our fluctuations, flaws and limitations are obvious to see. We do not become whatever the person thinking of us wants us to be, we do not confirm every thought the way an imaginary friend might. We are always there, even when not being thought about, while God, Krisna or Avyakt Baba can be forgotten, ignored until summoned by ”remembrance”. Just as you can never replace the imagined relationship a teenybopper has with Justin Bieber, or tell a person infatuated with a ”bad boy” that it’s a mistake, so too, no real person can match the projected ideal of the romanticised archetype.
For me, I think the key to breaking the spell is when the cult member begins to recognise that it is not an ”all or nothing” package, that the "sweet experience” had is not exclusive to the rest of the package. Spiritual/mystical ecstasy, deep ‘silence’ or stillness of mind, and all that has been experienced by humans probably as long as humans have existed. The package it comes in, the accompanying narrative is the wrapping and ribbons - or to mix metaphors, its the old wine of human experience is different bottles, but we get hung up on Brands and marketing to ourselves, i.e. we buy the product we think represents the persona we want to present to the world, the type of people or celebrities we want to be associated with.
If your wife is as intelligent and wise and out of character as you say, I think she will eventually see through her own thoughts. How long that takes is anyone’s guess.