10 Jul 2014
Dear ex-BK jan,
In these questions to ex-l (and he can answer for himself) what I hear is statements of your experience, that you have struggled or are still struggling. You are not alone, your experience is not unique, but it is unique to you because it is new to you.
Each person has different background and capacity to deal with the process of dis-enculting. No-one believes when they are in a cult that it is a cult. That’s "other people” and ”other groups”.
How strange do the beliefs and lifestyle of the medieval peasants appear to us today?. How strange will today’s beliefs and practices appear to people 300 years from now? Everyone believes they are normal and it’s others who are strange...
A cult is merely a small, non-majority cult-ure anyway. There is also a cult of the mainstream as well, people who do just go along and never question or examine their own lives, accept the paradigms of their parents and society and media. That may work for some and some can live quite happily in that way.
One reason many of us became ”enculted” is because we were questioning & examining ourselves and our world , and we were looking for ways to live more meaningfully. The thing that actually makes the BKs a ”cult” in the full sense of the word is the way they are not pluralistic in their view of mankind (everything is evaluated according to their doctrines, happens because of them or exists to serve them or to hinder them i.e it is all about them!).
They see a person’s freedom to do & think as they wish, finding their own path in life as independent mature adults, as being inferior to doing or thinking what they (BKs) think ”god” says everyone should do. It’s a pseudo-spiritual game of ”Simon Says” or in this case ”Baba says” - do something else without ”Baba says” and you are out! The ones who only do when ”Baba says” are the winners! A quite childish and self-centred view of the world.
True fathers, true teachers aim to assist their children & students to grow up, to graduate, to move out into the world to live independently and make their own choices,, determine their own beliefs, find their own moral core and tasks. BKs and other cults make it all about themselves, insisting the guru’s way is superior. BKs (and cults) are insular and greedy, like a tyrannical Father who takes all the child’s or wife's earnings, keeping them dependant, in the belief that his patriarchy and values trump everyone else’s right to autonomy.
It takes time. Be patient. Use ‘replacement therapy”, i.e. just as you replaced your pre-BK life with BK thoughts, actions, routines and relationships, you need to now replace all that with new thoughts, new activity, new routines and new (or revive old) relationships.
BKs make so much effort over a period of time to become good BKs and replace the supposed ”lokik sanskaras”.
Ex-BKs need to make just as much effort to erase the patterns BK life created. Keep it up. It’s good when you reach the stage where you look back laugh at yourself and the rest of us for ”Did I really do that? How dumb we were!! :-)