GuptaRati 6666 wrote:The wearing of the eye liner, I was told, was to protect the eyes from exposure from dust.
I think that's just a add on rationalisation made by someone who had no awareness of the original documents or the actual history.
There was some "magical" or occult connection between the eye liner and the saddhu initiation Lekhraj Kirpalani had taken. I think, think it through rationally, a) how many men of his class, generation and status wore it, and b) how effective would that have been anyway?
Reading the post and responses on this topic I see parallels between the BK establishment and Bikram Hot Yoga establishment. The founder of the latter took flight from the USA after several female associates sued him for sexual assault ...
One of the interviews that stood out the most for me in that documentary, was the one with the Indian woman sociologist (I think she was) who likened Bikram's grandiose self-fantasies the like of the braggards she knew from the coffeeshop back where she came from in Bengal. Calcutta, where Lekhraj Kirpalani made his fortune and met his initiating saddhu was the capital of Bengal.
The documentary documents the extent of Bikram's self-exaggeration, making wild claims about his own status that were just not in any way true ... but no one in the West thought to question or challenge.
This, too, is the same with us and BKism.
Possibly Indians - and the younger generations - are more immune to gurus' delusions of grandeur.
However, as with the Nigerian fraudsters on the internet, gurus keep running their scams as they work ... there's always a small percentage of people who fall for them, sufficient enough to live off comfortably it seems.
Someone called them "dream sellers" to me the other day, they don't sell the product they say they are offering - whether the Nigerians and their million dollar bank transfers or the Brahma Kumaris and their multi-million dollar Golden Age karmic bank transfers - they sell the dream of it to their victims.
In Bikram's case, it was just the fantasy of a Yoga studio franchise and he still made multi-millions from it, and he still continues despite being exposed as an abuser of women, immigration and tax system (again, just like the BKs).
That, sadly, also teaches that the BKs are like to continue on their scam for as long as they can too. It seems to be that such people have the "power", or the 'third eye', of being able to recognise suckers and an inner knowing that "a fool and his money is soon parted".
I will end on the most serious conclusion I have made about BKism ...
The BK Knowledge™ is not "knowledge", let alone facts,
it is a filtering system to filter out the most foolish in society ... in order to exploit them in some way, for as much as they can, and for as long as they can.If you believe it, and stick around, you must be a fool* and ripe for exploitation in their eyes.
*
definition: young, naive, vulnerable, in experienced, idealistic, damaged etc etc etc