ex-l wrote:Rest assured if I have written it would have been far more salacious and I would have not tiptoed around the naughty elements.
That argument does convince me :-)
I think one could actually be "sex positive" about what was going on in the early days... Although the BKs have since made love, sex and affection terrible crimes, pandering to Kali Yugi society's values, I can see expression as a way of overcoming the social and sexual hangups of the era, even challenging the arranged marriage and dowry system. The book hints at other males being allowed similar freedoms.
Is the world ready for Lekhraj Kirpalani as the guru of Free Love? At least where he was involved. I think it is time for the elders and originals to speak out about all this. Have any BKs got the courage to raise it with them and persist until they get an answer?
I agree 100%. The ball is now in their court.
I do like what I hear about the early days - what surprised me about the revelations in the book was that I was not surprised by any of the behaviour described. I knew that the early days were different, that they all lived together, that teenage Sisters regularly sat on Lehkraj's lap, and that the vibe was very different from what it has become. One has only to look at their faces in some of the oldest photographs to realise that the vibe was very intoxicated: the girls are radiant. All this just made me want to time-travel back there and see what it was really like.
When a BK, I was always struck by how the old photographs (50's, 60's?) show BB hugging Sisters, playing badminton with them, walking in the hills with them, on picnics etc. These photos display normal balanced human affection and warmth, and an easy natural attitude that has long since been replaced in the BKWSU (for Brother/Sister interactions at any rate, if not for Sister/Sister interactions!) by a starchy, inhuman "no touching allowed" protocol, with chaperones required.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the early excesses in familiarity would produce a subsequent counter-balancing excess of prudishness? And this has now been institutionalised and so stiffened further? So, this stamping out of physical contact may be an over-reaction to the early licentiousness. Whatever the reason, it is a very unhealthy development IMO, because, as we know, their methods have resulted in endemic deceit, guilt, and hypocrisy, and often in hysteria also. As with all their fear-based systems, the end-result is a "family" of broken pawns who pretend to follow codes of conduct that are not humanly possible.
BB and his close circle of survivors from the early days had their fun in the Golden Age of the Yagya, and are now telling everyone in effect to "do as we say, and not as we did". It is not surprising (though it is reprehensible) that they keep quiet about the reality of the early days!
However, it is one thing to promote purity, and even require it, and another thing entirely to make the whole subject of sexuality taboo, and to enforce artificial segregation of the sexes, and to prudishly refuse to discuss practical issues of how to maintain celibacy, or even what exactly they mean by celibacy. I always felt their whole concept of purity was very artificial, inhuman, and, tellingly, not at all Golden Aged (i.e. in defiance of their own teaching that they should be imbibing Golden Aged sanskars). No habit, let alone a powerful animal drive, can be conquered by sticking one's head in the sand, and pretending it does not exist. Lehkraj's original approach seems to me more honest and practicable: even though it appears that Lehkraj was repeatedly falling out of his own metaphorical fifth storey window!
Lets look at some of the evidence:
(Page 4)
The founder of the Om Mandli Bhai Lekhraj is a master of hypnotism and some of the Sakhies have also been trained by him into that nefarious art. With the aid of this Black Art, he, with his powerful gaze thrown from his magic laden eyes hypnotises youthful women and when they are completely under his sway, he sports with them, plays "Krishna, Lila", makes them dance, rocks them in swings, exchanges with them morsels of food, embraces them, bathes with them in the same tank, in short outrages commons of decency
Drishti or hypnotism? Is there any difference in essence? Are we to suppose that "the Saddhu" taught Lehkraj hypnotism in return for his roll of rupees?
(Page 8)
She admitted that Bhai Lekhraj kisses and embraces her and other girls, although this, she said, was done in the spirit of Gyan Father.
Either we are dealing with a Jimmy Saville prototype, or else we have Lehkraj coming over all fatherly with his young charges ... my money is on the latter ... Hindu society would have been very easily outraged in those days (and even now ...). Those with an agenda will always bend facts to suit their case. The writer's agenda is clearly anti-Lehkraj, while my agenda, based primarily and extensively on subtle interactions with Lehkraj, is that he created a monster but is not one himself, albeit a PR merchant and businessman and empire-builder (never trust a man with a moustache ... etc ...), and certainly not always practicing the purity he ended up preaching ...
When he suggested segregation of the sex, the Mandlites deprived much of their fun became annoyed and strongly objected.
Or ... were they programmed to react in this way?
Is it a colony of Free Love?
Yeay! I knew Lehkraj was a dude ahead of his time!
(Page 11)
From an 18 year old unemployed witness:
He used to preach that there was no difference between males and females and that whatever was done by males and females inside Om Mandli became sanctified.
No difference between males and females is still part of modern BK Gyan: Brothers and Sisters become all Brothers. I was taught that 12 years ago. Whatever was done by males and females became sanctified? This does sound like a great excuse for anything goes!
He preached no restraint in sex matters between males and females who were members of the Om Mandli because on account of Mandli Gian whatever they did could not amount to sin.
This sounds like full-on free love! I am assuming the children were not involved in this?
During the first 6 months I had seen Dada Lekhraj embracing those ladies and girls who used to go in a trance and fall in his lap ... I saw him making girls sleep in his lap and embracing and kissing them and also pulling their breasts and touching them all over the body. He used to ask the girls also to kiss him and keep their hands on ... The girls used to feel abashed but had no power of resistance. He used to pay more court in this connection to ... because she has chubby cheeks and is very fair in her look and well built body...
Good hypnotism, huh! OK, I admit it, Lehkraj is coming over as a full-on dirty old man here. However we have only the word of this 18 year old unemployed witness here ...
(Page 12)
From the same 18 year old unemployed witness:
He took me to a room. He embraced and kissed me there and passed his hands over my body.
Uh oh ...
In this bungalow of kidnapped girls there were about 100 kidnapped girls and 15 to 20 married women and widows. Dada Lekhraj used to kiss, embrace and play with the breasts of married women too. All this was being openly done by him.
Uh oh ...
The girls used to speak with each other about court paid to them by Lekhraj and they used to feel seemingly elated by his court.
Uh oh...
(Page 13)
Now, from a 17 year-old unemployed witness:
On the last Holi occasion I had seen Dada Lekhraj misbehaving with ... by seating them on his bed over which the flowers were spread and kissing and embracing them there. It was the usual practice for Dada Lekhraj in the Mandli to embrace and kiss all grown up girls and women living in the Om Mandli. In this connection he used to pay more court to fair skinned girls and women than to others ... Dada Lekhraj used to come and pass 2 to 3 nights per week in the house of run-away girls. The night on which Lekhraj used to come to sleep there used to be called a golden night, as on that night the girls whom Lekhraj used to like most used to meet him alone in a separate room ..
Uh oh ...
(Page 14)
He used to kiss and embrace all grown up and attractive girls ...
He loved passionately Om Radhe ... I mean by passionately loving that Lekhraj used to ... with them. Some of the male members were openly mis-behaving and some were mis-behaving on the sly.
Uh oh ...
Once I had seen bath being taken in Om Nivas by certain inmates of Om Nivas. This was a disgusting bath. All grown up girls and women were seen taking bath with only short drawers, the remaining body being naked. Lekhraj too was wearing only drawers. The female bathers numbered six only among whom 4 were grown up girls and two women. Five of these females were the pick of the Members of the Om Mandli ... No girl who was not taking bath was permitted to enter the bath room, but I had gone there suddenly having run away from my house
Such a scene now in the West would be unremarkable (apart from the age difference, which does lend a seediness to the scene) - after all, they all had their knickers on - but in '30's Sindh ... wow!
(Page 15)
Lekhraj had told us once that he would take us out of Sind to a country where we could not be molested by any one.
... except Lehkraj himself, presumably!
(Page 26)
The editor of "Hindu" testifies:
in my presence I have seen young girls of nine to 12 years in unconscious and semi-conscious condition clinging to him. They appeared to me to be under some hypnotic,two of them were lying on his lap and one of them was lying in a state of half embrace. Two other girls were holding him by the arm and the leg.
Is he implying child abuse? I don't think so - I get the impression this is fatherly behaviour, rather, so what is the problem?
Conclusions
===========
This document sets out to discredit Lehkraj and his merry band of pranksters (oops, Gopis), and makes a very good stab at it, certainly from the point of view of one who has a fixed and narrow conventional mindset. After all, who would not be horrified (especially in 1930's India) at the idea of one's children being abducted by a hypnotist nutter who says he is God and who lives with their children in a free love commune! BB comes across like a prototype Osho. Me, I wish I was there... maybe I was???
There is more than a suggestion of inappropriate behaviour with minors, and an avalanche of testimonies of lewd behaviour between Lehkraj and the adult women. However the witnesses do not come across as wholly convincing, especially given the habitual deceit in Indian culture, the youth of the key witnesses, and the tendency (still endemic in the BKWSU) for the young women to fantasise, and project their own lustful desires onto the object of their desire (I myself was innocently disgraced in my own centre by such behaviour from one Sister), and then tell tall tales to gullible others, who in turn embellish and pass on the stories ...
The detailed allegations are easy to discredit, given the Indian culture of endemic repression coupled with endemic dishonesty. But the general tone of them rings true with me (allowing for the preconceptions of those doing the reporting).
However, I am not convinced that Lehkraj was sexually abusing anyone, and there was no indication of hypocrisy along the lines of preaching purity and practicing impurity - they did seem to have a code in those days of anything goes! But what is wrong with physical interaction? Purity relates to the state of mind and not to physical actions.
My feeling is that it takes a dirty (or repressed) mind to see dirt here, and what I see (with my dirty mind temporarily switched off) is more of a swinging 60's type scene with Hypno-Yoga replacing the greatly-inferior psychedelic drugs of the 60's: in other words liberation from chains of convention, and free expression of love and humanity, without the selfish hedonism and spiritual ignorance that destroyed the '60's hippy dream.
Whatever, it seems that BB had more than his share of fun! I guess he would just tell us that he is number one, and so he falls the furthest and rises the highest, and so he gets the most fun!
On the other hand, I am choking now on the hypocrisy, on the lies and deceit and the cover ups in more modern times, as the BKWSU re-write aspects of their own history. While it is human to be embarrassed by one's past naivety, and to attempt to sweep it under the carpet, it is not spiritual. And such deception is inexcusable in a spiritual context where purity, virtue, and honesty are preached as mandatory. Dishonesty is impurity, simple and plain. Shame on you BKWSU.
Boy, am I glad to be an outside observer! Thanks again for publishing this - it is a rich vein of material, and I for one feel liberated by some of what have read.