I watched a couple of the videos. It was not enjoyable. In short, the South African interviewer (Magela Pillay) comes across as warm, intelligent, down to earth and has a little sparkle to her; Denise comes across as slightly cold, definitely controlling, a bit condescending and does those freaky "Indian" things some BKs pick up ... voice inflections and typical hand movement/"finger mudras" type things; the flick, the A-OK sign. At various points she become quite combatant claiming. I think there a hardness or shiftiness in her eyes, and she comes across as calculating.
Magella has been a BK for 22 years,
it seems.
She promotes the false/inaccurate history story and, I think, allows a false claims to be made of her, e.g. that she was the first person in the West to convert. I am pretty sure that was actually Stephan Nagel of Germany (in Delhi, 1970). And I think she is plain wrong when it comes to her explanation of the white sari which she claims is "the colour of celibacy". It's actually the colour of death (the sadhus use saffron) and was an emblem of Gandhi's movement which the BKs later adopted.
She completely misses the point when it comes to the perfectly reasonable questions an rambles on and on and on ... at one point the interview looks like she is falling asleep or yawning and the look on her face says, "who is this person?"
And Denise spouts complete bullsh** about the white sari as a uniform ... claiming that, "only one dozen others globally, outside of India, wear the sari" at 15:30.
The look on Magela face says, "you've got to be kidding me" ... she looks as if she is going to laugh at the claim.
BK Denise Lawrenece wrote:The one dozen people in the world who are dressed like this (Brahma Kumaris in white saris) out of India ...
The interview poses a theoretical question about someone walking into a centre in Stuttgart and seeing a BK in a white sari. Denise steams in insisting that, "it just would not happen ... it is not ... information wrong there", completely missing the point that it was a hypothetical question, and going off on how Brahma Kumaris in Germany have no uniform because the government banned organizations with uniforms after WWII.
That's probably just an excuse the German BKs use not to dress up Indian!
It's also BS because priest and nuns all wear "uniforms" in Germany too.
Then she calls it "ceremonial dress" ... which is, of course, a uniform!
Knowing BKs from the inside, it funny to watch how she spouts bullsh** about Amrit Vela posing it as merely "my quiet time", and how everything everyone does in BKism is their choice ... that "everything a person does they do because they decide to" ... That is not the military ... (actually, their god spirit calls it the Shiv-Shakti Army) ... and there's no one tell anyone what to do ... that it's not prescriptive.
Well, that's not true ...
There's a lot of pressure to follow Maryadas, demands even if you want to go to Madhuban ... and it's certainly not universally true because it certain does not apply to, say, young girls in centres in India.
That's how they like to present it to relative wealthy and free Westerners.
When pushed, I was quite surprised by such responses like, "I do not really need to justify myself ... not about proving who is right or wrong" falling back on the subjective and how it's all about how we "feel". Quoting the Japanese quack Dr Emoto as scientific proof of her hypotheses.
Then the funny part ... when asked why all the construction when the End of the World is coming, Denise claims they are building buildings "to relieve distress of large numbers of people" come natural disasters ... that the BKs are "fundamentally philanthropic" ... and then goes off on some total tangent about the BKs "provide medical care for car accidents" and starts to lecture on road safety, driving skills and power cuts!!! It's bizarre ... but by that time I guess the watchers have forgotten when the question was.
The road safety angle seems to be a link to
Magela's work/BK PR in South Africa.
Oh yes ... "Why when Destruction is about to happen, are you sucking up millions of dollars and building multi-million dollar buildings and solar energy plants?"
It's for the "power cuts", she says ... utterly sidestepping any response regarding Destruction, a word she never uses in all the talk about "transformation" etc.
But her words that struck me the most carried what almost seemed like a kind of relish over the idea of ...
In BKism, "you are on your own".
I'd re-state that, "you are entirely cut off from others".
There was another video, "My Yagya, My Life" but it contained zero autobiographical information.
What surprised me the most was how unchanged the waffling lectures were from 30 years.
Denise is current the head of the "Overseas Coordination Centre", whatever that is.
Laughably, considering she is being asked about whether the BKs are an End of the World cult, the open graphics of Godlywood Studios include a head with a suicide bomb inside of it!!! Five sticks of dynamite with some wires as a watch ticking off the final seconds until the head blows up!