Given what I have read from vlakshmi here, I really worry about what kind of professional care they are giving any patients s/he has as a practicing psychiatrist.
On the subject of catastrophising and BK’s, I'll remind readers of the history. The catastrophising is often upset by other unforeseen catastrophes!
Foundation of BKs as Om Mandli - whatever original motivations, within a short time, they became reclusive and withdrawn from society, considering themselves victims when in fact they were the ones that had disrupted social norms in a very big way.
Even if you think that what they were doing was somehow ”progressive” in a traditional society, the records of the time show them to simultaneously feel that,
a) they were above having any responsibility to society or to the families the girls were still legally under the guardianship of, and
b) began at the earliest to consider themselves persecuted and that persecution was a sign of their superiority, why they were misunderstood, and their Prajapati God Brahma (the title Lekhraj gave himself) was already predicting the end of the world to be within a few years.
When WW2 began, well, that was the cherry on top of the Parajapati top knot!
Here we had a world wide conflagration, and PGB (Prajapati God Brahma) was writing letters to the Viceroy, the King of England, and whichever high ups he felt needed to be told of his new found status! How
solipsistic were they? It was their yogic purifying meditations causing it all. Yes, that much!
These girls grew up through that tumultuous time so cut off and so enamoured of their sugar daddy faux-Krisna and his hypnotic ‘flute' that even in the 1970s Dadi Kumarka, Didi Manmohini, Gulzar etc had not heard of Adolf Hitler or what that war was about.
When Independence and Partition came, of all the dramas and politicking and upheaval, the only story they have to tell is how the locals did not want them to leave. It was all about them once again. That it was maybe their business the locals wanted does not occur to them. That many others wanted the communities not to be torn apart on sectarian grounds does not occur to them. For a while, there they thought this catastrophic blood-soaked partition was indeed the end of the world.
When all of the subcontinent was experiencing poverty and food shortages during and after the war, largely because of the extraction of resources by the British Empire for the war effort, it meant nothing to the BKs, they were not part of this world. In their own world, they had their own mythology, it was
their ”Beggary period”. The world still hadn't ended and God hadn't planned for the future not going to plan.
India’s independence and democracy was a blow to the arch monarchist and aspirational aristocrat Lekhraj. India’s poverty through the 1950s and 1960s meant few people had any money to donate or bring with them, the girls had left their families behind. Lekhraj's wealth was gone. That would be a convenient time for the world to end. Then especially with the Cold War and Nuclear Arms race building ever greater tensions, with 4 or 5 nations having nuclear capability by the late 1950s, yes, it going to happen now they have the weaponry!
I must admit that the Cold War was a a major factor in the culture of the time that made a gullible teenager like me find the whole BK scenario plausible.
But with no money coming in, and that world not ending the way it should, they had to do something. If people aren't coming to your shop and buying what you are selling, you have to go out there and maybe sell a new product. And that’s what they did. Re-jig the Gyan, a new improved whiter brighter wash with all new God Powered BapDada, two active ingredients in one to give a cleaner brighter end of the world.
God went from being a human to an egg, then from an egg to a point of light. Proselytising, donation seeking expeditions went out with the new message, they made converts and brought in the money. This seems to be working! Great!!
A whole new psycho drama mythology is built aroudn the cult members. Dada is Brahma, Brahma is Krishna, Krishna is Narayan is Rama is Vikarmajit is ... Lekhraj. Mama is Radhe, Lakshmi, Sita etc etc The other ”children” jostle for papa’s favour, who will be the top beads of the rosary? The early pictures showing certain people as the top 8 are removed and others now are in the top 8. Celebrity is fickle. At each stage the ”knowledge” is declared definitive, final, the earlier ”knowledge” was just God moving in mysterious ways because everyone was too stupid ( impure) to understand the true revelation earlier.
Then Om Radhe dies, of cancer, her achievement of karmateet stage as declared by God/not-God did not save her from karmic effects. New mythology is created, the Advance Party!!! She will be reborn a royal princess to give birth to Krishna, that will be her last, 84th birth, This was only her 83rd! Now it all makes sense Baba! The time does get away from her, childbearing years means she must have to take an 85th birth.
New posters, literature, billboards with definite Godly proclamations, new art work with Lekhraj’s face painted on all three parts of the Trimurti, etc, to replace the old stuff which never happened. New Gyan. It is gonna be 1976 chaps, 100 years of Brahma, you know Lekhraj was born in 1876 right? The network of useful people grows. It is all printed and distributed and trumpeted. Gee, they seem pretty damn sure! This is all going well! We are on the right track.
Then Lekhraj dies. **** me, what do we do now? The committee gathers, gets one of the trance prone people to go and find out from ... not Shiva, but the dead spirit itself. Guess what? It will still all end in 1976 says he, just need a few more years and God and Lekhraj, sorry, Brahma, will now come together in another person, speak in a different voice and vocabulary and come up with all kinds of new things, many of which say the previous, definitive final versions are not so definitive, not important while this new stuff is the bee’s knees. The Cold War gets even worse. Even a few foreigners, hippies looking for confirmation of how special they are, how different and spiritual, come along and buy into it. The world is after all about to end, The Cold War is what they've grown up with, the only world they’ve known.
In India especially, people sell their houses an dbusinesses, liquidate their wealth and give it to the BKs.
But 1976 comes and goes. What to do? Let's change the tune. No fixed dates, that was all about testing faith, getting you to not be Date-conscious. But catastrophism bring in donations and volunteers, can;t give that up completely. It can still happen anytime now. (Every breath is not a life giver, every breath is one breath closer to death, for sure).
People sell up more houses and give to the BKWSU (yes, it is now a University despite fulfilling none of the credentials needed). Some move to Mt Abu. Even Westerners now divorce their families, sell their houses, drop out of real University education, forego careers.
Now its 1999. The Y2K is a bug that will do it - that's it for sure, computers will do it! Th fulfilment fo the scriptures! BKs rush out and buy up canned food and camping equipment like the craziest survivalists, even though their God says that true, fortunate yogis will die quickly at Vinash and do not need to go through the pain of Dharmraj. Must be pessimists if they think they'll need supplies! Or is this part of the disconnect between logic and survival instinct?
Mayan Calendar!!!! 2012 is it. 2013, Nope.
Hang on, Climate Change! They say it is preventable but the politicians are doing nothing. The Big Money people will make sure of that. So why the heck are we, the BKs investing in solar and other renewables when Climate change is going to be the end of us all anyway? It cannot be to save electricity bills could it?
I don't know but it keeps everyone guessing, and that’s what feeds our pet. We’ve named him Egregore.
( Egregore is a concept representing a "thoughtform" or "collective group mind", an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people. The symbiotic relationship between an egregore and its group has been compared to the more recent, non-occult concepts of the corporation and the meme.What now? Gulzar’s past it? No more Avyakt Murlis? All the original ”jewels” are dead or dying? Re-jig!! Re-jig!!!
2036 now mate. Yep, we got that hundred years thing wrong. Let’s see, Nepali royal family was shot to pieces by one iof its own, maybe Mama took rebirth then but where, another birth? 86?
But none of it is important right? Numbers. M’eh.
Like 84 births, 5000 years, 3 worlds, 3 aspects fo time, 4 pillars of Yoga, 9 crore BKs to become deities, 8 incarnations in the 1st of 4 ages, the 12 .. etc. it all means nothing when you look at it.
That's why the BKs spent 80 years working and reworking these numbers trying to make things fit, like some dyslexic accountants.
Be nice to people. That’s what life is all about. Hey, that is worth something when you think about it, that’d be worth some money. Buy more land. And a bit more ...