GuptaRati 6666 wrote:If there are ... positive health benefits the BKs should statistically demonstrate as a sub-population, when compared to the total population or the global population, or even groups such as the TMers or Tibetan monks.
Excuse my paraphrasing of your comment.
You raise a good point, GuptaRati ... however, the BKs will quickly equivocate and respond with something like, "
Ah, yes, but the reason there is so sickness and ill health within BKism - [i]even taking the Dadis as examples - is caused by karmic settlements and so good/unavoidable[/i]".
I don't know where things stand at present but I remember they had such a problem with heart diseases, blood pressure, diabetes, obesity etc -
all diseases of affluence in India - that they started specific health programmes to address them. Indeed, even established hospitals to do so.
As you will well tell us, life is broadly random and that random noise needs to be removed from any findings to see what is really going on, random noise that would involve, eg the luck of good genes, of good childhood nutrition etc.
The problem with BKism is that the "benefits" they claim are ultimately invisible and unprovable. It's all about earning and storing up imaginary good karmas, to be spent only after Destruction of the world in the Golden Age. Any real world, present day benefits -
of which there may be a few - are accidental and of a secondary nature or cause, eg giving up smoking, stress reduction, the regimented lifestyle.
BKism is not about physiological or even psychological benefits. In my generation and earlier, it was specifically anti-health. Anyone concerned about health and exploring health regimes, anything from diet to sport, was considered to be a "health Bhagat" (
health worshipper. "worshipper" being a put down). Doing sport was practically a betray on a par with having sex! (
Something that had to be done alone and in secret). A waste of time and opportunity to do more "service" and, hence, earn more good karmas.
It is as if they did not accept any immediate connection between diet and activity and health, and conceived both health and sickness as relating only to one's karmic/kalpic status ("impurity" unavoidable, only improvable via their meditation).
I do not have any hope ever of any collective analysis of BKs because they are so institutionally prone, indoctrinated, into lying. Of providing what they believe to the right answer, rather than the real answer.
Interesting studies could be made of the effects of meditation on intelligence, eg does meditation increase intelligence? Or, one would hope, at least on depression and anxiety reduction ... but does the BKs' "positive thinking" actually reduce anxiety, or just change the nature of one's anxiety?
If you were to survey BKs they would all say, "Yes, 100%!" because not to -
to admit weakness and failure - would be disservice to Baba and "the family".
Then the question would be, does the degree of benefit offset the deficits of the regimented lifestyle, eg bad diet, overeating, lack of exercise, institutionally and philosophical stresses, lack of physical contact?
Typically, I think the BKs' response would be a kind of psychological denial and a denial of science, "We are not about real world benefits, we are above science and about other wordly (unprovable/unquestionable) benefits".
In short, "I am benefiting because I believe I am benefitting (despite all and any evidence to the contrary)". They have always a way out.
My bottomline would be, do all their efforts and philosophies make them any more honest or increase their integrity?
And in those departments, they are clearly failing badly.