hi - i am new to this board, and by way of introducing myself i will say a few words about the Brahma Kumaris (henceforth BKs).
The BKs are a religion who portray themselves as an educational institution, and run courses all over the world teaching meditation, positive thinking, self respect, and the like. Their courses are free, and (in my experience) they are effective and well worth attending. As a former BK (for 4-5 years, ending this past summer), I can vouch for the fact they are actually a religion, and this article
http://www.cesnur.org/testi/bryn/br_kranenborg.htm gives good background on this.
During a childhood of forced attendance at sunday school and bible class (Church of Scotland) I became atheist and developed a strong distaste for religion. after some 20+ years of adulthood, during which i experienced many psychic and spiritual phenomena, i came to believe in God and in spirituality. But I never would have seen myself becoming involved in a religion, as I still had (and still have) a deep mistrust of dogma and authoritarian structures. However I found myself at a BK centre learning how to meditate, and the experiences i had there transformed my life, very much for the better. So I stayed with them for a few years, making considerable personal spiritual progress, until the dogma and authoritarianism became too much, and I walked back out, blinking, into the bright sunlight of freedom....
I am very grateful to the BKs for showing me the way to my own spiritual path, and I now believe that most people will find help in one religious form or other at some point in their life. For me, religion was a stepping stone in personal development. The BKs teach a universal spirituality to the general public, but they have developed their own rigid dogmatic elitist religion behind the scenes. They preach virtue and honesty, and in practice hide (in what to my mind is a dishonest fashion) what they are really up to. I believe that all religions do this to a greater or lesser extent: there is an exoteric public face, and an esoteric hidden face. The BKs exoteric face is universalist and giving and I believe they help a great many people spiritually - their inner teachings command them to serve all of humanity. Their esoteric hidden side is a God centred religious cult - they see themselves as an elite family of souls whose role is to become angelic and give the whole of humanity the message that "God has come" and that God speaks only through their founder "Brahma Baba". I found their core teachings very powerful and largely very beneficial, and I found the BKs to be genuinely earnest and spiritually focused and I met many wonderful people within their ranks. If I was forced (it would have to be at gunpoint
) to join a religion, I would go back to the BKs.
I am happy to discuss in this forum anything relating to the BKs and their teachings, if anyone is interested :!: :) [/url]
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