Stockholm Syndrome, Tribal Power within the BK

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Stockholm Syndrome, Tribal Power within the BK

Post by fluffy bunny »

Keeping in mind the 7 Day Course, or 7 Day Bhatti for that matter, I suprise that we have not looked at within the context of the 'Stockholm Syndrome".

In short, "Stockholm Syndrome" is a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostages, in which the hostage can show signs of having feelings of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which the hostage has been placed. Stockholm syndrome is also sometimes discussed in reference to other situations with similar tensions, such as battered person syndrome, child abuse cases, and bride kidnapping.

The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage in the summer of 1973. Four hostages were but at the end of their captivity, six days later, they actively resisted rescue. They refused to testify against their captors, raised money for their legal defense, and according to some reports one of the hostages eventually became engaged to one of her jailed captors.

This struck some academics as strange way of coping and as they started seeing more examples they named this class of strange behavior the "Stockholm Syndrome." Notorious in the United States is the case of Patty Hearst, who after being kidnapped and tortured by the Symbionese Liberation Army, took up arms and joined their cause, taking on the nom de guerre of "Tania" and helping the SLA rob banks. It typically takes about three or four days for the psychological shift to take hold.

I have been reading an evolutionary geneticist's hypothesis about why this happens, or why it is and has been a successful strategy for survival. That is to say, a large proportion of our, or society's genetic wealth is adopted to survival in this way. They put it down to in the past where there was a high likelihood of individuals/women mainly being kidnapped during tribal or racial raids, e.g. vikings, slavery, it was universal experience.

The gist was that it was a good idea to be able to adopt to a new tribal setting ... or else you would get killed ... but not a good idea to adopt too soon ... in case of rescue by your own tribe.

One could suggest that it is a key element in many cults' induction process and it may answer how many of find ourselves sucked up into such closed groups EVEN THOUGH we do not actually believe in their religion. Now, I am not saying that this is the totality of the BK Raja Yoga experience. As with the 'Hypnosis Hypothesis', I think these are components to the way in which Brahma-kumaris work. Note, I separate the Brahma-kumaris and their agenda from any reference to God or spirit because the two appear quite separate.

Ditto, in reverse. One might consider the negative reaction to the black sheep BK, or the sticking out nail from the Senior Sisters not a rational, spiritual, God inspired reaction but rather the reaciton of a captor to a hostage that will not settle down andjoint heir new tribe; e.g kill themoff of bannish them to the wilds (where death is more than likely assured anyway).

If you then consider the experience of the PBKs with regards to banishment, then it all starts to appear a lot more obvious and clear. Basic tribe sanskars mentality and nothing to do with God at all. Your thoughts ...
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Re: Stockholm Syndrome

Post by proy »

ex-l wrote:Keeping in mind the 7 Day Course, or 7 Day Bhatti for that matter, I suprise that we have not looked at within the context of the 'Stockholm Syndrome".
I have been looking into it, ex-l, by co-incidence. Check this article Cesnur about brainwashing and cults.

Here is a short extract -
Dr. J. Gordon Melton wrote:Then, in 1975, media-empire heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, and disappeared into the Symbionese Liberation Army, a self-styled leftist revolutionary political group. Some months later she was photographed carrying a rifle and participating in a bank robbery. When she was finally captured by the police, she was tried for her role in the robbery, and her defense lawyers tried to argue a new concept, that she had been brainwashed by the SLA and having lost her free will was not responsible for her actions during the robbery.
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Re: Stockholm Syndrome

Post by fluffy bunny »

Dr. J. Gordon Melton wrote:When she was finally captured by the police, she was tried for her role in the robbery, and her defense lawyers tried to argue a new concept, that she had been brainwashed by the SLA and having lost her free will was not responsible for her actions during the robbery.
Unfortunately, having a heiress's defense lawyer argue a theory is just about the surest way of killing its credibility!

Melton is usually a defender of cults so if he takes to the theory, it might be valuable.
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Post by bro neo »

Caroline Myss, medical intuitive, talks about how humans go through 3 levels of power; tribal, individual, and then symbolic. The first level is tribal. In this level a person is totally dependent on their tribe. Dependent for beliefs, desires, interpretations, etc.

When a person is dependent on their tribe, (e.g. their social group, religion, racial identifications, etc.) and a more powerful tribe comes and takes over, it makes perfect sense for the person to fully adopt the new tribe culture of the dominate group. And love it! It goes back to the human animal's most basic need, survival. Survival, in the past, meant having strong Neanderthals with sharp spears to kill the saber tooth tigers when they attacked. Today it means surviving financially, healthwise, and most importantly, emotional problems.

The BKs are a far superior tribe then say, for example, a common village tribe in India. Or the tribe of a emotionally disturbed youngster in America. With their huge, gold plated retreat centers and Dadis who eat off of the best silver plates available, the BKWSU makes for a very powerful tribe indeed. And don't forget, they own God.
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Tribal Gods and Psychic Imperialism

Post by fluffy bunny »

bro neo wrote:The BKs are a far superior tribe then say, for example, a common village tribe in India. Or the tribe of a emotionally disturbed youngster in America. With their huge, gold plated retreat centers and Dadis who eat off of the best silver plates available, the BKWSU makes for a very powerful tribe indeed. And don't forget, they own God.
Or a tribal God, and a pretty impressive one too, albeit that he is somewhere fading into the background now. One might argue from the BK point of view that the manifestations of the 'God of BK' is the fruit of their Bhakti both before and during their time as BKs.

I am going with you on this one. I was about to post a similar reply elsewhere. The more I stand back and analyse BKWSU as a whole, the more it is about the BK Tribal Shamens' aquisition of Power, control and the fruits of those, i.e. land, property, wealth, status. In the old days they used to say that they were going to 'take over the world 3 feet by 3 feet at a time' (approx quote).

Is the tribal God of BK better than your merchant caste or village tribe? Its a difficult call for me to make. More powerful, yes. May be it is a good thing to stop them breeding like rabbits. Society united by a monotheism versus polythesism? Its been tried before by Rome, Islam successfully (and Ashoka's Buddhism). Is the BK less open to corruption and abuse than general society within India? Perhaps.

What ever BK is, I believe this is the mechanics of we are looking at; tribal gods, psychic imperialism and the subjection of the weak. How can we project the future likelihood? On the basis of the current and past activity.
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Post by bro neo »

In Plato’s Republic, Book VII, a beautiful picture is painted about how a person moves through the 3 levels of power.
Plato wrote:"Imagine prisoners, who have been chained since diapers deep inside a cave: not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained as well, so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which statues of various animals, plants, and other things are carried by people. The statues cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the statue-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who begin to play poorly."
At this level humans move from one set of language to another set, controlled by their perception of the dominate tribe. The language of the BKs was so beautiful and so simple. Perhaps it was the product of over 70 years of creative engineering on how to sell faith in the most acceptable way. They put ideas about faith and problem solving together in a very spell binding way. But returning to the metaphor of evolving through the 3 levels ...
"Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. At that moment his eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows."
This is when the person gains access to individual power. So beautiful it is, that a human being can move from slavery to such noble truth. But the truth is deeper and it is even more beautiful as par the power of symbolism. Alas, the end of this tale is very bitter and sad.
"Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything. At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects.

The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen," but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed ..."

" ... and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
References: Plato's Cave. Plato: 'The Allegory of the Cave', from The Republic at Washington State University
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Post by fluffy bunny »

Plato wrote:" ... and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
Aye, for the Greek Classics ... I am taking stronger to their concept of God's playing games with we human animals.

How primitive and tribal is the BKWSU policy of BANISHMENT?

Does that not go right back to the most basic of human instincts and is it not the crude element of control? Set individuals up to beelive that "The Kripalani Klan" is the only path to salvation. Have the threat of ex-commnication and banishment looming in the background for any dissenters or heretics that threaten, not the path to enlightenment, but the leadership's control. It goes right back to the deepest village human sanskars when banisment from the community would surely mean death. In the case of the BKWSU, spiritual death for eternity.

Now, viewing them and their God (which might not be Shiva) in this bright light, what do we start to see? We document the falsehood of their god or their leadership and interpretations on oneside; we see the light of truths about their god and them and reality appearing from outside their cave. It might not be a bad thing for human monkeys to be chained inside a cave darkly. Human monkey's souls might just need to be tamed. But I also question this is the light of other Classic scholarship.

The Athenians enjoyed their deomcracy on top of the ruled of a vast Theban slave caste. The Thebans were many and could have easily overwhelmed the Athenians by their numbers alone if they rose. How did the Athenians rule these slaves? They sent their young dressed poorly amongst the Thebans with the intrustructions to look out for any Thebans who had leadership qualities. And when they found such, what did they do? Killed them. By killing a few, cutting the head off the beast of the many, they maintained control.

Now, in the BKWSU scenario; killing, disarming, enslaving goes on at the psychic or spiritual level. And what an improved system it is. The slaves, not their masters, have to maintain nourish and themselves whilst still paying tribute (money, respect) to the leadership. They welcome merchantile growth but are a bit edgey about other royalty arising and when it does. Chop chop ... with no sense of morals or ethics. I could a name a few.

We could probably sit down and document who the BK royalty and royal families are.
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Post by zhuk »

ex-l wrote:How primitive and tribal is the BKWSU policy of BANISHMENT?

Does that not go right back to the most basic of human instincts and is it not the crude element of control? Set individuals up to beelive that "The Kripalani Klan" is the only path to salvation. Have the threat of ex-commnication and banishment looming in the background for any dissenters or heretics that threaten, not the path to enlightenment, but the leadership's control. It goes right back to the deepest village human sanskars when banisment from the community would surely mean death. In the case of the BKWSU, spiritual death for eternity.
This is more grist to the mill which suggests the BKs are simply carrying on the uneducated and susperstitious beliefs common in India, and adapting a 'BK flavour' to them. Hardly surprising when considering Kirpalani's social heritage, as you pointed out, ex-l. (and common to many other societies/belief systems/religions for that oh-so-necessary control element).

So when their brainwashing is called out and they realise they are not having any success in 'getting to you', suddenly the shutters slam down and you are cast out as an evil Shudra. woohoo :lol:.
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BKWSU Banishment

Post by fluffy bunny »

zhuk wrote:So when their brainwashing is called out and they realise they are not having any success in 'getting to you', suddenly the shutters slam down and you are cast out as an evil Shudra. woohoo.
I had not considered that element. I was only thinking of the heretics. Interesting ... if you are impervious to the hypnotism and ritual (social conditions), they have to exclude you as you highlight the impotence of their god (Brahma) over your soul? It is "not in your fortune" ... you're obviously not one of their Golden Aged souls.

But, yes, banishment would be a very power caste control mechanism ... but without any representation and appeal? That is very BKWSU.
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Re: BKWSU Banishment

Post by zhuk »

ex-l wrote:I had not considered that element. I was only thinking of the heretics. Interesting ... if you are impervious to the hypnotism and ritual (social conditions), they have to exclude you as you highlight the impotence of their god (Brahma) over your soul? It is "not in your fortune" ... you're obviously not one of their Golden Aged souls.
Ahh yes..."not in your fortune" :P That old chestnut lol.

Its your karma obviously ... all those negative sanskars from your previous life ... just as the rape victim is responsible also ... more 'working through of karma' ... due to their having been a rapist before ... more and more excuses. Pile on the guilt too :D That'll get em into line ;). And if it doesn't ... well, they weren't really one of US, were they!

So all memory of them can be discarded ... no need to ask uncomfortable questions. Just remember Baba at all times & super-sensuous bliss will be yours ;). Simple and effective.
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Re: BKWSU Banishment

Post by fluffy bunny »

zhuk wrote:just as the rape victim is responsible also ... more 'working through of karma' ... due to their having been a rapist before ... more and more excuses. Pile on the guilt too :D That'll get em into line ;). And if it doesn't ... well, they weren't really one of US, were they!
A BK once dropped 'The Bigger Clanger' in the UK media regarding 'The Jewish Question'. Yes, the it was the Jews' karma to suffer because they had caused suffering before. I wonder what the party line on that is now? (If the Law of Karma is as Hinduism and the BKs teach, then the Holocaust must have been the Jews' own fault ... surely? Where is the fault in that logic?)

The other thing they will say is, that the individual - like yourself - will come back begging at The End when the suffering becomes to much and take a low status.
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rejection

Post by alladin »

zhuk wrote: So when their brainwashing is called out and they realise they are not having any success in 'getting to you', suddenly the shutters slam down and you are cast out as an evil Shudra.
... or even just as a "cooperative soul". That became a blessing for me, saved me from surrendering, bull****, and further waste of mind time and $!!!
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Neural learning

Post by fluffy bunny »

I was listening to a scientists talk in the documentary called "What the Bleep?" (See movie topic). I am not scientist enough, nor have I watch the entire movie and so I cannot comment or recommend the entirety of it.

He related the well known experiment where subjects were fitted with goggles that turned the world upside. Literally, eveything was seen upside down, downside up. Obviously, life was very difficult to impossible for them as even their hands obeyed this.

But after two to three weeks, something happened and the brain "switched". All a sudden, life was back to normal and they could operate naturally again. If they saw an item, they could reach out to it exactly as before (Even though in space it was somewhere entirely elsewhere).

Now, a strange thing happened ... when they took the goggle OFF, the exact opposite happened. If they reached out for a hand, they would reach out to entirely the wrong and opposite position for it. I have seen a scientifif video of this experiment and know it to be true.

This led the commentator to suggest that something observable happens in the brain. He called it "neural learning". I stress that it was observable, rather than just being a matter of soul and sanskars and, I guess this relates to accident victims who are able re-grown or re-learn brain or neural functions. He related this to the Stockholm Syndrome above where cults, or invading tribes.

I am relating this our experience of coming into Gyan and becoming a BK Brahmin, this is putting the goggle for the first ocassion. It turns our world upside, or right side up depending on your pint of view. Then something challenged or shatters our new conditioning - we bump into a wall that we were told was not there - and we take the goggles off ... Then our world turns upside down again.

Now, we know this happens. What this is leading to is that these changes are not imaginery but, possibly even physical according to these scientists No wonder it is mentally painful to re-learn and no wonder some individuals come out and go back in again. What we are talking about is hard-wiring in your brains NOT merely thought reform/mind control.

Now, I am avoiding any debate of who is right or wrong here. I am purely observing the bio-physical, mechanical effects of it. Some questions arise;
  • how many times can individuals switch back and forward?
    Can one switch back and forward without their being any remaining reside either way?
    Are there techniques that are and can be consciously positively to remove such conditioning?
Now, this ties into other debates we are having; "if not this 'cult', which 'cult'?", and "is Western Materialism/Consumerism/New America another 'cult'?" ... which, of course, I absolutely agree with.

I am relate these issues together because, of course, WE DO REALLY NOT KNOW what the benchmark of normality, never mind perfection is and to which we must also add that there is really not even ONE benchmark, even within the BK family yet. The meeting of the West and India via the medium of the BKWSU IS proposing a new benchmark model if one has faith in it or its process.

However, lastly, I just want underline again that their might actually be physical effects to the brain and nerves involved in all this, that it is not all 'purely' spiritual or imaginary, and this might explain both the mechanisms and fanaticism involved, and the resistance and unwillingness of BOTH or ALL sides of the debate to change their positions.
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Re: Neural learning

Post by joel »

The brain is extremely plastic, capable of rewiring itself, in fact, constantly doing that. The potential for learning is immense, with or without God.

The complex of brain and body cannot be separated like in the "Spock's Brain" episode of Star Trek. Because many of the information flows go through mechanical, hormonal, immunological pathways. Remove those information flows, and you no longer have a functioning brain.

You and your brain-body can learn so much, adapt so much, that it appears like a miracle. Anyone can. God may be present, yet he is not necessary for a person to grow. It is not God, who teaches a child to speak or to walk. Each teaches him or herself these things through experimentation.
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Post by yudhishtira »

ex-l wrote: Aye, for the Greek Classics ... I am taking stronger to their concept of God's playing games with we human animals.

How primitive and tribal is the BKWSU policy of BANISHMENT?

Does that not go right back to the most basic of human instincts and is it not the crude element of control? Set individuals up to beelive that "The Kripalani Klan" is the only path to salvation. Have the threat of ex-commnication and banishment looming in the background for any dissenters or heretics that threaten, not the path to enlightenment, but the leadership's control. It goes right back to the deepest village human sanskars when banisment from the community would surely mean death. In the case of the BKWSU, spiritual death for eternity.
Well, having been on the recieving end of banishment (and can someone please tell me how to change my designation to "reforming BK"? I changed it in that field but it wont move) it is a shocker, and quite scary.

However, having been through it, I am glad that I am still with Baba but not part of this dysfunctional and co-dependant set up. It aint easy though, and I couldnt have made it without friends. Waves at all disheartened BKs ... yo, guys!! It is possible to have your spiritual cake without the rat poison!! You are not alone!!
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