Xena
Dreyfuss
Yoga:
Theory, Culture, and Practice
Laura
Douglas
2/26/2013
Raja
Yoga at Brahma Kumaris
The
Brahma Kumaris World Spirituality University's site indicates that the organization began with a small group of men,
women, and children living together in Hyderabad, Sindh, which at the time was
a part of India (now Pakistan). A respected and wealthy man by the name of Dada
Lekhrai, later known as Brahma Baba, experienced a series of vision in 1936
which inspired this group of people to transform their lives Dada Lekhrai’s
visions opened his mind and his heart to the true nature of the soul, God, and
time. His visions were so profoundly meaningful to him and those he shared them
with that the group, naming themselves “Om Mandali”, devoted their lives to
intense spiritual study, meditation and self transformation. Four hundred
members founded the group and lived as a self-sufficient community for fourteen
years. Brahma Baba formed a committee of all women and girls to act as the
spiritual teachers and administrators of the group. He saw that the
traditionally feminine qualities of patience, kindness, sacrifice, acceptance,
and love, would be the heart of personal growth and community unity. They
adopted the name Brahma Kumaris World Spirituality Organization; Brahma Kumaris
meaning “daughters of Brahma” (Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization, n.d.).
Two
years after the partition of Pakistan and India, in 1950, the group moved to
Mount Abu, a secluded, quiet and serene spot in the Aravali Mountains of
Rajasthan. Here they formed Madhuban (translated to Forest of Honey), which
began and remains as the headquarters of the organization. Due mainly to the wounds
that the partition had left on people’s lives, Brahma Baba decided it was time
to share with India the knowledge he had received. Young women were sent to
establish centers throughout India to teach Raja Yoga. Since the fifties the
organization expanded to the UK, Hong Kong, and eventually worldwide. Today
there are thousands of centers in hundreds of countries with hundreds of
thousands of students attending to experience meditation (Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization, n.d.).
The
Brahma Kumaris Centers offer courses and lectures in raja meditation and personal
development. All the services, including the retreats, are free of charge,
keeping in alignment with the founder’s wish to spread spiritual knowledge and
peace to humanity. Everyone is welcome regardless of age, race, or gender.
Although the organization is run by women it is not considered a “women’s
group”. The center has expanded across
the world and reached many people throughout the decades since its foundation.
Susan, who donates her time primarily to the Brahma Kumaris retreat center in
Haines Falls, NY, is a woman I met who came upon the center soon after it
reached the Boston area in 1984. She found meditation and personal development
as a life changing experience and has been dedicating her time to Brahma
Kumaris ever since. It is a completely volunteer run organization, yet still
has tremendous impact and prominence worldwide (Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual
Organization, n.d).
The
teachings of Brahma Kumaris are based on Raja Yoga meditation. Sri Swami Sivananda writes that Raja means king.
A king acts with independence, assurance and self-confidence. The idea is to
become a master of the self through meditation. Through this you access
authority of your own life and you are able to assess and discern your own
knowledge of the self and the world. The basic understanding in the practice is
that our original nature is full of the highest qualities of peace, love, joy,
and power. However, most people are disconnected from these internal qualities
and are seeking happiness from external forces. Through the practice of
meditation you can become one with the self, therefore mastering the self, as
the term Raja Yoga implies (Sivananda, n.d.). The goal of Raja Yoga is to have a one
pointed mind. If you study the mind and have achieved thought consistency,
focusing on thoughts of only one subject, it is considered a great achievement.
To those in Western culture, this seems absurd. Thinking about food, clothing,
and money is part of the accepted culture in the Western world. Multi-tasking
skills are considered vital in America. However, in Raja Yoga, one should
reduce worldly desires and activities and meditate for hours each day in order
to increase one’s ability to concentrate. Only then can the mind easily
concentrate (Sivananda, 1996).
The
mind thinks. This causes worries, doubts, and troubles. The mind has both
conscious and subconscious thought processes taking place. We are aware of some
of our thoughts and others we are not so aware of, which can lead to
conflicting and draining feelings that arise with these thoughts. In the
positive thinking lecture Soni, the speaker, referred to the subconscious mind
as our personal memory bank. She said that there are four types of thoughts:
waste, neutral, negative, and positive. Waste thoughts are thoughts of the
future and the past. They are a waste because we cannot change the past and we
cannot know the future. We only have the present moment and to think of the
past or future is a waste of energy. Neutral thoughts are the mundane thoughts
we have everyday, such as thoughts that go towards eating, brushing our teeth,
etc. Positive thoughts are those that bring well being to the self and to
others. Negative thoughts come from the subconscious memory bank. The mind
emerges these thoughts and our intellect, a different part of our self, brings
these thoughts into actions. Habits originate from our subconscious, which is
much stronger than ordinary conscious. Therefore we need strong awareness to
understand our thoughts and have control over them (Sivananda, 1996). Our
intellect is what observes, discerns, and discriminates. Our intellect can
decide what to do with the thoughts that we have. So we can use our intellect
to decide to bring in positive thoughts from our memory bank. Thoughts are like
seeds that grow into positive actions, which grow into positive habits, which
lead to positive character, which lead to a happy destiny. You begin by finding
thoughts of peace, not necessarily from past memories, but from your inner
self. If your mind is always going back to negative thoughts in the memory bank
of failures, doubts, and fears, then these thoughts can grow into negative
habits and a life of fear and doubt.
Our
mind tends to be married to our habits, which can be negative, old, worn, and unconstructive,
but the goal is for our mind to be married to our intellect in order for us to
shape our thoughts, actions, habits, and destiny into one of peace and harmony.
In order for us to master our mind, and marry it to our intellect, we need to
practice. The practice is called meditation. Through meditation we can achieve
yoga. Yoga is mastering, or uniting, us with our own true nature and thoughts.
To master the self we should ask ourselves where our thoughts come from. By
reconnecting with our inner being we find peace. Peace bring positive thoughts,
which slow the mind down and draw us back to ourselves. Instead of reacting to
external forces, we step back into ourselves and are able to observe ourselves
and the world. Then we can respond, rather than react. This lets us steer
ourselves to our own destiny. Soni described the acronym “S.O.S” to mean stop,
observe, and steer. We need to apply awareness to our thoughts and situations
in order for this system to work. You have to be aware of your negative
thoughts, what they are, and where they are coming from in order to steer your
thoughts towards positive ones. Sivananda writes that this is swimming against
the mind’s natural state of sensual currents (Sivananda, 1996).
The
theory of Raja Yoga is implemented at Brahma Kumaris through the meditations held
throughout the week. My first experience at Brahma Kumaris was at the center in
Watertown. The center appears to be a normal house. To enter I rang the
doorbell and a man by the name of Dave welcomed me in. He introduced himself in
a friendly manner and told me to make myself comfortable. I took off my shoes
at the entrance where there is a carpet and a shoe rack. I followed him down
the hall where there is a coat closet and an entrance to the mediation room. I
was the first to have arrived and the house was calm and quiet. I was asked to
take my time and enter whenever I was ready. Once I got settled and entered,
Dave joined me and we chatted about why I was there, what I wanted to know, and
what Brahma Kumaris is all about. The room was tidy and had a few rows of tall cushioned
chairs. It was decorated with a few flowers, paintings, and a selection of
books which lined the shelves on the sides of the room. At the front and center
of the room was an orange painting with a light fixture above it. At the center
of the painting was a dot of very bright light, with orangeish hues spiraling
outwards. Below the painting was a single chair facing all the other chairs in
the room.
After
talking for a while I asked Dave what I might expect the meditation to be like.
He said that everyone is in a chair, facing the front of the room, with eyes
open, gazing softly at the center of light in the painting. Soft music would
start to play and a voice of a speaker would be heard to begin a guided
meditation. Following this there may be periods of silence, more music, more
silence, and someone might take a seat at the front of the room, meditating in
the chair facing all the observers. The idea of the open eyed meditation is to
keep the mind from wandering off, however Dave said if I needed to close my
eyes to better focus that way it was of course okay to do so. The eyes focus on
the central light, which reflects the river of light running through us all, as
was said at some point during the guided meditation.
From
doing further research on their website, I found that the open eyed meditation
also mimics the idea that we have to face people, fears, and situations in life
with our eyes open. There are no breathing exercises or postures during the
meditation and the thoughts of peace are enough to create relaxation of the
body. The practice at Brahma Kumaris is based on the self, not any guru or
scripture. We learn to cultivate our own teachings of our own self through the
practice of meditation (Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization, n.d.).
Inner
space near Harvard Square is one of Brahma Kumaris’s centers. Here I attended a
lecture on positive thinking. It is an open, beautiful, and peaceful place with
nice hardwood floors and art hung up around the room. There is a room in the
back used for quiet meditation. Everything appears very simple, modest and
clean. The perimeter of the main room has glass shelves with books for sale on
display. Many of the books relate to the theme of positive thinking. The titles
indicated that many were on overcoming fear and doubt, meditating for stress
relief, living in the now, returning to the true self, the idea of love, Eastern
Yoga philosophy for the Western mind, and even a variety of children’s books
about feelings, emotions, and returning to “The Original Forest”. The books
definitely seem to cater to a population of people who may be overworked,
stressed out, and wanting to better themselves and feel happier and more self
confident. While attending the lecture Soni kept saying “you all are here
because you want to feel more positive about life”. Soni suggested that we take
five minutes each day when we wake up and five minutes before going to sleep
each night to silently reflect upon peace and joy. This is much more manageable
for people in America than Sivananda’s suggestion of meditating for hours daily.
Soni emphasized that although we can purchase a book or attend a lecture, the actual
practice of positive thinking is what will bring about real change.
The
core idea of Brahma Kumaris is that a spiritual transformation needs to take
place for us to understand and become one with ourselves. This will lead us to
higher consciousness and peace. Here in the United States, the Brahma Kumaris
center has adapted the approach to finding peace of mind from the societal
pressures such as work, school, and appearance. However, the core beliefs
remain intact and anyone can take this enlightenment as far and as deep as they
choose to. The idea is that we put these methods of peace into practice by actively
thinking positive and taking the time from our busy lives to meditate. After
the principles of studying, meditating, and practicing have been implemented in
one’s life one should aim to serve the greater good by sharing with others the
basis of one’s own life experiences.
Brahma
Kumaris has a range of programs promoting education, gender equality and
empowerment of women, mental, spiritual, and physical health, and environment
sustainability. They aim to build bridges between divides and bring together
communities such as different faiths and religions. Members of Brahma Kumaris
serve on committees of interfaith groups, showing how their practice is very
open and usable by all. Brahma Kumaris also does work within correctional
facilities to help bring the practices of meditation, positive thinking, and self-esteem
to people in these facilities to help them make meaningful changes in their
lives. The leaders of the organization are all women from the Eastern world,
mainly India. In the Boston center there was a mix of ethnicities in the staff
running the events and those attending. There were young and old people both at
the meditation in Watertown and the lecture in Harvard Square. The reach of Brahma Kumaris is not limited and
it has proven to be an incredibly open, welcoming, and supportive environment
for all. It continues to grow geographically, in membership, and in meaning and
service to the world.
References
Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization. (n.d.).
Brahma Kumaris History. Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization.
Retrieved
February 22, 2013, from: http://www.bkwsu.org/us/massachusetts/whoweare/history.htm/More.
Sivananda, Sri Swami. (1996) Thought Power. Retrieved from: http://www.rsl.ukans.edu/~pkanagar/divine/.
Sivananda, Sri Swami. (n.d.). What is Raja Yoga. The Divine Life Society. Retrieved
February 22, 2013, from: http://www.sivanandaonline.org/public_html/?cmd=displaysection§ion_id=634.
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