stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

... TO A NUNNERY 307
[H]e was with me in a previous life. If you will recall, when
William the Conqueror fell upon landing in England, one of
his men [i.e., the current brother] told William, “This fall is a
bad omen, let us turn back” (Mata, 1992).
William himself, however, seems to have exhibited somewhat
less than the “omnipresent divine love” with which Yogananda has
since been credited:
When William was in his early twenties he asked Count
Baldwin V of Flanders for his daughter Matilda’s hand in
marriage. [Matilda was a diminutive 4' 2", or half the height
of Paulsen’s alleged gigantic incarnation.] But Matilda was
already in love with an Englishman named Brihtric. She
supposedly proclaimed that she would rather become a nun
than the wife of a bastard, which made William so angry
that he attacked her in the street as she left church one day.
He slapped her, tore her clothes, threw her to the ground,
and rode off (Royalty, 2003).
William and Matilda were actually distant cousins, causing
the pope to object to their eventual marriage on grounds of incest.
Indeed, His Holiness went so far as to excommunicate the “happy
couple”—and everyone else in Normandy—for several years; relenting
only at William’s promised building of two new abbeys.
In later years, in search of greater conquests,
William gathered together a great army in Normandy, and
had many men, and sufficient transport-shipping. The day
that he rode out of the castle to his ships, and had mounted
his horse, his wife came to him, and wanted to speak with
him; but when he saw her he struck at her with his heel, and
set his spurs so deep into her breast that she fell down dead;
and the earl rode on to his ships, and went with his ships
over to England (Sturlson, 1997).
[H]e was merciless in the suppression of political opposition.
In fact, so merciless was he that he introduced the act of beheading
to England in 1076 (Silverman, 2003).
To be fair, however, William B. was said to have been “obsessed
by guilt over his treatment of Waltheof [the first Saxon to
lose his head, while all around were keeping theirs] until his own