stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

422 STRIPPING THE GURUS
obviously wrong, peer-pressured answers they had given in the
group, were actually correct [M. Underwood, 2005].)
The question now, though, is not which of several lines is the
same length as another. Rather, it is whether Guru X is the most
enlightened being around. And the “confederates” vouching for
that guru as being the “right answer” have been there longer than
you have, and are thus more spiritually advanced than you are—
only “ego” would question that, after all. Thus, they know better
than you do.
So, in that environment, simply via the pressures of conformity,
without any necessary techniques of “mind control” being applied:
Who do you think Da Greatest Living Realizer is?
Controlled studies have further shown that the greater the
amount of trouble or pain we have to go through in order to get
something, the more we will value it later:
Aronson and Mills [demonstrated] that the severity of an initiation
ceremony significantly heightens the newcomer’s
commitment to the group (Cialdini, 2001; italics added).
And, of course, the more committed one is, the more difficult it
will be to leave.
The experiences of Zen meditators sitting zazen in the lotus
posture for hours on end, their knees burning and bodies aching—
being hit with “the stick” should they even shift their positions—
will unavoidably fall under the sway of exactly the same principle.
For, those sitters are effectively “pledging” to be accepted as members
of a fraternity of more enlightened, respected and admired
individuals than themselves.
Whether there is, or has ever been, any calculation or malice
on the part of the spiritual leaders in all that, is irrelevant here.
For, the psychological effect is just as certain. That is, when one
has gone through extreme pain in order to get closer to enlightenment
and be “one of the boys,” one will thereafter encounter great
psychological difficulty in leaving the community, or even in questioning
whether “enlightenment” is anything of value. One has,
after all, gone through far too much pain and humiliation in getting
to one’s first “kensho” experiences, to be able to admit to oneself
that the grander “enlightenment” to come in one’s own future
might not be all that it’s cracked up to be.
Any effects of explicit “mind control” (in sleep deprivation,
love-bombing, hypnotic induction, etc.) would only be on top of the