Preparing for the Past, Packaged for the Present: The Brahma Kumaris, Meditation, and a Self-(Help) Styled Monasticism

Abstract

The Brahma Kumaris are a Hindu religious movement whose membership consists almost exclusively of women and whose devotional practices revolve around notions of purity and celibacy. They also hold a cyclical apocalyptic eschatology, believing that the world will end in utter disaster in the near future, just as it has done in countless times past. In order to achieve their religious goals with respect to the apocalypse, the Brahma Kumaris must engage in recruitment on a massive scale. This article examines the marketing of the Brahma Kumaris. It argues that, in order to usher in the end of the world and spare others a painful post-apocalyptic fate, the Brahma Kumaris host a number of retreats and programs aimed at attracting the public to their movement. These retreats and programs, however, have little to do with celibacy and apocalypticism, but instead focus on self-help, stress reduction, and increasing self-confidence. The article examines the ways that the Brahma Kumaris brand their determinedly ascetic, apocalyptic, and predestinarian movement as a meditative tradition which offers self-help tools for the frenzied modern public. It also considers how scholars should theorize about the marketing of religious groups that have a radically different set of internal theologies than those they present to the public.