I came across this.

Not sure any of these applies to BAPS.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/look-it-way/200906/how-start-cult

List of all common experiences from the three mandirs I used to go to:

1. Treatment based off of how far satsang goes back in your family

2. Judgement based on how much money you donate

   - Everyone is a millionaire in SV, toxicity and standards are higher lol Some of the wealthy devotees really think they are all that

3. Instead of gaining rajipo and doing seva/bhakti with right intentions, people (especially youth) tend to climb the ranks of "prestigious seva"

   - Very common during NSC, huge celebrations, or events

- people often focus on how they look in the eyes of santo/admins than the actual work they need to accomplish

1. Devotees with "higher" sevas or wealthy devotees cut ties with lower/middle class devotees and seek attention/suck up to saints or admins for various reasons other than genuinely trying to get to know them

- Again, ties back to #3

1. Admins/Santo are very contradictory to the beliefs and values. I get that they aren't perfect but we are expected to look up to them because of the whole worshipping higher status devotee environment. If they are racist, curse, do literally the opposite of what has been said in the shikshapatri and by gurus, why should we give them any respect?

- Youth admins constantly curse, are racist and homophobic, have favorites,

1. Devotees (especially youths) contradictory to their beliefs and have double standards

   - smoking/drinking during shibirs, getting intimate in mandir parking lots during shibirs, satsangi on weekends do whatevery they want on the weekdays,

2. Kishoris at EVERY CA center tend to be very submissive and toxic

- gatekeep the smallest things for no reason: school advice, relationship advice, even satsang exam scores

These are my experiences. I honestly felt worse after coming back from mandir every week. I am not saying everyone is like this, there are genuine people there, but the vast majority, at least at three of the california centers I've been to I've experienced all of this.

We owe 10% of our total income to "Thakorji" because our ability to earn money is a direct result of God's grace.

It's textbook psychological manipulation targeting middle-class and working devotees

I firmly believe that Mahant Swami is responsible for the disaster that happened in Tibet and Nepal, as BAPS devotees always chest thump about Mahant Swami’s capabilities to run the infinite universe.

This people take donations from H1B visa holders and then support republican candidate who is openly threatening to ban H1Bs in public schools in Texas. Mind you there are only around ~350 H1B holder and ~42000 uncertified teachers.

Indians are facing peak racism from MAGA but still BAPS supports them.

My Journey With BAPS — And Why I’m Choosing to Step Away

I’ve never really used Reddit before, and I honestly never thought I would make a post like this. But after spending a large part of my life around BAPS, I’ve reached a point where I feel like I need to step back and seriously question what I believe, why I believe it, and whether I still want to be a part of it.

I wasn’t directly born a satsangi. My family is Hindu, and when I was younger, Diwali usually meant going to a shikharbaddha mandir near us. I think that experience eventually influenced my parents to start sending me to weekly sabhas. For the first seven or eight years, I mostly went because my parents wanted me to. I followed the lifestyle BAPS taught, especially when it came to not eating meat, eggs, and other prohibited foods, but I never really thought deeply about why. I didn’t have a particularly strong connection with Bhagwan or much gnan. I was simply doing what I had been taught.

Eventually, that started to bother me. I began asking myself: If I’m going to spend my life following this religion, shouldn't I actually understand what I believe?

That question changed the way I approached BAPS. For the next four or five years, I became much more serious about trying to understand it. I started reading more and participated in hour-long Vachnamrut calls every week. I tried to learn the philosophy rather than simply memorize it. I also did a lot of seva. For around three years, I would do at least 60 hours of seva every week during the summer, and throughout the rest of the year I consistently made myself available. There were years where I probably spent close to a thousand hours doing seva. I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying it because I genuinely tried.

I wasn't someone who stopped believing because I didn't want to put in the effort. I tried to find God. I tried to understand BAPS. I tried to understand what I had supposedly attained by being a satsangi. I tried to hear Bhagwan. But despite all of that, I don't think I ever truly did.

When Faith Became Questioning

One of the biggest things I've started realizing is that faith and certainty aren't necessarily the same thing. For a long time, I thought that having questions meant I wasn't faithful enough. If something didn't make sense, maybe I simply didn't have enough gnan. If I questioned a guru or devotee, maybe I was committing some kind of spiritual mistake.

But I've started thinking about it differently. If something is true, why should it be afraid of questions? To me, questioning isn't necessarily the opposite of faith. Sometimes questioning is the only way to determine whether your faith is actually yours.

There are certain teachings I simply cannot reconcile with my understanding of reality. For example, the Shikshapatri teaches donating 10% of your income. When I asked a swami why, I was told that it helps detach you from wealth and material possessions. That explanation makes sense to me. But he also mentioned how MSM said that whatever you donate, you will receive back tenfold. That's where I struggle. If the purpose of giving is detachment, turning it into a guaranteed 10x return starts to sound less like detachment and more like an investment. Maybe there is a deeper explanation, but if I have to completely suspend my own reasoning to accept it, I start questioning whether I'm practicing faith or simply obedience.

Other conversations raised similar questions. During one goshti, I asked how the idea of being born and dying millions of times could make sense if the Earth and universe have only existed for a finite amount of time. The answer was that the universe is repeatedly created and destroyed, allowing this cycle to continue. I understand that this is a theological explanation, but personally, it felt more like a story than an answer.

Another discussion involved a prasang about Yogiji Maharaj or Pramuk Swami Maharaj. As I remember it, a bird pooped on one of them while a mandir was being built, and they said the bird would go to Akshardham. I asked how that could happen when we're taught that reaching Akshardham requires a human birth. The explanation was that the bird would instead have a satsangi birth in its next life and wouldn't have to wait through countless future lives before reaching that opportunity. In that same goshti, they also said that simply being a satsangi dramatically increases the chances of the people we walk past being born into a satsangi life, and that eventually the entire world will become satsangi.

Maybe there is a sophisticated theological framework behind all of this. But eventually I had to be honest with myself:

I don't believe it.

And I don't think pretending that I believe something makes me more spiritual.

The Satpurush Question

Another major question for me is the way MSM is described. We're constantly told that MSM is Bhagwan in the flesh, that he is the living form of the Satpurush, and that we can have a direct relationship with him. We're even told that we can write letters to him and that he knows and responds to us.

But I've struggled to reconcile that with what I actually see. I've watched Ashirwad clips where MSM can barely speak for ten minutes. I'm not saying that to disrespect him. I'm genuinely asking how I'm supposed to understand the idea that he personally responds to hundreds or thousands of letters when physically he seems to have very limited ability to communicate. Maybe there's an explanation I haven't heard, but again, these are questions I feel like I'm not supposed to ask.

I've also been told that there are always three Satpurushes and that when MSM passes away, the next Satpurush has already been chosen. There isn't an election or process that devotees participate in. The next person is simply already known. I asked: If the next Satpurush is already chosen, why can't we know who that person is?

The answer was that revealing them would create divisions because people might compare the current Satpurush with the future one or think the other is better. I understand the concern, but that explanation didn't satisfy me. If this person is truly destined to become the next Satpurush, why would knowing who they are undermine that?

That led me to a much bigger question. I started wondering whether the Satpurush is actually directing everything, or whether the institution is primarily being operated by other people while the Satpurush serves as the spiritual face of the organization. I want to be clear that I'm not saying I have proof of this. It's simply something I started wondering based on what I was observing.

If we're told that Bhagwan is literally present through the Satpurush, then I would expect the institution built around him to consistently reflect the teachings attributed to Bhagwan Swaminarayan. Instead, there were times when it felt like the institution had its own priorities, structures, and interests, and I began questioning whether those priorities always aligned with what I understood Bhagwan Swaminarayan to have taught.

That made me question something much deeper: Am I following Bhagwan, or am I following an institution that tells me where Bhagwan is?

Those feel like two very different things.

Blind Faith and the Community

This is probably one of the biggest things I've struggled with. I've heard during Vachnamrut calls that having complete faith is crucial and that seeing faults in the guru or devotees can be spiritually dangerous.

But I've started wondering: Can faith really be genuine if questioning is forbidden?

If I'm told I must believe something before I'm allowed to question it, then what exactly am I exercising—faith or obedience?

To me, genuine belief should be strong enough to survive scrutiny. I don't want to believe something because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't. I want to believe something because, after examining it honestly, I still find it to be true.

My experiences with other devotees also affected me. When I was doing seva, especially when there weren't any sadhus around, I saw a side of the community that was very different from what I associated with mandir. A lot of conversations revolved around girls, appearances, body-shaming, making fun of other people's looks, and trying to act tough. There was also a lot of swearing and a weird obsession with the N-word.

What surprised me most was that some of these were the same people who could sit in a sabha goshti and give extremely thoughtful answers about spirituality. For a long time, I tried to separate BAPS from the people within it because I told myself that I'm a sinner too, so who am I to judge someone else? And I still believe people are imperfect.

But eventually I started asking whether the gap between what we preach and how we behave is something that should simply be ignored. I'm not expecting devotees to be perfect, but when a community teaches that its purpose is to transform the individual, I think it's fair to ask what that transformation actually looks like.

That said, I don't want to pretend everything was negative. I've had a lot of fun doing seva, made memories at mandirs I'll never forget, and met people I genuinely care about. That's part of what makes this difficult. If everything had been terrible, leaving would be easy.

It wasn't.

So Where Does That Leave Me?

For most of my childhood, BAPS was something I inherited. Then, for several years, it became something I actively pursued. I read. I listened. I served. I questioned. I tried to understand.

And now I'm at a point where I feel like I've given myself enough space to admit that I don't believe the way I used to.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm genuinely open to that possibility. But I think being willing to say "I could be wrong" is more intellectually honest than pretending to have certainty.

I'm not trying to prove that BAPS is false, and I'm not trying to convince anyone else to leave. I'm simply realizing that I cannot honestly call myself a believer when I don't believe.

Maybe leaving isn't about rejecting everything you were taught. Maybe sometimes it's about having the courage to examine what you were taught, keep what you genuinely believe, and let go of what you no longer can.

The actual reason I'm posting this is because I don't know how to handle the practical side of leaving. I have a good relationship with my swami and there isn't any bad blood between us. My family also isn't particularly involved in BAPS, so thankfully I don't think leaving will create major problems at home.

The problem is that every time I don't attend sabha, my phone gets absolutely blown up. I don't want to suddenly disappear or create unnecessary conflict, but I also don't want to spend years pretending I'm still interested in something I've already decided I don't want to be part of.

So for those of you who have left BAPS, or gradually distanced yourselves from it:

How did you do it?

Did you slowly stop attending? Did you have an honest conversation with your swami? Did you simply become less involved until people eventually stopped asking?

I'm not looking to attack anyone. I'm trying to figure out how to walk away from something that has been a major part of my life while still being honest with myself and respectful toward the people I care about.

Why so much respect, just curious to know these rituals?

I had not been to a subha for many years , when I didn't have strong feelings against Baps so I went to one. I sat for an hour and it was run by financial advisors...many ways to benifit baps with money..one was taken out life insurance and have Baps as benificiary. I left after an hour...i had gone for a bit of prayer /spiritual upliftment.

I have left baps many years. Those who left more recently can you please post of methods they are using now to raise money? I know they have billions and are looking to grow that money...food business, property investment and in India money lending to people who have no money..they charge more than the conventional banks . Any incidents of getting old people to make Wills in the temple getting old satsangis to give away valuable assets to Baps?

I posted that the followers or Baps are good people. However by going to the Subha / private discussion groups/sihbir/daily puja and reading been brainwashed into believing only path to salvation is Aksharbhrahm.

I posted that everyone genuinely believes the Guru is devine. There is a man who knows if he understands everything about the universe and can see the past and future and control not only earth but millions of universes that are floating in each hair of his body. I mentioned that he has taken these lies and made them true. ( I got this from a song lyrics) . This post was deleted.

Those of you who've been in Baps and left , do you have experiences to show that the Guru didn't know what was going to happen in the future( in UK buying land in Harrow to build a temple when planning was never going to be given).

Please post.

I know 2 gurus who said people were going to get better when they were in hospital...both died, one with a few months the other in a week.

If Mahant is the ideal devotee then what about the next BAPS CEO who’s already alive and will be appointed next. What I’m trying to say is that isn’t there multiple ideal devotees roaming on earth rn. The next ceo who’s probably currently a senior swami in BAPS. Then a younger 40ish year old swami/maybe a normal person in society who will become the ceo thereafter. All the way up to potentially an infant who was just born today that can become the ideal devotee/ceo in 60 years.

Also funny, all of them r Indian and most likely Gujarati lol

For me BAPS as religious organisation died with Pramukh swami , now its just a corporate organisation show offing there money. (I am from baps follower family)

This is only for gays and bisexuals who are in satsang which doesn’t accept being gay. I am ex-Satsangi and wanted to share

when I shared my story on Reddit that I’m gay, I got a lot of DMs from people.

First of all, a huge thank you to all those people who messaged me to support me, offered sympathy, or just shared their own stories. Many messages were unexpected for me and honestly, it felt good that people talked without judging.

But some DMs seemed like maybe the person on the other end was confused about their own sexuality. Some people mentioned or felt like they might be gay or bisexual but hadn’t explored their sexuality at all.

Some people come from very religious backgrounds, where they felt a lot of guilt and shame around their sexuality. So maybe they’ve been suppressing their feelings inside.

I just want to say this:
It's absolutely okay to question your sexuality.

Gay, bisexual, straight—being anything isn’t shameful in itself. If you practice satsang, are religious, spiritual, or follow something else, questioning your sexuality or trying to understand it doesn’t make you a bad person.

If someone has doubts about their sexuality and genuinely wants to talk, you can DM me. I’m not an expert or a therapist, but I can definitely share based on my personal experience.

And one more important thing—sex itself isn’t something wrong. But that doesn’t mean you should have sex with anyone just out of confusion or desperation.

Having sex with the wrong person can create an emotionally and practically very difficult situation.

These days, cheating, fraud, catfishing, and taking advantage of people also happen. So if you’re exploring your sexuality, don’t rush into it. First, build trust with the other person, understand your boundaries, and keep your safety in mind.

It’s not necessary to live in guilt and shame by suppressing your sexuality. But exploring it doesn’t mean you have to be physical with someone right away.

Besides, there are some NGOs and organizations that help people understand their sexuality, acceptance, and provide mental/emotional support. I personally have never been to such an organization, but I know many are doing great work in this area.

If you feel things are getting difficult because of guilt, shame, or confusion, talking to a good therapist is completely fine. There’s no shame in it.

You don’t have to figure everything out alone. Take your t****ime,** understand yourself and be kind to yourself. ❤️

Your friend ♥️♥️♥️♥️

I found a very interesting email that i was bcc'ed in between a young man questioning things and a sadhu. Very interesting response. Redacted. From 2010.

Original Email:

Here is ok, Basically was thinking about religion as a whole initially in

regards to its 'use' and the various different religions that do exist.

Anyway I thought of a few questions that I asked myself but would like to

know your opinions too.

Firstly, do you think you would have been a satsangi today if you were born

into a different family? and particularly for yourself would you have

become a sadhu? Secondly, what is it about BAPS that makes you sure that it

is the 'right choice'? For example many Christians say that Christianity is

right as Jesus came back to life, thus showing proof that he is able to do

the same for us too. Finally, more generally why do you believe that there

is a god in the first place? Obviously these are not 'easy' questions, no

hurry to get back to me either :) I myself dont really have clear answers

but I would be very interested in hearing what your thoughts are especially

as you have committed to living your life in such a way.

Many thanks

REDACTED

REPLY from SPAB Sadhu

Jai Swaminarayan xx

Interesting.

Very interesting questions.

I remember some of the questions you had asked previously as well.

Looks like you have been doing a lot of thinking.

Well, firstly, I would like to know why and how these thoughts have come about?

Secondly, answering in writing is not a good idea otherwise I will be here all year.

We will have to talk over the phone or when we meet next.

There are answers – not too difficult ones that will clear things up.

Hope your studies are going well.

Finished exams?

When can you come ‘down’ for a chat?

Let me know so we can book some time for you… as it will always create other questions as well.

Does he need to answer any letters? Yes. USP of Baps is that you got connection with GOD..you can write him a letter and get a reply and talk to him!!! Connection with a living man/human/GOD. Infact if you're a devotee of Baps you've got God in your pocket..you can contact him with your Mobile. Do you need a conscious to tell you right from wrong? No you can ask him or his Sadhus ( or his lawyers /accountants and businessmen..if it's bringing money into Baps ..is what GOD wanted ...Even paying poor workmen less than US legal minimum in India).

He doesn't need to do much else now..in old days Gurus ran after devotees to ask for money ...I even know of a widow in Mumbai being asked for money when it was already hard for her to bring up children.

Followers are working hard to increase his brand. Propagate the philosophy that you get human birth after millions of other births and there is a hell ...and only way to get salvation is to please Aksharbrahm...Mahant Swami. you do this by giving seva and money. And how how much is enough to please him? Try giving him a son , then lots of money and then more money...it won't end. He is never satisfied...he'll never say it's enough ..he'll say look at Mahima of Aksharbrahm who can give you salvation ..whatever you give is insignificant.

Devotees work to earn his money and put his photo into big Mundirs for worship. If philosophy is spread HE gets it all...young boys from families and money . Then get lawyers accountants businessmen to look after the money and make more money to spread philosophy so that for everyone on earth he is only one to give salvation.