It has always amused me to see how people are so gullible as to fall for the cheap tricks employed by the "Godmen". The crook hires a few actors who pretend to be sick or handicapped. He then calls them on stage, mumbles something or touches them with his "divine fingers", and then - they are cured! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Its a miracle! Of course there is a choir playing some religious music in the background to numb the senses of the audience. At this point of time, the crook's sidekicks pass out buckets among the audience to collect money "in the name of the Lord".
This is a highly lucrative multi-million dollar business. Along with globalization, the crooks have now started to expand their business. Last month an American evangelist called Benny Hinn came to Bangalore in his private jet with a lot of publicity. This scared the Indian crooks who were afraid of losing their market, so they unanimously denounced him as a fraud. RSS and the other hindu fundamentalists too got involved and protested by burning down a few buses. What a tamasha!
But even Benny Hinn is no match for our own home bred Sai baba (the one with the sparrow nest on his head, and not the older one). True, he has set up a free hospital, but when he gets a billion rupees from the public, it will look strange if he doesn't give back a fraction of it. Anyway, if he is "divine", why does he need a super speciality hospital? He could very well touch all the sick people and cure them. Apart from curing the "sick", his favorite trick was to produce rings from thin air and give them to his devotees. One rationalist asked him to produce a pumpkin (which is too big to be hidden inside his sleeves) from thin air. Needless to say, Sai baba didn't take up the challenge.
There is another breed of conmen, the pseudo-intelluctual type. They are exemplified by Sri Sri Ravishankar (did I get the number of Sri's right?). He is very articulate, knows how to generate self publicity and looks the part. But when he opens his mouth, what comes out is an endless stream of gibberish. He also writes a few magazine columns in mainstream newspapers and gets himself invited to business conclaves. His column has been running for a few months now in the Indian Express. It seems as if he has run out of things to say, so he has resorted to crap like:
"One infinite space that is immortal means that which does not die, that which does not change. It is one homogeneous mass of knowledge and bliss and is self-contained. This definition of Divine nobody can dismiss. What is God? The infinity - knowledge of the 'knowing-ness' of the infinity - and bliss. This 'knowing-ness' of consciousness is all pervading."
The target audience of these kind of people is the highly educated, frustrated urban dwellers (mostly software engineers!). In a way these conmen are more dangerous than those like Benny Hinn or Sai baba. These guys use vacuous logic to gain credibility, and are far more cunning. It just proves that for every divine crook, there are a hundred fools lining up to hand over their money.
I sometimes wonder, why should I work fifty hours a week and earn a pittance, when I can earn millions by growing a beard, looking stupidly serene, mouthing inanities and setting up an ashram with thousands of devotees? Any idiot with a bit of luck can do it. So perhaps I will too .. so look out for Sri Sri Sri Chinamyananda Abhijit Swamiji .. coming soon to an ashram near you!
