Blog: The Man who said He was God

by Santosh Kumar Mahadeo (Guest Author) on 2012-12-21 15:31:00

The Mauritian, however educated, is today ambushed by anxiety and stress to such an extent that he needs guidance. Marriage has failed because it cements a fake relationship of apparent unity when, in fact, it bonds loosely two persons who are tired of being together. The couple either echoes each other or expresses the angst of failed love in tempestuous violence. There is a need for calm, and meaning outside the home. The ashram gave them the hope because the manager sounded so helpful. He became the confidant of many failed partners who told him of their incompetence, of their inability to understand each other, their difficulty of facing their own children, the emptiness and void they felt in life after having achieved a lot in terms of respectability and status in society. They have also lost faith in love. The romance has been eroded; sexual love has been exhausted till satiety and they have both proved to be empty shells that earlier promised heaven and today have landed in an emotional desert. Man cannot naturally survive in chaos. He must have at least a perception of infinite calm and order. God for us is not a choice, but a necessity. About a hundred years ago a great psychologist and philosopher, William James, declared that human nature contains a "Will to believe" in a higher power. James did not know if God existed or whether there was a world beyond this one. He was almost certain that no proof of God could be found, but he felt it would deprive human beings of something profound if belief was stripped away from him. We need the hunt, the quest. When the mad crowd no longer suffices and you look for silent places, but when silent places themselves shriek with noises in your disturbed mind, then begins the quest. The spiritual master knows your distress and weaves his address with the thread of your own stories you told him in moments of unguarded confession. He knows you are a pilgrim who has lost his way in the traffic jam of human thwarted aspirations. He knows you need adoration, he is an astute judge of human character. Did you think that every person needs a PhD in order to know human beings? No, the empathy that comes naturally to a few has opened his gates to your heart and mind. He knows all the holy books because he knows that today in a world that is torn and sullied by conflicts only the visionary knowledge can soothe, embalm and uplift. He, therefore speaks the Vedas to the Hindu sufferer, the Holy Quran to the tired Moslem, and the Bible to the Christian who is stranded in a tiresome world. The devotee, newly converted from the status of a deserted sheep, now finds himself redeemed in his spiritual master. He finds in the spiritual charlatan the person who can drag him out of the shifting sands. His words are collected like pearls. His gestures are inventoried and made sanctimonious. Wherever he is, the devotee talks of the spiritual master with whom he has fallen in love. It is a long honeymoon that he spends on earth because everything becomes worthwhile living for, every moment of life becomes sacred again, life is approached in a positive way; the devotee is always seen with smiles because he has been inducted into happiness, mesmerized into a state of blissful serenity, where every problem has a solution, every difficulty a way out. God is present. God is a reality for the devotee. The spiritual master sees his devotees increase in number. The donations multiply because sinning man finds in stripping himself of his wealth a sure way of being grateful to the master and through him of reaching God. This feeling of appreciation grows into a factor of inflation. The spiritual master's ego becomes bloated. He forgets the basic rules of gratitude and humility, not pride, of silence, not noise. A bloated ego pulls the master down to crass materiality and he becomes the erring human encumbered with desires which grow bigger and bigger. His presumptuous claim of being God is the climax of an unchecked pride that has not been tutored, schooled and tamed. His inordinate greed makes him ask for more, and more till the devotee's honeymoon ends. The dream snaps and the waking into hard reality is painful. Making the master pay for his crimes should start with self examination during which the devotee anatomizes himself and seeks his own insufficiency.

In the act of seeking peace of mind the pilgrim has made the medium become the destination. Spiritual guides are flesh and blood, but more evolved than others because they have the merit of knowing the holy books, and can quote chapter and verse what we, half-baked intellectuals like to hear because we need to purify ourselves. We wrongly believe that just being in the company of the holy makes us become holy. In fact this company itself is made up of those very men and women whom we want to flee. We need to grow multidimensionally to avoid the traps and ambushes of even the holy.
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