stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

486 STRIPPING THE GURUS
the most ridiculous ideas can be taken as being completely “normal”
and “safe,” if enough people believe in them.
Conversely, you may be safely and traditionally Jewish, for
example, and believe, on the basis of holy scriptures written by the
relevant ancient sages, that the Messiah is yet to come (cf. Rich,
2001). But then how do you know he won’t come from Korea, for
example? How do you distinguish “false” messiahs from the “true”
one that you’re expecting to come “any day now”? (And remember:
Generally, if you fail to believe the “real” Messiah when he makes
the same claims as the “false” ones do, your salvation is toast.
Good reason to “believe,” then, to “be on the safe side.”) Is it by his
manifesting of miraculous “signs and wonders” ... a la Sai Baba?
By his claimed physical healing of others ... a la Yogananda? By his
downplaying of the claims made on his behalf, i.e., “Only the true
Messiah denies his divinity”? By his “divine love,” as vouched for
by his earliest followers on down, all of whom would probably have
felt (i.e., imagined/projected) the same love and peace flowing from
Jim Jones or the messianic Elvis Presley? By the characteristics
explicated in your holy scriptures—the authors of which were
surely no more wise or reliable than are the contemporary likes of
Cohen, Da and Wilber?
Would the “real” Messiah reportedly own a machine-gun factory?
Presumably not; but yet, as every devotee of the sun and
moon knows, “God works in mysterious ways”—who are we to
question the Divine, even in His human forms? If the Messiah
doesn’t conform to what the prophets of old said to expect, perhaps
those ancient prophets got it wrong, right? Plus, Jesus himself
overturned the tables of the money-lenders, even if not utilizing
submachine guns in that, as a real “Rambo-dhisattva”—some
things just require force.
If God spoke to Adam and to Abraham, why shouldn’t He
speak equally clearly to Ramakrishna and Sai Baba? Conversely,
though, if none of the top forty “sages” of today are what they claim
to be, what makes you think that things were any different for the
equally “authentic” prophets millennia ago? Realistically, given the
absence of the scientific method and the corresponding greater degree
of superstition, those aged figures could only have been even
less reliable.
Whether one is devoutly believing that a messianic Santa
Claus lived two thousand years ago, or that Santa Claus is incarnate
today, or that the real Santa Claus is yet to come on some