On the local access television station, late at night, you can watch videos of gurus talking to their flocks. These aren’t Indian gurus, they are from other places, and mostly from the USA; some from Wisconsin. I was watching one of these guys last Tuesday night when it dawned on me that it doesn’t seem to take much to just put up a shingle and say you’re a guru. There is a common thread to what they teach and how they talk. You too can become a guru with a little know-how and by putting your imagination to the grindstone, so to speak.

How do they talk, these gurus? If you want to be a guru, you need to know. They speak like they are a cross between a robot and a mental patient, not to demean mental patients. And they have a look in their eyes that is distant yet psychotic. On their faces they wear a plastic smile as if everything they are saying is brilliant and wise. They also speak in a monotone voice, very measured, not because they want to hypnotize you, but because they are insane. Read the rest of this entry »

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If you are from the US of A, then you’ve heard the official story of Thanksgiving a million times. Some pilgrims take a boat across the Atlantic. They get out of the boat, kiss Plymouth Rock and put their shoe buckles in the water as they make their way across the beach. They didn’t realize it would be so cold, so they didn’t bring any sweaters. They prayed to God to save them from the cold, but it didn’t work and most of them died. Very sad. Short visit. So long.

But there is far more to the story than we are led to believe. It began in England in the year 1610, on a Tuesday. A man named Eli Rappaport carried a large suitcase across the dank streets of London, hailed a coach at the corner of Lexington and Maybury, got off on the corner of Marple and Simmons, then walked into the nearest pub. There he met Jonathan Smythe, a tall, good looking, religious young man wearing a funny hat with a buckle on it. The conversation went like this: Read the rest of this entry »

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There is so much controversy over the God issue these days that people are having seizures in the streets. Evolution or creationism? What is the truth? Who has the best religion? Who can pee the farthest? How was the world created and who done it?

All of this debate forced me to leave the comfort of my small New England summer home and take a trip across the world. After a week of travel I ended up at the foothills of the Himalayas and led to a small hut miles from anywhere. Once in a while I’d see a shepherd or a young fellow pulling at the reins of a water buffalo, but besides this, the area I was in was pretty sparse. I sat in the hut for seven days. I made a nice fire and brought plenty of provisions. It was quite peaceful, really. Anyhow, at last, as promised by my sherpa guide, an old sage appeared at my doorstep bearing yak butter tea and a little drum. His name was Darmya. He told me the secret to the universe in simple words that would make the heads spin of Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Darmya told me the world was created by a guy named Bernie. Some people call him God, but definitely not his wife. Read the rest of this entry »

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I’d like to delve a little into the idea of demonic possession because it weighs heavy on the minds of many people, and I’d like to be the one to put some balm on the festering fear.

The idea of possession by demons is very old. It goes all the way back to the beginning of early man and his civilization. “Very” early man (also known as cave man) had no such thing as demonic possession. He was too busy running from predatory animals. It wasn’t until man evolved into a social creature with a fairly sophisticated language that demonic possession became popular. At this stage in human history, man began to become obsessed with the unseen world. He woke up one day, yawned, stretched, took a leak in the bushes, then realized he didn’t know all there was to know.

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I am reminded of the joke wherein a guy complains to his doctor that his father thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor asks, “Why don’t you get him help?” to which the guy replies, “Because we need the eggs.”

This, my friends, is strange logic. I have a hunch that 90 percent of all hermits are people who have been driven crazy by strange logic. They have chosen to live alone rather than to be exposed to it any more. On my book shelf is a book about Chinese hermits who live high in the mountains near cliffs, in caves and on promontories. When you look at the photos you are awe-struck as to how anybody could even reach one of these abodes on the Yellow Mountain, let alone how octogenarians thrive in these secluded places mired in mist and mystery. My theory is that these people heard just one too many statements such as “The Internet is a series of tubes.”

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Did the world begin less than 10,000 years ago? The answer is a resounding yes, if you are the recent recipient of a labotomy or if your anatomy is such that your head has somehow become lodged in an unmentionable orifice. Otherwise, the answer is just plain “no.”

Some people sit awake in bed at night and think up great questions about life. They ask, “If the world is flat, then how did God make a man in the Garden of Eden without having to travel to Japan for some of the spare parts?” Questions like this fuel debates between modern-day scholars and a bunch of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. The latter subscribe to a theory that I like to call Godvolution. To restate the two sides of this debate, we have one side saying “Look at all the evidence. Let’s applaud our science. Here’s carbon dating proof. Here are a bunch of bones. Look at these ancient tools, etc.” and the other side that says no life existed on earth until then it suddenly did.

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Today a man tried to jump into the Pope’s popemobile. Police described him as a German wearing a pink T-shirt and dark shorts, a beige baseball cap and sunglasses. I am not sure whether the bigger crime was an attempt to hijack the pope or whether it was the assailant’s fashion sense. With a wardrobe like that it’s no wonder why they took him for evaluation at a mental hospital.

This brings me to my next point: Who named the popemobile? It doesn’t sound dignified. The pontiff and the popemobile. Sounds like a Disney movie. You know, like Herbie the Love Bug or The Princess and the Pea. Was that a Disney movie?

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