Piers 'Akker Dakker' on Barnaby Joyce's revelation, featured yesterday in the pond, that Mark Arbib is a double agent, and revealed by Barners in his comedy styling Austen Arbib - International Man of Mystery?
Oh Barners, you're not the messiah, you're not even a naughty boy, you're a humbug, and that from the master of all-day-sucking, peppermint-flavoured humbuggery.
Speaking of messiahs, the pond only recently caught up with Lauren Collins' piece in The New Yorker Are you the Messiah?, which requires a digital subscription if you want to read online, but which - let the pond tease and tout for the magazine - wends its way through messiah cultdom, and in particular the bizarre exchanges between political economist Raj Patel, and the arrival of the Maitreya, as predicted by eighty seven year old oil painter Benjamin Creme.
If ever you wanted further evidence that people are ever willing to be beguiled by news of the Messiah landing, and other crackpot cult notions, then Creme is your man.
There are other ways into the story, if such is your pleasure.
Creme naturally has his own Wiki, here, and if you want the moment when Creme denied Patel is the already arrived Maitreya, you only need to turn to The Guardian to read Creme's sage advice in his hand-crafted column Raj Patel is not Maitreya, but the World Teacher is here and needed, helpfully sub-headed This is no mystical bedtime story but a profound part of the history of the world.
The role of World Teacher is now held by Maitreya; the previous holder of the office was the Buddha. This is an office in our Spiritual Hierarchy of Masters, who are gradually returning to the everyday world where once they lived as men.
In her own coverage, Collins manages to tick off a respectable number of messiahs:
The One has been many: since people have sought messiahs, they have found them, from the Emperor Vespasian (who was said to have healed a blind man with his spittle) to the Quaker James Nayler (who rode into Bristol on a donkey in 1656, greeted by women shouting hosannas), Haile Selassie (official title: King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and Elect of God), Rabbi Schneerson ("Long live our maser, our teacher, and our rebbe King Moshiach forever," his followers prayed), and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (whose name means "the world made clear").
And that's just the second eleven, way behind Christ, Buddha, Mohammad and sundry others. She also spends a par on the sad tale of Krishnamurti, picked up by the Theosophical society at age 13, who eventually got as mad as hell, repudiated Theosophy, rejected all organized religion, and urged people to look into themselves, and who has his own wiki here:
This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.
This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.
Perhaps most touching is an explosive study of the power of the number nineteen:
Afif (father of one Ben Shoucair) jabbed a finger at the illustration and began puzzling out a math problem on an imaginary slate: God + Adam + Noah + Abraham + Jesus + Moses + Muhammad + 12 (and if you need to ask about the 12...) = 19. He looked ecstatic. "God in the middle! And from him all rays spread throughout the universe!"
The only way I can get the maths to work turns out like this:
God + Adam + Noah + Abraham + Jesus + Moses + Muhammad + Creme + 12 = 20 - Creme = 19.
Of course much of the story has already achieved quite handsome media coverage. Along with Michael Barkun, Collins dubs the phenomenon "improvisational millenialism" - a sort of pastiche eschatology ("millenialism" refers to a belief in the imminent perfectability of human existence), incorporating elements of traditional religious belief, folklore, and conspiracy theory - the Bible with black helicopters."
Collins, as is the fashionable way, picks up on the Internet as the new great disseminator, but human kind has never been short of eccentrics or eccentricities or mechanisms to spread them. It would be just as easy to blame Hollywood, and especially television, for a horde of plot lines involving crackpot theories (dearie me, is the X-Files now so long ago, surely it's time for a whole new load of plotlines dedicated to bunkum).
The story of Patel and Creme as picked up by no less an August body than The New York Times, running Scott James' Meeting the Man Who Made Him the (Mistaken) Messiah, which tells of the moment that the reluctant Messiah Patel, who only wanted to be a naughty boy, met up with Benjamin Creme.
My heart immediately began to beat faster.
Mr. Patel a believer in Monty Python and a reader of Lewis Carroll?
I knew at once he was the new Messiah. Come, let us read the sacred text together:
'I wish I could manage to be glad!' the Queen said. 'Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!'
'Only it is so very lonely here!' Alice said in a melancholy voice; and, at the thought of her loneliness, two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.
'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. 'Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!'
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. 'Can you keep from crying by considering things?' she asked.
'That's the way it's done, 'the Queen said with great decision: 'nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let's consider your age to begin with -- how old are you?'
'I'm seven and a half, exactly.'
'You needn't say "exactly",' the Queen remarked. 'I can believe it without that. Now I'll give you something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day.'
'I can't believe that!' said Alice.
'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.'
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said, 'one can't believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast ...'
'Only it is so very lonely here!' Alice said in a melancholy voice; and, at the thought of her loneliness, two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.
'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. 'Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!'
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. 'Can you keep from crying by considering things?' she asked.
'That's the way it's done, 'the Queen said with great decision: 'nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let's consider your age to begin with -- how old are you?'
'I'm seven and a half, exactly.'
'You needn't say "exactly",' the Queen remarked. 'I can believe it without that. Now I'll give you something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day.'
'I can't believe that!' said Alice.
'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.'
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said, 'one can't believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast ...'
Poor Patel. There's a lot of Red Queens in the world ...
If you head off to his wiki, here, you can collect even more references, which seem to outnumber thoughts about his actual ideas on food, and instead saw him land in The Guardian in stories like I'm not the messiah, says food activist - but his many worshippers do not believe him, which added to the list of unlikely Messiahs:
There have been similar cases in the past, including Steve Cooper, an unemployed man from Tooting, south London, who was identified by a Hindu sect as the reincarnation of a goddess and now lives in a temple in Gujurat with scores of followers.
Ah Tooting, home to infinite truth.
Why if you want to read more about Steve Cooper, you only have to dial up The Sun, and its story Tooting man is Hindu goddess. Irresistible, well at least for The Sun, which managed to work in a gender bender angle, along with lots of snaps ... though controversy raged as to whether Cooper retained his penis.
Inevitably the Patel angle was picked up by Stephen Colbert, linked to below, and Collins' story - for the November 30th edition, just landed, thanks Australia Post - which takes yet another belated bite at the story, proves that it's not just millenialism that has appeal, but that reporting on millenialism is ongoing fun on any slow or ugly news day of the week. And given current events and the predictable response from the vile likes of Andrew Bolt, it's truly an ugly news day today in Oz ...
Of course if all Collins had to offer was a re-hash, it would hardly move the meter, but via this rather unseemly conduit, Creme has fresh news for the world concerning Maitreya:
"Well, he is tall, broad-shouldered, six feet three," Creme began. "But he might not look quite like that. He can change his clothes and his expression in such a way that it would be hard to think it was the same person." (Creme has said that he once ran into Maitreya in Berkeley, where he appeared "modern day, slightly hippie, quite casually dressed, but nicely dressed, with a little bomber jacket on.")
I swear to the absent lord, I saw a tall dude in a bomber jacket in Newtown only last week, and so the pond is pleased to announce that the Maitreya is alive and well and living amongst us in Newtown, and contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, Oprah Winfrey is just a false messiah come to visit, and quite possibly the anti-Christ ...
And now, as the year winds down, why not a visit to Colbert as we begin to prepare our list of greatest hits, memories and messiahs and false messiahs for the year ... and yes, it's strange, but you have to consider some of the commentariat as false messiahs, since calling them naughty boys isn't a strong enough form of verbal abuse:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| I Can't Believe It's Not Buddha - Raj Patel | ||||
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