Savior of the World

 

Weapons found by Indian police in 2014 at
Rampal´s ashram
(Credit: Times of India)

"Savior of the World" is a very, very bizarre YouTube video introducing a certain Sant Rampal Ji Maharaj, who styles himself the leader of Kabir Panth within the Sant Mat tradition. (I´m sure there are a myriad of factions within this heterodox Sikh movement.) Rampal claims to be "the only true satguru in the entire universe" (!). Unfortunately, he is currently serving a lifetime sentence for murder after violent clashes between his supporters and those of another religious group, Arya Samaj, ended with the death of one samaj supporter. How the infidel powers-that-be (Kal Niranjan?) managed to arrest and jail an incarnation of God is, alas, less clear. 

The video promoting Rampal is so bad that I almost suspect he is trolling us. Or maybe somebody trolled his supporters with egregiously wrong information? The video claims that there are innumerable prophecies and astrological predictions that point to Rampal being the Great Man (Mahapurusha) and Great Power (Mahashakti). The prophecies are obviously bogus and frequently make no sense whatsoever. Thus, a certain "Florence" from New Jersey supposedly published a book in 1960 called "The New Golden Era of Light: COMPLETION NOW!" in which she predicted Rampal. The pictures of "Florence" clearly show Florence Nightingale, the famous British nurse who died in 1910, while the book wrongly attributed to her was published in 2014 by Lisa Manfrede Smith, an otherwise unknown New Age channeler! And so it goes on. 

Jules Verne, the French novelist, is called a "French astrologer". Nostradamus supposedly predicted that the Great Man would come from Punjab in India. Which he didn´t (his quatrains are clearly Christian in nature). The most original character mentioned is Sri Ananda Acharya of Norway, apparently a real Indian mystic who lived for decades in that country (he was wrongly assumed to be a Buddhist by the bewildered natives). If he really predicted the coming of the chosen one is, alas, less clear. 

After all this fakery, the second half of the video turns out to be untranslated. Since my Hindi (or is it Punjabi) is a little bit rusty (not to mention my Sanskrit), I couldn´t really follow the splendid teachings of the Jagatguru, as Rampal also calls himself. I did notice a curious detail, though. The video mentions the old joker Osho several times, pretending to wonder whether all the prophecies could perhaps point to *him*, only to discard the possibility. I always assumed Osho mostly had Western followers. Perhaps there is a flock of Indian faithful which Rampal´s faction of the Kabir Panth wants to recruit into their fold? Not sure if I would want to have unruly oshoites as part of my Great Man cult, but there you go...