26
Long hair or shaved head, clown’s paint, tongs, bowls and rosaries
Are found to be a sure way of effecting ‘the squeeze’.
Once, the men of the robe gave learning and light in exchange;
These fellows now are jackals and wolves roaming the range.
Vedanta used to mean ‘the sum of knowledge’; now it hallows
Repetitions and commentaries out of cracked bellows.
As for the holy fist of Zen and the gallows of Sufism—
These words have become synonyms for any sort of goofism.
But things’ being as they are is also the divine will—
Or how could God-Man come again to fill cups and Grace spill?
Stars whirl, worms crawl, beasts range, men shuffle, all at God’s pace—
All so that God in men shall behold God’s lovely face.
Let the long-haired and the shaven head put on clown’s paint and thumb rosaries:
They are finds the archaeologists have dug up from the last Great Freeze.
The outer trappings of religion hide exploitation, ignorance and hypocrisy. Out with the old and in with the new! The ‘squeeze’ is the extraction of cash. And it is no use getting all het up and judgmental, its all needed for the precipitation of the divine advent and a new dispensation. All movement on earth and in heaven is incidental to his revealing. The mummery of the religions is already fossilized.
Francis had little patience with the excesses of the counterculture and is sweeping in his dismissals. Not all followers of other paths deserved such condemnation. He is overwhelmed by the wonder of the Avataric presence but Baba grace flows through many channels.
As Francis clearly sees Baba’s message is of God in man, seeking God (see ‘The Ten States of God’ in God Speaks). This stunning divine perspective sweeps away all the trappings of religion. Rites and rituals look back to a primitive past, the last Ice Age.