Another alleged redeemer passed away... - but there are still enough to choose from

He was one of the cult leaders, whose organisation I was warned about in high school, back in the early 1980s, too: Sun Myung Moon (along with Osho - Bhagvan Sri Rajneesh, as he was known back then - or the Scientologists... although Osho has formulated wonderful bits of universal wisdom, still famous among spiritual and hippie folks of many colors and flavors - along with creating a world-spanning spiritual enterprise, including vegan restaurants and alternative discos, thus creating nice gathering spots for us beautiful and spiritual people, too).

Moon, who claimed to have had a vision of Jesus at the age of 15 and who said, that J.C. wanted him to carry out the unfinished work of the redeemer, grew up to not only found his own "church". He also became a media mogul and anti-communist, very actively supporting the US Republican party - most prominently in 1974, when he asked his church members to support Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, by praying and fasting three days in front of the Capitol in Washington D.C. On February 1, 1974, Nixon thanked the church members and officially received Moon, which brought him and his sect widespread media attention.

In the end, all prayer did not help in preventing the resignation of "Tricky Dick". He established News World Communications in 1976. From 1982 on, "The Washington Times" was one of the newspaper titles published there and also served as a mouthpiece for Moon's anti-communist and pro-Republican support.

By his suggestion, members of his so-called church founded CAUSA International ("Confederation of the Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas") in 1980, an anti-communist organization, which formulated an ideology called "godism" in contrast to marxism. CAUSA was active in 21 countries, holding "educational" conferences for evangelical and Christian fundamentalist leaders as well as seminars and workshops for US Senate staffers, Hispanic Americans and conservative activists.

I guess, quite many conservative and Republican US-Americans are now mourning the death of one of their spiritual role models (even though the Republican party is now dissociating itself from him). He certainly could serve as a role model for conservative politicians world-wide, since he was one prominent delinquent found guilty of filing false federal income tax returns and conspiracy. One might say, that some of his students were more successful - like our own current German SecTreas (federal Secretary of Treasury), Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, who has so far successfully been able to hide and oscure the details of several offshore accounts and mystical black briefcases full of bribes paid to the CDU, the German conservative party. One might wonder, whether Moon also helped in bringing down the Berlin Wall... but as we know, that was all David Hasselhoff's doing, in the tradition of the good ole biblical trumps of Jericho.

At least, one redeemer is still alive... and it was not Helmut Kohl who did it. After all (according to the findings of the satiric magazine "TITANIC"), the German unification was invalid, since Kohl was doped. And, considering the evidence photo, it seems to have been brain doping of the most severe sort, too.

And according to the same sources, Helmut Kohl also has threatened to be reborn, adding a somewhat bizarre note to Buddhism... 

So, even with one alleged redeemer dead, there are still many to choose from. Believers in the technology faith have already dubbed the newest generation of the sect mobile phone from that bitten fruit corporation the new redeemer, since it might be able to raise the US-American economy's turnaround by a whopping 0.5 per cent! Mo' money! Considering that, we can easily overlook the more than dreary working conditions in the Foxconn factories, where the components of this electronic rectangular redeemer are glued together. After all, higher winnings are more important than workers having to live in dirty, cockroach-riddled small apartments, looking out of steel-barred windows.

And the followers of this particular sect stay true in their devotion to their all-powerful God and the products now devised by his cardinals and priests... and true to the tradition of any large church, the high officials in power make sure to keep the real redemption from their followers, serving it only bit by bit... hence the rather slow evolution of their electronic evangelium... such as in 2008, when the latest make and model of their mobile was introduced:

OK, whomever or whatever one's personal redeemer might be, some spiritual leaders have enlightened the world with universal wisdom. My approach is to keep my personal spirituality as it is: a sweet fruit salad of faiths, with some raisins of wisdom sprinkled in between, such as these:

Although he was denounced as being a psycho-cult leader, amassing riches, while his followers worked for him on a mere subsistence level (which is partly true, as well, when remembering the pictures of him driving by his followers in his Oregon commune, called "Rajneeshpuram"), his teachings and lectures were marked by a special and endearing humor, often interspersed with jokes. According to him, every human being is a Buddha, with the capacity for enlightenment, capable of feeling unconditional love and of responding rather than just reacting to life.

Sounds nice... however, he then went on, that the ego (and individuality) prevents us from attaining that status. His message of sexual, emotional, spiritual, and institutional liberation, as well as the pleasure he took in causing offence, ensured that his life was surrounded by controversy. Osho became known as the "sex guru" in India, and as the "Rolls-Royce guru" in the United States. He attacked traditional concepts of nationalism, openly expressed contempt for politicians, and poked fun at the leading figures of various religions, who in turn found his arrogance unbearable. His ideas on sex, marriage, family and relationships contradicted traditional views and aroused a great deal of anger and opposition around the world.

And while his messages as quoted above are nice and positive ones, quite large grains of salt (boulder-sized, really) coming with Osho's teachings were his positions on gay love, euthanasia and eugenics:

"Especially after his move to the United States, Osho became increasingly critical of homosexuality and also believed that homosexuality created or caused AIDS, though it is unclear what he believed about the concrete biological mechanism by which a sexual preference may create a contagious virus. According to Osho, "homosexuals, because they were perverted, created the disease AIDS" and also suggested that "homosexuals should be given different localities. They can live in their own world, in their own way, and be happy, but they should not be allowed to move in the wider society, spreading all kinds of dangerous viruses. When asked to explain his new stance on homosexuality by gay sannyasins, Osho further reinforced his view by stating that according to him, "as a homosexual, you are not even a human being [...]. You have fallen from dignity." Osho never retracted these statements.

Osho also spoke in favor of euthanasia of children with a broad variety of birth defects such as blindness, deafness, and dumbness. He suggested that "if a child is born deaf, dumb, and we cannot do anything, and the parents are willing, the child should be put to eternal sleep." Furthermore, he claimed that people who may be at risk of conceiving children with birth defects "don't have that permission from existence" to "take the risk of burdening the earth with a crippled, blind child"."

(Source: Wikipedia)

As long as all messiahs and redeemers have their various corpses hidden in their closets, it's best to not follow any of them fully, but to keep looking for the sweet raisins they left behind to sprinkle them over your personal spiritual fruit salad and enjoy eating it...