Swami Ji

The hall was packed with people; the cleanly-dressed kind that have been sheltered from dust and soot that beclouds the majority. These were mostly doctors who had congregated to talk about spirituality. They were listening attentively. At the stage, Swami ji, adorned in yellow robes graced the throne. Throne, indeed! Long hair flowed out from his head, streaks of grey boosted elegance of his eminent beard. Energy was ebullient. Swami ji had captivated the audience. 

At the end of nearly an hour of his discourse, the message I gathered from Swami ji was: Thought is powerful. I felt that the discourse lacked any substance. It neither offered me any information about why recognizing thought as powerful was important nor it told me what next after recognizing the power of thought. It was an exercise of futility lacking in any direction or intent. It was as if someone spent an hour saying, "there is an apple in a tree."

But the Swami ji captivated the audience. He was a master at that. He had energy and charisma during the talk. Interjecting with rhetorical English statements during his monologue in Nepali, he convinced us that he was no traditional jogi. He would spit out a string of English names, who he informed us were philosophers. "Emerson knew that the East had already figured out two thousand years ago," he told us. "Big bang theory tells us that the world is going to end," he declared. He told us stories, simple ones in very easily understandable language, wrapped in humor, and we laughed heartily. "I consider myself philosopher and not a traditional jogi" he pronounced. He giggled wildly, laughed like a fool. Shouting at times, he toned down to a whisper like some musical exercise. He was a sight to behold.  

As he descended the stage and later walked out of the hall, he was surrounded by numerous young men from his organisation, clad in fluorescent jackets (like those of traffic police), people surrounded him, bowing, heaping praises, he was offered money and those young men in fluorescent jackets collected the money. Swami ji swaggered out the door smiling at a captivated audience, waving his hand, blessing perhaps. More young men started collecting many of the audio visual equipments that had been set up for Swami ji's discourse. It was a massive enterprise; the act of discourse. Even after the Swami ji left the premises, the young men lingered along with numerous video cameras and microphones, interviewing the attendees and taping the responses. 

There can be a discourse that transcends reasons: that of faith and things beyond reasoning. But that can be a coherent, meaningful discourse. There can be a discourse of matters using reasons and facts. His was neither of those. It was an entertaining talk by a charismatic man using pseudoscientific gibberish. 

And it had impressed the audience. It was terrifying that just the style of a substanceless  monologue had glossed over their critical reasoning. And it was furthermore terrifying that many in this audience claim the intellectual authority in this society. No wonder the Swami ji blankets Nepali TV stations in the mornings.