The reason why I avoided the typical trap of trying to appropriate the outward appearance of a spiritual person was very simple. They didn’t look anything like the goal; nothing like anything I wanted to be. So, if they are not something I want to be, it would be foolish to act like them or try to be one of them.

In the beginning, the most impressive spiritual people looked like something I would want to reach, but outward emulation was obviously not the way to approach that. So, in either case, trying to fake it out never seemed like a worthy approach. Instead, I was doing things no “spiritual person” would recognize as very spiritual, but I knew better – not because I’m that much smarter, but because I had help from above. I knew what to do because darshan of the Gods made it quite obvious.

Fake spiritual people are usually described as wolves in sheep’s clothing, and in some cases this description is quite apt. However, in most cases, they look like sheep pretending to be wolves. You see, when a person poses as a guru, the first thing I think of is to compare the feeling I get in their presence to the feeling I get in the presence of Goddess, or Lord Vishnu, and I can barely control laughter. Those “gurus” are for the most part just human souls slightly increased in depth and dimension by samadhi and similar spiritual states, but their soul structure is essentially human. The real thing feels different, and I don’t even know how to describe it. Imagine a difference between a guy who is trying to impress you by the fact that he bought a Porsche… and Mate Rimac. Imagine a difference between a small person trying to be big, and an incredibly huge person trying to look as normal as possible in order not to freak you out, but you still see the shadow of what’s not shown.

It would be wrong to say that all those “spiritual” humans are fake… but they are also definitely not the real thing, the way a hermit crab in a snail’s house isn’t a snail, but he’s also not fake. It’s a very genuine hermit crab. Also, for the most part those sheep trying to act like wolves have very obviously never seen a real “wolf”. They never saw a God in person, because that leaves a mark on you; it defines how you will approach spirituality, what you will see as sensible and pointless, what you will understand as the goal, and what you will discard as silly. If someone thinks a lion is something like a big dog, you know they never saw a lion. If they think a rhinoceros is something like a big cow with a single horn, you know they never saw the real thing. Seeing the real thing defines what you will consider as valid options. It defines your coordinate system, your frame of reference. It’s not merely a thing in the coordinate system, among other things, or an abstract idea. It redefines what everything else is.

God is not a big saint. God is a whole qualitatively different order of being. Humans trying to act saintly are not saints, because a saint is a wholly different order of being; a saint is someone who saw God, and this left a mark by transforming his entire frame of reference. A saint is not something who is “all good”. No, a saint is someone who saw what God is, and knows what everything else is in reference to That.

So, when a human tries to pretend to be a saint, or even worse, when a supremely silly human tries to pretend to be a God, I find it something between sad and funny.