Page 73 - Just Deserts

Swami Adavasi

The worldwide headquarters of Help Yourself, a burgeoning new
religion, were located in a former military base on a scenic stretch of
California coastline. The enlisted men’s barracks and mess halls were
filled with an ever-changing guard of recruits to Swami Adavasi’s
creed of balanced give-and-take; renamed Camp Help It, the
installation also served as a model for Help Yourself centers
elsewhere around the globe. Extensive remodeling of the officer’s
quarters had produced a small palace containing both the leader’s
apartments and the permanent guest rooms of his immediate
subordinates, the five regional subswamis. The latter were in constant
commutation between their own fiefdoms and Camp Help It, where,
it was rumored by outsiders, Swami Adavasi kept his quintet of
underlings busy accounting for their share of the take—or helpings,
as insiders referred to the upward flow of wealth in the hierarchy.
Helping oneself was the credo as well as the motto of the
movement. In his official biography, the swami recounted his early
days as a “street person,” living from one handout to the next, one
day suddenly realizing that the real benefit accrued to those who
offered him spare change or scraps of food. He, on the other hand,
was in constant misery because he could not help himself by helping
others; his circumstances forced him to function as a one-way
conduit for the blessings enjoyed by donors. His situation, as further
revealed to him in a flash of religious inspiration, was exactly
analogous to Christ’s assumption of the sins of mankind. But the
world was upside-down: the wretched poor were, in fact, saints—in
most cases involuntarily—because they hung at the end of a long
chain of handed-down misery. They balanced the books for the
wealthy, who offloaded their assets at will, receiving nothing as gifts;
alone in their generosity, the rich were obliged to take whatever they
could as a sort of economic tribute, squeezed from other people by
virtue of power or position. This was a totally original economic
theory as well as a radical redefinition of sin and redemption.
After a suitable gestation period, the soon-to-be swami’s ideas
took a more definite shape. Again claiming divine instruction, he
outlined the ultimate design of Help Yourself in a rambling series of
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