The Telegraph reported a 59 year old man who
“looked like a tramp” and “had a disagreeable smell”
was arrested in Spain for the terrible crime of trying to give away money while laughing. Seems he was drunk at the time.
It is interesting that giving away money is such an anti-social behaviour that you can be arrested for it – since being drunk, and perhaps a bit grubby is nothing unusual for a British ‘larger lout’ tourist.
Papaji (aka Poonjaji), the late Indian guru, told that he found a man in Spain who had chanced upon the same kind of enlightenment that Poonjaji experienced. The same kind of enlightenment that Eckhart Tolle describes. The man could not stop laughing, coupled with some ecstatic utterances. He was taken to a mental hospital, until the Indian could show him how to control and live with the new realisation.
Perhaps the English tourist in Spain will have a harder time living with the realisation that he had given away thousands of pounds while drunk.
The power of giving is not to be underestimated. The first murder attempt on the infamous Russian starets Rasputin was stalled when he gave his would-be murderess a five kopeck coin. He had it in his hand, not knowing who had come to visit him, and after she plunged the knife deep in his gut, he handed it to her. She stepped back in shock and dropped the knife, and Rasputin lived to tell the tale. Albeit with a painful stomach condition that dogged him the rest of his eventful career. The woman was found to be of “psychological disturbance and exalted religiosity” and placed in an asylum for the insane.
For his second escape from attempted murder Rasputin was not so lucky to have a coin in hand, and so relied on his famous bone-chilling stare to make his assassin’s hand shake and drop the gun. The would-be murderer had been due to become his son-in-law, but was severely rattled and stayed away from the family from that point on.
Accounts of Rasputin’s final murder vary. It is pretty sure however that it was the promise of sleeping with his murerer’s wife that lured him to his place of demise. It is kind of fitting that a ‘Holy Man’ who had lived his life bedding other people’s wives and drinking Madeira copiously, would be so lured to his death. He was so versed in the wiles, that he did not think it strange when it was the murderer himself who was enticing Rasputin to sleep with his wife. He had always been one to give money away before keeping it for himself; but never able to resist temptation of flesh or Madeira.
Love of gold has always driven human beings to extremes of behaviour. One young British woman since childhood spent her spare time panning for gold in Britain’s rivers. She found enough over the years to make two rings for her upcoming wedding.
….see a flake of gold and it gleams and sparkles and you soon forget you are cold and wet
It would take a lot more gold than that to get most of us wading through the chilly waters of Britain.