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Updated Sunday, October 18, 2009 12:21 am TWN, By Daniel J. Bauer

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PT Barnum was right about suckers

Whew. Here is a slice of rhetoric that cries for scrutiny. I am blinking my eyes, for example, at that patronizing and yet buddy-buddy tone (“Look, I've spent ... so that I can introduce them to you.”) What a great guy! He doesn't know me, but he's doing me this great big favor. And talk about chutzpah. A two-day seminar that costs a few quarters less than 500 U.S. smackers a day. And that's not all. Some folks would “expect” it to be five times as expensive! In fact, James Ray International “should” charge that much. (Does Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man come to your mind too?)

Let's take our collective hat off to P.T. Barnum. He said it first: “There's a sucker born every minute.”

If you've got the stomach for it, you ought to check out this guy's lecture series entitled “The Awakening Dimensional Consciousness Guided Meditation System.” It comes with a “100% satisfaction guarantee” and promises to “balance your emotional centers” in what is termed Level One insight. Level Two will “enhance sixth sense properties,” and extra-sensory perception development. But Level Three is better yet. It'll help you reach what some describe as “Nirvana, Enlightenment or experiencing God.”

I regret having used nearly all my space on reporting and quotations. Those modes today, however, offer more than enough material for thoughtful readers to ponder. People familiar with human nature who also treasure spiritual values just might have some questions for someone like Mr. Ray.

Thanks anyway if you want me to join a Spiritual Warrior retreat. And you can keep the awakening dimensional stuff. It's not only the US$142 price tag. It's also that I don't want a P.T. Barnum to get the last laugh.

Father Daniel J. Bauer SVD is a priest and associate professor in the English Department at Fu Jen Catholic University.

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