"heh heh...wellllll... some folks'll believe anything eh?"

That might be part of it. I think some of us are naturally more gullible than others. When I was young impressionable naive and idealistic, I wanted to find resolution for the gritty ugly side of life, and the temptation to believe in a messiah and a set of practical techniques, resisted absolutely from past messiahs in established religion studded with ritual, was too great for me when presented in the guise of the at the time cool Indian mythology.

I suspect a lot of us were escaping from reality, and that in the past we would have been bound into local religious belief systems that would have provided panacea for the trials and tribulations of life.

Just a thought.