The crow and the swans : A fable

Once upon a time, in a tiny village situated by the sea, there lived a crow.The crow was the only bird in the village and had no rivals. There were a few children living in the same village who loved the crow a lot. They would provide him with delicious food stuffs and whenever the crow landed at their verandah to eat their offerings, they used to loudly praise him.
The first child would say "What a lovely bird! Look at his shiny wings."
The second child would say :"Lovely legs he has!" The third one would maybe praise his looks and so on. All the children used to be mesmerized by the crow : they would take every opportunity to call the crow to their respective courtyards and shower him with food ,gifts and affection.
The crow, as a result, became very proud and arrogant.
One day, as the crow was sitting on a tree by the sea side, a group of swans flew into the place and seated themselves on the same tree.
The crow was mad with anger : "How dare you sit on my tree ? You must leave at once. This place belongs to me."
The swans tried to first ignore his remarks, but as he continued to create nuisance, one of the elders among the swans most humbly replied :
"Brother, we have come after a long journey and we are tired. We will leave after a short time. Besides, as far as we know, this tree doesn't belong to any of us. So why can't we sit on it ?"
The crow loudly disagreed and ordered the swans to leave at once.
Amused, the swans decided to teach the crow a lesson.
Praising the crow , they said :"O Crow, indeed you are very handsome, strong. But we do not know yet about your flying skills."
Enraged, the crow said :"Look here and you will learn what flying is all about."
The crow then flew in various ways, sometimes in zigzag fashion, sometimes with his feet upwards and also performed acrobatics to show off his flying skills.
The swans praised his skills saying "Very nice, very nice. We can't do all that."
Then one of the swans said :"Brother, it is true that we cannot fly in so many ways. However, there is one way to fly that we know, would you please compete with us?"
The crow was too puffed up and he readily agreed, saying that he could match any skills they had.
So the two decided to take a flight over the ocean.The crow started flying at a rapid pace, but soon after realizing the vast expanse of the ocean, his energy and enthusiasm started waning.In no time, the crow was almost falling into the waters and started crying loudly.
The swan asked :"Is this the skill you were talking about, brother ?"
The crow was filled with shame :"Forgive me my friend. Actually I don't know how to fly over the ocean. I cannot even find a tree here where to stop for a while.I am about to be drowned, please save me."
The swans took pity on him and saved the crow. The crow then apologized to the swans for his offenses.

Moral : In this world, we find so many types of pseudo spiritualists. They can show so many types of miracles and can obtain the respect and admiration of the general masses. The masses are not very intelligent and they flock to such "crow like" spiritualists. We find "This Yoga", "That Yoga", "This Baba", "This Bhagvan" etc being invented every other day.
Those false spiritualists attack the true devotees , who are like the Hamsas (swans).
The devotees do not show their position to the fools right away
However, when it comes to taking a flight over the ocean of material universe, those false spiritualists fail like the crow. They may drown into the ocean, unless they take shelter of a devotee who like "hamsa" can carry them across the ocean.