Michael J. Hollander – Longtime Ardent Sathya Sai Baba Apostle

Many poison-pen attacks assail those of us who stand forth to tell the facts about Sathya Sai Baba and his worldwide cult.  So it is with some relief that one receives mail from those whom one knew long ago and held in high regard. Such an email has just come from Richard in the USA, whom I knew when we twice shared lodgings, during my first year of teaching at the Sathya Sai College, Whitefield, via Bangalore. Prior to our first meeting, Richard served as an overseas officer in the United States armed forces. He left Whitefield and Puttaparthi to work with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, before returning for a time.

I might add, in passing, in reference to Richard’s mention of his book on environmental catastrophe, that I have just returned from a forum, hearing from some of the top environmentalist scientists in the world that the vast ecological troubles threatening the planet are not the concoctions of crack-brain doomsayers. They are very real. Blinded by narrow economic advantage, many governments, corporations and others dangerously ignore compelling scientific data going back forty years. Sathya Sai Baba did not address these immense threats to the planet. In his constant sermonizing, he all too often spoke with extreme abstraction, getting lost in ancient myths that he treated not as allegory or parable but as historic fact.

For context to this note, see my previous blog: Michael J. Hollander: A Sathya Sai Baba Preacher of ‘Woe-Unto-The-Wicked’

Posted by Barry Pittard on January 16, 2012

Below, see Richard’s note:

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“Dear Barry,

Well do I remember Michael and Faith Hollander, since I was privy to their after-story in New York.

You and I become good friends during first 5 months of 1978, living first at the Singh’s and later at the Tank-cabin with the baba wall. It was from there I departed to spend rest of my 1978 year in Calcutta and more briefly, Madras and Bombay. Meanwhile, you soldiered on as a fine teacher in Karnataka. Well do I recall your wonderful bhajan classes with tiny ones.

Faith and Micheal returned to New York City, where I encountered them in 1979 as leaders of the Sathya Sai Center of Manhattan. I went there twice for bhajans, then disconnected from corporate baba-ism. I now call the guy S. N. Raju. I will fine tune my essay re that issue and send to you in next few months or sooner. (I regret I still viewed Raju as my guru until about 1998-99, when I learned about his evil conduct and that of some around him)

Faith Hollander was a devout if floaty lady with deep spiritual capacities, and Michael was a loud, if well-meaning, “idealogue” and evangelical, a sort of Baba’s apostle ‘Paul’, sent forth to browbeat the earth into Baba-tude. I find it sad but amusing how so many, having drunk the koolaid, cannot transform themselves. I think its like Sam Sandweis or that other leader of the Sathya Sai Organization, the doctor (glad I can’t recall his name) said: “Ive given 20 years of my life to this, I can’t recant now.”  That’s sort of like the inquisitors saying about Galileo’s ’round Earth” thesis: I’ve dedicated my life to a flat Earth… so let’s kill or silence that guy.

Anyway… the beat goes on. My book about coming eco-catastrophe is at the printers in Calcutta.

Peace, love and Justice,

Richard

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General

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