Sathya Sai Baba: Symbol Of A Vastly Corrupt India Resistant To Reform

For over a decade, many of Robert Priddy‘s and my articles have insisted that the changes Sathya Sai Baba promised for India (much less – and more megalomaniacally still – the world) have, in extreme degree, failed to materialize.   See:  India will lead the world – Sathya Sai Baba and:  Official Sai Baba Documents Show His Death Date Prophecies Failed and:  Sai Baba’s failed predictions, doubtful birth date, doubtful age, doubtful death and:  Most predictions by and about Sai Baba failed

He was appalling off-target in regard to the future, but blundered quite as egregiously  in matters relating to the past.  See:  Sathya Sai Baba Made Huge Science and History Mistakes.  He himself is now of the past, so his prophecy, below, is now part of the huge junk pile of his glaring errors:

A huge array of India’s power elites – including many successive Indian Prime Ministers and Presidents – who so often visited him – profoundly failed to go within light years of following his teachings about truth, right conduct, peace, love and non-violence.  He himself failed to live up to them.

Social injustice, corruption, casteism, nepotism, military and police violence and other extreme malfunctions always were, and are, as rife in India.  See:  Ex-Chief Justice of India: Sathya Sai Baba “dictated my every single judgement” and:  Will India clean up its Augean police and political stables? and:  Police, Security and Sathya Sai Baba

Former devotees and others who have worked to expose the crimes, misdemeanors and spiritual betrayals of Sai Baba and many of his core leaders have faced enormous obstacles. One of these has been the failure of almost the entire Indian media. The  honorable exception was India Today.  In a professional way, it dealt with our witnesses (individuals of outstanding professional and other credentials) both from other countries and well as from India.  To often, there there was the often skillfully disguised hatred of westerners only too familiar to experts on India  -  a trait interpretable as stemming from India’s long experience with British imperialism and, before that, the crashing waves of Mughal invasion. In dealing with her power brokers, no one should fall for the infinite charm.

It is to the Indian media’s undying shame that foreign media in various countries had to take the lead in surfacing facts about the 1993 police killings in Sai Baba’s bedroom, the serial and wide scale sexual abuse of boys and young men, etc.

Establishing the bona fides of former devotees from many countries around the world took coordinators a vast amount of time and hard work.  

However, with demonstrable intellectual dishonesty, individuals like the deputy chairman of the world Sathya Sai Organization, Dr G. Venkatarman, residing at Sai Baba’s Puttaparthi headquarters, tried to impute ill motives to many former devotees many of whom had outstanding records of service and devotion when members of the international Sathya Sai Organization, and attribute gross incompetence to the BBC, The London Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, among others.  

Venkataraman’s poverty of intellectual discourse can be seen in various other directions, too.  With telling use of documents, Robert Priddy, retired philosopher and social scientist of the university of Oslo, Norway,  exposed Venkataraman for serious science plagiarism of a sort which, were the deeds not perpetrated in an India rank with corruption of every sort, would probably have seen him in great trouble in the academic world elsewhere.  See:  Indian Scientist Dr G. Venkataraman Accused of Plagiarism and:   Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘Minister of Propaganda’ – Dr G. Venkataraman.

It took many decades before Indian news reports adverse to Sathya Sai Baba and his cult could be seen.  There is the irony that non-resident Indians around the world saw the BBC (see:  Barry Pittard’s Guide To His Articles On The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Exposing Sai Baba), and many other media, expose Sathya Sai Baba and his worldwide cult – which the Indian media almost exclusively denied to their readers and viewers.  See:  Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba. Media Source List.  Sathya Sai Devotees Suspect Foul Play In Guru’s Health Crisis. Seek Court Order

Our private contact with leading Indian journalists, including with editors of major media, has long underlined the power of the Sathya Sai Organization to keep stories out of the press, no matter how great the scandal. It was many decades too late that the Indian media ran the sort of stories now impossible to suppress.  See:

Indian Media’s Reticence on Top Guru, Sathya Sai Baba, Weakens

‘Face the Nation’ Audience Poll, India – 87% Hostile to Gurus Like Sathya Sai Baba

This was not until the last stages Sathya Sai Baba’s illness, his death (about which leading devotees themselves questioned Sathya Central Trust’s highly irregular handling of matters), and the vast millions worth of currency, gold, silver and other valuable items which Sai Baba secreted in his private quarters.  

In a note to a senior Indian investigative journalist on a top Indian television channel, I wrote (in part):

 (How could) “a Trust – charged with due diligence! – first, dismiss all suggestions that a unaccounted treasure could lie hidden, and issue emphatic statements that all-is-above board – with only cheques from, and receipts issued to, donors – and, YET, later, only after repeated contradicting detection, come up with another explanation altogether?

If they were let loose on the Sai Baba and Sai Trust saga, Indian newspaper cartoonists would have a field day,  ….! You potentially have a great story. But will you and your Team dare to go for it, X? Where are all the editorials? The serious Ed.Op pieces? Where is there a persistent raising of vital questions – e.g., about the circumstances leading up to Sai Baba’s death/ the death certificate circumstances/ the ordering of his golden casket from a source in Bangalore well before his death / his body weight at the time of his hospital admission / the reported concern of Sai Baba’s team of highly senior doctors about lack of information on any medications being given to him before his emergency admission to their care / or about the lack of statements from doctors and nurses and, above all, Dr Safaya at the Sathya Sai hospital who resigned en masse / or about Satyajit (about whom there is so much silence, and yet so much noise – indeed bluster!  -  from V. Srinivasan and R.J. Ratnakar)?What of the on-again, off-again resignations of Ex-Chief Justice Bhagwati? And of the former world Sathya Sai Organization head, Indulal Shah? And so on ……..”.  

See:  Sathya Sai Baba Saga: Is There Too Little Indian Media Critical Analysis?

General

Excerpt From Public Petition (and introduction)

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

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India’s Prayers, Chants and Nuclear Stance

Is India – the country which Sathya Sai Baba said would lead the world into a “Golden Age” of prolonged peace and well-being – well-justified?

Certainly, India escalates its nuclear armament preparations, including long-range  nuclear missiles with multiple warhead capacity, and development (especially hand-in-hand with Russia and France) of a nuclear flotilla. 

On one level, it is a complex geo-political discussion. I intend, rather, to compare India’s present intense defense nuclear reality with what Sathya Sai Baba said would be India’s place in the world, and indeed within his own lifetime. But then, in extremely ignominious circumstances, which the Indian press, after decades of supressing news inimical to Sathya Sai Baba could not afford to suppress, he died, many years prior to the confusing array of dates which, over the decades, he foretold. The most common date was circa 2022.  See articles:

Sathya Sai Baba Is Dead. Said He Would Rule the World and Die Aged 96

Sai Baba Treasure Scandals: His Big Political Protectors Now Run For Cover

Sathya Sai Baba’s prediction about Vivekananda’s rebirth proven false

Arihant Nuclear Sub Launch. PM Manmohan Singh and dignitaries

Sathya Sai Baba – at whose feet fell countless Indians at the highest levels right across India’s power structure (including PM Manmohan Singh, pictured at Right – said that India, after having accepted his Divine Lordship, would lead the world into a ‘ Golden Age’ of peace and social well-being.

Such a massive paradigm shift, to be wrought by him, and extensively implemented by his international Sathya Sai Organization, he many times foretold, both in discourses and in the interview room to his visitors from various countries. For example:

“Formerly when the Govardhanagiri (mountain) was raised aloft by a little boy, the gopis and gopalas realised that Krishna was the Lord. Now, it is not one Govardhanagiri , a whole range will be lifted, you will see!”(see scan from Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 3, p. 106)

“I will have to forego the car and even the aeroplane when I move from place to place, for the crowds pressing around them will be too huge; I will have to move across the sky; yes, that too will happen, believe Me.” ( see scan at Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. II, p. 92)

“You will realize Swami’s glory when I walk across the sky from one end to the other.” (Tapovanam Chapter 11)

“The whole world will be transformed into Sathya Sai Organisation and Sathya Sai will be installed in the hearts of one and all.” (Sanathana Sarathi,January 1999 – page 16)

“The whole world will be transformed into Sathya Sai Organisation and Sathya Sai will be installed in the hearts of one and all.” (Sanathana Sarathi January, 1999. page 16)

“In the days ahead, the whole world will be obliged to come to Prashanthi Nilayam” (p. 320 Sanathana Sarathi December 1991)

“Very soon, the entire world will be united. In fact, after 28 years, the world itself will become ‘Bharat’. Everyone will call themself a Bharatiya (one imbued with godliness — Bhagavat rathas). No one will refer to themself as belonging to this state or that state, this region or that region.” (from Sathya Sai Baba’s Convocation Discourse 22-11-2008 at http://www.sathyasai.org/discour/2008/d081122.html).

Sathya Sai Baba said that India, with him as the driver, would be, so to speak, the locomotive, with all the other countries, like carriages, coming behind. Instead of a smooth ride, we shall all have to hang onto our hats!

India now has an ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) capability, having successfully tested the Agni V. Its delivery loads have a long reach, including Chinese cities. 

This nuclear weapon is (Agni 3), precedes the latest Indian ICBM, a MIRV, Agni 5 –  a Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle. Also:  Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicle, Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle.

See:  Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

MIRV

“Any of several nuclear warheads carried on the front end of a ballistic missile. The technique allows separately targeted nuclear warheads to be released from the missile on different trajectories, thus attacking several targets from only one launcher. MIRVed ballistic missiles were first deployed by the U.S. and then the Soviet Union in the 1970s, followed by Britain and France in the 1980s and possibly China in the 1990s. Because multiple warheads represent a significant increase in firepower, they have often been an issue in arms control negotations. The Strategic Arms Reduction Talks commit both the U.S. and Russia to limit the number of MIRVs on some missiles”.

For more information on MIRV, visit Britannica.com

Defense writers report that India’s multiple warheads point at key parts of China. China-sponsored Pakistan’s counterpoise to the Agni V is the Shaheen 1A which can carry up to 100 nuclear warheads.

Last year India spent (US) 49 billion on defense, and is the world’s biggest arms buyer. It has an indigenous nuclear-powered submarine, and is sourcing others from abroad, and burgeoning nuclear supportive naval power. 

China, too, greatly extends its defense spending.  In a which-came-first, chicken-or-egg scenario, it hardly matters who initiates a difficulty. Both chook and egg are going to get badly smashed.

India – now firmly enjoined with the USA-led Western Alliance (including nuclear-armed Britain, France, Russia, Israel) – fast-orchestrates strategies to preëmpt or to match. This, despite all of these countries’ political and diplomatic sweet talk that these counterweights are not meant with China in mind.

On India’s present nuclear stance, I do not here refer to any political or strategic defense rights or wrongs. But say this:

Especially from the 60′s many of the dropped-out ‘Hippy Generation’, along with other spiritual seekers – disabused with materialism whether capitalist or communist – looked to India (and other parts of the East) as a light in a dark and frightening world.

Often, the hopes of the seekers reposed in the likes of  Paramahansa Sri Rama Krishna, Vivekanananda and the Ramakrishna Mission, Meha Baba, Ramana Maharshi, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sivananda and the Divine Light Mission, Neem Karoli Baba, Muktananda, and a great many others from India – the millennial land of avatars, gurus, mahouts, mahants, mahatmas, swamis, etc.

Indian educated classes, like the villagers, often have, alike, long bowed low to all these.  As one who lived lengthily in India both around Sathya Sai Baba, and well beyond, I can attest to how daily and typical it was, and is, to find Indian politicians of practically all stripes bowing low to the ‘holy’ men and women.  The often pompous and florid speeches proclaim the spiritual glories of India, but the practice is truly abysmal – and, just as daily and typically, steeped in corruption, toxic as the spit from cobra fangs.

In India, I was a guest in high places and in hovels, and found, at all levels – not even exempting the still often sweetly naïve forest tribals among whom I at one time worked, who knew too well of the way e.g., the police and other dark forces worked at the behest of the evil and powerful timber logging companies – almost universal despair at generations of corruption in the country’s leadership.

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India Successfully Launches First Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile

Author: Sahil Shaikh.
Published: April 19, 2012 at 12:03 pm

Source:  Technorati

New Delhi; April 19,2012: Today India launched it’s first Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile(ICBM), called the “Agni-V”. The missile was launched from Wheeler Islands in the Indian State of Odisha (Formerly known as Orissa).

The missile was developed by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). It took about four years to develop this missile, which has the capability to reach strike targets well beyond 5,500 km. The Agni-V can also carry nuclear warheads up-to 1.1 tons.

This successful launch has allowed India to join the elite group of nations which possess far-reaching nuclear rocket technology, including the United States, China, Russia, Great Britain and France.

Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh described the Agni-V test as a major milestone in India’s military power. Indian defense minister A.K. Antony congratulated DRDO chief Dr. V.K. Saraswat, stating that the “immaculate success” of the Agni-5 is a major milestone in the country’s missile research and development program.

The Agni-V test was conducted using a rail mobile launcher. The missile took about 15 minutes to reach the designated target point, more than 5,000 kilometers away in the Indian Ocean. The missile was to be launched on Wednesday, but the test had to be postponed due to poor weather conditions.

Agni-V is about 17.5 m long and weighs 50,000 kilograms, and was developed with a budget of about 2,500 crore rupees.

Agni-V will be operational by 2014–2015 after four to five repeatable tests by the DRDO. The missile will bring all of Asia, including the northernmost parts of China, 70% of Europe and other regions under its strike range

Read more: http://technorati.com/technology/article/india-successfully-launches-first-inter-continental/#ixzz1tWHZUfbP

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available:

PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA ”INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL

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The Sathya Sai Organization’s Treatment of Dissidents: A Desertion of Ethics and Spirituality

Among other reasons, there is a much less reported reason for the success – at a very deep and far-reaching level – of the former Sathya Sai Baba devotees’ long and gruelling exposure in some of the world’s leading media, the UN, etc., of Sathya Sai Baba and his worldwide cult.

This success drew the response from non-Sai devotee family members, friends, neighbors, and school, college, university, professional, trade and other and associates of devotees. It also drew a strong interest from many government, civic, legal, religious and other institutions.

These third-party interests had no compunction in consulting the internet and in judging the critical offerings on the basis of commonsense and reason. Sai Baba ordered his devotees that they should have nothing to do with the internet. Some of them saw the almost daily attacks upon us, and how viciously set-upon and libeled have been those who have made great personal, financial and other forms of sacrifice in getting the abuses investigated by responsible world media, the United Nations, and so on

Profoundly blinded devotees would not hear a word said against their idol. He was God walking the earth. He could do as he pleased. One had to love him for his mystery. And not question his plethora of outright contradictions, failed prophecies and promises of healing or giving places in his colleges or university or apartments in the ashram, etc.

They would not listen to the heart-wrenching testimony of the parents and boys and young men from many countries whom Sathya Sai Baba sexually abused. They were utterly remiss in refusing all proper and normative processes of moral and legal accountability. We have powerful and repeated well-documented evidence of Sathya Sai Organization leaders turning away the many parents and others who have gone to them in great distress with their shocking accounts of Sai Baba’s sexual abuse of their boys and young men and, sometimes, by a small number of his college and university teachers. The organization’s history of ignoring the allegations is truly appalling. Sorely afflicted families from many countries have verified the Sathya Sai Organizations profound failure of duty of care and accountability and transparency.  The media, scholars, police and other institutions have attested the extreme resistance of the cult to investigation. Top world media have observed this imperviousness and obfuscation, including:  BBC, CBC (Canada), DR (Denmark), Salon.com (USA), SBS (all television), ABC (Radio Australia). In paper media – Times of London, Daily Telegraph, Guardian (UK), Marie Claire Magazine, Salon.com,BT, Bild, Focus, Trouw, Speegelbield, Noordhollands Dagblad, Sokaren, Gatopardo, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, Age, Australian Financial Review, West Australian (a major front page article by an award-winning journalist (Torrance Mendez) was pulled at the 11th hour!), Adelaide Advertiser, etc., …..

For the international Sathya Sai Organization, and for Sai devotees en masse, reason and commonsense stood for naught, much less ordinary human compassion. There was utterly cruel shunning of their former colleagues and friends, often of many years standing, whom they had, for every good reason, previously held in high regard. Overnight, as it were, we transformed into devils.

History can only deliver a harsh judgement of those members at all levels of the Sathya Sai Organization who spurned those who, with great pain and difficulty spoke forth the shocking facts which they, around the world, increasingly uncovered – broadly speaking from about 1999. They deserted their constantly iterated principles of: Truth, Right Conduct, Spiritual Love and Peace and (in a few cases, resorted to violence – a legal case about more recent – and most terrible –  examples is now underway).

Whereas, Sai Baba, both in discourses and via the high level world leadership of his cult, made sure that devotees did not discuss the many allegations of criminal conduct, non-devotees deeply concerned for those within the Sai fold DID consult the critical writings of David and Faye Bailey, Robert Priddy, Brian Steel, Glen Meloy, Hari Sampath, Conny Larsson, Sanjay Dadlani, Shirley Pike, Elena Hartgering, Alexandra Nagel, and others such as myself – and, in general, on websites such as:  http://ex-baba.com, http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/, http://www.saiguru.net/english/

These readers had an invaluable asset: Their independence. For they were not caught up in the trammels of one of history’s biggest and far-reaching cults.

For a brief glimpse of one of a whole series of Sathya Sai cult madness reflecting the increasing decrepitude of Sathya Sai Baba, 2007, see:

Is Indian ‘Godman’ Sai Baba’s Moon Waning Still Further?

It is interesting to find highly unofficially-officially connected prominent Sathya Sai Baba devotees, including those who as students were long in his colleges and university, now enthusing about visions in the moon of their guru. That some get so extremely excitable as to support calls on the Internet for people’s experiences of Sathya Sai Baba induced moon visions, suggests that Sai Baba’s years of education have failed them. (Yes, by the way, their education was ‘free’ but many of their parents forked out a fortune in donations and supposedly incidental expenses).

Unless, of course, a moon vision of Sai Baba – when, as it turned out, clouds heavily obscured the moon!!! - is one of his greatest miracles.

The astronomical moon chart for October 2007 sustains Robert Priddy’s point in his article Deceiving ‘devotee’ makes bogus image of Sai in the Moon. He writes:

“it so happens that the moon on October 23 was not full but was still ’waxing gibbous’, as can be seen from the following image taken from the astronomical website http://stardate.org/nightsky/moon/ This shows the moon two days before full moon. Full moon did not occur until Oct 26 04:52, according to NASA“.

Every now and then major examples of Sathya Sai Baba’s worsening mental physical decrepitude would – quite enormously – aid us in far more widely establishing our good credentials in exposing him and his cult. We, whom the Sai forces went to great lengths to make seem mad and bad, were all too validly, and often sadly, exposing a terrible madness. The madness of the human mind in the grip of an extremely powerful charismatic cult.

See also:

Sai Baba To Be Seen In Moon? But Where Was Moon?

Sai Baba Fails To Appear In Moon, IANS Reports

Sai Baba Fails To Grant Great Moon Vision. Endangers Crowds

Sathya Sai Baba Moon Miracles & as Man in the Moon

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available:

PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA ”INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL

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Documented: Sathya Sai Baba’s Harsh Chauvinism Against Women

The extent to which devotees endured Sathya Sai Baba’s misogyny is truly appalling. It is yet another of a great many instances which show how, in cases of charismatic leaders, human beings sacrifice their intelligence, commonsense and humanity.  See my last post:  Sathya Sai Baba’s Ignoring of Women. And Especial Focus On Boys and Young Men.   Barry Pittard on April 12, 2012

Just A Few Examples of Sathya Sai Baba’s Chauvinism

“Women have their estimable role in household affairs, but they should be kept out of state politics (Sanathana Sarathi, May 1995, p. 118)

His extremely narrow-minded religious fundamentalism is on display, here:

“Rama told Bharata that he should not permit women to take part in affairs of state. Women have their estimable role in household affairs, but they should be kept out of state politics. Don’t employ women as ministers. The reason is: a nation’s honour is based upon its women. It is only when women maintain their respect and honour that the nation will be respected. It is not proper for women to cheapen themselves by roaming in public places.”  (Sanathana Sarathi, May 1995, p. 118)

He often and foolishly equated young romantic love with later, mature love in relationships. In doing so, he did constant dirt against the kind of marriage my own wonderful parents had, along with so many others in so many cultures.

For decades, in his interviews and discourses, thousands from around the world have heard such marriage-antagonistic pronouncements as the following:

“Marriage is 23 hours of problems, 1 hour happiness” (Sometimes, he would say:  5 minutes happiness)

“Marriage is a sickness; The real marriage is with God”

“One man is alone walks on two feet, when married he walks on 4, then children come and after a while he needs to crawl”

“First man has 2 legs, he gets married and becomes an animal with 4 legs. They get one child, a six-legged scorpion, then another, an 8-legged cockroach. One connection leads to another and you lose your freedom”

General

Excerpt From Public Petition (and introduction)

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

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Sathya Sai Baba’s Ignoring of Women. And Especial Focus On Boys and Young Men

Today, in tribute to Motherhood, I wrote a lyric. I have long noticed how so many mothers pass themselves off, in self-diminishment, as “just a mother”.

For inspiration, I used an instrumental piece of music by Sir Karl Jenkins, the great contemporary British composer:  ‘Children of Dannu’.

 You may like to sing the words along with the music, HERE:

Just A Mother. 

By Barry Pittard.  12 April 2012

Once, I asked a young girl what …

What would you like to be in life?

She tossed her head, said oh just a Mother

…

Today you’ll see her passing by

And see her baby pout or smile

She’s everywhere, she’s just – a Mother

…

Today she shops from shelf to shelf

Cares for her babe much more than herself

A passer’s heart cannot but help go ah…ah

…

(Chorus)  That’s just a Mother passing by

That’s just a Mother passing by

You hear her babe sigh Ma…ah (Ma)

…

She’s just attuned to baby’s mood

She’s just a Mother with some food

She is just solicitude  -  hm, mm, mm

…

(Instrumental)

…

(Chorus, thrice)

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Sathya Sai Baba’s vulgar harshness – well-known to those who knew him better than those who saw him superficially – is the very antithesis of the profound tenderness Sir Karl Jenkins expresses in ‘Children of Dannu’ (and so very much of his other music)

No matter how much Sathya Sai Baba’s devotee’s may like to deny his many downputs about women, he was severely misogynistic. He held a yearly ‘Ladies Day’, but his discourses and behaviour on this and many other occasions show that he often did not, where it counts, honor them. 

For some documentary examples of his chauvenism, see my my post:  Documented: Sathya Sai Baba’s Harsh Chauvinism Against Women

His international Sathya Sai Organization is to this day extremely chauvinistic and male-dominated. Like many of his beliefs, it is as though, in crucial respects, no sociocultural sea changes had ever happened.

Throughout the decades, he famously ignored the women’s side of the darshan. A welter of evidence from around the world helps to make sense of this. For, in the grip of a powerful attraction to boys and young men, he was forever scanning for victims for his homosexual lust (while, of course, forever preaching against lust).

Many times, he disparaged partners, sometimes forcing them to split. To this day, partners who stay together are deeply struck at how he mistaken he was in the nasty characteristics which, in interviews and sometimes darshan, he attributed to them.

Robert Priddy has written incisively of the deep contradictions in Sai Baba’s words and actions in regard to women. See:

Sathya Sai Baba on marriage and family

Ladies Day – Sathya Sai Baba vs. Women’s Day and true female emancipation

Sathya Sai Organization President of 10 states resignation

General

Excerpt From Public Petition (and introduction)

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

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But a few of many revealing candid camera shots of the demeanor of the one who said that he was always smiling: -

At 85th Birthday, Sathya Sai Baba's Prolonged Sobbing Fit

Sathya Sai Baba Failed To Face India’s Endemic Corruption. Or Support Key Agencies of Real Change

Like most days, yesterday, I worked on a song (See lyrics below).

It reminded me – quite beside the immediate purpose of the piece, incidentally – how profoundly Sathya Sai Baba and his officials were utterly bound up, beside their own day-by-day autocratic practices, with some of the most corrupt and suppressive agencies in India. This was irrespective of which political regime ruled the country.

Sai Baba himself, and his worldwide Satha Sai Organization have long boasted of work among the poor. Repeatedly, their pronouncements read as though there were not many and remarkable service organizations in the world. Commonly, he and his keynote speakers said that the world now knew of him. This gross falsification anyone can prove. Let him or her, in their travels around the world, lean over and ask random people whether they have heard of him. If anyone has done so, high chances are that it is because internationally organized former Sai devotees presented their excellent credentials to the world media. More recently, Sai Baba’s own mad collections of millions of dollars and large piles of glittering treasure, hidden in his private chambers, became known. At last the Indian media – so extremely remiss in not having exposed Sai Baba and his outfit long years ago – could not but cover the story.

He and his officials have forever failed to speak out against the systems of control which keep up privilege and power over the weaker sections of society. Except, of course, in the most abstract, philosophizing terms. How could they have done otherwise? For they, beneath their smiling veneer, were deeply involved in highly autocratic control – one which, moreover, mostly excluded women.

In the song, I use the image of an old busker (street performer).  Many Australians value buskers.  But yesterday, the police, at the behest of business interests in a town not far from where I live, moved on an accomplished musician, who was not even busking but working on some songs for an upcoming concert. He is well-known for delighting townsfolk young and old in that area, Palmwoods, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, for some six years.

Except in rare instances, when a famous musician like Keith Urban (‘Mr’ Nicole Kidman) does a brief, lightning return to roots, buskers are ordinary, unglamorized pople. From the point of view of the corporate trend-makers, they may have potato faces, be ‘too ugly’, ‘too fat’, ‘too thin’. But they are a treasurable alternative to the heavy cultural dominance of the music and film industries, especially, of course, those of the USA.  And in India, Bollywood and other such dream factories.

The corporate heads of these dream industries are precisely the types that the upper levels of the Sathya Sai Organization have, all along, assiduously cultivated to build the multi billion dollar Sai empire. These are among the fat cats that you see on Sai Baba’s veranda, and in the best seats at Sai events.

All the incredible pomp and circumstance which surrounded Sai Baba is a variety of such obscenely wasteful opulence, and use of the notion so beloved of the Roman power elites – panem et circenses:  bread and circus games. Keep the general populace drugged and entertained. Ensure that they do not question their plight – or, if they should do so, then in a way that does not disprivilege the privileged. 

In Australia, some businesses scheme to suppress buskers. Citizens who love rich culture variety need strongly to oppose those forces who exploit weak legal frameworks to stifle what is alternative to the materialistic consumer society.

In my lyric, I use, too, the image of fiendish timber interests in India, whom I vividly remember driving out – including by genocide, and use of police – the forest tribal people among whom I worked alongside Indians of conscience and decency, and of varied sociocultural background. The police were puppets of the logging companies. If desperately hungry tribespeople, displaced from their traditional hunting grounds, speared a cow, the police would shoot to kill. In their records, the police untruthfully stated that they shot when the tribal people would resist arrest.

But Sathya Sai Baba was firmly on the side of the most conservative and suppressive social organs of control in India and beyond. It is not enough to go out and work among the poor. We need to analyse both philosophically and pragmatically. Too often, among those who think of themselves as ‘spiritual’, there is an air of abstraction. There is far too much ‘feel-good’, and not nearly enough ‘feel-bad’.  Feeling bad is actually very good. Because what one is feeling is a bad conscience.

However, when it comes time to face State and other organs of oppression, and the oppressors, and to call rotten things and rotten people by their right names, a great many of the so-called ‘spiritual’ are passive. This is one reason governments allow them such a degree of latitude.  

It is why the Sathya Sai Organization can so easily sidle up to governments and politicians. Often, voluntarism attends to social ills that governments prefer to neglect.

——————————————–

Old Busker, Jake. By Barry Pittard. 21 March 2012

— 

Old busker moves; he hums

A tune quite like this one

As his feet drag, he sighs and says:

They drive us from the streets …

— 

Although we cause no fuss

Some Burghers warn: don’t busk!

And if their souls turn more tone deaf

There’ll be no more of us

— 

     ‘Bout driving-off, old Jake knew lots

     When once he lived with tribal friends

     When the timber merchants drove them off

     For the love of logs instead

—

     ‘Bout forest trees and people chopped

     And kindly love Jake sang and busked

     Which is what the soul-dead Tsars drive off

     Who in love-of-dollars trust

——————————————–

Select Further Reading

Sathya Sai Baba Saga: Is There Too Little Indian Media Critical Analysis?

Yet Another Sai Yajur Mandir Treasure Haul. Stash Not In Recent Enforced Sai Central Trust Inventory

Indian Media and Governments Heedless of Decade of Foreign Media and Sai Baba Critics’ Revelations

The Sathya Sai Organization’s Deception and Propaganda Exposed. Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard

Private confidences about Sai Baba from V.K. Narasimhan 

General

Excerpt From Public Petition (and introduction)

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

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The One Per Centers

In India – the country which Sathya Sai Baba utterly failed to transform, as he had so long promised to do – and in many other countries, there is a widespread mushrooming of public protest against corruption. For example, the ‘Occupy’ movement. See my article:

Occupy Movement Exemplifies Sathya Sai Baba’s Failure As Social Reformer

In some countries, many people die when they challenge their ruling regimes. If those of us in so-called democratic countries continue to be deceived by better disguised deceptions of our own leaders and systems, we will lose those freedoms which came only after grave sacrifice.

The Wikileaks phenomenon exposed to the world many (although an iceberg tip relative to the reality) shameful secrets that governments routinely suppress through massive lying and cover up. That is to say, a world often profoundly naïve and cosseted in a way that many power brokers, diplomats and journalists, for example, are not. For a complex array of reasons, they are frequently required to shut up. The systems silence the whistleblowers. Any system in any country does this, and the methods, whether gross or subtle, according to system and regime, are many and frightening.

Sathya Sai Baba drew to himself many very high level figures in finance, politics, the armed services, the judiciary, the police and so on, But he signally failed – to any genuine and meaningful extent – to challenge or to change the visible and the invisible holders of power in his own or any other country, to a point where they have come out against their former practices. His many promises and prophecies, like those of countless promise merchants and prognosticators down millennia, have proved nonsensical and worthless. See: 

Official Sai Baba Documents Show His Death Date Prophecies Failed

Sathya Sai Baba Foretold He Would ‘Die’ Circa 2022. Further Archival Evidence 

Sathya Sai Baba Made Huge Science and History Mistakes

Basic Myths and Pertinent Questions about the Guru Sathya Sai Baba

Sathya Sai Baba Claimed He Will Resurrect After 40 Days

Sathya Sai Baba’s Death Falsifies His Vivekananda ‘Reincarnation’ Claim (Part 1)

Sathya Sai Baba’s Death Falsifies Vivekananda ‘Reincarnation’ Story (Part 2)

Sathya Sai Baba’s Death Falsifies Vivekananda ‘Reincarnation’ Story (Part 3)

Sick and Ailing Sathya Sai Baba 85. His Promises to Look Young Have Failed

Sathya Sai Baba On Magnetism. Science or Sai-ence?

                                                                              —————————

By Barry Pittard. 8 February 2012

…

Somebody’s grabbed a calculator

They’ve got it all worked out –

There’s 1 per cent owns nearly all the money

And the little bit left is ours

…

I guess that I’m not a 1 percenter

I suspect the percentage machine

Neglected to tell my smiling banksters

That their percentage has kept me lean

…

        How would you like to steer

        A gold train across the stratosphere -

        Own a gold satellite way up in the crystal sky

        Instead of a fiscal debt that keeps steering you (in the red debt that’s steering you)?

…

Somewhere, way way way up there the biggest of the Mr Bigs live

Without a blush on their cheeks the lenders take much more than they give

Somewhere, way way way up there, they don’t care a fig

If you think that you’ve glimpsed a Mr Big

You’ve glimpsed just a little Mr Big!

…

Yes ….

        How would you like to steer

        A gold train across the stratosphere -

        Own a gold satellite way up in the crystal sky

        Instead the red fiscal debt that keeps steering you (in the red debt that’s steering you)?

…

White collar, blue collar, all riding in the same train

Fourth or fifth class, see us all whizz past – all in the same train:

Farmless the farmer, armless the soldier – all in the same red train:

The deadbeat, the scholar, the dandy and the cobbler – all in the same red train:

All except the one-percenters

And they ride the gold satellite train

Yes ….

They ride the gold satellite train ….

———————————————-

For enquiries about words and music for this song, apply:  Barry Pittard, bpittard@ westnet.com.au

Customer Disservice – Where Greed Is All Good

Sathya Sai Baba, no different to many other teachers in many traditions, inveighed against greed, anger, selfishness, and so on. This he did via constant harping in his discourses and interviews.

There lacked imaginative, challenging and effective ways to transform society, which he had long said he would revolutionize within his own lifetime. He is dead. But then, mere preaching is dead which fails to galvanise and transform.

When I taught for two years in Sathya Sai Baba’s Whitefield college (via Bangalore, South India), there was almost utter dependence on rote learning. Nonetheless, I have always deeply appreciated that Sai Baba ensured that I was able to innovate, and that he and a small number of his senior staff protected what I was doing from certain  ‘education’ neanderthals in that college. Not that the  unregenerate staff members failed to produce results acceptable in Indian terms, which were much the legacy of Lord Macaulay, no matter how much Sai Baba, from the safe cordon of his interminable and preachy discourses, harked back to the ancient Indian education system known as the gurukul. There were plenty of gold medals and cages for the parrots.

Mind you, Sai Baba’s followers do in fact go out and serve the poor, but he, all along, failed to tackle the corruption in India (and everywhere else) which creates that very poverty. No end of elites – political, industrial, scientific, medical, legal, armed services, etc. – visited him, and yet he profoundly failed to do what he said he would do:  clean up (his) own backyard.

The global financial crisis – or, rather, ongoing series of crises – has spurred a great many to think about questions such as:  Can local, national and international political and social leaders, bankers, brokers, corporations, governments etc., be trusted?

Notions about who and what caused the global financial crisis often throw most of the blame on leaders or governments or institutions or, more complexly, these combined. Often missing from discussion are our own personal psychological states of being. These need challenging and transforming.

It is this capricious, sometimes chaotic mental fundament of greed in human beings everywhere which countless economists – with all their tidy, supposedly rational mathematical models – failed to take into account. I think it is why the financial crash of 2008 so shocked and surprised them. Way back in 1936, in his classic The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,  the famed British macroeconomist John Maynard Keynes wrote of what he called “animal spirits”:

“Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits – a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities”.

Many ethical systems, religious and non-religious, point to the fundamental and ubiquitous cause of human greed as crucial to any understanding of social predicament. Is it just a bank or a stock broking firm or a corporation that is greedy?

Well may we ask ourselves such questions as: 

-  What are my own desires that made me so ready to believe in the easy availability of credit?

-  What was my lack of information which led me to believe that financial institutions would not disservice me?

-  Or that my government would make sure that all the reforms, checks and balances, and protections against exploitation were a) in place and b) being observed?

-  Or that I should, in effect, allow my house to become a casino?

-  Or that I should ignore my own feelings that ‘something’ seems a bit ‘off’ here? Too good to be true?….

-  Or do I see mortgage hikes forcing young marrieds/partners forced to go and live with parents or, conversely, parents forced to go and live with their kids?

-  Or do I see social engineering narrowing children’s education, instead of stimulating deep curiosity and wonder and humanity and a questioning attitude?

-  Or do I see trillions being spent on war, which becomes an inseparable part of national and international economies, rather than addressing the very roots of human discord?

 ….. Or too serious and forever without genuine solutions – such as shrinkage of purchasing power, mortgage and interest rates rises, bank foreclosures, questionable bank fee policies, unemployment and underemployment, contracting of superannuation entitlements, the pressure to work longer hours – with drastic effects on family life – and non-commensurate wages,  issues of home ownership or rental …. and much else.

If I were still teaching, I think I’d be taking students out on still more observational excursions than was my custom. Supermarkets would be a good target. They are symptomatic of much else that is part of an inhuman economic system. A related task would be to do some polling of local customer experience of shopping. They could  compare various local, national and international consumer reports, and a range of responses from Satisfaction to Dissatisfaction. Responses of various age groups could also be factored into the task.

Without my having to preach, the students might, at the right moment, be persuaded to have a look at some of their own material desires, and consider some of the more and less obvious likely outcomes. And thus begin to see how open we all are to exploitation by the cynical and self-serving.

Below are a few lines of a piece I’ve been working on.

——————————————–

Customer Disservice. By Barry Pittard. 25 January 2012

—

Before shopping was a nightmare, I first met Joe

He had a chain of small stores where shoppers loved to go

Joe was big on value and his food was morning fresh

And the customer was right, because the customer paid the cash

To his customers and his workers, Joe would nod and smile

He was helpful, and humble, and didn’t want you to ‘seig heil’

He never hired bludgers or sourpuss faces

Or pimple-spotted dimwits with untied laces

Or narcissistic rude bastards who make you wait for ages

All of whom expect to be paid bigger wages

Yes, Joe was a gentleman, from his head to his toes

And his worker’s ‘hullos’ to you were just like Joe’s

—

Well, I’ll tell you what happened to the shopper’s friend Joe

Some superstore Big Wigs reckoned he would have to go!

There was this hungry-giant store – Big Wigs’ll do for a name

(This giant, that giant – their footprints look the same)

Big Wig lackeys front of Joe’s stores they’d strut

They’d copy down his prices and by Tuesday undercut

The big-city giant’s cut-throat men

Hounded Joe from the plazas then upped their price again

Microscopic-small is the heart of a Mr Big

And a bullet-proof balloon his giant Ego is

His big arses bounce in stretch limousines

Off to Charity Galas to flounce with Kings and Queens

He’s the greedy giant that helps money systems fail

But the bigness of a Mr Big is far too big for jail

—

Which is why I say –

—

The bigger and bigger the less better the store

The less you get service like Joe’s anymore

—

Although you may get – Have a nice day!

—

Though you walk about as far as Sydney to Bankok

The staff stand like sentries around the stockade store

You keep wondering what work the boss paid for

You scan the far horizon for staff who look human

Was it a shop dummy you saw? Or was it a slight movement?

Customers come forth in every size and shape

But no-one in the store has a measuring tape

The lipstick lady’s filing her nails

Her assistant’s on the phone swapping boyfriend tales

Does anyone know their stock? Is there anyone who cares?

It’s like the window of a fish-shop with the dead fish stares

—

Now the Big Wig’s cry out: We hurt, don’t you see!

So they spend millions campaigning against the GST

Not seeing that they’d be better if they gave an ounce

Of real old-fashioned service instead of fake discounts

—

Instead of – Have a nice day! Have a nice day!

—

Which is why I say –

—

The bigger and bigger the less better the store

The less you get service like Joe’s anymore

To Tend Mother Earth. A Lyric

In my blog of last Thursday, I observed 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”.

Returning home with that forum very present in my mind, I wrote a song, the lyrics for which follow.

———————————-

To Tend Mother Earth. By Barry Pittard. 22 January 2012

—

 If it takes the sweat of planting many billions of trees

To save all of the countries, and all of the people

Let’s grow instead of axe down, let’s stop the Earth’s decease

And tend this Mother Earth and bring her kind love back

—

If it takes the work of unchoking of each river and stream

To save all of the countries, and all of the people

Let’s work instead of slack down and forever day-dream

Let’s tempt this Mother Earth to flow her sweet love back?

—

If it takes a natural growing against what gunk pollutes

To save all of the countries, and all of the people

We’ll stop from pushing lawn-mowers, and raise blossoms and fruits

And save poor Mother Earth and draw her sweet love back

—

If it takes majestic glaciers that Man cannot invent

To save all of the countries, and all of the people

Why in hell melt a glacier for a dollar and a cent?

As if this Mother Earth could sell her loving back

—

If it takes a modest lifestyle to stop us getting sick

To save all of the countries, and all of the people

Nobody can stagger waif thin if nobody is far too thick

To tend to Mother Earth and win her sweet love back

General

Excerpt From and Comment On Public Petition

(Note: You may prefer to go straight to the Petition):

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available: PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

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Will Court Action Outside India Expose Hired Killers In The Sathya Sai Cult?

There is a matter about which I should shortly be able to write. I understand that arrests have been made, money trails unearthed, dangerous and bloody forces exposed through hard evidence and testimony, and that court actions are about to unfold.

I am told that a major media force is now preparing a documentary. It will be interesting to see how the International Sathya Sai Organization reacts.

Many death threats are, of course, bluffs. Some come from idle nutters who rant or bunglers who don’t get very far. But it is important, nonetheless, to keep whatever tracks may have been left by all who threaten.

In regard to some types of information, with the assistance of our relevant professional members, we deal with Interpol or other government agencies. In Australia, I have dealt with the (then) head of Interpol in Australia, Paul Weller, and senior officials in DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade). Our USA members have dealt with the FBI and State Department, UK members, their officials, and so on. In India, there are certain means by which to raise issues that circumvent at least some of the endemic corruption in that country. On occasions, we have been successful there, too, despite huge odds.

Since 1999, when the internationally coordinated former devotee exposure of Sathya Sai Baba and his cult began, there have been times when, for the personal safety of our most active members, we have had to curtail any thought of going public. This has been especially so in relation to India, where one of our brilliantly effective members has reported, and taken to a high government authority in India, attempts either to kill or maim him. Although he had earlier taken strong actions, he heeded family members and other acquaintances deeply concerned for his safety.

In background terms, with the permission of another key person, I earlier began to write of great progress made in India in exposing at least a part of the teacher sexual betrayal of Sathya Sai Baba college boys. I abruptly stopped writing. In the wake of these court actions, an acquaintance of mine, some of whose family elders I have long known, a former Sathya Sai Baba college boy, twice narrowly escaped with his life, in two separate countries. It will be most interesting if the three police forces investigating the second attack on him show in court evidence where those now accused as hired assassins got their training. India is one of the countries that will need to be looked at very closely.

Of course, too, the victim’s immense wealth and effectiveness in exposing at law elements of the Sathya Sai cult will need to be considered as motives for the alleged hiring of hitmen. The alleged hirer will need, among his other associations, to be looked at for any connection with the Sathya Sai Organization, including in his own country, which is outside India, although he is of Indian origin.

In this latter case, various professional security advice is at hand. I understand that close body protection is now provided for the man and his family, and he tells me that he is utterly resolute in continuing to expose some of the more evil-minded of the Sathya Sai fraternity, as are a goodly number of his colleagues who are knowledgeable about Sathya Sai Baba, and India and other countries, who have now risen to positions of outstanding influence and power.

This world would never be such a dangerous place if it were far more common to stand up against the vile miscreants who corrupt it. We should not wait for times of war to show a bit of determination to overcome the evils that, sooner or later, trouble all of us.

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:

—————————————

“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

—————————————

General

Excerpt From and Comment On Public Petition

(Note: You may prefer to go straight to the Petition):

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available: PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

Subscribe in a reader Subscribe to Call for media and government investigation of Sathya Sai Baba

Michael J. Hollander: A Sathya Sai Baba Preacher of ‘Woe-Unto-The-Wicked’

I remember Michael Hollander

This was when I began to teach for two years at the Sathya Sai College (1978-79) and heard that Sai Baba had selected a woman named Faith, a leader in a New York Sathya Sai Baba center, as a wife for Hollander. At a time when very few westerners lived around Sai Baba, she came to spend prolonged time in quiet, focused spiritual retreat. (Earlier to this, he had cleared his ashrams of 60′s spiritual seekers/hippies).

However, Faith preferred, her fellow devotees said, to be – spiritually speaking – married only to Sai Baba. Nonetheless, regarding him as all-knowing and all-seeing, she was ready to comply with Sai Baba’s match-making.

One morning, Michael quickly summoned me. On the spur of a moment, he asked me to act as, it seemed, ‘best man’. I was aware of Michael Hollander as a rather robust, enthusiastic bhajan singer, who was very eager to lead bhajans (conducted from about 9am to 5pm) during Thursday and Sunday lunch-times when the experienced singers retired for lunch.

Sathya Sai Baba conducted Michael and Faith’s wedding in his interview room at the Whitefield campus. I can still ‘hear’ the words of his homily: “Michael, when she is sick, do not say that she is sick. Say – WE are sick. Faith, when he is sick, do not say that he is sick. Say – WE are sick”. 

This was but one of a few marriages which – to the great surprise of one or both parties – Sai Baba, in his role of spiritual master, ordered. A very noted example was his marriage of David and Fay Bailey, who at great sacrifice to themselves, years later, were among the foremost in exposing Sathya Sai Baba internationally. See:

Truth In Action: David and Faye Bailey Vs Sathya Sai Baba

For Faith, Sai Baba appeared to materialize a filigree pendent composed of (apparently) gold and gemstones for Faith, by reaching up into the air and pulling it down.  For Michael, he produced a ring that looked like it was gold. This Sai Baba did right in front of Michael and me. It seemed to form from out of his fingers, in full sight as the pendant manifestation was. (But see my articles): 

Right Hand. Sleight Hand. Watch Sai Baba Cheat With Sacred Ash (Film clip)

Censored Indian National Television Film of Sai Baba Cheating

BBC Cameras Catch Sai Baba Cheating With Gold Sivalingam. (Film Clip)

BBC Footage Exposes Fake Sathya Sai Baba Miracle

Michael Hollander, Fervent Sathya Sai Baba Apostle

Below, I copy a comment which was one among a number of comments Michael Hollander sent http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com, the blogsite of my trusted colleague, Robert Priddy. As I read it, I mused about whether Hollander, who has written hagiographically on Sai Baba and who is somewhat venerated in Sai circles because of his long-time association with Sai Baba, has at all learned one of his master’s key teachings:  Be loving towards all, even those who may have done ill to you.

In terms of Sai Baba’s marriage homily advising partners to think in terms of WE, Michael Hollander’s email to Robert Priddy may question whether Michael and Faith are at all well all these years later.

In Hollander’s email, is there even a trace of that urbane respect we see in rational discussion when people have a differing viewpoint? Or do we see, rather, a finger-wagging condemnation? Like an old-time Puritan preacher fulminating from the pulpit, threatening  hellfire and damnation? Here are a few of Hollander’s – um – exquisitely loving words, rather redolent of an email with which, years ago, he assailed David Bailey (I shall refer to it in my next blog):

“Yes to engage in such slander against God Himself is a sin that only He can gauge.There are Laws that Govern us all and all must and will be held accountable for their own actions.There is no escaping this Fact.Thus for those who chose to write such evil lies and slander-as always ones own karma does come around sooner or later”

“It is only some due to their own internal problems and ego that engage in such trash”

“What a bunch of low-life cowards to print such evil lies and falsehood”

“It is only some due to their own internal problems and ego that engage in such trash”

“Yes Lord Christ had one Judas.God Lord Sri Sathya Sai had thousands of Judas’s” (ed. properly, Judases)

“What a bunch of low-life cowards to print such evil lies and falsehood”

“All of these false accusations will be revealed- it is all part of Natural Law – even as the Sun rises and sets and the Moon waxes and wanes”

“Yes it was a joy to see how Nothing ever touched Him and He still only Taught Love and to serve ones fellow-man”

Why would Hollander even begin to think that his rather lengthy, flowery, often repetitive email would have any effect on such a major, well-known Sai Baba cult critic as Robert Priddy, the former long-time leader of the Sathya Sai Organization, Norway, and a retired University academic in philosophy and social science of the University of Oslo. See: Wikipedia entry, Robert C. Priddy.

Robert Priddy’s many articles over the years on Sathya Sai Baba and his cult are anything but flowery or splenetic. They ask, and answer, the rigorous questions which Sai Baba’s cultic, button-down-minded followers constantly evade. They duck and weave, typically, either by saying nothing or, like Hollander, dealing in great sermonizing abstractions and treating as wicked any who question Sai Baba, his teachings and his cult.

(To be continued in next blog)

Further Reading

Michael Hollander, bigot preacher of preposterous, untested beliefs

Posted by robertpriddy on January 10, 2012

For another example of the demeaning, depersonalizing way in which so many Sai devotees have written to former devotees, see:

Reply to a Sathya Sai Devotee’s Note re: David and Faye Bailey

Here is the text of Michael Hollander’s email to Robert Priddy’s blogsite

“YES – it was easy to see that Sri Sathya Sai Baba was none other then God Himself – to print such evil lies and slander is only a reflection of your own ego and weakness and sheer stupidity.It is unfortunate that some due to their own inability to to see Pure Divinity resort to such evil slander.And as we all know the Truth has and will continue to come out here.Truth Truth Truth He Himself is Truth,and this was so obvious.It is only some due to their own internal problems and ego that engage in such trash.Yes slander is a severe sin of this there is no doubt.Thus the Universe that is all based on Truth will make sure that the Divine Light will expose all fradulent and ego based lies and horrific false accounts be fully exposed.This we know is truth.Is it not the way the Cosmos expands and reveals what is true and what is a lie?.Yes this is the very nature of TRUTH.Yes Lord Christ had one Judas.God Lord Sri Sathya Sai had thousands of Judas’s.What a shame.He Himself was ever perfect in every way.He Himself was Perfection itself. Again this was so obvious.All of these false accusations will be revealed- it is all part of Natural Law – even as the Sun rises and sets and the Moon waxes and wanes.

What a bunch of low-life cowards to print such evil lies and falsehood.

Yes to engage in such slander against God Himself is a sin that only He can gauge.There are Laws that Govern us all and all must and will be held accountable for their own actions.There is no escaping this Fact.Thus for those who chose to write such evil lies and slander-as always ones own karma does come around sooner or later.Of this there is no doubt. Sathya Sai Baba was a Voice for the poorest of the poor as shown by His Work and the Institutions founded by Him.People only turned on Him because of their own problems,ego and hatred.Yet He Himself as God was ever untouched by any of it.This also was obvious.It is only those who engaged in such lies will have to face their own karma.This we all know is True.What a shame that some weak-minded people had to resort to such evil Lies.Yes the Universe we live in is all ultimately based on Truth.And this same Truth will expose all such cowards and all the falsehood that has been written.This I promise you.Over the last 40 years I spent almost 9 years in His Immediate Presence in India.And i met many of the people who now make these horrendous accusations.And once again ones own karma will find each sooner or later.It is just the way the Universe works.

Yes it was a joy to see how Nothing ever touched Him and He still only Taught Love and to serve ones fellow-man”.

General

Excerpt From Public Petition

(Note: You may prefer to go straight to the Petition):

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available: PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

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Traveller’s Aid

I wish a Happy New Year to all.  I am thankful that, since early 2007, many hundreds of thousands of readers have visited this blog.

Each of us plants seeds that grow, hoping they will turn out well, no matter what the terrain – parents, their children;  teachers, their charges; visionaries, their creations, and so on. We can all grow a tree that will become a bone-sore weary traveller’s aid.

Possibly more than at any other time, the world – whose population late last year exceeded seven billion people – needs each of us who can do it to plant physical trees, and other wholesome, much-needed plants which will aid a profoundly compromised planet. So that we can breathe. And many other measures that protect the planet.

The other ‘seeds’ that need planting are those which relate to the practical implementation of ethics key to many belief systems, religious and secular. It is no use merely to write and mouth facts, like the endless Sathya Sai Speaks series, but to discover or rediscover those facts which need no establishing, and, often, facts we ignore all along – such as the scientific warnings of the last thirty or forty years about our planet’s spoliation. Our rampant consumerism. Our materialistic, competition-oriented ‘education’. The unimaginable cover ups and lies daily fed us by governments, corporations and other instrumentalities ….

The first great impetus for many who left Sathya Sai Baba was care for the safety of children. That was all good, so far as it went. But those who have worked hardest to draw world attention to great wrongs soon discovered a signal lesson. This is that, eventually, those who speak out, and who work hard do most of, and sometimes all of, the work.

Most former devotees, like most people everywhere, offer a great many excuses, and a few partly decent reasons,  for not standing forth. I have long been in touch with former devotees and other critics in many parts of the world. Likewise, I have yet to hear of a single instance where any member of the Sathya Sai Organization has accorded a loving response to any of our representations – no matter how loving and caring those representations have been. The organization stood silent when its members and their supporters attacked former devotees with a hatred very different to the decades of esteem they once accorded our members.

It is hard, then, for the heart of activists with a conscience not to call it cowardice. It looks and it acts just like cowardice does. However one may view the problem, the result is the same:  that is to say, when human beings do not question, challenge and engage,  sooner or later, the evils which they deplore, and from which they avert their eyes, will grip civil society, like pernicious and unstoppable vines. Power brokers, criminals and other profiteers depend upon our fear. How can we be heroes to our children when we are cowards to ourselves? How can we establish for them a future that is essentially as nasty as so much of the past has been.

I pay great tribute to my close colleague Robert Priddy, retired academic in philosophy and the social sciences. With the death of my earlier colleague, the utterly remarkable, late Glen Meloy, the work supporting survivors and continuing to expose the Sathya Sai Organization publicly was rather rough and sweaty work. It was at this time that Robert entered with his formidable intellectual and humane resources. In any difficulty or danger, those like Robert and Glen, and a few others in the background, are the only sort of persons you would want to travel at your side.

A few days ago, I wrote this song:

Travellers’ Aid. By Barry Pittard (3 January 2012)

—

Some gone dug deeper, and before they went

A green cool shade over the future spread

And I will bet that they knew sweat

Needs a shade as fresh as lemonade

A treeful of shade

To be a shade

For some bone-worn, weary traveller’s aid …..

—

So I’ll take some seeds and a spade before I go

And plant a tree for those I’ll never know

And I will bet like me they’ll sweat

Their bones will ache, from the marrow ache

But here is a shade

To be a shade

For some bone-worn, weary traveller’s aid

Survivors ‘Move On’? But Abusers Move On – From Victim To Victim. And Must Be Opposed

Tediously, phrases emerge from the mouths of those who could, but do not, speak out forthrightly about their experiences of spiritual and moral betrayal.

Often, one hears them say, “I am moving on, now”.

But the abusers, the criminals, the bullies, don’t move on. They thrive in the knowledge that their victims will, most often, move on. Essentially cowards themselves, they understand that other cowards will protect them – by preferring the easy way out. By shutting up. By not calling a crime a crime. By leaving undefended the abused. By abandoning any shred of self-respect.

There Is No Healing In Hiding

The Sathya Sai Organization certainly moves on, thinking that their dead guru – despite his countless false promises of healing and absurdly unfulfilled predictions and vast secret hoard of currency, gold, silver and other valuables – moves with them and within them.

Those who, against unenviable odds, have continued year after year to expose Sathya Sai Baba and his soviet-style, authoritarian, worldwide cult too often see cases where those who speak of ‘moving on’ get into yet more self-entrapment. Out of one guru’s or cult’s frying pan into another. Again, the problem of lack of self-respect.

For some examples of those who were highly respected leaders when members of the Sathya Sai Organization, and who have spoken out with conscience and decency, see:

Searing true testimony about Sathya Sai Baba abuse (the case of Hans de Kraker, Australia, for years Manager of the Western Canteen at Puttaparthi. Article by Robert Priddy)

Sathya Sai Baba Organization’s Betrayal of Love and Compassion (including Terry Gallagher case –  Gallagher investigated extensively, and, in consequence, resigned as leader of the Sathya Sai Organization, Australia)

Sathya Sai Baba Critic Serguei Badaev: An Incisive Voice of Conscience From Russia

U.S. Psychologist Shirley Pike’s Moving Challenge To Sathya Sai Baba and His Organization « Call For Media and Government Investigation

The Sathya Sai Organization: Almost overnight, dissenters treated as demons! « Call For Media and Government Investigation

David Bailey and Thomas Wiehe. Transcript Of Phone Link: Sathya Sai Abuses

Truth In Action: David and Faye Bailey Vs Sathya Sai Baba

New Zealand Lawyer Exposes Official Cover Up of Killings In Sathya Sai Baba Bedroom

Stephen Carthew, A Voice of Testimony From Australia, On The Dangers of Cults

Video of Some Primary Witnesses of Sathya Sai Sex Abuse, and Sai Cult Cover Up

The patient researcher will need to sift carefully among roles played by many individuals. Twenty six years a highly respected devotee who worked in close association with early leaders of the Sai movement, such as the late Elsie and Walter Cowan, the late Glen Meloy was an exceptional former devotee international coordinator. See my tribute to him at the time of his death:  Glen Meloy (“Standing up for truth and goodness”) – In Memoriam. An early key coordinator, Hari Sampath, an Indian from Chennai, who had previously worked in Sai Baba’s Security and Intelligence Wing was, like Glen Meloy, a tour de force.

Some other names to start with are:  Terry Gallagher and Stephen Carthew Australia), Al Rahm (USA), Richard Nelson, Rick Raines (USA), Timothy Conway Ph.D (USA), Dave Lyons (USA),  Artur Wisniewski (Poland), Although, overwhelmingly, it is men who lead the Sathya Sai Organization, prominent women leaders who have left after years of work on behalf of the organization include: Britt-Marie Anden (Sweden), and (from the USA) Shirley Pike, Sharon Purcell, Elena Hartgering (the latter two deceased), Lori Kaplowitz, Ella Evers.  For an incisive writer with a quite academic (though very accessible) approach, see the Dutch former Sai devotee writer:  Alexandra Nagel. A Seminal Writer On Sathya Sai Baba, A Guru Accused. 

The noted Australian scholar in linguists Brian Steel has long written incisively and voluminously on many aspects of the Sathya Sai cult. His published writings while a devotee of twelve years were already respected for their extensive knowledge of Sai literature. His close and rigorous examination of many primary documents, including large numbers of collected Sathya Sai Baba discourses, have unearthed many egregious mistakes about science and history, prophecies subsequently unfulfilled, and other anomalies.

There are many others, but these men and women raised their voices strongly and clearly from the first. They, who had not been derided in all their involvement in official Sathya Sai circles, were now treated to appalling behaviours such as shunning, defaming, and the rather Orwellian historic obliteration from memory. These responses are so typically evident when there is apostasy after sect membership.

On the surface, ‘moving on’ from a traumatic set of circumstances, as opposed to getting stuck in them, may seem perfectly reasonable. One after another, the various schools of mental health declare that until one has seriously dealt with the underlying issues, there is no successful ‘moving on’. One set of symptoms may replace another set, but masking and not addressing the basic causes. 

There remain several questions which often go unanswered, such as:

If one has done little or nothing to mine one’s experiences for serious lessons – spiritual, mental, and physical – does one successfully ‘move on’ from an issue?

Is it ‘moving on’ when one hides, first, from oneself and, then, by not sharing, forthrightly, one’s insights with others?

Coming from countries around the world, a few have, in the face of attacks on their integrity, publicly recorded their experiences of sexual abuse at the hands of Sathya Sai Baba, and in some cases those around him, including teaching staff.

Sadly, the many who could have shown solidarity with those who spoke out left all the heavy-lifting up to a small few.

The Sathya Sai Organizations Treatment of the Rahm Family

Alaya Rahm’s Lawsuit vs Sathya Sai Society of America.  Joint Statement by the International JuST Group and the Rahm family (Al Rahm was one of the foremost of top leaders in the SS Org.) and:

Al Rahm’s explanatory letter and:

Alaya Rahm’s Lawsuit vs Sathya Sai Society of America

Further Interconnected Articles

Dr Naresh Bhatia. Silenced Now In Indian Child Abuse Scourge

Some prominent ex-devotees of Sathya Sai Baba

Smear Campaign against critics of Sathya Sai Baba

Dissent From Guru Cults Draws Slander and Harassment

Evidence of an Internet Activist in Action

On Disinformation and Internet Vandalism

Wikipedia Issues and Sathya Sai Baba (By the Independent British writer on religion and philosophy Kevin R.D. Shepherd)

Sathya Sai Organisation – Further Subterfuge and Misinformation, by Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard

General

Excerpt From Public Petition

(Note: You may prefer to go straight to the Petition):

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available: PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

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Note From Former Lecturer To An Enquirer About Sathya Sai Education

Since about 1999, former devotees’ replies to enquirers have been a great many. My closest colleagues and I go out of our way to assist those who enquire with courtesy.

It seems very right to ignore those who are offensive. Why – when one has invested so many years in striving to pursue a decent and humane path – fall to the display of hatred and anger that has all too often reached our inboxes?

The below email response which I have just sent to an enquirer is typical in tone and purpose to many that former devotees have, for many years, spent time and care in responding to enquirers.

——————————————————————

Dear ……..,

Thank you for writing to my blogsite.

I may suggest that, in matters so serious as your education, you feel welcome to share this email with your parents and any elders within your extended family or circle of mentors whom you feel that you can approach for wise guidance. I am happy to answer any questions they may wish to put.

I don’t know whether you read further into my blogsite at:  http://barrypittard.wordpress.com . I also recommend the blogsite of the longtime former head of the Sathya Sai Organisation, Robert Priddy, a retired academic of the University of Oslo, Norway: http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com

There are other outstanding and highly senior leaders, too, who have resigned – after proper and scrupulous investigation of primary sources (families and young men from countries around the world) – from the Sathya Sai Organization.

It is extremely hard for devotees to credit the integrity of those many former devotees who have investigated the serious allegations against Sathya Sai Baba, and, I must quickly add, certain of his servitors, including some teachers. I myself lectured for two years at the Whitefield college (1978-9), and was deeply devoted to Sathya Sai Baba for twenty-five years.

In 1999, after very careful investigation that extended around the world, the evidence of sexual abuse against boys and young men, and other great wrongdoing was utterly compelling. Some of the investigation was by outstandingly qualified sexual abuse professionals, who have long stood ready to testify in any properly accountable legal jurisdiction.

The truth remains that many of those who have left the Sathya Sai Organisation have done so on the highest moral and ethical principles. They have exercised the same standards that have, all along, been seen in them in their professions, trades and wider communities.

No amount of vilification can change the actions of those renowned for telling the truth and practising righteous principles. We have remained within integrity no matter that some Sai devotees have often and cruelly attacked and libeled us, on and off the internet.

Nothing can equal the sense of inner strength that comes from fearless assertion of truth and right conduct, no matter what the odds.

My best wishes to you,

Barry Pittard, Australia. Former lecturer at the Sathya Sai College, Whitefield.

                                                ———————————–

Subject: [Call For Media and Government Investigation] Please moderate: “Sai Baba’s Imperial 83rd Birthday Celebrations Photo, Puttaparthi, India”

A new comment on the post “Sai Baba’s Imperial 83rd Birthday Celebrations Photo, Puttaparthi, India”

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Comment:

I am a class X student. I am a devotee of Shri Sathya Sai Baba. I want to get an admission in the Higher Secondary School because I want to devote myself to Babaji service

General

Excerpt From Public Petition

(Note: You may prefer to go straight to the Petition):

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available: PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

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