William Aitken’s Book Fails to Answer Sai Baba Critics

Today’s blog continues my small series on aspects of Brian Steel’s impressive opus, specifically at:  Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma,  on William Aitken’s book, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006).

Steel’s Meticulous Work Invaluable

Brian Steel’s approach in this piece is scholarly, but his writing has long been appreciated by a wider readership. All who are in search of detailed evidence will find Steel’s meticulous, painstakingly researched work (from 2001 on) indispensable. It is vast, and has been groundbreaking from the very first. I think that there will be no independent scholars or other investigators of merit who will be able to find serious fault with his project. He will nevertheless be targeted, I think, by fervent pro Sai Baba polemicists, who will increasingly undo themselves wherever there are attentive, critical and sober readers. Of Aitken’s attempts at demolishing Sathya Sai Baba critics, Steel says:

“Aitken’s preoccupation with the sensational, headline-grabbing sexual allegations (by Tal Brooke, or David Bailey, for example) does not leave him time to deal with more serious aspects of past and present critical research on Sathya Sai Baba, like recurring demonstrations by magicians (and video evidence too, especially of recent Mahasivaratri lingam productions) that some of Sathya Sai Baba’s commonest materialisations are easily replicated by others. As for the counter-evidence his claims of Divinity, it is just possible that Aitken may not have bothered to read them”.

The Supreme Preposterousness of Avataral Claims

Sathya Sai Baba can be documented by any conscientious reader as having made contradictory statements and egregious historical and scientific blunders. These include his remarks on Jesus Christ and Martin Luther . For Steel’s detailed and sharply contextualized discussion, see: Sai Baba and Christianity. Some Observations (2002). Steel remarks here the alarming “extent of Sai Baba’s inventiveness”.  This can be instructively read in concert with his Basic Notes On Sai Baba’s Credibility Problem (2004). Also on the acuteness of the credibility problem, Jorje Reysvera and Robert Priddy have written engagingly on Sai Baba and Magnetism, about his prescientific comments on the nature of magnetism. I have written in the article Huge Sai Baba Gaffes how these stunning inanities in Sai Baba’s discourses are preserved in video materials but quickly expunged by nervy Sai editors from the written records, and of my own first-hand observations of the weeding process when I was editing an internationally distributed Sai Baba magazine and books by Sai Baba devotees. This was at Sai Towers in Puttaparthi, and I saw how those such as Professor Anil Kumar and my late friend V.K.Narasimhan, one of India’s pre-eminent, historic and courageous newspaper editors, did such doctoring. I had a hand in the process myself when Sai Baba’s talk about his mother’s ghost would have raised a few eyebrows if allowed to circulate any further than a public discourse. The extraordinary blunders are excised before they get into publications that go worldwide like Sanathana Sarathi and Spiritual Impressions.

Steel quotes Aitken’s own amazement at Sathya Sai Baba’s well-known pronouncement that “Sanskrit is the parent and core of all languages,” which no respectable language scholar holds. And, indeed, to be amazed by disgrace is appropriate.

William Aitken Fails on Prof. E. Haraldsson and Dr K. Osis

As promised, I shall take some further looks at the work of Brian Steel. See my articles: 

• A Host of Sai Baba Hagiographers

• William Aitken’s Sai Baba Book Major Flaws Says Scholar

• Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel

In this blogging and some upcoming ones, I shall be looking at Brian Steel’s article: Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma,  on Aitken’s book, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006).

 

Aitken speaks of his book as a counterweight to “excesses of hagiography”. Steel’s textual analysis, however, reveals beyond any dispute that the book is strongly, despite its claims to the contrary, hagiographical. It isolates “headline grabbing” and superficial views contra Sai Baba, while ignoring the large body of serious criticism by former devotees and other critics that has been taken seriously by many third parties. For example, see below for clickable video material from the BBC’s The Secret Swami and DR’s Seduced. See also, my fairly extensive resource compilation, Exposure of Sai Baba: Media Source List.

 

Brian Steel criticises Bill Aitken’s work for carelessly elevating a minor player, the US parapsychologist Dr Karlis Osis, to major importance and yet leaving out of account Osis’s more relevant and well known research partner, Professor Erlandur (other spelling=Elendur)Haraldsson, author of Miracles Are My Visiting Cards. USA Title, (1988). Modern Miracles. An investigative report on psychic phenomena associated with Sri Sathya Sai Baba. New York: Ballantine Books, 304 pp. This is a work, sold in the many thousands, which Sai Baba devotees commonly - and very mistakenly - hail as ‘proving’ that his so-called miracles are all real.

 

Steel says:

“The author’s preference for Murphet’s quote about the minor participant (Osis) and his inexplicable lack of curiosity about one of the most influential books in the SSB literature is an important flaw in the research for this book, especially since Aitken fleetingly mentions Haraldsson’s book (on p. 220), but merely to recommend its coverage of miracle stories”. 

Dr E. Haraldsson, Emeritus Professor of the University of Iceland, Reykjavík, a leading academic parapsychology researcher. Incorrectly and widely cited by Sai Baba devotees as having ’proved’ Sai Baba’s claims to have extraordinary psychic powers. 

 

Professor Haraldsson’s careful and exhaustive investigations discredited Sai Baba’s claim to have ‘resurrected’ Walter Cowan, which the crypto-/ virtual devotee Aitken fails to note. Morover, Osis is promoted as an expert in Kirlian photography. In fact, ‘photographs of auras’ have been shown to be explainable by physics other than by any supposed ‘aura’. There is an interesting Wikipedia article which notes how Kirlian photography has been discredited in the scientific community.

 

To be continued shortly

For Viewing

See The Secret Swami HERE. Available in broadband and modem

Seduced (DR, Danish Broadcasting, Denmark’s national television and radio broadcaster):
(80 MB, Broadband)

Seduced

(21 MB, Modem)

Further References

• Dr Elendur Haraldsson, University of Iceland Faculty of Social Science. Dr E. Haraldsson’s webpage (English version), with his email contact details
• Erlendur Haraldsson, Wikipedia entry
• How Not to Study Paranormal Phenomena. Book Review by Babu Gogineni, Director, International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). This looks at critically at Haraldsson’s work on Sai Baba, and says that the former has not responded to the points made.

A Host of Sai Baba Hagiographers

In the heyday of Sathya Sai Baba’s mission, some devotee writers with various professional backgrounds influenced many, particularly his more educated followers.

These included Professor N. Kasturi, Howard Murphet, Dr John Hislop, Dr Samuel Sandweiss, Ra. Ganapati, Dr Satya Pal Ruhela, V, Balu, Shukuntala Balu, Robert Lowenburg, etc.

Where Hagiography Fails Ethically

The name of William ‘Bill’ Aitken has now to be added to the list of these hagiographical writers on Sai Baba. In coming days I shall be looking at Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma, by the Australian scholar Brian Steel  writing on Aitken’s book, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006).

The Blind Misleading of Blind Yearning

The willingness of those searching, often with a great and aching longing, for peace of mind can conceal from their readers, even well-educated ones, just how hagiographic these works really are.  The role of educated writers who forsake time-honoured principles of rigorous questioning of phenomena needs to be looked at in relation to Sai Baba and his hagiographers. They bear a tremendous responsibility, and I think that history will treat them harshly. They have been, in effect, among the prime recruiting agents for Sai Baba, commanding many thousands of readers, and show no sign of the same careful investigation of the allegations that many former devotees and other critics, as well as major institutions such as the BBC and UNESCO, have made. These writers have profoundly failed in their duty of care - in standards of critical research, and in bringing any accountability to Sai Baba or his global Sathya Sai Organization. Our worldwide network shows no sign that they have attempted to meet or in any way engage with our former devotees, who number many who are honored in all their walks of life, and were so honored when they were so very dedicated in their work in various programs of the Sathya Sai Organization. The scale of the shunning of those in dissent has been simply enormous. 

Spurious ‘Appeals to Authority’ Rampant Among Sai Devotees

A professional standing (e.g., teacher, journalist, psychiatrist and so forth) imparts, quite spuriously, an added aura of authority. In the Sathya Sai Baba movement, this logical fallacy of ‘appeal to authority’ has long served as high octane fuel in the promotion of this guru. There is the appearance of urbane reason but in reality an abandonment of questioning. The guru - especially in regard to his own self-concept - is unchallenged and a myriad of inconsistencies are typically explained away in phrases common to devotees, such as: “Baba’s little leela (guru’s sport)”, his “unfathomable mystery”, his “testing of the devotee’s faith, spiritual progress”, his “wiping clean the devotee’s karmic slate”, etc.

Further Reading

Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma

William Aitken’s Sai Baba Book. Major Flaws Says Scholar
Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel

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

                  

Today’s blog suggests that Sai Baba has, leave aside his recent would-be moon sightings, not been particularly bright himself.

And how can he be so when the evidence - that can less and less be hidden from his rank-and-file devotees - suggests that he now suffers from senile dementia?

He has not selected the brightest moon. Nor  a cloudless evening by which his religious and spiritual élite of devotees could view him in the moon on October 4, 2007. Nor the brightest students of his alumni - who now rush to the Internet to prove that Sai mooning is not moon madness.

Why Seek They After A Sign?

Note, King James Bible. Mark 8.

“And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation”.

Note, the great Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda:

“I look upon miracles as the greatest stumbling block in the way of truth. When the disciples of Buddha told him of a man who had performed a so-called miracle and showed him the bowl, he took it and crushed it under his feet and told them never to build their faith on miracles, but to look for truth in everlasting principles”

Note, writer of the ancient classic treatise The Yoga Sutras, Sage Patanjali:

‘These (psychic) powers of spreading or outgoing mind are injurious to contemplation”

SBOI (Sai Baba of India Group) Are Over the Moon

It is interesting to find highly unofficially-officially connected prominent 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 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 in the absence of a 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“.

Tonight, quite a bit of the eastern seaboard in Australia looks as though it may be in cloud. A pity. Otherwise, we’d get to see the moon at its brightest for 2007, a large brilliant perigree moon. If you were Sai Baba - who says that he is the fullest manifestation of God in mankind’s history - perhaps, you might:

 a) have chosen the brightest moon for the delectation of your followers and

b) made sure to check with your inner Divine Weather Forecaster - because, on October 4, clouds descended over Puttaparthi obscuring the moon. Ah, that old devil cloud!  Or, let me be true to that marvelous American lyricist Yip Harburg with the Burton Lane tune:

I look at you and suddenly,
Something in your eyes I see;
Soon begins bewitching me.
It’s that old devil moon;
That you stole from the skies.
It’s that old devil moon in your eyes

Can Visions Be Deceptions?

In regard to later capers by some of Sai Baba’s well-known (many of them young) propagandists of SBOI (SaibabaofIndia), I leave Robert Priddy on his blogsite at http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com to make the point about whether one of a group of highly active supporters of Sai Baba, Darpan Rane, has fabricated a deception. Perhaps more interesting from the point of view of human growth to maturity is this:  Just suppose Sai Baba’s image were to have appeared on the moon. Then, let us ask, of what advancement would such a quaint manifestation have been to individuals collected around their guru? Or to all those international devotees so fervently racking up huge mobile phone costs trying to get the latest ‘moon miracle’ reports from their contacts at Puttaparthi? Or, much less, to humanity as a whole? 

Form vs Essence

It is interesting that so many devotees have assumed that the vision apparently promised by Sai Baba via his chief translator and close servitor Professor Anil Kumar to many thousands of devotees gathered at his Puttaparthi ashram would entail seeing the form of Sai Baba on the moon. If they had consulted their timeless sacred classic, Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11, they might have recalled that the vision granted by Sri Krishna to Lord Arjuna (vishwarupa or vishvarupa darshana) was of a very different character. It was not the form of Sri Krishna -who was right beside him! - but a cosmic vision of enormous range and depth. But what fools who rush all agape in to Sai Baba’s local airport would ever want something both noble and fiercesome as that?

• Was it not enough for them to have seen it where they had daily darshan (sight) of him within his Puttaparthi ashram?
• Why all the sensationalism, and indeed threat to life and limb, of thousands of devotees rushing headlong to his nearby private airport?
• Is an unruly crowd, which police had great difficulty in controlling, likely to be in a fit state to receive a divine and blissful vision?

Certainly, if it was the form of Sathya Sai Baba that was so eagerly sought after by the crowds of devotees, they have entirely missed one of his most insistent teachings: that the form is not what is important - but the essence of the teachings, and that attachment to the form is deleterious to spiritual growth.

A Dotty Sai Moon, A Smudgey Sai Earth

Why then, after all these years, do his devotees, both old and young, quest so fervently after a mere rather dotty semblance of his form somehow superimposed on the moon? 

And are they so uncertain of their faith that they need to grasp at ‘proofs’ of their guru’s divinity?

Certainly, Sai Baba’s so-called ’spiritual’ museum exhibitors cater for such spurious ‘confirmatory’ evidence of their ‘Lord’s’ greatness. On show for example is what purports to be a NASA satellite photo of Sai Baba. It appears to some as though the very terrain for miles around his abode shows him watching over it. (I rather think that this is what Darpan Rane has in view and it harks back to material in Chapter 10 of (the late) Sai Baba devotee-journalist Shakuntala Balu’s book, Living Divinity. Here you are, dear Reader - but gaze on this divine miracle of Sai Baba, and, should you become fully enlightened, please remember me in your Will):  

Or, with no authentication by Muslim or any other bona fide scholars, you may like to take a trip to India to witness material in Sai Baba’s self-glorifying Chaitanya Jyoti museum at Puttaparthi that purports to be many clear prophecies of the so-called ‘Advent’ of Sathya Sai Baba - as the promised Medhi Moud. What? Allah in form?! See, HERE

Further Reading

Other articles on the Sai Baba moon issue at: http://barrypittard.wordpress.com are:

Sai Baba Fails to Grant Great Moon Darshan

Sai Baba Fails To Appear In The Moon, IANS Reports

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

Brian Steel: For a detailed, critical examination of the Medhi Moud so-called prophecy regarding Sai Baba, see The “Mehdi Moud” Prophecy Revisited

………

Robert Priddy:

Deceiving ‘devotee’ makes bogus image of Sai in the Moon

Oops! Apparently Sai Baba DID appear on the moon?

Why build moon rockets when Sai Baba has mantras?

More Sathya Sai Baba Moon Madness

Sai Baba postpones moon buggy ride

General

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ - A Revision

Note: Many surfers used the following search terms to get to the articles at http://barrypittard.wordpress.com on the Sai Baba moon issue:

sai baba moon miracle
sai baba appears on the moon
sai in the moon, October 2007
sai Baba on moon
baba in moon
sathya sai baba in moon
satya sai baba in moon
saibaba on moon
moon appear satya sai
sai baba viwa darshan

Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba. Media Source List

Media resources source list relating to the exposé of Sathya Sai Baba and his cult. Compiled by Barry Pittard: bpittard (at) optusnet.com.au

Note: Please kindly report any errors,  updates, or suggest improvements. This overview - not exhaustive -  was mainly compiled well before the BBC’s The Secret Swami, June 2004, and amid many far more pressing duties. I think I have sorted out Urls still alive and scrapped defunct ones. Some newspaper Urls are now not extant, or are retrievable by paid subscription, so in various cases I have relied on copies posted of these articles, usually close to the time when they were published in the media. Usually the postings were to former Sai Baba devotee websites - http://www.exbaba.com or http://saiguru.net . However, institutions, journalists, academic researchers and others in need of originals should be able to obtain those via standard resources, such as hard copy within the media establishments themselves.  Barry Pittard.

               ……………………….

The Week, June 20, 1993. High intrigue. Deadly power struggle in Puttaparthi

Indian Skeptic, 6(4), August 1993, Santa Claus in India. Piet Vroon, Santa Claus in India, from Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant, Saturday December 5, 1992, translated J.W. Nienhuys 

Sunday Magazine, December, 10-16, 1996. Brushed Under The Carpet. From five-page Feature: G.S. Radhakrishna, Sandhya Mendonca

Nexus Magazine, August-September 1999. Volume 7, Number 5. Sai Baba Exposed - Fraud, Fakery, & Molestation. Terry Gallagher, Hans de Kraker, Jens and Gurprit Sethi. Compiled from the website: www.myfreeoffice.com/saibabaexposed/ (no longer available)

Bild (Tr., German daily). August 21, 2000. Resident from Munich Ran Away From India - Guru all of a sudden wants sex. Wolfgang Ranft

Trouw (Dutch daily ), September 6th, 2000. The Downfall of A Guru Sai Baba, Koert van de Velde, tr., Ella Evers

Spiegelbeeld, (Tr., Dutch national Magazine) October, 2000. The truth will prevail. Matthijs van der Meer:

Noordhollands Dagblad (Tr., Dutch daily), Saturday December 9, 2000. Devotee becomes anti Sai Baba activist. Arthur de Mijttenaere

BBC Radio 4 - Sunday 19, November 2000 - 7.30 am.  Interview by Stephen Perry with:  David Bailey (UK), former closest Western devotee; Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph journalist (UK); Jed Geyerhahn (USA), Steen Piculell, Ashok Bhagani, Trustee, UK Sathya Sai Organisation

Daily Telegraph, Saturday October 28, 2000. Divine Downfall, Mick Brown

Tehelka, November 29, 2002.  Sathya Sai Central Trust: grab as grab can

Tehelka, November 29, 2002.  Is the Sai Baba’s empire beginning to disintegrate?

Tehelka, November 29, 2002.  Ashram Mandiram: fortress of solitude

India Today, Cover story: Sathya Sai Baba: Test of Faith.  Monday, December 4, 2000. Test of Faith, Amarnath K. Menon, Ashok Malik. SAI BABA:  A God Accused.  Vijay Jung Thapa with Lavina Melwani (New York), Syed Zubair Ahmed (London), Arthur J. Pais (San Francisco)

India Today, resulting letters to; archived  

The Ottawa Citizen, Tuesday, December 19, 2000. The Man Believers Think is God. Bob Harvey

The Times of India, December 26, 2000, Sai Baba Lashes Out At Detractors.  B.S. Manu Rao

Toronto Star, January 14, 2001, Guru shrugs off sex allegations. Tom Harper

Vancouver Sun, February 27, 2001. Holy man? Sex abuser? Both? Douglas Todd

The Times of India, August 9, 2001. Tight security for Sai Baba after LTTE threat

Salon.com, July 25, 2001.  Untouchable, Parts 1 to 4. Michelle Goldberg

Times of London, Monday August 27, 2001. Monday August 27, 2001. Suicide, sex and the guru, Dominic Kennedy

The Times of London, Monday August 27, 2001. Three die after putting faith in guru, Dominic Kennedy

Times of London, August 27, 2001. I sought peace and couldn’t find it. Michael Dynes and Dominic Kennedy

The Times News Network, August 27, 2001. British Law Against Sai Baba Sought. Rashmee Z. Ahmed (ed. i.e., Times of Indian, not Times of London)

The Hindustan Times, August 27, 2001.  Sai Baba could be put on UK blacklist. Vijay Dutt, London 

The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Saturday-Sunday, November 12, 2000. Scandal engulfs guru’s empire

DR (Denmark’s national radio and television broadcaster), January 30, 2002. Seduced by Sai Baba. Producer-Presenter, Øjvind Kyrø

Gatopardo (A leading Chilean Magazine), Febuary, 2002. No. 21 Yr 20. Divine Sin.  Alejandro Agostinelli

Noticias (Argentinean Magazine), August 17, 2001, Bad Faith Business, Juan Alonso: 

Nexus, (Australian/International bi-monthly magazine) Vol 10, N­o. 4. June-July 2003. Sai Baba Allegations Grow. Barry Pittard

The Australian Financial Review, 21 November 2003.  The Trouble with Gurus. Mary Garden

BBC News, June 17, 2004, Sai Baba: God-man or con man? Tanya Datta 

The Scotsman, June 18, 2004, Guru who gives us no answers. Tom Adair

The Guardian, June 18, 2004. Spiritual Depths. Rupert Smith

The Observer, Sunday June 20, 2004. Deity dancing. Kathryn Flett

The New Statesman, Monday, June 21, 2004. Laying on of hands. The guru who thinks he’s God is exposed as far from divine. Andrew Billen

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio National, The World Today, Friday, 25 June, 2004.  Guru glamour uncovered. Interviewer: Rachel Kohn. Guests, Mary Garden, Australian author, Mick Brown, English author and Daily Telegraph journalist

The Guardian. The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards. Saturday, November 4, 2006. Paul Lewis

DNA (Daily News and Analysis, India). Sunday, November 05, 2006. A holy furore rages in Britain. Ginnie Mahajan and Brajesh Kumar

Some Indian News Headlines on Sai Baba controversial remarks on the Telangana issue

Times of India, Jan 24, 2007. TRS cries hoarse over Sai Baba’s Telangana stance

Times of India, Jan 24, 2007. Cong ignores Sai Baba’s remarks

The Hindu. Special Correspondent, Jan 25, 2007. Agnivesh Flays Baba’s Remarks

Andhra Cafe, India, Jan 21, 2007. KCR condemns Sai Baba’s Anti-Telangana comments

CNN-IBN, India, Jan 23, 2007. Sai Baba lands in a Telangana row

Hindustan Times, India, Jan 22, 2007. Telangana activists upset with Sai Baba

Wikinews reports on Telangana issue. (There are some further news sources cited at the foot of this Wiki article)

Cancellation of ‘moon miracle’

Sify News and many Indian media carried the IANS (Indo-Asian News Service feed on this). Friday, October 5, 2007. Sai Baba’s Moon Miracle Fails

Note: Close on the heels of the Guardian article The Indian living god, The paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards by Paul Lewis, an historic Indian media feed seachange started to happen. There were many IANS (Indo-Asian News Service) feeds to Indian and a few foreign media which referred to this article, with some added input from IANS Staffer Sudeshna Sarkar, Nepal, who followed up on the story, and filed from London. This broke decades’-long silence from an Indian press which almost exclusively has censored news adverse to the extraordinarily powerful and influential Sathya Sai Baba. The Telangana issue, in which vast conflicting interests were involved, was the next blow to Sai Baba’s virtual immunity to criticism in the Indian media. This marked change was yet again witnessed in early October 2007 in the wide Indian press coverage of reports that Sai Baba had promised a great divine miracle, subsequently cancelled when clouds appeared, in which thousands of his devotees gathered at his private airport would, it seems he had promised via his close aide and chief translator Professor Anil Kumar, see the universal form of God (or vishwarupa darshanam) in the moon. Again, it was the upstart news agency IANS which was aggressive in gettings its feeds accepted in India. It may be argued that, with so many NRI’s (non-resident Indians) freely reading news and views highly critical of Sai Baba in other countries around the world, that with new generational influences in Indian media far more inclined to secularism, and that what with the arrival of a rising ’star’ news agency like IANS, Sai Baba and his semi-feudal, ancien régime servitors and minders are in ever faster decline. There are many signs, including BBC footage and other photographic evidence, along with travelers’ and ashram inmates’ reports that cannot be denied by any except his most blinded followers that his health, both mental and physical, are in serious decline.

Is Humanity One Big Cult?

There is a fundamental mistake that defenders of those accused of serious abuse keep on making.

Accusations of substantive abuse do not have to be proved. They have to be investigated.

An organization that does not have genuine policies and practices of transparency and accountability is per se condemned.

Many Exposés of Cults Reveal Same Abuses and Rationalizations

Statements such as that an organization’s founder and his or her core leaders have never been brought before a court are crude and dishonest in the extreme. Repeatedly, across the various exposure of leaders, the patterns of denial, obfuscation and outright deceit are to be observed. Meetings between dissenters from various cults, who have left because they found profoundly betrayed the noble aims concerning which they joined, can tend to get off to a flying start, for participants are deeply struck by the many commonalities of experiences. I shall not say more of this aspect at present. For it is good that increasing contacts mature between those who have experienced spiritual betrayal around the world and the monumental cover-up of it can mature and prosper. And, indeed, that the perpetrators are left to wonder what alliances and resource-sharing and joint ventures might effect in educating greater publics of the great and insidious threats posed by cults of various kinds.

Cult defenders persistently employ a number of blunt tools: demeaning, name-calling, demonizing, slandering, stalking both on and off the Internet, intimidation, distortion and misinterpretation of what has been said. They muck-rack like McCarthyites, and attack individuals, quite commonly for faults they have not committed, instead of address issues. The use of ad hominem arguments and tu quoque retorts is very typical, and they confuse the difference between legitimately naming an individual and criticising their statements or role and illegitimate practice of slandering a person, and thus avoiding the central issues being presented. Their smokescreens choke horizons like a bad bushfire on a gusty day. Often, they appeal to popular prejudice. They get caught up in the narrowest interpretations of dissenters’ intentions or actions. Each individual who speaks up, they will assume the worst of, and defame - one after the other. They avoid the substantive questions and arguments, and accuse others of doing so. One is damned if one should respond to them, and damned if one does not. But then why should one bend to respond to those so antagonistic? It’s damned well good at least not to be down in the gutter.

There is no diving equipment adequate to diving into sewers. Those among the dissenters such as the hotheaded and bloody-mindedly quarrelsome who do respond end up in endless dogfights, which are far removed from the very reasons - which can be ideals most would agree to be noble, humane, spiritual and so forth - which led one to be a part of a self-enhancement group in the first instance. Many dissenters have, however, done years of hard self-development and of unstinting service to the poor and needy in their communities and other worthy causes. They may fight, but they will not dogfight.

Euphoria and Topic Avoidance

There is often in guru and cult defenders an appeal to popular prejudices - such as that media inevitably sensationalizes and misreports or that dissenters are people who did not get attention from the group’s guru, etc. The defensive tactics reveal the depth of problems of personality which a leader and cult, despite grand claims, has not, amidst the unreal euphoria and avoidance of topics where hard questions are raised, been able to heal or to solve. It is, of course, a problem that can as easily afflict dissenters, unless they have done some hard work on themselves.

Humanity - One Big Cult?

A far wider problem exists. One can point to cultic tendencies in this or that group. But then if we emphasize qualities of group-think and non-think in groups termed (accurately or not) ‘cults’, we will end up comforted, with our fingers pointed out, rather than considering our own capacities. Is there a grand unquestioning that is the tendency of a cult called Humanity? A cutting across all the ’isms’ - except one:  bias-ism. So normal that we feel normal. So huge that we don’t recognize it, just as we might tend to assume without thinking that the sun will rise in the east on the morrow or that the sky still coheres above us.

No need to click on ‘Register’ or ‘Join’. No need to pay annual subsriptions. Our forebears have already enrolled us.

If we are all afflicted, we had best find a better way of getting out of the millennially built-up sludge. But no use ‘fessing up unless we can find ways to do it without exploitation, shouting, clubbing, and reversion to division and the manning of battlements.

The Example of The Muslim Leaders

Perhaps the Muslim and Christian clerics, theologians and academics who are busily writing to each other right at this moment will find ways to express commonalities which lead to love and compassion, and still face the differentiations that tests the goodwill, and in a way that works beyond the lovey-dovey. I think there is a tendency, which the leaders will have to address, to assume that religions are what make the world go round, rather the cynical machinations of realpolitik. Never mind, any genuinely caring way might be the way out of the sludge - even if by happy accident, or some millennial crawl to a new paradigm.

We can all be members of the clubless club of the great unwashed, which has but one essential thought. That we are washed, even if others are not. And one essential risk: that we can, all too easily do bad dirt on good people - if there happen to be any around.

Further Reading

The Muslim leaders’ bold document is available in .pdf format, courtesy of the BBC, HERE

Muslim Leaders Initiative Bold. Sai Baba’s Efforts Fail

An extraordinary cross-section of mainstream Muslim clerics, theologians and academics have acted in a way that Sai Baba and his mega wealthy worldwide cult have profoundly failed to act.

This failure needs to be made very clear within the interfaith movement. The members of the Sathya Sai Organization which has attempted to interact with it, can be challenged to disclose their real agendas, which are similarly kept from tightly controlled public meetings in very costly, high-prestige venues around the world (See my article, Will World Accept Sai Baba? He Says Yes. Very Soon)

Virtually Sai Baba’s whole evangel and program have long been to establish unity between the faiths.

Where, if anywhere, is Sai Baba in the interfaith equation?

What, if any, distinctive contribution to interfaith conferences have Sai Baba and his Sathya Sai Organization made?

Are there any sign of the 138 Muslim leaders from all the major Islamic branches (Sunni, Shia, Ibadi, Sufi, Ismali, Jafari), or the wide cross-section of those Christian leaders to whom they have addressed their letter, flocking to Puttaparthi to consult Sai Baba?

Is it at all likely that these or any other widely and genuinely respected religious leaders worldwide would accept Sai Baba? - For he has said that all the faiths soon will, before he dies circa 2022. Sai Baba has many times said that He who is God, the father of Jesus Christ and He who is Allah who sent the Prophet, is now fully manifest in the form of Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, South India, and, especially via the instrumentality of his Sathya Sai Organization, will transform the world.

What of those members of the Sathya Sai Organization who adhere to a scheme to work their way into the interfaith movement? Members of the latter may like to ask themselves a question: have those very pleasant people who have sought them out (including at a highly senior level) been truthful and frank, and disclosed the agendas of the cult whose leader the BBC has termed “The Secret Swami”, which is to prepare a world for the global rulership of Sathya Sai Baba?

Reading

The Muslim leaders’ document is available HERE

Major News Releases on the initiative by Muslim leaders

Pope told ’survival of world’ at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace
The Times
The “survival of the world” is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other, leaders of the Muslim world will warn the Pope and other Christian leaders today. In an unprecedented open…

Muslims Leaders Warn Pope ‘Survival of World’ at Stake
Fox News
The “survival of the world” is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other, leaders of the Muslim world will warn the Pope and other Christian leaders today. In an unprecedented open…

Muslim-Christian dialogue urged
Dawn
By Our Special Correspondent LONDON, Oct 11: In an unprecedented open letter signed by 138 leading scholars from every sect of Islam and sent to the Pope and other Christian leaders on Thursday, the signatories…

Muslim Leaders Send Peace Message
Time Magazine
It is time that Muslims and Christians recognized just how similar they are — the fate of the world depends on it. That’s the message being sent out today by 138 Muslim leaders and scholars in an open…

Let’s make peace to save world, Muslims tell Pope
The Times
The “survival of the world” is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other, leaders of the Muslim world have told the Pope and other Christian leaders. In an open letter signed by 138…

Unprecedented Muslim call for peace with Christians
Scotsman
By Peter Graff LONDON (Reuters) - More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe called on Thursday for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying “the very survival of the world itself…

Muslim scholars appeal for peace
National Post
LONDON - More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe called yesterday for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying “the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.” In…

Muslim scholars call for peace with Christians
Khaleej Times
(Reuters) 11 October 2007 LONDON - More than 130 Muslim scholars called on Thursday for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying “the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at…

Survival of world ‘is perhaps at stake’
Canada Dot Com
LONDON - More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe called on Thursday for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying “the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.” In…

Muslim scholars call for peace between religions
International Herald Tribune
: More than 130 Muslim scholars called Thursday for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying “the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.” In a to Pope Benedict XVI…

Sai Baba Fails To Grant Great Moon Vision. Endangers Crowds

Once, my life nearly succumbed to an Indian headlong pilgrim rush.

Crowd Delirium at Puttaparthi

What wondrous relief, then, not to have been caught up in the crowd surges of Sathya Sai Baba devotees which, last Thursday evening, plunged towards Sai Baba’s Puttaparthi airport. They hungered after Sai Baba’s reportedly promised divine vision as hunger-maddened human beings might rush for food.

Sai Baba had announced through one of his chief servitors, Professor Anil Kumar, news reports state, that he would grant to his assembled devotees a great vision - no less than “Vishwarupa Darshanam”.

                               

This is the sort of peak divine experience that Lord Krishna is said to have granted to his servitor and boon companion Arjuna. See Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11, At a point north east, all the divinely and incredibly fortunate Sai devotees would have to do would be to look up at the moon, and, lo, they would receive a blessing granted usually only to yogis or rishis (sages) who had meditated for thousands of years. (Too bad, of course, for any blind Sai Baba devotees). But the weather turned cloudy, and Puttaparthi officials are reported as saying that their Bhagawan Sai Baba had refused to go ahead with the event because the crowds had become unruly, holding up his car, in which he had been driven to the airport, for an hour.

How anyone could attain redemptive deliverance by trampling to death one’s fellow pilgrims may seem something of a mystery. But it is not a spiritual mystery. How Sai Baba could have set up a situation which any sane Indian knows is bound to cause incredible crowd turmoil is not, I think, a mystery at all. But, rather, is explicable in terms of serious recurring evidence of an encroaching mental condition that his core assistants work overtime in trying to keep from devotees and the general public. See my article: Sai Baba’s Tip to Keep Ageing Away.

In India, ‘Guest is God’. My 15 Minutes of Godhood

To speak of fervent ‘religous’ crowds who can trample you underfoot in the twinkling of a foot. One day at Sai Baba’s Puttaparthi ashram, in the late ’70’s, I was seized by a fit of (would-be) renunciation.

I was a lecturer in Sai Baba’s boys college at Whitefield, via Bangalore, and used to my place on Sai Baba’s temple (mandir) verandah and other ‘privilegious’ vantage points. One of these was a spot among Sai Baba’s male bhajan lead singers who sat right up front in the Puttaparthi auditorium, the Poorna Chandra, at that time said to be the second-largest auditorium in South-East Asia.                          

With no prizes available for grand naivity, I thought:  let me get out of this unseemly easefulness and sit as far up towards the back as possible, among the seething humanity, in this way working towards combatting egoic attachment to Sai Baba’s form. Unlike my normal seating position, to which I could go freely without queuing, I now had to wait among great throngs. At length, the roller doors of the Poorna Chandra were thown open, whence followed as fiece a charge as a Kiplingesque ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ - except that this was the charge of myriad heavy brigades. Pakistan would have been defeated in an instant!

Salvational Desperation

I did not then know what many a surviving pilgrim in India will know - which is:  Do rush. Do plunge pell-mell. Do charge with the charge. Otherwise you’re done for - life or limb. Unless you want to stay at home and risk getting run over by a vehicle. Nothing in India’s scriptures, nor in any, had quite prepared me for this important annexure to sacred Wisdom.

Thou Shalt Not Trample Foreign Visitors, Unless Moksha (Soul Liberation) Needs Forbid

Fortunately, there were a few quick thinkers among that madding crowd. As it surged forward stormily - avid after sitting places - an instinctive protectiveness by alert Indians saved this Australian “innocent abroad”. One had better not, if at all manageable, paste an innocent foreign face on the floor. Of course, my Indian brothers have known millennia before the American humorist Mark Twain wrote “Innocents Abroad“ that foreign travellers tend to be … ah, well … Or, to express the matter mildly, that we can magnify Murphy’s Law to the power of ten. 

Then, several pairs of hands swept me up until I was carried over the heads of my benignly strong-armed rescuers. Perhaps that was the prize - my life.

My Fifteen Minutes of Sacred (or Scared) Fame

Once we sat down, I found that some knew I was a teacher in Sai Baba’s college and, at odd times, a bhajan leader, and “I” found “myself” - so to speak - duly worshipped - for God’s sake! The chump being worshipped was still alive, if rather shaken. And Andy Warhol was assiduously timing the whole event - pretty well right down to his statutary fifteen minutes.

Further earnest devotees started beckoning me to work my way down, and, with pained concern inscribed in their faces and tender care vibrating in their outreaching hands, swept me up and passed me continually forward to yet myriad other caring hands (which minutes ago might have belonged to individuals who would gingerly have trampled me underfoot), until service volunteers (seva dals), also brimfull of earnest solicitation, conducted me back to my accustomed, privilegious seat.

For, of course, one of the great courtesies of India is, veritably, that ‘guest is God’.

Vintage Quote From Sai Baba

“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.” (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. II, p. 92)

Further Reading

www.andhracafe.com news report, updated: October 4, 2007. Hysteric crowds force Sai Baba to differ Viwa Rupa. Below, I have excerpted from this news release:

HYDERABAD : Hysteric crowds and overhanging clouds persuaded Sri Satya Sai Baba to postpone his promised Vishwarupa darshanam on Thursday evening. There was chaos at the Puttaparthi airport after Sai Baba devotees thronged the premises to witness the Vishwarupa darshanam of their master….
  They returned disappointed. Sai Baba had earlier given darshan to his devotees at Sai Kulwant hall in Puttaparthi. After the bhajan, he told his assistant Anil Kumar that he would give Vishwarupa darshanam at around 7 pm on the northeastern direction of the airport….
  As soon as Mr Anil Kumar announced this, devotees ran towards the airport chanting his name. Television channels also telecast the news and people in Puttaparthi locked up their houses and ran towards the airport. Thousands also rushed to the area from surrounding villages….
  All the devotees crowding the area focused their attention on the northeastern direction in the sky. In a fit of devotion, some of them surrounded the car of Sai Baba and he could not come out. Devotees did not relent even after members of Satya Sai Trust urged them to sit down. Instead, they ran after the car….
  A small stage was set up before the car for Viswarupa Darshanam but Sai Baba could not reach the stage as devotees prostrated before him. He was forced to remain in the car for about an hour….
  A short while later, the office-bearers of the Satya Sai Trust announced that the Viswarupa Darsanam was postponed because of the non-cooperation of devotees and the cloudy weather. Sai Baba then returned to his Ashram. Sai Baba devotees in other countries also called up their friends and relatives in Puttaparthy to find out about the incident….
  Because of the rush, traffic on the road from Puttaparthy to the airport was thrown out of gear. At one stage, doors of the airport had to be closed. Police finally cleared the traffic to enable Sai Baba to return to his Ashram. Most devotees expressed disappo