Pamela Stephenson Protects Celeb ‘Shrink Rap’ Interviewees

I recently saw Pamela Stephenson interviewed by Andrew Denton in Enough Rope on ABC television (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). She is the former celebrated actress and comedian, and star of such television shows Not The Nine O’Clock News. She is now a clinical psychologist in Hollywood and a professor of psychology at the California Graduate Institute.

Vile Public Critics

In her recently-made television series Shrink Rap, her famous interview subjects were willing to bare their more vulnerable feelings and lesions, and in a serious way beyond what usually passes for celebrity (so-called) ‘revelations’. Her subjects thus far have been Sharon Osbourne, Stephen Fry, David Blunkett, Sarah Ferguson, and Robin Williams.

 In a note for the show, Stephenson says:

“Shrink Rap is an attempt to allow people not to be under pressure of performing, not to feel that they have to present the ideal self, the one that is always adorable and perfect and funny and together. This allows people to bring forward the true self, to not always tell the official story”.

Holding Barbarians at Bay

But, prior to its release, she found herself editing things out far more than she had earlier thought she would need to. It was not the celebrities themselves who called for this degree of censorship but Stephenson’s own deepening awareness of state-of-the-art maliciousness among media commentators and other unconscienable attackers.

Stephenson had her own experience of having earlier been one of Great Britain’s best-known television celebrities (and is, moreover, the wife of one of the world’s most famous comedians Billy Connelly). Therefore, the need occurred her to go to still greater editorial lengths to protect her famous interview subjects. She was acutely aware of the extreme readiness of unscrupulous critics to make insensitive and distorted use of what her subjects revealed about themselves. In an interview for The Independent, she observed:

“I can control what we have in the programme, and take out things that might be misunderstood, but there’s no guarantee of how it’s going to be received. I will feel terrible on people’s behalf if anyone is publicly punished for saying how they feel.”

Neo-Neanderthal Journalism Needs Extinctifying

There needs of course to be a new regimen of sensitivity and responsibity in the media. This is not to say, necessarily, censorship of either journalists or of content presented by those they write about. (Although it is a sad comment that the very advocates of an open society have, all too often, to self-censorship against philistine triumph). Rather, it is about creating an altogether different climate in which genuine feelings of interview or other subjects can be discussed more openly and commented on sensitively and intelligently, sans attack and cynical exploitation. Rupert Murdoch thinks he can influence an eco friendly ‘greening’ of his newspapers. So then, let him and other prime movers and shakers support those developmental programmes which create greater awareness in journalists (and especially the emerging trainee ones) that might approach that sensitivity and deep ethics being role-modeled by Pamela Stephenson.

Sai Baba No Shiva. Gold From His Gut Is Regurgitator’s Trick

Within Hinduism, the Shiva lingam can represent the wonder and majesty of creation-dissolution, a symbol of limitlessness. See Wikipedia, under ‘Lingam‘: 

‘The term lingam is sometimes used synonymously for shivalingam or sivalingam a specific type of icon or altar representing the god Shiva’
   

In Sanskrit, this object is often called a lingodhbhava. In India, especially in the south, down the millennia, via literature, drama, temple worship and so on, the sacredness of its associations have become immense.        

Sai Baba had, over a number of years, ostensibly brought from his stomach a pure gold egg-shaped Shiva lingam (Sivalingam, Shivalingam). This event he performed at the festival to the Hindu god Siva, or Mahashivarathri. For two decades, Sai Baba ceased what had been a yearly (so-called miraculous) production of the lingam. Why would he resume it in February 1999?

A Lordly Miracle Might Revive Emperor’s Crumbling Empire

I have elsewhere characterized Sai Baba as a master showman, see The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire. Around Sai Baba, all is panoply, pomp and circumstance - and dazzling architecture costing millions.

Sai Baba’s pet elephant, Sai Gita appearing at Sai Baba’s showpiece Hillview Stadium

A Hindu dissenter of Sai Baba, chance-met, who was at Puttaparthi on suffrance, once said to me, “This is a national circus”.

Sai Baba’s humble living quarters

But empire or circus, the show is a voracious money ‘beast’ that has continually to be fed. Gold may or may not come out of Sai Baba’s stomach but it certainly has to keep on going into his coffers.

Sai Baba showcased in pure gold

What then the case of a series of calamitous exposures in major media around the world? What of all the leave-takings from his worldwide Sathya Sai Organization - far more numerous than formal resignations? What of the threatened recruitment bases?

Big Money Replenishment - A Desperation to Recruit in Luxurious Venues

In tightly controlled circumstances, the Sathya Sai Organization now recruits in highly costly, luxurious venues. For example, Cooper’s Union, New York; La Mirada Theatre; Los Angeles County, Hilton Ballroom and Sheraton Hotel and Towers, both Chicago; Copley International Conference Center, San Diego; Town Hall, Melbourne; Super Dome, Sydney, etc. See article by Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard, Sai Organization’s Spending Spree In Super Dome, Sydney.

Sydney Superdome, Australia one of world’s top stadiums, built for the Olympic Games 2000

A Positive BBC Documentary Would Help Recuperate from Intense International Criticism

The BBC was on the scene, and the ashram officials had given a rare permission to shoot inside the Puttaparthi ashram. It was not until the BBC producer of what was to become the television documentary The Secret Swami (2004) Eamon Hardy asked about the worldwide sex abuse allegations that matters drastically altered. The Sathya Sai Central Trust Secretary, K. Chakravarthy, summarily evicted the BBC team. The Indian television company Sanskaar TV also televised this Mahashivarathi event.

There had been, especially from 2000, tremendous international pressure for Sai Baba and his worldwide Sathya Sai Organization. (See, towards the end of the article - Sathya Sai Baba’s Deputy Head, Dr G. Venkataraman, Speaks of “Mr Idi Amin” - a number of heavy stressors that were being applied by globally networked former devotees known as ‘the exposé). One outcome was the display of an anger Sai Baba has long kept behind-the-scenes. Bad cracks began to appear in the Sai monolith, and the world began to peep through. In a Christmas 2000 discourse, in which peace and goodwill to all men were remarkable for their absence, Sai Baba repeatedly pounded his lecturn, denouncing his accuses as demons and Judases, and vaunting his accomplisments (even though, contrary to his assertions, far from unique), prompting The Times of India, December 26, 2000, to headline: Sai Baba Lashes Out At His Detractors. He cried,

“Is there any government that is giving free medical care? People don’t even think about the sanctity behind it. Most of the educated have become so low and mean minded. Is there anyone who is doing even one thousandth of this work ? No, no. It is only Sathya Sai Baba, who is doing this selflessly, always for the welfare of others.”

He has at various times said he is anger-free. For example:

“When I am defamed, I never get incensed, for it is only the tree full of edible fruits that is attached by sticks and stones.” (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 4 p. 184).

“There is no trace of anger or hatred in Me and hence everyone loves Me” (Sanathana Sarathi September 2002, page 257f)

Sathya Sai Speaks of his alleged lingam creations

“Ah! This is the Brahmaanda Linga! Symbol of the Universe. Inside it, the nine planets (Navagrahas) revolve; the entire Universe is represented herein … You are indeed blessed, the merit of many births as brought you here to see the Great Phenomenon, this rare Creation.” (Sathya Sai Speaks, IV, 4:26).

He has also said:

“This is Amruthtatwam (symbol of immortality). It is changeless. You cannot see such a manifestation anywhere in the world. It is possible only with Divinity.” (Sanathana Sarathi - March 1999, p. 73)

In 2004, as caught by BBC and Indian television cameras, Sai Baba not only produced one lingam, but, if we take his officials’ word for it, two more offstage.  The public ‘miracle’ he performed, to the suprise of many, in terribly fumbling and absent-minded fashion. One would think that this to declining faculties that many have noticed but which his minders have tried to mask as best they can under the all too tell-tale circumstances, and which Sai devotees keep a numbed silence about). However, according to Sai Baba’s chief translator and also a world-travelling emissary Professor Anil Kumar in his words to the crowds, Sai Baba privately manifested two more ‘atma lingams’ off-stage.

 In the BBC’s The Secret Swami, the interviewer Tanya Datta comments:

“To the alarm of the crowd suddenly Sai Baba collapsed. His huge coterie of staff swung into action. There was panic. An organisation used to tight control seemed to have lost its grip. Sai Baba was hastily wheeled off stage.” Later, he is carried hobbling back, with officials claiming that he manifested two more lingams offstage”. Transcript is HERE. See the whole documentary. Broadband users click HERE (80 MB). There is a small version for modem users Here (23,3 MB)
Or you can download it packed in zip file (22 MB) Here. 

Returning to the Kulwant Hall stage within the next hour, to the immensely relieved audience of many thousands, a pale and shaken Sai Baba makes the unfathomable claim:

“Out of the stomach emanated Shiva Lingas of the weight of three tonnes. That’s the reason why some strain on the face and the body”

But Centuries of Magicians Have Produced Objects By Regurgitation

Magicians have long produced objects - both precious and trivial - from out of their stomachs. A contemporary example is the British regurgitator Stevie Starr. The website:  http://www.steviestarr.com/index.php informs us that:

“He swallows live goldfish, pool balls, numbered coins, even dry sugar, and manages to bring them back up in order, on command (and in the case of the sugar, completely dry!)”

If you feel that you can control your own stomach, you can see a video clip (4.4mb) of Stevie Star at work HERE

There is a German documentary that shows ’sadhus’ or Hindu ‘holy men’ performing tricks, including regurgitation:  Das Mysterium Der Shiva - Heilige Männer (Ein film von Eberhart Thiem, Helga Lippert, Arno Peik) from a German series called Terra X - Rätsel alter Weltkulturen). Swallowing of nails and regurgitating them one at a time is shown.

For a fascinating byway in film history, see HADJI ALI, Scenes from POLITIQUERIAS, the Spanish-language version of Laurel and Hardy’s Chickens Come Home. Hadji Ali is of that group of performers known as ‘regurgitators’ or ‘water spouters’. A vaudeville star in the first decades of the last century, this Egyptian-born performer was billed as ‘The Great Regurgitator’. In the webpage just cited, there are stark black and white shots of Hadji Ali performing the regurgitation trick in a 1931 Stanley Laurel and Oliver Hardy movie.

The Indian swami Swami Premananda also used to produce lingams.  He now sits in the bowls of a gaol with a double life sentence for rape  and murder, and not likely to be regurgitated therefrom.

The celebrated Indian Rationalist and ‘guru buster’ Basava Premanand appeared in the BBC’s The Secret Swami. Originally a Sai Baba devotee, he reported investigating Sathya Sai Baba since 1968, first “as a hobby” then going public in 1976. In this one-hour television documentary, B. Premanand is seen demonstrating the trick behind Sai Baba’s so-called ‘miraculous’ production of the golden lingam or Shiva lingam.

Powerful Psycho-religious Role of the Lingam Among Many Hindus

Sai Baba knows well how to tap into aeons-old Indian piety. He says he is all the gods and goddesses. Many Vaishnavites worship him as Lord Vishnu, many Shaivites, as Lord Shiva, and so on. But this phenomenon is not untypical - in the remarkable form of a live-and-let-live philosophy - and is seen in much guru worship throughout India, where an individual is free to worship the guru according to her or his own traditional or temperamental iconography or ishta devata (personalized or favourite form of godhead). To his devotees of Christian background, Sai Baba says that he is the Father who sent Lord Jesus Christ. Because of these deep Indian traditions of religious plurality and acceptance (which goes far deeper than mere tolerance), his devotees are happy, for example, to sing his praises in bhajans (antiphonal, commonly congregational hymn-singing) using the names of all the gods and goddesses.

Crowd Pulling Psychology Far Exceeding Barnum and Bailey

Sai Baba’s sarva dharma chakra (all-major Faiths symbol)

In one thing at least Sai Baba is supreme. He has the supreme ability to play the all-religions-are-essentially-one card with brilliance. He virtually adopts the role, at the level of self-proclaimed absolute Divinity, of being all-things-to-all religious men. One of the psychological factors he draws on goes emotionally deep for those worshipping him. Sathya Sai speaks, for example, of how his devotees plead with him not to produce the lingam, particulary now that he is becoming older and has been through a number of hip operations (he is 81, and may be older if we are to regard British colonial records). In The Deccan Herald report of the February 2004 Mahashivrathri, Srikanth Srinivasa wrote,

“Sai Baba’s devotees have been imploring him not to suffer the ordeal of bringing out the Linga every year at the cost of the god man’s health”

Sai Baba’s Promise: Who Witnesses His Production Of the Lingam is Liberated from Sin and Rebirth

Down the years, Sai Baba has made references like this:

“Those who are fortunate to witness Lingodbhava are freed from all sins”.  Sanathana Sarathi, 3/99, p. 66

In short, he mines for all it is worth mass anxiety about the karmic future. Will one be damnably consigned to birth after birth? Or will a trip to Puttaparthi mend things, forever? In short, what this great religious showman offers - no, promises, absolutely - is absolution and forgiveness of sins. It is a consideration that motivates millions of religionists the world over.

A similar psychology - the spectacle of God’s pain, as it were - attends Christian attitudes to the ‘Passion’ or crucifixion story, and Christian evangelists have long played deeply on this.

Shiva Rules But Sai Baba Was No Tiger

Majestic symbol of undeniable cosmic forces, Lord Shiva sits forever serenely on his tigers skin. Sathya Sai Baba’s tiger skin is but that - a skin held dazzlingly aloft to make him appear be the real Shiva.

Playing cricket or playing Shiva?

Sai Baba’s mask-like face. A degenerative disease like Parkinson’s?

                     ……………………………..

Further Reading

Faked lingam production. Frame-by-frame analysis of the BBC and other footage is revealing indeed. Former leader of the Sathya Sai Organization, Norway, and retired academic of the University of Oslo, Robert Priddy, analyses and provides background notes, See, Mahahshivarathri 2004.  Quote:  “Sai Baba allowed an unprecedented live broadcast in the Indian subcontinent of his so-called ‘lingodbhava’ (bringing the egg-like ellipsoidal object out of his mouth after what looks like a painful process of ‘regurgitation’). However, one can most clearly see that NO lingam ‘actually emerged at all this year. Instead there was a small spurt of yellowish vomit, which was later claimed to be the lingam in liquid golden form!”

Devotees’ Expectations and SSB’s Lingam Production (Background Notes on the 2004 Mahasivaratri Spectacle). In this article, the Australian scholar and former devotee Brian Steel writes:

“It is not unreasonable to hypothesise that in 1999 and 2000, this popular event may even have been deliberately revived for precisely the same promotional reasons, at a time when the Organisation was acutely aware that very strong criticism and denunciation of SSB was about to be made public overseas by two very high-profile close ex-devotees (David Bailey and Naresh Bhatia) who had recently “defected” and whose spectacular revelations were nervously awaited. If this hypothesis is not correct, and if the Lingodbhava performance was discontinued because of fears of unruly crowds in 1977, why revive it when the crowds are much larger today?”

Notes

“Bhagavan Baba kept manifesting His divinity in the form of Lingodbhava year after year on every Shivaratri till 1977 when He announced that he had decided to discontinue Lingodbhava in public. Those who witnessed this Divine phenomenon again on 15 February, 1999 were really fortunate as it happened after a long gap of more than 20 years.” Editor, Sanathana Sarathi, 3/99, p. 81

Barry Pittard at: http://barrypittard.wordpress.com

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

The BBC’s The Secret Swami - A Revision

The Genesis of the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Sai Baba)

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Probed On Male Sex Abuse, Sai Baba Evicts BBC TV Team

In Puttaparthi, 2004, a BBC This World television team led by producer Eamon Hardy was evicted from the Sai Baba Ashram for asking about the worldwide male sex abuse allegations that face Sai Baba.

Caught by BBC hidden camera: an angry and shouting Sai Baba’s world chairman, Dr Michael Goldstein. He dismisses the BBC interviewer’s point about organization accountability and transparency and says of the worldwide serial sex abuse allegations against Sai Baba, “I would know it in my heart because I am what I am – a consummate professional. Can you understand that?”

Fortunately, before they were summarily thrown out, the BBC crew had shot close up valuable footage that clearly shows Sai Baba faking the miraculous production of a pure gold Shiva lingam or lingodbhava - a ‘cosmic egg’ from his stomach. He then - there are no signs of him faking this - faints. A few minutes later, in but one of his many statements that question the rationality of his devotees as well as his own, Sai Baba told his vast audience,

“Out of the stomach emanated Shiva Lingas of the weight of three tonnes. That’s the reason why some strain on the face and the body“.

The final film documentary was The Secret Swami, which has been screened in many countries. 

BBC producers say that Sai Baba’s top officials at first thought, on their own entire assumption, the documentary would present a ‘positive image’ of their guru and the works of his organization to the world. Hence the rare permission for the BBC to shoot at Sai Baba’s ashram.

The ashram authorities extended highly guided tours to the BBC by Central Trust Secretary K. Chakravarthy and other leading officials, including the world head of the Sathya Sai Organization Dr Michael Goldstein of Covina, California, never before granted to a television corporation. In November or December 1997, Indulal Shah (then world head of the Sathya Sai Organization) told me that, over the years, a number of big overseas television companies had sought permission to shoot in the ashram but that ’Bhagavan had not permitted it’.

A few days into the film shoot, the BBC asked for a comment on the worldwide allegations against Sai Baba of sex abuse of young males. The ashram authorities then peremptorily ordered them to leave, and Dr Goldstein (who was in Puttaparthi at the time) sent a prompt  instruction to all Sai Baba centres throughout the world that no-one must cooperate with the BBC.

Haunted By Other Media Exposure

Quite apart from other exposure in leading media, the exposure by Denmark’s national television and radio broadcaster DR can only have haunted the minds of Sai Baba and his officials. This was in its 2003 documentary Seduced (renamed Seduced By Sai Baba in the English language version by Australia’s national multicultural broadcaster SBS), seen by millions in Denmark, Norway and Australia. At this time, the top Sai leaders in Denmark and Australia made unavailing threats of legal action. In Denmark Sai Baba’s leaders Thorbjörn Meyer and Jørgen Trygved, hiring the top litigation talent in the country, took, between them, as many as ten court actions, all of which failed. In a scene reminiscent of Dr Michael Goldstein’s angry outbursts caught by the BBC’s hidden camera, Thorbjörn Meyer, one of the highest ranking of Sai Baba’s world leaders had, I am reliably informed, to be ordered out of the office of the distinguished head of Denmark’s top national television and radio Director of DR, Christian Nissen.

So much for such cultist. From his grave, the perennially and sorely relevant Sir Karl Popper must be desperately trying to write an update of The Open Society and Its Enemies.

For Viewing

See The Secret Swami HERE. Available in broadband and modem

Further Reading

The BBC’s The Secret Swami - A Revision.
The Genesis of the BBC’s The Secret Swami (Sai Baba)

For a detailed examination relating to Sai Baba’s production of the Shiva lingam, see the article HERE. Its author Robert Priddy, was formerly head of the Sathya Sai Organization in Norway, and is a retired academic in Philosophy and Social Science from the University of Oslo.

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Serial Sex Abuse And Broken Promises of Miracle Healing

Here are some quotes from Sathya (Sathya, Satch) Purcell’s from the just posted account: My Life As Sathya Sai Baba’s Prophecy (Part 3).

To access this piece, go to: http://www.exbaba.com  and click on the NEWS tab at the date entry: 05-22-07. Each installment is accessible by clickable internal links.

Here are some quotes:

“My mother Sharon Purcell’s 1993 private trip overlapped with the visit of our group of young men led by Hal Honig (who although almost elderly is now the head of the Sathya Sai Youth in the U.S.A.), and Sai Baba called her and me for interview.  As I stepped into the room, Sai Baba held the door open and pressed his other hand firmly into my groin area and in a very concealed way”.

“A few of the men in our group told us that Baba materialized a container of oil and rubbed it on their genitals  This is an all to common occurrence at the ashram, as one discovers over time, and the rationalizations and justifications of Sai Baba’s devotees show poor judgement. They fly straight in the face of ethics - and laws! - the world over”.

“Sai Baba then casually - it came across as half-heartedly - ‘materialized’ a black egg-shaped stone that he said was a lingam.  He told my mother to put it in water and that the water would heal people - to say the very least. They died, and in other cases survived with great difficulty”.

“Yet, there are many extraordinary remissions known to medical science. Obviously, the more followers a ‘miracle worker’ has, and Sai Baba has millions, the more this type of statistic is bound to kick in - whether with or without attribution to “Sai Baba’s Grace”"

“The Sathya Sai Organization has extremely failed. The BBC brought this point out strongly in the part where its hidden cameras expose Dr Michael Goldstein. In a way that would not be tolerated of CEO’s or other heads of organization, he showed extreme resistance to the notion of transparency and accountability, which the The Secret Swami interviewer Tanya Datta raised”

Further Resources:

View video clips of The Secret Swami or the entire program HERE:

My review The Secret Swami - A Revision is found HERE.

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The Genesis of the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Sai Baba)

For several months from late 2003 to mid 2004, former Sathya Sai Baba followers coordinated internationally to document our acute concerns to the BBC. This culminated in the one-hour television documentary The Secret Swami. It was unanimously praised by U.K. reviewers in leading newspapers. My views, pro and con, are found HERE.

Protection of Young Was Initial Driving Force For Most Former Sai Baba followers

Our concerns addressed to UNESCO, Interpol, U.S. State Department, other governments, institutions and  leading world media - and now to the BBC - ranged far beyond the allegations of long years of wide-scale, serial sexual abuse by Sai Baba. These are itemized at the foot of my article: Serial Sex Molestation and Bedroom Killings. But Much More, HERE.

However, because of the natural and powerful desire in adults to safeguard the innocence of the young, the sexual molestation issue was the foremost driving force. We were pitted against another human drive - the will to blindness and deafness in defense of a belief system and its founder. Many had attempted to raise the allegations, some individuals (including leaders) even while they were still devotees in the worldwide Sathya Sai Organization, but its officials - as they have done to this day -remained impervious to requests to clarify the issue of sexual molestations, or indeed any of the other types of allegation facing Sai Baba.  Of course, any organization that refuses to be accountable and transparent has only itself to blame when allegations persist year after year. Its perceived best bet is to turn the blame on dissentors. Thus begins a process of demonization of dissentors, well documented in the behaviour of so many cults by academic researchers affliated with a group such as The International Cult Studies Association (ICSA). Link: http://www.csj.org/

Reaching Out To Forums Of Common Sense

Obviously, only so much can be packed into a one-hour television documentary, out of massive documentation. Like other serious investigators, the BBC found the Ashram officials and other Sai Baba leaders very evasive. The team had the feeling of being on a highly guided tour, rather like Intourist in the days of a monolithic Russia. Most of our testimony, it may be noted in passing, is carefully kept away from places like the Internet, where fanatics stalk, abuse and harrass, attempting to investigate us whether in university, workplace or family. But it is ready to be shown to bona fide investigators with good track records of integrity and sensitivity.  The inevitability of mistakes occurring with even the best of intentioned journalists is serious enough. What goes to the Internet, however, can be all too readily attacked and distorted mercilessly and libelously. They would do the forever unlamented Senator Joseph McCarthy proud. At least, with professional, third party investigators of the quality media, and various agencies (also at a senior level), one is ‘in’ with some sort of chance of getting one’s message out more widely to thoughtful auditors - and, at last, somehow, to forums of common sense.

Blaming The Media

Sai Baba followers have attempted to discredit various major media that have listened to us with respect and seriousness, like the BBC, DR, CBC, SBS, ABC, Azul TV, India Today, Daily Telegraph, Salon.com, Guardian,  Age, Australian Financial Times, Guardian, and newspapers in Europe and Canada. Sai Baba’s defenders - who ignore his oft-given advice not to listen to the allegations (advice that, once the pressure was intense, he himself has contradicted and publically displayed anger about, beating his lectern repeatedly) typically point to a journalist’s mistake here and there. There is no pause to think that it was not in our original documentation, or that deadline pressures in a newspaper or television news report can generate absurd errors. A cult’s defenders  fail chronically to see what virtually anyone not blinded by faith in their founder can see - the serious issues being presented - like the accountability and transparency issue. You may watch The Secret Swami for yourself, and make your own judgements, HERE.

Dr G. Venkataraman is Sai Baba’s deputy world chairman and head of Sai Global Harmony which, via Worldspace International Satellite Radio, strives to get Sai Baba into every corner of the globe. Has he not said that, before he dies around 2022, the whole world will have come to him - the last being the Mahomedans? He certainly has. In this piece, G.Venkataraman, in his usually terribly long-winded fashion that would surely blunt his efforts as Sai Baba’s chief of propaganda, reacts to the articles in the Times of London, by Dominic Kennedy - see: 1, 2, 3:

“When the Times article appeared, I was shocked as were many others. Here was one of the leading newspapers of the world, and it was publishing negative material without even a casual inquiry about the accuracy of the content. Some of us wrote letters to the Editor, but, contrary to the usual practice of giving some space to those with differing opinions, none of these letters were published. So much for objectivity of the Press!”
Source: Radio Sai Listeners’ journal, enquire HERE. For Robert Priddy’s and Barry Pittard’s four-part series responding to Venkataraman’s points, HERE.

But did G. Venkatarman stop to think that many others write to the extremely limited spaces of the Times of London, and indeed most newspapers in the world? Does he really think that  The Times, as a greatly respected world press leader, survives without high standards of source checking? Does he really believe that such a paper (and other respected media like the BBC) who have investigated Sai Baba would proceed “without even a casual inquiry about the accuracy”?

In any case, why should the Editor publish the Sai Baba leadership’s attempted propaganda on behalf of an highly cultic organization not willing to investigate disturbing allegations or itself check anything with honest accuracy? The Times would not retract anything, despite the initiatives of Sai Baba’s autocratic, longtime (recently retired) world and then Indian leader, Indulal Shah, and retired Indian Air Chief Marshal N. C. Suri, to personally influence this newspaper. The Times and officials of important institutions (UNESCO, the State Department, the BBC, etc) acted upon the allegations only after strenuous investigation of credentials and documentation by former devotees from many professions, trades and countries.

Some former devotees were disappointed that the almost overwhelming attention in The Secret Swami was given to just one family - that of Al (Seral) Rahm, who was a former top leader in the U.S.A of the Sathya Sai Organization, Marisa his wife, and their son Alaya. The latter had already stood courageously forth. In Seduced (2002), Alaya related that Sai Baba’s had extensively sexually abused him when a teenager. This one-hour television documentary by DR, Denmark’s national radio and television broadcaster, has been shown several times in Scandinavia and later in Australia (2004) by SBS and, despite Sathya Sai Organization threats of litigation, retitled Seduced By Sai Baba. 

The Rahm family had, in a number of important initiatives, like our appeal to UNESCO, supported organized former devotee efforts to bring out the facts - for example, to the FBI and U.S. State Department - knowing that they would be attacked and vilified by many, as they already had been from virtually the moment they raised their concerns in 1999).

There were many families and individuals from several countries who have made the allegations, and who assisted the BBC researchers. The Secret Swami glancingly refers to these, and indeed the BBC had spent many months in carefully documenting and interviewing them. The sheer labours of both the BBC and organized former devotees were considerable. International coordinators - as we had been required to do by UNESCO and other institutions and media - had to provide strong evidence of credibility. A number of very credentialled sexual abuse and other professionals were in our networked group, as were parents of several families which had been stricken by Sai Baba’s alleged immoral activities, as were a number of those with accounts of Sai Baba’s sexual abuse against themselves as teenagers or young men.

As in his words about the Times articles, G. Venkataraman steers wildly off-course. In his Radio Sai journal, read by devotees around the world, he ran a piece by the author of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, A Life, Bill Aitkin, longtime resident at Sai Baba ashrams, who claims:

“The BBC is ultimately governed by the Anglican establishment, and churches in the west are losing out financially to the appeal of the Sai Baba movement”.

With a logic strange for one who was formerly a major Indian nuclear scientist, G.Venkataraman adds:

“Well, there it is - all the rebuttal of the BBC that you have always wanted, that too from an Englishman!”

…………………..

Article coming soon: “After Decades of Silence, Mark Roche Speaks To BBC Of Sai Baba Sex Abuse”.

The first of my two articles on Mark Roche - BBC’s ‘Secret Swami’ Clip. Man Claims Abuse When Young - is HERE.

You may view Mark Roche’s BBC interview HERE.

A number of video clips from The Secret Swami are HERE.

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Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia

For more lavish pics of Sai Baba’s Imperial splendour, see below. (Are we seeing the rise or decline of the Showman Empire?)

In the director-writer-actor Orson Welles’s great movie classic Citizen Kane, one can, it is true, note certain differences between the U.S. newspaper proprietor William Randolf Hearst

and Welles’s and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s creation Charles Foster Kane. For decades, the differences have been fought over - fiercely. Nonetheless, both were fabulously wealthy, gigantically egocentric - and corrupt. They splurged incredibly on their domiciles

(Microsoft founder, Bill Gates’s little shack - dubbed by some wag as: Xanadu 2.0.  No zoo there as yet, but who knows? - with the true coming-of-age of Robotics something cyber-’animal’ might be managed)

In naming the fictive Kane’s dream home on sprawling acres, Xanadu, Welles-Mankiewicz thought - perhaps inevitably - of the fabulous city of the 13th Century Mongolian emperor, Kubla Khan (see portrait above) and of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s fittingly eccentric and exotic poem known to millions, whose first line runs:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea

Today’s Emperor of India

Kane in Florida, like Hearst at San Simeon in California, was absolute King of his castle. But there is a virtual Emperor in India - Sathya Sai Baba. 

Even Randolph Hearst (as perhaps a modern day media buccaneer Rupert Murdoch) might have blushed for shame to hold such sway with the big end of town as Sai Baba has long done with India’s power brokers, irrespective of what political party is in power. Sai Baba, who long ago learnt not to blush, is arguably India’s and history’s most famous - and infamous - guru. So too - well may these other extravagant castle owners blanch at being so dwarfed by this Kubla Khan who Lords it over the, in many ways, tragically poor India. How the stupendous splurger Sai Baba can ever say the name of Mahatma Gandhi, modern India’s wonderfully humble ‘father’, without blushing is one of his greatest miracles. 

Much less Microsoft founder Bill Gate’s with his mansion, featuring every technological wizardry. Or Michael Jackson (said to have had his own connections with Sai Baba, and certainly both have had to face repeated allegations of sexual molestation of young males) with his weird parody of Disneyland, the Neverland Ranch. (Interestingly, Hearst would refer to his establishment as “the ranch”). Or Hugh Heffner, the ’soft’ pornography magnate, with the Playboy Mansion, of which  John Marshal has written that  driving through its gates is “like being misdirected into the back entrance of a public zoo”. The zoo atmospheric reminds that Hearst’s estate included a zoo then the world’s largest. The narrator in Citizen Kane speaks of Kane having the largest zoo since Noah. See USA Weekend LINK.

India’s Fabulous Top Guru Sai Baba. More Emperor Than King

One wonders why Sai Baba has not included a wizzo zoo. Perhaps it would be a counter-distraction, because everybody is supposed to have their eyes trained on Sai Baba (it is called ‘darshan’, and his devotees spell it with a capital ‘D’. Instead of gazing at one’s navel, one gazes at the guru). However, one Indian man sitting next to me at a Sai Baba ‘darshan’ described Sai Baba’s setup to me as “a national circus”. So at least, something of the zoological atmospheric may be in the air. 

Vastly Costly Monuments Glorifying Sai Baba

His splashy-colored and sometimes vast buildings rise up at enormous cost. Sathya Sai Baba’s exchequer owes to vast donations to his Central Trust via his powerful organisation spanning more than 150 countries, and not least to the donations of the extremely wealthy - like James Sinclair, the Canadian cable and minerals magnate, Isaac Tigrett the American founder of the Hard Rock Café and House of Blues, the Rai family in India in steel and technology, and an astounding number of other hugely wealthy and influential individuals and families from many countries. Rediff News, July 06, 2005, reported:

“The Andhra Pradesh-based Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust is the largest recipient of foreign contributions. The Sathya Sai Trust received Rs 95 crore (Rs 950 million) during 2003-04″.

This figure - which is well over US $20 million - is but the officially-declared one and does not account for contributions of those foreigners who donate when they are in India. One can observe how at Sai Baba’s establishments at Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, and Whitefield, Karnataka, in South India, the Indian and foreign mega business fraternity swap business cards - within what devotees regard as the so-called Holiest of Holy precincts! - and thereafter mutually thrive. At the Puttaparthi temple, on June 6, 1993) police executions took place in Sai Baba’s bedroom, with his close proximity and command of the situation. See my article, at LINK, which contains a further link to a video clip of the BBC The Secret Swami television interview with former Andhra Pradesh Home Secretary V.P.B. Nair saying that the slaying was “absolute cold-blooded murder”). 

It is easy to see that far wider national and international economic and political forces are at play, and that it is little wonder how successive Indian governments both State and Central have been loathe to ‘kill’ a goose that lays an incredible number of golden eggs.

Efforts to Globalize Sai Baba withWorld Radio Station

Sai Baba controls with an iron hand the international Sathya Sai Organization. This powerful cult has been found by some of the world’s top media like the BBC, Times of London, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and in other countries, as well as UNESCO, the U.S. State Department and other institutions to be extremely hard to investigate or act against. His second most senior aide is its deputy chairman, who, as head of Sai Global Harmony, is his ‘minister of propaganda’, Dr G. Venkataraman, one of the progenitors of India’s atomic bomb, as was Sai Baba’s previous close aide, the late Dr S. Bhagavantam - sometimes called ‘the father of the Indian atomic bomb’ - as was his present staunch devotee, the President of India, Dr A.J. P. Kalam, who writes flowery  panegyrics to Sai Baba, as did the last Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 

Sai Global Harmony broadcasts, in affiliation with WorldSpace International Satellite Radio Service, 24/7 to many countries. With a behind-the-scenes corporate-style, assisted by the billions of funds that pour from many countries into the Sathya Sai Central Trust, the declared aim is to penetrate to every corner of the globe.

Government Inaction on Powerful Cults

A vital question will be whether politicians in democratic countries will be capable of distinguishing between the issue of freedom of religion and the issue of cults that decidedly do not, whatever may be their rhetoric, respect democracy.

Followers Believe Sai Baba Will Rule