Wolf Messing and Sathya Sai Baba: Serguei Badaev and Brian Steel Articles On Conflicting Evidence
Posted by Barry Pittard on October 23, 2010
One of many instructive cases that challenge Sai Baba’s self-presentation are his references, across time, to an alleged meeting between himself and the 20th century Polish psychic Wolf Messing.
The more scrutiny that is given – other than by the eyes of blind faith – to many of Sathya Sai Baba’s pronouncements about history and science the more a rational reader is struck by the occurrence of error, contradiction and lack of clarity.
An editor at the Invigilator blogsite has noted:
“The text previously posted about Wolf Messing by Alexandra Nagel on this blog (written in 2004) has been removed since researches by expert investigators – entirely independently of all Sathya Sai Baba connections – have proven almost his entire biography to be a concocted myth. This information only emerged after new hitherto unknown sources became available. showing that the world has been totally misled by the claims put forward by Wolf Messing and Mikhail Khvastunov. In his thorough article summarizing these matters and also the bogus claims by Sathya Sai Baba about Wolf Messing”.
See Serguei Badaev detailed article: ‘Wolf Messing, A Psychic Entertainer Whom Sathya Sai Baba Claims to Have Met’.
See also: Sathya Sai Baba Critic Serguei Badaev: An Incisive Voice of Conscience From Russia
The rational reader will pay proper attention to the arguments of yet another careful commentator whose writings critically probe Sathya Sai Baba’s own accounts of himself. Brian Steel has also written instructively on the supposed Wolf Messing-Sathya Sai Baba nexus. Steel has extensively analysed Sathya Sai literature, on which he was an acknowledged expert well before he quit the Sathya Sai Baba fold. He has often focused on Sathya Sai Baba’s statements as they appear in officially-approved publications that issue from his own publication house. When he is not discoursing on ancient subjects relating to the Vedas, Puranas etc., a habit of Sathya Sai Baba, is to weave into his discourses accounts that often come across as re-workings of stories he has read or heard. The purpose of this seems to be, in no matter how many novel ways, to buttress up his claim to be the avatar of avatars, and add to his own mystique. Sometimes his retellings are in conflict. In more recent times, there has been considerable ‘weeding’ by editors at Puttaparthi of embarrassing Sathya Baba statements. See my article: The Quiet Weeding Out Of Sathya Sai Baba’s Embarrassing Statements
In the article More Messing, Brian Steel writes:
“My attention has been drawn to the fact that SB recently decided to liven up a Discourse in honour of Krishna (31 August 2002) by retelling his Wolf Messing story in its third incarnation. The previous shorter versions are to be found in his Discourse of 22 November 1980 – Sathya Sai Speaks, XIV, Chapter 57, pp. 364-366; LIMF, p. 48; and in R. T. Kakade and A. Veerabadhra Rao’s Shirdi to Puttaparthi, pp. 159-160. My July 2002 commentary on the earlier versions can be seen at ‘Paranormal References: Wolf Messing and Kirlian (Revised)’ …
A recapitulation of the most obvious discrepancies which emerge from the above analysis inevitably casts the shadow of doubt over all three of these versions:
Messing’s biographical 1915 visits to Freud and Einstein are postponed by SB to 1937.
Messing met Gandhi in 1927, when Sathya was 1 year old.
SB’s own presence in far distant Kamalapuram was, as LIMF shows, between June 1940 and June 1941, not 1937 (when Sathya Narayana was only in his second year of Primary school). By 1941 the war in Europe was raging and Messing was presumably confined to the Soviet Union.
The Hitler references lack plausibility given Messing’s Jewishness and his prediction about the Fuhrer’s death.
The geographical discrepancy between the railway itineraries mentioned.
Parts of Version 3 also sound as though they were gleaned from the Ostrander-Shroeder book or a similar biographical source, like Lungin’s.
Therefore, whichever way one looks at the 3 Messing stories, and whatever truth there might be at the base of the various permutations, the conclusion that SB has invented or changed details and dates is surely unavoidable. But, once again, the questions linger: Why, time after time, do intelligent devotees unquestioningly indulge SB’s disregard for the truth? Why does he embroider his stories, and so often? And why does he continue to do so at this particular time when SB’s advisers are aware of the many serious questions (not “gossip and rumours”) being raised in different forums concerning his omniscience and credibility? Or doesn’t he listen to them?”
See also Brian Steel’s: SB’s Wolf Messing Stories Revisited and (providing a further contexts that illuminate Sai Baba’s tendency, via his discourses, to creating a mythos around himself, though it regarded by many devotees as gospel truth): The Packaging of SB’s Discourses – An Update
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Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization
There is a Spanish version available:
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Call For Media and Government Investigation 
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