Certainly, Sathya Sai Baba was supreme in his ability to exaggerate. And, as even many better-informed remaining devotees know – only too painfully well – to lie, and to lie often.
Anyone who is careful about statistics can only deplore Sathya Sai Baba grossly exaggerated Puttaparthi crowd numbers. And the also oft-repeated and gullibly believed estimates of his worldwide following.
In not being upfront about this issue, the international Sathya Sai Organization fails badly. Yet, in the civic domain, it works hard to appear respectable. It gives public presentations. It lobbies local, state and national governments and the United Nations. It tries (frequently without success) to join in projects with mainstream civic and religious organizations. It falsifies – just like its founder falsified down many decades.
Perhaps the Sathya Sai Organization should surprise us all and tell us how hugely – as our far-reaching exposure of this cult – its numbers fell away in its centers worldwide.
Those who view statistics with integrity will wonder at the existence of an organization, which has any number of adherents who in their professions would never use, or be allowed to use, rubbery statistics, unjustifiable figures which it stands blind-eyed and allows to be cited in their publications and in media around the world. Notoriously, they do not submit to any authoritative means of deriving estimates. Unfortunately, and most carelessly and naïvely, some media, has cited Sai Baba’s own evaluation of devotee numbers.
One of many examples of the so-called ‘Avatar of all Avatar’s’ mendacity – in this case his exceeding rubbery ‘statistics’ – Robert Priddy deals with humorously in a Youtube video clip (1 min 21 secs): Robert Priddy on Sathya Sai Baba at Stockholm book launch.
Sai Baba himself has provided an unintentional but marvelous ‘punchline’ to Robert Priddy’s anecdote, which includes reference to Sathya Sai Baba’s expirically falsifiable crowd-numbers lie about 3 million people attending his 70th birthday in 1996. In what must have been one of Sai Baba’s greatest ‘miracles’, the Hillview stadium at Puttaparthi – what shall we say? – ‘expanded’ a great many times its real holding capacity of around 250, ooo. Even Pinocchio’s nose did not grow so many times beyond its default size ….
This book launch in Stockholm, Sweden, which BBC television and radio’s Iris Asic and other media and public attended, was of Conny Larsson‘s book “Behind the Clown’s Mask”.
Before widely exposing Sathya Sai Baba for serial sexual abuse of boys and young men, Conny Larsson was the co-leader (along with Bi-Ma Andén, a noted educationalist, who was also lucid and courgageous in exposing the abuses) of the Sathya Sai Organization in Sweden. Formerly a top Swedish film star, Conny Larsson has since worked as a rehabilitation therapist in the Swedish prison system. Rigmore Robert, a nationally prominent psychotherapist and cult expert, wrote the Preface to his book.
See also: Robert Priddy’s bibliography and Conny Larsson’s ‘Behind the Mask of the Clown’, Reviewed by Robert C. Priddy, and review by: Åsa Samsioe – practising psychologist and ex devotee of Sathya Sai Baba. Ms Samsioe has wide professional experience dealing with sexual abuse among the young. She is one of former devotees from various parts of the world who have outstanding credentials in psychology, psychotherapy or psychiatry who have assisted those whom Sathya Sai Baba (and in some cases his teachers and others close to him) sexually and in other ways abused.
For detailed analysis of the absurd Sai Baba ‘numbers game’, see Priddy’s article ‘The Conflicting Reports and Propaganda About Sathya Sai Baba’s Followers and Visitor Numbers’
See also ‘Politics, Sex, Cults and Truth’ talk by Conny Larsson at the Brussels FECRIS Conference
(FECRIS, Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d‘Information sur le Sectarisme. European Federation of Centres Research and Information on Sectarianism)
Read also my refutation of the alleged ‘exposure’ of Robert Priddy at Robert Priddy Not Exposed
Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization
There is a Spanish version available:
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