The Quiet Weeding Out Of Sathya Sai Baba’s Embarrassing Statements

The official Sathya Sai ‘weeders’ have removed the presence on the internet of major Sathya Sai Baba claims. These are of the sort bound to attract prompt dismissal in the minds of many inquirers. An extremely wide cross-section of any public, except those of his own fold, would regard his claims as stemming from megalomania. And it is those inquirers – and the money and skill-sets that successful recruitment can bring – that Sathya Sai Baba’s organization desperately needs as donors if it is to continue to pay its astronomical bills. What to speak of subsidizing his promise to rule the world before he leaves it, circa 2022!   

It should be noted that the huge claims have not, in and of themselves, been withdrawn. But they are being kept as in-house as possible. Secular fronts like his ‘Education in Human Values’ and ‘Educare’ have been developed, which aim to penetrate schools, universities and other mainstream institutions. Sai Baba’s leaders around the world have been instructed to avoid mention of the claims when dealing with the public. But the tall claims are an absolute article of faith among his devotees, and what is preached in all the Sai centers. The propaganda target is the wider public, which is not going to take kindly to Sai Baba’s grandiose claims.  

Sathya Sai Baba’s weeders can weed out some of his embarrassing statements as much as they like, but they can’t weed out any of his palaces.

Palace-Abode of Sathya Sai Baba

 The scholarly articles of Brian Steel are notable in this area, as in others, in elucidating the official tampering with Sathya Sai history. See the Sai Organization’s attempts at ‘Downgrading Divinity’ by Brian Steel
See also a summary of his most enormous claims about himself and his missions here and The strong toning down is recorded and discussed in Brian Steels’ Downgrading Divinity
and also at http://bdsteel.tripod.com/More/doss2claims.htm  

The following is taken from the main body of the official web page – removed from http://www.sathyasai.org/discour/content.htm  (but still archived here)    

“Four important discourses by Sri Sathya Sai Baba:
Shiva Shakthi (6 July 1963). Swami heals himself from an 8-day stroke and announces his third incarnation as Prema Sai eight years after he leaves this body. The revelation (17 May 1968). The last part of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s discourse at the “World Conference of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organizations” in Bombay, 17 May 1968. Sai Baba states plainly and directly that he has come as an incarnation of God to restore righteousness (dharma). Forty-Third birthday discourse (23 November 1968). Swami speaks about His being the Avatar and proclaims his mission on earth: the establishment of righteousness. Who is Sai? (9 June 1974). Sai Baba talks about God, the Religion of Love, and His Avatar-hood. He explains why he materializes rings, etc., and gives them to people, and he explains what “Sai Baba” means. “   

Since the movement to expose Sathya Sai Baba and his worldwide cult began to flourish, circa the year 2000, the key leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization have had to make extraordinary attempts to arrest his organization’s decline. This has been an onerous task for them, not only in emotional but in vast financial terms. I have elsewhere noted the recruiting drives (although his propaganda managers certainly do not call them this) in plush venues in various countries. In the article ‘Secret Swami’ Cult Recruits At Prime Public Venues , I wrote:    

“What does the cult  need for its survival – given over a decade of unrelenting exposure? It needs to provide for the stupendous upkeep and maintenance of its costly and sumptuous buildings and various programs that glorify Sathya Sai Baba as God of Gods … (A few recruitment centers are):  Cooper’s Union, New York; Town Hall, Melbourne; Copley International Conference Center, San Diego; Super Dome, Sydney; La Mirada Theatre, Hilton Ballroom (both Los Angeles); Sheraton Hotel & Towers, Chicago; etc., …”   

But what the Sathya Sai weeders cannot remove are the patent evidences of vast opulence, the like of which India has seldom seen.   

     

         

See the articles:    

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

Sai Baba’s Birthday. Vast, Costly Pomp and Ceremony

 Sathya Sai Baba 84th Birthday Celebrations. Will 21st Century India Tolerate The Shame That Is Puttaparthi? 

Golden Throne of India’s Sathya Sai Baba. He says he will Rule the world soon

India’s ‘Emperor’ Sai Baba. By His Lavish Spending Ye Shall Know Him

Sathya Sai Baba Says He Dislikes Pomp

Sai Baba Says His Cult Is ‘The’ Divine Organization In History

The Sathya Sai movement is in tortuous self-contradiction. The more its own documents are analysed, the more this fact rams home.  Thus the now chronically ailing would-be Avatar of All Avatars says:

  “I do not like this pomp and show. I do not derive any joy out of it. Pomp, such as this, has become a fashion now, even among ascetics and monks who ought to know better. They profess poverty and simplicity and yet, they allow or encourage their disciples to waste much energy and money on pomp and pageantry which serve only to develop the egotism of themselves and their followers. The emphasis on show makes a thing hollow of all meaning.” (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol 3, p. 228) 

 

Sathya Sai Baba approves statue to himself

  “I do not like your going about collecting funds or raising donations”. (SSS Vol 6, p. 325)

Dazzling Opulence In Poor India. Sathya Sai Speaks

  “I do not need grand decorations, huge pandals, arches, flags and such paraphernalia … Even a chair is superfluous! …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sathya Sai Baba Has Many Thrones

 

Spend sparing to the minimum needs; do not involve yourselves in expensive luxury. I would like you to spend any extra money that you have for the feeding of the poor or for any similar beneficial object.” (SSS Vol 7, p. 100)

 

 

Sathya Sai Baba: Is this a chair or a Throne?

 “I do not need any publicity”. (SSS Vol 7, p. 140)

 “Do not imagine that your task is to propagate Baba and speak of Baba and his message”. (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol 9, p. 191) 

 ………………………………………….

 

 Further Resources  

 Sathya Sai Baba: ‘Considerable Concern’ In Wider Hindu Community   

 Sathya Sai Organization: World Communities Need To Treat This Sect Cautiously   

Will World Accept Sathya Sai Baba? He Says Yes. Very Soon    

Has ‘World Saviour’ Missed His Plane?   

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

Sai Baba Exchequer Worth Billions. Many Countries Donate

Self-documented Folly of India’s Would-be God

The Sathya Sai Organisation’s Deception and Propaganda Exposed.  Article by Robert Priddy (former leader of SS Org., Sweden) and Barry Pittard (former lecturer at Sathya Sai College, Whitefield).  Part One Two Three Four  

Quote:   

 “The foes of the ‘open society’ (Sir Karl Popper’s term) are those who use its very openness to achieve their closed and devious ends. Sai Baba and his highly authoritarian and cultist organisation have such ends, which critics have tried to make known. Its foremost leaders silence all those who question it- and never face substantive criticisms. For the first time – after six years of pained and guilty silence – since hundreds of long-term devotees left it in disgust – the Sathya Sai Organisation has found it necessary to try to defuse the debate about Sathya Sai Baba’s alleged crimes, deceits and fraudulence. Dr. Venkataraman’s tendentious cover-up article expresses untruths which have long circulated within the cult, giving an opportunity to confront him with facts and truth”  

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 Some Video Resources    

The Secret Swami (BBC Television): 

(154 MB, Broadband)   

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

http://home.hetnet.nl/~seduced/seduced.wmv
(21 MB, Modem)   

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

BBC and Other Film Footage Shows India’s Top Guru Sathya Sai Baba Faking Miracles

BBC Footage Exposes Fake Sathya Sai Baba Miracle « Call For Media and Government Investigation

‘The Secret Swami’ showcased with selected transcripts and brief
video clips   

The Public Petition   

Excerpt From Public Petition (and comments)  

(Note: You may prefer to proceed straight to the Petition): Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization   

There is a Spanish version available:   

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

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Sathya Sai Baba’s Tips To Keep Ageing Away

Who in the West, and well beyond, has not heard Bob Dylan’s 1974 song ‘Forever Young’?

After 60 His Body Would Never Age – But …!

Some of the Sathya Sai Baba’s core, oft-proclaimed virtues are named in the Bob Dylan song, but quite apart from grave difficulties in living up to these, Sai Baba has also failed in his prophecy of looking – after his 60th birthday – forever young.  A few lines of the Dylan song run:

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

But, as so commonly, Sai Baba, in word and action falsifies what he superabundantly preaches.

“Desire to which you are too fondly attached breeds anger and its nefarious brood. Discard it and you can have perpetual youth! The Aanandha that the Aathman can manifest will keep age and ageing away!” Discourse of Sathya Sai Baba, Prashanthi Nilayam, 22 Feb 1971. Published by Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications Trust.

“The attributes of the Avatars are beyond human comprehension…. Rama and Krishna were ever youthful. Have you ever seen a picture of Rama or Krishna with grey hair?….. Usually old people have wrinkles on their faces … I do not have any signs of old age. (loud applause). There is not a single wrinkle on My face”. Sanathana Sarathi, October, 2002.

This was what he wanted people to believe:-

But …!

On his 60th birthday, he promised to look like this, forever young, as it were:

Now he looks like this:

Sathya Sai Baba said would not age. But …!

How many failed prophecies of his do Sai Baba’s millions of devotees have to hear before they start to think critically? That so many of them are scientists, judges, engineers, teachers, politicians, diplomats and so on is cause for real concern. If India does not act to curb superstition in its elites, will it not become the enduring laughing-stock of the world, especially as it, along with China, attains superpower status?

What Sai Baba devotee did not see the early signs of his physical demise? Like the balding at the back of his head, the thinning and greying of his hair? In early 1998, along with horrified and gasping thousands, I saw him fall headlong as he was about to mount the small step leading to the verandah near the entrance to his Puttaparthi interview room. Faith, like the experience of ‘being in love’, is blind.

Although they do not allude to it, Sai Baba’s officials can no longer conceal his declining mental health nor his increasing physical decrepitude. They do not broadcast – and literally in the case of Dr G. Venkataraman’s international propaganda transmissions over Radio Sai Global Harmony – that he has said that his body will not age after he is 60 years. But his official organisation’s videos become increasingly revealing – see http://www.saicast.org/festivals.htm and click on “Christmas Day 2005 morning”. Here, it takes no doctor to note the “stone-face,” (Is it e.g., Parkinson’s disease?), the indecisive bodily movements and the general sense of dithering mental confusion.

One can note, for example, his poor efforts at using the knife to cut his birthday cake. Reports are increasing of his doing strange things, sometimes in full view of the public, like walking in circles muttering away to himself. Here is an Indo-Norwegian devotee report Oct 17, 2006,

“Swami has problems in moving, has had five fractures in 2003, 2004 and 2005, and only one was cured. According to Swami’s close friends, he has become very emotional recently, often sitting in tears …”

Examination of recent photos on an official website show the way in which select students surround him at closer quarters than hitherto and with great vigilance, their faces and body language clearly anxious lest he topple over. Here, too, one observes the immobile face.

On stage before February 2004’s Mahasivaratri crowd, the BBC cameras (in footage that would later become part of ‘The Secret Swami’, which has been seen in over 120 countries around the world) show Sai Baba looking increasingly sick. He produces the lingam, and the materialization trick demonstrated by Professor Narendra Nayak is easy for the viewer to spot, the lingam being concealed in Sai Baba’s handkerchief. In the ensueing documentary, the BBC journalist 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. To the audience, a shaken Sai Baba makes a preposterous 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”:
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex-baba/engels/movies.html

One can go a deal further back to find other such inane statements. He has made the most garbled, contradictory and unscientific statements about magnetism.

In his public discourse March 13, 2002, he told thousands that his divine magnetism holds him to the ground, impeding his feet and hand movements:

“So when I put My foot down, the whole foot stuck to the ground. It is a little hard to lift a foot that is stuck. Wherever I walk, it sticks there. Whatever is held, it sticks to My (sic) hand. This magnet is not in everyone like this. This magnet is so powerful only in Divinity.”

A native Telegu speaker has kindly translated for me a revealing section of a report. He writes:

‘The translation of the relevant part from the second-last paragraph in the news item from Eenadu, Monday 22, January 22, is as follows:

“Lacking in Clarity: There was a lack of clarity in Satya Sai’s speech because of his old age. The interpreter struggled much to translate his speech into English. Satya Sai was seated in a special wheel chair which was brought very close to the car, so he could very slowly get into it. At the time of the speech, he stood up with great difficulty with the help of his assistants”.

Note: Eenadu is the largest circulated Telugu newspaper in Andhra Pradesh and boasts a daily readership of over 10 million.

 For Online Viewing and/or Dowloading

The Secret Swami (BBC Television) Broadband 154 MB

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

Sleight Of Hand. The Sleightness of Sathya Sai Baba (Exposing film clips)

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

Censored Indian National Television Film of Sai Baba Cheating

Sai Baba Cultists’ Gull Wider Communities

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

Sathya Sai Baba Chief, Dr Goldstein, Explodes. “I am the consummate professional” (See Film Clips)

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Sai Baba). Revealing Footage

General

Excerpt From Public Petition

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

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

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Reply To Claimer of Spiritual Enlightenment (Yaani Drucker Correspondence) Part 6

This piece continues from:  Reply To Claimer of Spiritual Enlightenment (Yaani Drucker Correspondence) Part 5 – my response to Yaani Drucker, who wrote to me in the first instance. Many Sathya Sai devotees worldwide have hero-worshipped her and her husband Professor Al Drucker (formerly with NASA). To some devotees, it has not mattered that Sai Baba has treated them both very harshly – for they regard such harsh treatment as the guru’s ineffable tough love. I have not noted that she anywhere accepts responsibility for (the very influential) talks she and Al Drucker gave at Kingdom Hall in the UK in April 2000.  She seems incapable of seeing how easy it is for impressionable individuals to see her notion of how to deal with rape (or other grave trauma) as the way they should go. See:  Reply To Claimer of Spiritual Enlightenment (Yaani Drucker Correspondence) Part 4 . Or that in her writings on her website it is important that she makes clear that psychologists have a genuine role to play in the case of trauma, just as medics are important to consult in physical injury. Instead, she now writes saying:

“You told your audience that I have a hatred for psychology”.

The interested reader will see that this is an entire distortion, for I have said nothing of the sort. The context is this, as I have, in various ways said:   “… it is important for survivors of severe trauma to seek qualified professional counseling, and also – bearing in mind that she is a public  figure – she has the responsibility correctly to model this kind of service to those who read her writings”.

She further states:

You lose nothing, except ego, which was never real. which psychology does not get, therefore psychology is not absolute truth. You lean heavily on psychology, as though it has answers. It does not. Sure it can help people overcome trauma, but so can truth. That is all I have ever suggested.

I have said not a word about psychology being absolute truth. I have talked about what psychology (across many schools, a few of which I have named), does indeed “get”. Which is precisely what Ms Drucker does not “get”.

Again, as the rational reader can see at every turning, I have not said that psychology has all the answers. I have said, for example, “There is much impressive evidence that the body, mind and personality are one, not a dualism (ref. science of consciousness, neurology and philosophical neurology). Therefore, I want to say to you that notions which deny the interaction that goes on in the psycho-soma are very flawed, inept. And, yes, present their real dangers to human health and well-being. I do not resile from the notions of rationalization (in context) and danger”. See: HERE.

Can it be that she has lost track of the position she stated in earlier correspondence?  See: Reply To Claimer of Spiritual Enlightenment (Yaani Drucker Correspondence) Part 3 . 

“Is it necessary for a rape victim to receive professional counseling? This assumes that psychology/ psychotherapy has answers that ABSOLUTE TRUTH does not”.

She also asserted that I have said that I am a psychologist. Yet again, I have said nothing of the sort. Ms Drucker does not seem to have much of her mind concentrated on simple matters within the mundane world. Himalayas of cloudiness seem more to her liking.

Note: Ms Drucker wrote that:

“I am happy to discuss and debate issues. I have responded to every issue you raised”.

But has she been as good as her word? The reader can examine her own words throughout this series. In subsequent emails from her that I have not cited, she constantly claims to be answering questions but resorts to large abstractions, and avoids the issues that I have raised. These are unrooted in reference to the practical world of those men and women who inhabit the normal world. That she tells us she enlighted and that she tell us that she has had independent confirmations should be enough for us. She says that the latter have come to in various ways and a major one came when she traveled to the Himalayas. Today (3 March, 2010), she wrote:

Earlier articles on this topic at Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba are: Dangerous to Rationalize Rape. A major Sathya Sai Baba Follower’s Example and Barry Pittard Replies To Sathya Sai Center Rape Survivor’s Note To Him

“You pointed out that so many claim on their web to be enlightened, so what makes me authentic – a fair question. I would say that what makes me authentic is that I had an experience in darshan, as described to you previously. This experience was more than an epiphany or light experience, it was a moment wherein all the pieces of the puzzle to the human condition came together perfectly and I understood in the very essence of my being and the search was over. I knew that I knew. This does not mean I knew that I was enlightened. I simply had no way to measure that. However a year later I was directed to the Himalayas where enlightenment was confirmed.

 

 

What part did Sai Baba play in the confirmation of my enlightenment? NONE directly. Of course I see that He did direct me, but He used instruments who were not Sai devotees, so it was not Baba directly. Because Baba is omnipresent, He directed me both toward my enlightenment and its confirmation. Because you have no faith in Baba, it would make no sense for me to suggest that because Baba confirmed is evidence of my legitimacy. He did not confirm directly. Baba works in subtle ways, ways that communicate perfectly, to those who choose to hear… and see…

 

Bottom line Barry is that you have not the power to stop God’s work through this instrument”.

 

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Al and I were black listed after we married. That means we have had nothing to do with the Sai organization since 1990 or rather the Sai organization has had nothing to do with us.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sai Baba knows He is not his body. Once a young man from Sweden requested Baba’s permission to give Baba a hug. When Baba obliged and the young man wrapped his arms around Baba’s torso, his arms wrapped around an empty robe  – there was no body to make contact with. I met this man personally.

These are a few of many examples where Baba demonstrates that He clearly manipulates the laws of physical reality, because He can.  If He has these powers, He is certainly not driven by personality disorders, but rather does all that he does for the highest good for all, in the most efficacious manner possible. No pedophile that I have ever heard or read about has had the powers that Sai Baba has.

I have heard rumors, but I have had no direct contact with any of the young men to claim abuse at Baba’s hand, nor have I personally met any of their family members. You want me to put Sai Baba on the level of a common criminal – it is a joke surely???

Do you think that years and thousands of hours (and ‘thousands’ is no exaggeration) of former devotees’ time and efforts are to be reduced to some poor joke? We put heart and soul and care and love – and vast amounts of time and labor into these matters. Your suggestion of joking is not a worthy one. Let me quote to you a snippet from a note. It comes from old friends of yours.  It may act as an aide-memoire for Al and you:

“(Al) told us of his disillusionment with Baba – that time after time, parents of young boys would come to his room in great distress after interviews, seeking an explanation… Al said this is why he left the ashram and got married. (It was) with the great shock (heard) this from Al and also his wife Yaani (and later from other close contacts , people we trusted , who had no motivation for telling lies about Baba” …

It is these sort of situations that I think are good to clear up, once and for all. Indulal Shah, John Hislop, Michael Goldstein, William Harvey, G.Venkataraman, Samuel Sandweiss,  Phyllis Kristal, J. Jagadeesan, Thorbjorn Meyer, Ashok Bhagani, T.Sri Ramanathan, Sara Pavan, and many others have profoundly failed in their duty of care for the devotees who have come to them with terrible accounts. I speak of devotees, now former devotees, whose goodness and integrity were NOT assailed in all their long years around Sathya Sai Baba and in his organization. But – virtually overnight! – they were declared demons. Jaani, please tell me straight – is that how Sathya Sai Baba, who forever says we should speak sweetly, and his core leaders and many rank-and-file devotees should be speaking?

That the leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization have failed in this regard will, without any reasonable doubt, remain as a very dark blot in the pages of history. And, though much has been withheld from them by core Sai Baba servitors, the rank-and-file devotees have their own kind of culpability – for they have closed their hearts and blinded their eyes to the plight of those whom they have long known to be good.

Jaani, can you understand why there is a difficulty about perception? Though you say above “we have had nothing to do with the Sai organization since 1990 or rather the Sai organization has had nothing to do with us” and your current status in regard to association with the Sathya Sai Organization, there are many who saw Al Drucker subscribe to the Paduka ceremony in Puttaparthi 1998, and saw him around the ashram. Yes – we have those who saw and spoke with him. You will surely understand, therefore, why many have continued to see a link between Al and you and Sathya Sai Baba. In the eyes of some, Al was the most prominent VIP there over a number of years. Has he renounced his faith in Sathya Sai baba then?

There are those who went to Al (and indeed to other very prominent leaders around Sathya Sai Baba) and have deeply grieved, first, over their afflicted children and second, that they feel profoundly let down by those to whom they thought they could bring their harrowing accounts. The Drucker name figures among these. It is very sad – although you may be above it all. Given that you say that you remember only “rumours”, I am wondering whether the accounts of the individuals concerned would have proved too difficult for you to embrace, and that, if the recollections of various informants are correct, you have filtered the reported presentations from your awareness. (Yet again, need I really add, that I am not saying that you are deliberately telling untruths). When I learnt of Al’s driving absorption in the advaitin endeavour, I wondered: why does he keep coming back to the form, when he is supposed to be practising to attain the formless apprehension of the divine?

Can you understand how your website appears to promote a ‘solution’ to the rape question, quite strongly – e.g., “Have truth, will travel”?

A number of people, including very qualified mental health professionals with long experience in the sexual abuse area, observed how your website can be too readily interpreted as campaigning for recognition that rape and other terrible occurrences have an answer – if only people will follow what you hold forth to be Truth. It may be that you cannot accept that you have – and I would surely think without meaning to – promoted a very misleading ‘theory’ based entirely on belief. And this belief is one from which you may not be able to free yourself, for, if you were to free yourself without recourse to a psychological in-denial situation, you would have to face the trauma. These conditions hide. Sooner or later, however, the suppressed stuffs will not be denied – and manifest in illnesses and social disruptions of one kind or another. Many former devotees have had courageously, and with great self-honesty, to face their years of psychological denial. You now explain that it was not to justify rape – but it was to say that rape is not really a problem if one will just recognize that one is not the body. This view goes against the fact that we all HAVE a body and serious violations of it have an extremely forceful effect on the psyche.

I wish you the very best in all your endeavors. May all humanity find peace. May all humanity find truth.

Yaani Drucker

I thank you, Yaani. It would seem that you are one of the few who do not shun and revile. Especially given the craven ducking for cover of so many Sathya Sai Baba devotees, I honor you for your readiness to exchange, and wish you and Al love and best wishes, whatever may be the divide,

Barry Pittard

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Select Further Reading

Dangerous to Rationalize Rape. A major Sathya Sai Baba Follower’s Example

Barry Pittard Replies To Sathya Sai Center Rape Survivor’s Note To Him

Will the Real Professor Alvin Drucker Be Upstanding?

Petition

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

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

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Typically, as one can see below, too, Yaani is unable to provide any alternative explanations for her inner processes. How can others possible examine her processes?  She does not even examine them herself. She says she “knows”.

Nor has she shown any attempt to get from her own husband, Professor Al Drucker, his account of why he ignored those parents and others who came to him in great distress, and who felt deeply let down by one whom they came to in trust and in grief. While it is true that she is a different person, would she not be in an excellent position to ascertain his response to events so important as these?

Nor has she examined – much less critically examined – the reasons in writings by Robert Priddy, Brian Steel,  Timothy Conway Ph.D.,  Kevin R.D.Shepherd (an independent author on religion and philosophy), Barry Pittard and others who have advanced reasons why Sathya Sai Baba presides over what is a formidable cult, which is highly authoritarian, unaccountable and untransparent.

Nor – even given that for some years she and Al Drucker have had a but tenuous link with the Sathya Sai Baba Organization – does she show any responsibility for her frequent extolling references to Sathya Sai Baba, despite worldwide allegations against him and some of his servitors, which are of a grave nature indeed.

Thus I find Yaani Drucker’s of the terms “discuss” and “debate” all but vacuous.

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Barry Pittard’s Articles On Sathya Sai Baba and His Global Movement (1)

For more recent readers in particular, this series points to some of my articles at Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba – https://barrypittard.wordpress.com – on Sathya Sai Baba and his global sect, extending to January 2007.  ——————————————————————————
Sai Baba To Be Seen In Moon? But Where Was Moon? 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. BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ and British Press Praise Robert Priddy has blogged ‘Undisputable facts about Sathya Sai Baba by BBC’. This is a summary of a number of major factors that came out of BBC’s television documentary ‘The Secret Swami’ (2004) exposing Sathya Sai Baba and his worldwide cult. The documentary was seen by millions in around 200 countries. He cites a number of the many major British press reviews that highly praised this documentary, such as Andrew Billen, of The Times (of London), who wrote:-   One of the richest supporters of the Indian guru Sai Baba – no less than Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe – told his interviewer that he was perfectly willing to believe that Baba was simultaneously a) quite likely a paedophile and b) God incarnate
Right Hand. Sleight Hand. Watch Sai Baba Cheat With Sacred Ash (Film clip) In a video clip, watch Sai Baba’s right hand. It goes beneath the pile of letters (taken from the seated crowds) he holds in his left hand.  Note the swift movement as, with his right hand, he extricates the solidified material from his left. This material has yet to be crushed by the fingers of his right hand.
Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘Minister of Propaganda’ – Dr G. VenkataramanDr Venkataraman is tantamount to being Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘minister of propaganda’. Practically all heads of the Sathya Sai Organization are forbidden to comment on critical matters, but G. Venkataraman is an exception. The few spokesmen (and they are almost always men!) say very little, as one would expect of a virtually Soviet-style, cultic organization, with a leader and a deputy chairman who can both wax lyrical about how the former dictator of Uganda Idi Amin wept with tears of devotion over Sai Baba.See, too, Robert Priddy’s and Barry Pittard’s jointly authored, four-part article ‘The Sathya Sai Organization’s Deception and Propaganda Exposed’ The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ – A Revision The Secret Swami confines itself to four areas: Accusations down many years of Sai Baba’s sexual molestation of young males. His implication in police executions in his private quarters on June 6, 1993. Cover-up by him and the leadership of his worldwide organization, and as well as by successive Indian governments, of major criminal allegations. His faking of miracles. BBC producer Eamon Hardy and his team’s view is that serious questions are raised about India’s political maturity. Idi Amin Video Clip. Amin Claimed Direct Line To God Sathya Sai Baba has reminisced on how Idi Amin wept tears of devotion for him, when he visited Uganda in 1968. Actually, Sai Baba goes a step further than Amin, proclaiming that he is the Divine Incarnation surpassing all Incarnations. His devotee propagandists are now fervently downplaying his actual claims by telling the wider public that Sai Baba simply says that “all are God”.  See also, Sathya Sai Baba’s Deputy Head, Dr G. Venkataraman, Speaks of “Mr Idi Amin”  and  The Last King of Scotland – GOD’S ORDERS and Sai Baba  BBC Cameras Catch Sai Baba Cheating With Gold Sivalingam. (Film Clip) ‘Shiva Lingam’ so-called miracle. Filmed by the BBC for its documentary ‘The Secret Swami’ at Maha Shivarathri Festival at Puttaparthi (2004).  The carelessness with which Sathya Sai Baba botched his trick may be explicable by reference to other serious mistakes, in the context of his declining mental and physical health. See: Sai Baba To Be Seen In Moon? But Where Was Moon?  See also, Sai Baba No Shiva. Gold From His Gut Is Regurgitator’s Trick Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia 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″.
Does Obama Carry Sathya Sai Baba Photo In Wallet?From the end of last year, the saibababaofindia conglomerate and followers elsewhere have hailed this sort of situation. Anita Sharma, an organizer on a host committe, Pittsburgh USA, for Barack Obama in November 2008 managed to hand a photo of Sathya Sai Baba to Obama. ———————————————————————————————– Barry Pittard’s comments in regard to the Public Petition) -: Petition For Official Investigation Into Sathya Sai Baba Cult                            ———————————————————————— Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization There is a Spanish version available: PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA ”INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL

Links Critical of Sathya Sai Baba: India’s Most Famous Living Guru

• http://www.exbaba.com/ Extensive website – testimonies, articles, videos

• Ongoing Investigations into Claims and Realities Surrounding Sathya Sai Baba – a thoroughly documented scholarly website by Brian Steel.

• Sai Baba Exposé Hidden facts about Sai Baba and his Worldwide Cult.

• Sai Baba Exposed Indian religionist examines the guru’s claims, also from a Hindu scriptural viewpoint.

• Call for Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba

• Sathya Sai Baba (and Wikipedia) – website of author Kevin R.D. Shepherd

• Sathya Sai Baba – The Truth

• Anti-Sai Baba Deceptions? M. Alan Kazlev, investigates allegations against the exposé

• Italian ExBaba exposé website http://www.exbaba.it

• Scandinavian Sai Baba exposé websites Swedish) Danish, & Norwegian (Norsk)

• Professor Dr. Dale Beyerstein’s study of Sathya Sai Baba’s claims and ‘miracles’

• Belief and Sathya Sai Baba: Avatar or Imposter-Trickster? Useful page with links to relevant websites (but some no longer extant)

• The Rick Ross Sathya Sai Baba pages

• Breaking the spell of religious/’spiritual’ superstitions

• Website informing about sects, including the Sathya Sai Baba cult

• FRENCH WEB LOG Marc-André

• Sai Baba Exposed | International Humanist and Ethical Union

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“The Secret Swami” – BBC Film Footage and Transcript

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Introductory articles by the scholar Brian Steel:-

Sathya Sai Baba: The Guru Who Claimed to be God on Earth

Basic Myths and Pertinent Questions about the Guru Sathya Sai Baba (Updated)

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Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard On Dr G. Venkataraman – Sathya Sai Baba Global Propagandist

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On the BBC exposure, at this blogsite – ‘Call For Media and Government Investigation’ – https://barrypittard.wordpress.com – see the articles:

• The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ – A Revision
• BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ and British Press Praise Sathya Sai
• Probed On Male Sex Abuse, Sai Baba Evicts BBC TV Team
• Sathya Sai Baba Chief, Dr Goldstein, Explodes. “I am the consummate professional” (See Film Clips)
• Cameras Catch Sai Baba Cheating With Gold Sivalingam. (Film Clip)
• Right Hand. Sleight Hand. Watch Sai Baba Cheat With Sacred Ash (Film clip)
• BBC Footage Exposes Fake Sathya Sai Baba Miracle
• Sai Baba No Shiva. Gold From His Gut Is Regurgitator’s Trick
• BBC and Other Film Footage Shows India’s Top Guru Sathya Sai Baba Faking Miracles
• Sleight Of Hand. The Sleightness of Sathya Sai Baba (Exposing film clips)

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General

Barry Pittard’s comments in regard to the Public Petition) -:

Petition For Official Investigation Into Sathya Sai Baba Cult

Posted by Barry Pittard on July 10, 2009

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

Dr G. Venkataraman, Sathya Sai Baba’s Nuclear Boon Companion

Robert Priddy is the former long-time head of the Sathya Sai Organization in Norway and a retired philosopher in the Social Sciences, University of Oslo. He has written insightfully on the extraordinary, often procrustean efforts of Dr G. Venkataraman to rationalise his beliefs in Sathya Sai Baba. The latter is Sathya Sai Baba’s head of Sai Global Radio and deputy chairman of the international Sathya Sai Organization  Though not a physical (actually, nuclear) scientist like Venkataraman, he has an abiding interest in the sciences, and how a certain variety of scientists, in a great minority but with unfortunate influence far beyond their importance, falsely use science to buttress up their religious claims.

The following information may be of particular value for journalistic and scholarly investigators, and also those institutions and agencies which the Sathya Sai cult in many countries attempts to influence – but without portraying their real agendas. For those who may like to hunt and peck among Priddy’s writings on G. Venkataraman, I have excerpted from articles that appear at: http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com

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Robert C. Priddy On Dr G. Venkataraman, Sathya Sai Baba’s Chief Propagandist

Dr. G. Venkataraman, propagandist in the limelight

Dr. G. Venkataraman, a physicist, formerly employed in India’s nuclear bomb programme community, became a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba when he suffered major depression after the loss of his son. Being one of the few somewhat notable scientists in the following, he was duly made Vice-Chancellor of Sai Baba’s university at Puttaparthi. He is now on the central body ruling Sai matter, the Prashanthi Council, and is 2nd-in-command of the International Sathya Sai Organization. As head of Sai Global Harmony which broadcasts Sai propaganda en masse via WorldSpace International Satellite Radio Service, 24/7 to a number of countries. The agenda of this multi-billion dollar mini-empire involves penetration of the world and infiltrations of all official bodies, governments, UN organizations and so on. The entire set-up has virtually all of the distinguishing features of a clandestinely-managed religious cult. They exploit the liberal world’s tolerance under freedom of religion legislation, though they operate in a completely top-down, no feedback, autocratic and censoring cult.

Slander by Dr. G. Venkataraman & Joe Moreno

Among the many intentional untruths that has been spun and spread about Barry Pittard and myself is the claim that we somehow are behind the entire exposè of Sathya Sai Baba ….

Dr. G. Venkarataman – head of Radio Sai and member of Sai Baba’s ruling Prashanthi Council – has lied about me on his misnamed “heart-to-heart” website, where he wrote “Robert Priddy who was one of those who started much of this slander claimed that two Vice Chancellors of Universities in Australia supported the allegations.” This is so far the only claim published against my name by any central Sai official. The distinct activity in the exposure of Sathya Sai Baba’s sexual abuses began already from about April 1999  with many testimonies and documented facts about Sathya Sai Baba’s alleged sex abuses, fraud, deceptions – I did not start any of that. The two Vice-Chancellors were contacted before my time by Glen Meloy and Barry Pittard, I have only referred their contacts with them. Since then I have spoken out on many issues known to me (not least through Sai Baba’s close servitor, V.K. Narasimhan – also my close friend and confidante).

Donations to Sathya Sai Central Trust misused by/for directors etc.

The only top Sai official who has ever even mentioned the many allegations against Sai Baba – and then only after a period of six years or more had gone by – is Dr. G. Venkataraman. He has shown his true colours, however, in having written a document full of cover-up and false statements aiming to refute the countless allegations against Sai Baba, which has been refuted in its entirety point by point with full documentation (see here).

Sathya Sai Baba, dictator Idi Amin and G. Venkataraman

In a discourse held on Christmas Day (2007) – of all days – Sathya Sai Baba chose to talk most affirmatively about the spirituality of his meetings with the despot and Dictator Idi Amin. His servile propagandist G. Venkataraman – who ought to have known better – blithely overlooked Idi Amin was a known and self-confessed murderer who had at least five wives and 23 children (plus hundreds of ‘lady friends’), who fed enemies to crocodiles, reportedly kept some of his victims in his deep freezer, and – according to persistent reports of his staff who escaped – even tasted human flesh!

Apologist for Sathya Sai Baba

The only top Sai official who has ever even mentioned the many allegations against Sai Baba – and then only after a period of six years or more had gone by – is Dr. G. Venkataraman. He has shown his true colours, however, in having written a document full of cover-up and false statements aiming to refute the countless allegations against Sai Baba, which has been refuted in its entirety point by point with full documentation (see here).

G. VENKATARAMAN – CHIEF PROPAGANDIST FOR ‘GOD’

To accept Sathya Sai Baba as a universal teacher also means accepting ‘Creationism’

(see http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/kentucky-creationism-plus/), That is a totally discredited quasi-theory, banned from education by a 1987 Supreme Court ruling.Venkataraman’s attempt to misuse science to support his belief in God does not befit anyone who truly bends to the scientific spirit.

Dr.G. Venkataraman – physicist ‘explains’ Sathya Sai Baba.

Dr. G. Venkataraman rambles on denigrating scientists and science and promoting Sathya Sai Baba – as God descended to earth – and his most spurious speculations (’teachings’) about an invisible beyond

G. Venkataraman’s out-dated and fallacious ideas – part two. Propagating Sai Baba’s anti-scientific views, Dr. G. Venkataraman – former physicist – attacks science and scientists in general for the usual sins that religionists hold them to be committing. These I refute at some length, as called for.

Atomic physics Puttaparthi style. Deeply intriguing

Some few quotations from many similarly anti-empirical statements and false ideas by Sathya Sai Baba show how he tried to impose on a simplified picture of the atom and the universe a meaning and purpose which is pure speculation… even though it has ancient roots in obscure and often confused scriptures written when humankind was in a very primitive state of speculation and ignorance of the workings of the physical universe. Interestingly, his chief propagandist is a relatively informed physicist (relative to Sathya Sai baba) yet this poor superstition-beleaguered Dr. G. Venkataraman – in his blind faith – naturally fails to challenge any of the Tommy rot his Lord and Master preaches.

Venkataraman – the most gullible physicist alive?

Dr. G. Venkataraman reviews at length developments in our scientific knowledge of the cosmos… though nothing scientific that is not found in hundreds of books and other media. Venkataraman was a physicist working for the Indian government’s nuclear programme. However, he has copied his information on astronomy from other scientific authorities. Yet he does not once attribute anything he reports to its originators or to other scientific sources! He has even plagiarised text from the Dennis Dutton website, without any mention.

Outright plagiarism: Both text and an image ‘lifted’ from denisdutton.com/einstein_eddington.htm by Prof. G. Venkataraman, who also took the following images, all  without acknowledgement:- ‘The Big Bang’ image from science.hq.nasa.gov/universe/science/bang.html ‘An Expanding Universe’ from http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Phys-SNAP-dark-energy.html ‘The Periodic Table of Elements’ is from http://www.scientificpsychic.com/health/chemistry.html (on which he has even imposed the logo of Radio.Sai! ‘The Chandra Telescope’ images come from starbulletin.com/2000/01/14/news/story1.html and from http://whyfiles.org/223orbital_astro/images/chandradiag.jpg The images of white dwarfs are falsely sub-titled “www.radio sai” but they are taken  from http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/science/hubble_m4wd.jpg He uses copyright images from the Anglo-Australian Observatory at http://astro.ic.ac.uk/Research/Stellar/images/aat050.jpg

This failure to cite any references in articles on science or academic subjects is regarded as dilettantism by scientists and scholars. The innocent and uneducated may well believe that Venkataraman  discovered such things himself, when he is simply promoting himself as if he were an authoritative researcher. This marks him out as bogus. In addition to this absence of basic scholarly standards, he has a pretentious main agenda. He presumes to inform us of 1) The Cosmic origin of man.  2) Man’s Cosmic connections. 3) Man’s Cosmic responsibilities, and 4) Man’s Cosmic Destiny, no less!
These (contra-feminist) titles alone reveal that he is setting himself up as some kind of ‘spiritual mouthpiece’, misusing science as a mere tool in an attempt to inculcate religious belief – preferably  faith in his Lord and Master, Sathya Sai Baba, as the Incarnation of God Almighty in this Age.

Venkataraman, a victim of emotional blackmail?

One of the many former devotees with whom I correspond privately has commented to me that “Dr.G. Venkataraman lost all his scruples.” Also that he “had a harrowing experience when he lost his son and that is the main reason he is with Sathya Sai Baba who kind of gave him emotional support during the hard times.” Sathya Sai Baba is known to inquire of his servitors about persons coming to him, and so he is able to pretend he knows their problems and gives assurances he will take care of them etc.. But he does not even do this when he gets a massive payback in support, funds or other services… as was seen in the case of the long sufferings and inability to cure some of his staunchest supporters.

Money, Morality and Sai-worshipper Dr. Venkataraman

Venkataraman has lost all his scruples about sexual abuse allegations and murder cover-up by Sai Baba, he is comfortable with all of it! (See here!) So morality is certainly ignored in his scheme of things, at any rate. He also tells what everyone knows anyhow, how scientists made the atomic bomb and states, “Overnight, scientists lost their innocence and became putty in the hands of those who had money to throw.” Well, G. Venkataraman is one of those very persons, for – like his more accomplished former colleague Dr. Bhagavantam – he worked for the Indian government on developing atomics which backed up India’s nuclear capacity! Now he is preaching against this… and he is one of the guilty!

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Other Articles referring to Dr G. Venkataraman

Barry Pittard, at ‘Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba‘

Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘Minister of Propaganda’ – Dr G. Venkataraman

Indian Nuclear Scientist Now Sathya Sai Baba’s Global Radio Chief

The Case of UNESCO’s Missing Media Advisory

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General

Excerpt From Public Petition (With Barry Pittard’s comments)

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

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

“The Secret Swami” – BBC Film Footage and Transcript

For media and scholarly researchers and others interested in concentrated examination of the issues presented in the BBC’s one-hour documentary, here are some key resources. Those networks beyond the one which led the exposure of Sathya Sai Baba and his core officials can, for convenience share these links with your own channels in local and national media, and mainstream institutions in your communities with which the Sathya Sai Organization attempts to link itself.

From Exbaba.com

SATHYA SAI BABA ‘THE SECRET SWAMI’

PHOTO & VIDEO GALLERY

SATHYA SAI BABA IN EXCEPTIONAL FILM SHOTS. FILMED IN 2004 AT SHIVARATHRI

VIEW THESE EXCERPT TRANSCRIPTS AND VIDEO CLIPS FROM

THE BBC TV DOCUMENTARY ‘THE SECRET SWAMI‘:

THIS DOCUMENTARY CAN BE BOUGHT DIRECT FROM THE BBC MARKETING DEPT.
AS A VHS VIDEO. FOR A FRANCHISE TO SHOW IT ON INDEPENDENT TV STATIONS,  CONTACT THE BBC.

1) SATHYA SAI BABA’S ‘PRODUCTION’ OF THE GOLDEN LINGAM

2) HIS COLLAPSE AFTER THE STRAIN & HIS EXPLANATION AFTERWARDS

3) DR. MICHAEL GOLDSTEIN DISCUSSES THE SEX ABUSE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SAI BABA

4) DR. MICHAEL GOLDSTEIN STATES THE SAI ORGANISATION’S FAITH ABOUT SAI BABA

5) ISAAC TIGRETT DISCUSSES THE SEX ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SAI BABA

6) INDIAN EX-MINISTER OF EDUCATION, M.M. JOSHI, ON THE SEX ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SAI BABA

7) INTERVIEW WITH THE EX-HOME SECRETARY OF ANDRHA PRADESH

8) VERY CLOSE DEVOTEES TESTIFY – SAI BABA’S SEX ABUSE AND DIRE THREATS ETC.

9) SOME CLOSE BEDFELLOWS OF SATHYA SAI BABA

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At this blogsite – Call For Media and Government Investigation – https://barrypittard.wordpress.com – see the articles:

• The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ – A Revision
• BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ and British Press Praise Sathya Sai
• Probed On Male Sex Abuse, Sai Baba Evicts BBC TV Team
• Sathya Sai Baba Chief, Dr Goldstein, Explodes. “I am the consummate professional” (See Film Clips)
• Cameras Catch Sai Baba Cheating With Gold Sivalingam. (Film Clip)
• Right Hand. Sleight Hand. Watch Sai Baba Cheat With Sacred Ash (Film clip)
• BBC Footage Exposes Fake Sathya Sai Baba Miracle
• Sai Baba No Shiva. Gold From His Gut Is Regurgitator’s Trick
• BBC and Other Film Footage Shows India’s Top Guru Sathya Sai Baba Faking Miracles
• Sleight Of Hand. The Sleightness of Sathya Sai Baba (Exposing film clips)

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A list of but a few of the Sathya Sai Baba critics who have been attacked in an attempt to prevent proper third party investigation of Sathya Sai Baba and core leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization:
Robert Priddy, Barry Pittard, Timothy Conway Ph.D (author and scholar), Brian Steel (author and scholar), Kevin R.D. Shepherd (author on religion and philosophy), Serguei Badaev, Al Rahm, Alaya Rahm (BBC testifier to sex abuse), Tal Brooke (author), Duncan Roads (journalist, editor of Nexus) Conny Larsson (Swedish actor subsequently active in criminal/drug rehabilitation), Mick Brown (UK journalist and author, Daily Telegraph), Ojvind Kyro/Øjvind Kyrø (Danish journalist and television producer with DR, Denmark’s national broadcaster), Vir Sangvi (Indian newspaper Editor and journalist), (the late) Marianne Warren Ph.D (academic and author), M. Alan Kazlev, Mary Garden (Australian author), David Bailey (former top Sai Baba favourite), Faye Bailey (David Bailey’s wife), (the late) Elena Hartgering (accredited abuse counsellor), Basava Premanand (famous sceptic honoured by the Indian Government), Alexandra Nagel (academic), John Purnell (Roman Catholic priest), Terry Gallagher former head of Sathya Sai Organization of Australia), Stephen Carthew (former spiritual convenor, Sathya Sai Organization, South Australia), Sanal Edamaruku (President – Indian Rationalist Association), Reinier van der Sandt, Hans de Kraker, Marc Andre Saint-Jean (author and publisher), Lisa Tice, Diana Scott, Dave Lyons, Gabriel Merrun, Sanjay Dadlani, Afshin Said Khorramshahgol, Ullrich Zimmermann, Jens Sethi, Dennis Hanisch, Keith Ord, Jesper Andén, Jed Geyerhahn, Sharon Purcell, Satch Purcell, Greg Gerson, Mark Roche, David Paul, Karen Tilley, Paul Throne, Marcus Martenson, Veronica Isacsson, David Juliano, Rosalia Malagelada de Neves and many more.

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General

Excerpt From Public Petition (With Barry Pittard’s comments)

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

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

“What about the miracles”? Response To One Drawn By Sathya Sai Baba

Sometimes, a clearly decent and civil email comes from those not in agreement with one’s stance. Offensive mails seem to be the lot of those who, no matter how civilly, speak out asking for proper investigation into the worldwide allegations against Sathya Sai Baba.  One is happy to respond to polite queries, and to save one’s precious energy by not responding to those who are rude. Interesting, by the way, is how the genuine-sounding emails typically – unlike quite a few of those which strike one as having an agenda to draw one into reaction – contain a genuine email ID.

Recently, a writer, who had witnessed inexplicable phenomena occurring at a Sai devotee venue, asked me:  what about the (Sathya Sai Baba-related) miracles that are happening around the world? I responded in terms close to the following. I shall now include some relevant links:

The question is fair. It is one that many who have left Sathya Sai Baba have pondered over. I have not seen any satisfactory explanation. Typically, there is a quality of manifestation that cannot be explained. In my view, these phenomena are far removed from phenomena of the Ouija Board type, what to mention many another variety studied by parapsychologists.

I think that neither devotee nor non-devotee explanations can do justice to phenomena about which, in the scientific, rational sense, we can say very little. There is that arresting statement in the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus’: “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent”.

Yes, the cry by some that there is trickery in many homes and other places where these phenomena occur is mistaken. There are too many householders etc., and the many who know them, of decades, of known integrity for this to be correct. I have had, over the years, my own experiences in such homes (in three of which, in markedly different places, I dwelt for some time).  However, from the point of view of those who have either suffered directly from or else carefully investigated Sathya Sai Baba’s abuses, there are two markedly different situations:  one of them delightful – the manifestations, experienced by a number of us; but the other terrible indeed. There is the joyful. There is the terrible.

The happy faces of those as they experience such phenomena is very different to the pain in the whole demeanor of those individuals and families who have suffered at the hands of Sathya Sai Baba and, in some cases, of those close to him, including in his educational wing. Those who have suffered – in regard to sexual abuse of boys and young men AND in other ways – feel very differently to those who undergo the delights of feeling their faith affirmed by the presence of honey and ash coming out of the pictures, and other sorts of phenomena. In any event, when it comes to Sathya Sai Baba’s own apparent physical performance of miracles, the truthful enquirer may have to watch video footage from various sources, including the BBC, without side-stepping. See my article:

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

The fact is that individuals and families from many parts of the world have been shattered. Sathya Sai Baba and his ashram authorities, further assisted by successive Indian governments, have initiated extreme cover up:

Senior Indian Policeman (Rtd) Speaks Out About Sathya Sai Baba Murders Cover Up

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

Indulal Shah and Indian Government Cover Up

V.P.B. Nair, B.Premanand, Robert Priddy: Sai Baba Bedroom Killings

Facts about murders, huge ashram financial ashram scams, as well as the widespread, serial sexual abuse of boys and young men have been profoundly suppressed. To these more obviously shocking facts, one must also consider the many contradictions and anomalies that have been uncovered by close examination of the Sathya Sai literary canon. One thinks especially of the work of Brian Steel and Robert Priddy.  See, e.g.,:

Recent Research on the Claims of Sathya Sai Baba (B.D. Steel website)

Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions Exposed (R.C. Priddy blogsite)

Sathya Sai Baba In Word And Action (R.C. Priddy’s extensive website)

Any truthful, consecutive thinking needs to consider the importance of this type of critical work. Those who continue to speak out are motivated by very old-time personal, ethical habits of speaking the truth irrespective of the attacks that come. Many who have left his side are very far from the manner in which he and various devotees would depict us. It is simply not true that we are liars, disgruntled, dissenting for the sake of money, and so on. He and his core leaders know it too well.

We have come to see the twistings and procrustean stretchings of what we have stated, by certain pro SSB activists. What is more, certain key officials know very well the terrible facts. There is also the appalling lapse of memory by those we long knew as co-workers and loving friends. It is good that my correspondent is “still continuing reading”. This is exactly what, typically, the devotees would not do, and are told not to do by Sathya Sai Baba himself in regard to our material on the Internet and elsewhere. He says to question, and yet heads a very autocratic worldwide organization. He says it is THE divine institution on earth, through which the whole world will be saved from its greatest perils ever to confront it, and this mostly within his own lifetime. Yet so many of his promises and predictions have failed, as can be seen by a great deal of proper documentation from official Sathya Sai publications of discourses (See Further Reading, below).

I may add that there have been those such as Buddha, Ramakrishna and many other spiritual teachers who have been very specific about the obstacle to the spiritual path that is posed by the mind’s attention to miracles.

Further Reading

Brian Steel Demythologizes Early Foreign-led Sathya Sai Baba Myths

Brian Steel On John Hislop’s 27 Years as Sathya Sai Baba’s Spokesman

Brian Steel On Sathya Sai Baba’s Credibility Gap. John Hislop Contributions

Sathya Sai Baba’s Promise To “Clean Up” His “Own Back Yard (India) Unfulfilled

‘World Avatar’ Sathya Sai Baba’s Troubled Trail

Sai Baba – Miraculous or Disastrous?

Many Power Brokers Follow Failed Prophet Sathya Sai Baba

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

Why Do Prominent Sathya Sai Baba Sect Critics Persist?

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

BBC and Other Film Footage Shows India’s Top Guru Sathya Sai Baba Faking Miracles

When ‘Divine’ Magnetism Becomes A Dead Weight

Learn how sleight-of-hand is done:

Sleight Of Hand. The Sleightness of Sathya Sai Baba (Exposing film clips)

Sathya Sai Baba Green “Diamond” Proved A Fake – ‘Materialised’ For Robert Priddy, Exposed By Top Danish Diamond Expert

For Viewing

The Secret Swami (BBC Television):

(154 MB, Broadband)

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

http://home.hetnet.nl/~seduced/seduced.wmv
(21 MB, Modem)

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General

Excerpt From Public Petition

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

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

Donors and Would-be Donors Beware (Sathya Sai Central Trust Example)

As the years pass, more evidence emerges of the very non-divine manner in which Sathya Sai Baba and his financial wing collect vast funds – particularly from wealthy donors. As with scams the world over, there are methods of ‘spotting’ – in this case, by ashram staff of visitors most likely to donate large sums. The admixture of ‘miracles’ – such as Sai Baba’s ‘materializing’ of expensive rings or pendants etc., for the wealthy – is central to setting up of these traps. This operation involves the participation of the registration office, as well as Sathya Sai Baba’s close servitors, many of them wealthy or those who have given away their wealth to him.

Criminals and police forces often refer to this type of spotting as finding the ‘mark’ or victim to be set up.

Donors and Would-be Donors Beware

There are two classes of individual, and in some cases institutions, who have every reason to be looking at these issues. First, those who have already been donors to Sathya Sai Baba’s exchequer, among whom there are those who have serious misgivings about how they were misused. Second, those who are contemplating donation to the Sathya Sai Central trust.

In the first group, there are those who have been far too busy with their business enterprises or professions to have time for deeper reflection on their experiences. It needs to be remembered that deeply emotional, religious or spiritual commitments are far from straightforward and rational. Donors have given, in some cases in many millions, thinking they have found an impeccable cause. However, some are at the stage where they are handing over their prime responsibilities to others in their enterprises, retiring, etc.  The photos below are just a very few examples of that for which of the Sathya Sai opulence, they have already handed over! (For more revealing photos, see bottom of this article).

In August 16, 2003. the Rediff news agency reported:
“The largest recipient of foreign contribution was Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust — Rs 88.18 crore (Rs 881.8 million)”

The Torment of Awakening From The Dream Splendid

Coming out of the dream splendid can be an emotionally tormenting period, whether one is rich or not. Again, irrespective of status, the wide tendency for individuals is to clam up, and let as few as possible know that one has made some bad choices.

To those wishing to reflect intellectually on their own experiences of donorship, or for those who may be contemplating giving money to Sathya Sai Baba’s organization, I point to the article (4700 approx words) of Robert Priddy, retired academic and former longtime leader of the Norwegian Sathya Sai Organization:

‘Donating to Sathya Sai Baba and His Bottomless Trust Or Other Institutions. How donations are encouraged and devotees are manipulated – with negative experiences reported’

QUOTE

“In my participant-observer sociological study of the International Sathya Sai Organisation, recorded mainly in 2000, I concluded that one of the main functions it actually fulfils, although in theory it should not, is to channel money from the widest possible catchment area of devotees in rich countries. This was implied by the collected data and analyses of its various practices which I interpreted on the basis of my wide-ranging experience – and increasing distaste – of how matters were handled at Organization meetings I attended in various countries. In stark contrast to Sathya Sai Baba pretends, his organisation contributes, indirectly and increasingly more and more directly, to the funnelling of donations in huge amounts into his account and under his control. Why does Sai Baba ‘allow’ this discrepancy between his word and action? The simple answer would be because money is a necessary ingredient of improving education, health and living conditions for the poor. To support this, Sai Baba points to the institutions like colleges, hospitals and village projects he has provided (as if it were not all from his devotees). So why then does he constantly boast that he has no connection whatever with money – saying as but one example, “Where money is present, there I am absent”? Obviously, it is a very clever device to hide the real situation and seem to put him apart from other money collecting ‘men of god’. Money gurus awaken much skepticism, especially among Westerners nowadays, it being known very widely that so many have been defrauded”.

Subheadings in this article:

Sizing up likely donors, and diamond gifts to soften them up?

What is Sathya Sai Baba’s actual relationship to money?

True Believer Devotees as Easy-Touches for Money

Soliciting Devotees for Major Funds

Ashram apartment ‘donors’ – deceptively called ‘owners’

Donors Recruited under False Pretenses

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Further Reading

Can We Trust The Central Trust?By Serguei Badaev.  (Ex-President of Sai Org. Moscow Centre and ex-deputy National Coordinator and National SSEHV Coordinator, Russia)

“It is not the Sathya Sai Organisation which is the owner of all the property and estates we can see in Prashanthi Nilayam and Brindavan (Sai Baba’s ashrams in Puttaparthi and in Whitefield correspondingly). There is another organisation which prefers to stay in a shadow. It is Sathya Sai Central Trust (the SSCT), which can be regarded as the highest authority in the Sai Baba movement except Sai Baba himself”

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The money behind Sai Baba By Hari Sampath. 08-04-2001. (Member of Sathya Sai Baba’s Security and Intelligence Wing between 1992 and 1995)

‘Secret Swami’ Cult Recruits At Prime Public Venues. By Barry Pittard

QUOTE

“The easiest way to look for the source of Sai Baba’s ‘immunity’ from investigation and what exactly all this scam is about is to just take a look at the staggering amounts of money involved, and approximately estimate how much money does Sai Baba actually have?”

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Barry Pittard at ‘Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba’

‘Secret Swami’ Cult Recruits At Prime Public Venues

Sathya Sai Organization: World Communities Need To Treat This Sect Cautiously

India’s ‘Emperor’ Sai Baba. By His Lavish Spending Ye Shall Know Him

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

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General

Excerpt From Public Petition

(Note: The above articles contextualizes. Or you may prefer to proceed straight to the Petition):

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

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

Note:  Thursday 7 October 2010.  But two areas in which the blindness of countless followers of Sathya Sai Baba is exposed are of science and history. His comments are extremely ill-informed, and sometimes so absurd as to beggar belief. Here is India’s chronically ailing would-be Avatar of Avatars, the figure who has told us that he will soon be traveling abroad! And who long ago said that in the last quadrant of his life he would be ruling the world!  And who said at the time of his 60th birthday that he would not hitherto show signs of physical ageing! This article from 2009 at ‘Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba’ drives home the silliness of it all.

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Sathya Sai Baba is wildly at odds with some of the most basic scientific facts. His jumping between physical and metaphysical notions, vague at best, clash with the physics being taught in his colleges and university – and in any respectable classroom.  He would even have it that gold is magnetic!

Sathya Sai Baba – from ‘Sanathana Sarathi’, April 2002, p. 123

In actual fact, at this time, Sai Baba was having grave difficulties with his hip, which had to undergo a series of operations.

In an early blog of mine in 2007 – A Great Deceiver – Laughable But Still Dangerous – I wrote:  “Sai Baba’s many scientist followers must have to block their ears or don magical-thinking hearing aids when he opines on matters scientific. Some of his pronouncements are comic, to be sure. But the smile disappears from one’s face when considering that Sai Baba’s devotees number many leaders in the top power echelons of politics, government, the sciences, the judiciary, diplomacy, industry, finance, the arts, medicine, and so on.  He speaks, for example, of the nature of magnetism” …..

Since then, Sai Baba’s critical commentators have noted many past and current absurdities. A scholar, Brian Steel, strongly versed in Sathya Sai bibliography, has examined many of these, and I have selected and commented on a number of his writings in articles that contain the links to these extensive writings. Sathya Sai Baba has made very serious scientific and historical blunders.

For Steel’s detailed and sharply contextualized discussions, see

 

on Jesus Christ and Martin Luther .

and:

Sai Baba and Christianity. Some Observations (2002).

In the latter, Steel remarks on the “alarming nature of Sai Baba’s inventiveness”. This piece can instructively be read in concert with his:

On Jesus Christ and Martin Luther .

These grand pronouncements of Sai Baba are sometimes accompanied by cheering from the crowds he attracts – or, perhaps one may say, magnetizes. Those devotees who have a scientific education would, if their faith were to be sustained, need to make some procrustean mental shifts, performing conceptual acrobatics worthy of the adherents of Manichaeism.

Further Reading

See Jorge Reyesvera‘s point-by-point, rational reductio of Sathya Sai Baba’s terribly confused, sometimes downright contradictory, notions of magnetism:

The Omniscient Sai Baba’s Massive ignorance of Physics Exposed (I)

• Be it noted that the source of the discourse that Reyesvera uses is from a provenance long-accepted by Sathya Sai Baba adherents everywhere. A comment on this article reads that this:  “discourse on magnetism by Sathya Sai Baba is from the  Mahasivarathri, 2002 … The following is an excerpt from the verbatim translation of the premsai website’s version of Sathya Sai Baba’s discourse on Mahashivarathri, 13-3-2002, which appears in an edited-down version in ‘Sanathana Sarathi’ – March 2002″.

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General

Public Petition On Sathya Sai Baba (1)

There is a Public Petition calling for official probing of Sai Baba and his Sathya Sai Organization. (See website details at the end of this post).

The JUST (Just Seekers of Truth) petition is presented by a globally networked group of former followers of Sathya Sai Baba. In the ranks of both devotees and dissenters, there are those who say that Sai Baba is history’s most powerful guru. Some critics regard him as one of history’s arch deceivers – highly charismatic, highly flawed. He may brilliantly inspire good social uplift works, which is why so many earnest and good people are attracted to him, but profoundly conceals, along with his core servitors who keep an vice-like grip on his global organization, what is morally loathsome and criminal.

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

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

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Further useful Resources Critical of Sathya Sai Baba’s Understanding of Science and Education

The Case of UNESCO’s Missing Media Advisory

Robert Priddy, retired academic in philosophy and the social sciences, University of Oslo, writes in his article

Sathya Sai Baba followers in education and science :-

“Not one head of any independent University in the world has endorsed Sathya Sai Baba educational ideals or programmes, and – as is well known – a branch of UNESCO withdrew from a planned educational conference under the auspices of Sathya Sai Baba at Puttaparthi once they had investigated what this involved. (See UNESCO’s warning on Sathya Sai Baba here)

Not one Nobel laureate is known to be a follower, as far as can be discovered. Incidentally, Sathya Sai Baba has been forwarded as a candidate for the Nobel Peace prize by the Indian Government, obviously without result, of course. He made clear his  hopes that he would receive it from Dr. Michael Nobel, a grandson of Alfred Nobel, but a person who the Nobel Committee has denounced. See Sathya Sai Baba’s hunger for international recognition “

Sathya Sai Baba’s Slurred Speech Due To Old Age. ‘Eenadu’ News Report

Telegu Press Report Cites ‘Old Age’ Signs In Sai Baba 

 ‘Eenadu’, with over 10 million daily readers in Andhra Pradesh, the state of India in which Sathya Sai Baba lives, has reported of a speech problem he faces.

Sathya Sai Baba’s Lack of Clarity in His Speech Due To Old Age

 “Lacking in Clarity: There was a lack of clarity in Sathya Sai’s speech because of his old age. The interpreter struggled much to translate his speech into English. Satya Sai was seated in a special wheel chair which was brought very close to the car, so he could very slowly get into it. At the time of the speech, he stood up with great difficulty with the help of his assistants.”  (See reproduction of ‘Eenadu’ newspaper page, below).

One of Sai Baba’s many readily falsifiable statements is this:

“The attributes of the Avatars are beyond human comprehension…. Rama and Krishna were ever youthful. Have you ever seen a picture of Rama or Krishna with grey hair?….. Usually old people have wrinkles on their faces … I do not have any signs of old age. (loud applause). There is not a single wrinkle on My face”. Sanathana Sarathi, October, 2002.

That Sathya Sai Baba has made egregious historical and scientific blunders does not inspire confidence in his statements about pre-historical events. See my article: 

Huge Sai Baba Gaffes

He has also proclaimed:

“Many people wonder that I look so young even at the age of 73. The reason is that I have the three P’s in Me. One is Purity, the second is Patience and the third is Perseverance. It is because of these three that I shall remain like this for any number of years to come. (cheers)”  p. 302 Sanathana Sarathi, 11-1998

Various commentators have pointed to Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘turkey throat’ and other signs of ageing and disease in him. His episodes of falling over are well known – in 1998, I observed such an incident at fairly close quarters along with many shocked observers at a Puttaparthi afternoon darshan. There are also close-up, reliable eye-witness reports of his uttering of inanities, his fits of crying, his walking round and round in circles, his blank stare and mask-like face. He has also made some extraordinary faux pas, which were of such a dimension that they could not be covered up, and got into some mainstream Indian media – See:

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

Sai Baba Sparks Political Furore

Examination of many photos of this octogenarian may prompt the notion that hair dye is used on his hair. 

See videos which reveal Sathya Sai Baba as unable to cut his birthday cakes any longer.

NOTE:  In an article, the context of the critique in regard to Sai Baba slide into senility, I have made it clear to any observant reader that the issue is: that his statements that he would not age are abundantly falsifiable. To interpret such a remark as in any way ageist indicates the cast of mind of a foremost Sathya Sai Baba apologist. Who in all decency and reason would wish to cast aspersions upon conditions that, alas, the flesh is all too heir to? See, Robert Priddy’s article in response to that mischief:

Joe Moreno’s schoolyard tit-for-tat attacks

See too, my article:

Sai Baba Internet Man’s Attacks Based On Age and Physical Appearance

Select Reading

Sathya Sai Baba Tells Untruths About His Health?

Sathya Sai Baba’s Hip Joint Injury and Surgery – 2003. What are the actual facts of the matter?

Sathya Sai Baba Continues To Ail

2006 – Puttparthi Village Without Water? Sai Baba Sits and Cries?

G.J. Moreno’s ’senile dementia’ slurs, avoidances & irrationality

Sathya Sai Baba Man Gerald Moreno – Banned By Eight Wikpedia Editors

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Brian Steel On Dr John Hislop’s Gift From Sathya Sai Baba – Idol claimed to have wood from cross of Jesus

Among commentators, Brian Steel has done especial service in portraying the sheer impact and spread of the works of Sathya Sai Baba’s early apostles and popularizers. Especially prominent among these are Dr John Hislop (the first Sai Baba organizational leader outside India), Howard Murphet, Dr Samuel Sandweis, Phyllis Krystal.

 

Today’s blog note continues my series highlighting – all too selectively – certain aspects of Brian Steel’s work. As I have pointed out, it would be a great pity if – because his opus is vast, and also because most of his work is not blogged but contained on his websites (See details below) – his extremely valuable work were to suffer any eclipse. My recent articles on Steel’s work are:

Brian Steel Demythologizes Early Foreign-led Sathya Sai Baba Myths

Brian Steel On John Hislop’s 27 Years as Sathya Sai Baba’s Spokesman

Brian Steel On Sathya Sai Baba’s Credibility Gap. John Hislop Contributions

Demythologizing Sathya Sai Baba

 There are many other writers, and when I worked as a publisher’s editor in Sai Towers, Puttaparthi, I counted over 600 books in the collection of R.Padmanaban, the publisher. Random checks showed that almost all of them were very hagiographical, and poorly written, commonly self-published or with the non-professional aid of others. None of their works has had anything like the impact of the books by the above , and also the same authors’ talks in various parts of the world. In Sai Baba circles, these figures have attained an almost god status. One hears them referred to as “rishis”, “saints”, “apostles”, and so forth. 

Although the alleged miracles of Sathya Sai Baba appear to be endless, there are a few which have especially captured the popular imagination and devotion of many of his followers, irrespective of their levels of education. One of these is the iconic crucifix, which Sai Baba ostensibly materialized for Jack Hislop at the mahashivratri festival in 1973.

Sai Baba told Hislop that he – by his divine powers – fetched the wood on which the idol is hung from the wood of the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified.

  Sathya Sai Baba Crucifix: Miraculously materialized?

For those wishing some key backgrounding on this ‘miracle’, there is a fairly brief but succinct page by the Norwegian academic and former leader of the Sathya Sai Organization in Norway, Robert Priddy: 

Alleged miracle crucifix materialised for Dr. John Hislop

He has blogged at: 

Faked “miracle”: crucifix given by Sai Baba to Dr. Hislop

Brian D.Steel On Dr John Hislop and Sai Baba’s Crucifix Gift

The following two quotes are excerpts from Brian Steel’s long and detailed article, which deals with various aspects relating to Hislop, his relationship with Sai Baba, and role in hugely extending the Sai movement world-wide: Sathya Sai Baba’s credibility gap: Contributions by John Hislop. (Brian Steel. January 2009).

(Note: there is an important companion piece to this: Sathya Sai Baba, Elsie and Walter Cowan, and John Hislop. A Discredited 1971 Resurrection Claim (Brian Steel. February 2009). He comments on the book My Baba and I  by Dr. John Hislop, [1985: Birth Day Publishing, San Diego]:

“For tens (or perhaps hundreds) of thousands of readers, this has been one of the principal introductory books on Sathya Sai Baba. It has been translated into many languages. The title was chosen by Sathya Sai Baba himself (p. vi). The book deals with Hislop’s prolonged and intimate experiences of SSB’s teachings, some miracles (most notably that of the famous Crucifix allegedly materialised for Hislop by SSB from wood reconstituted from the True Cross on Mahasivaratri Day, 1973). The experiences are followed by 22 supplementary conversations (January 1978-October 1984), and a treasure trove of letters from SSB to Hislop (as well as a few from Hislop to SSB) written between 1969 and 1983, during the important formative years of the American Sathya Sai Organization, of which Hislop was such a prominent figure”. 

“This famous icon, however implausible, has been the object of endless fascination for devotees. Photographs of the crucifix are available in the front pages of My Baba and I and in many other books, including those by Fanibunda, Sandweiss, Peter Phipps (Sathya Sai Baba and Jesus Christ. A Gospel for the Golden Age – and also in his second book on a similar theme). That the surreal icon still has the full backing of the SSO is evident in its inclusion in a recent compilation published by the SSSBPT, Be Like Jesus). Indeed, almost 40 years after the alleged event (in October 2008), when I was visiting the Bombay SSO Centre (Dharmakshetra), a young devotee who took it upon himself to show me round and tell me about SSB, insisted at the end of our meeting that the best book for me to start with would be John Hislop’s My Baba and I, and he specifically mentioned a crucifix materialised for the revered American devotee. This special crucifix – whatever its provenance – has been, and remains, an outstandingly powerful advertisement for Sathya Sai Baba’s alleged omnipotence”. 

 

See also, Robert Priddy’s compilation of resources:  Sai Deceptions. Fraud, Legerdemain, Rumour-spreading and Lies By Sathya Sai Baba 

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Select writings from Brian Steel’s Extensive Opus

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)

Brian Steel Indexes

• Sathya Sai Baba: The Guru Who Claimed to be God on Earth

• Recent Research on Sathya Sai Baba

• A Bibliography of Apologetic Writings

Barry Pittard’s Earlier Articles On Brian Steel

Revealing Materials On Sai Baba Of India

Brian Steel’s Surprise Visit To Sathya Sai Baba’s Ashram

William Aitken’s Book Fails to Answer Sai Baba Critics

For Brian Steel’s detailed exposure of severe inadequacies of a foremost Sai Baba hagiographer mentioned in this article refer to Steel’s:

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) 

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General

Excerpt From Public Petition

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

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

There is a Spanish version available:

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

Brian Steel On Sathya Sai Baba’s Credibility Gap. John Hislop Contributions

In some ways, it is regrettable that scholarly habits can limit readership. It is fortunate that Brian Steel writes clearly. Now retired, his background is in academic studies and teaching at a leading Australian university. His fairly lengthy January 2009 piece Sathya Sai Baba’s credibility gap: Contributions by John Hislop deserves to see light of day.  One might well think that thoughtful readers who still adhere to Sathya Sai Baba would, nonetheless, still be among Steel’s appreciative readers. They certainly appreciated his writing when he followed Sathya Sai Baba and wrote notable works in that area. Other readers who likely to find value in Steel’s writing would surely include those who have left the Sathya Sai Baba fold who appreciate historic overviews of the movement of which they have been a part. The calmness and balance of the writing are key strengths.

QUOTE

“For many Sathya Sai Baba devotees, Dr John Hislop (between 1965 and 1995), the Australian devotee, Howard Murphet (between 1965 and 2004), and the American psychiatrist Dr Samuel Sandweiss (1971-), are the three foreign (non-Hindu) devotees who have contributed the most to the propagation of SSB’s teachings and stories, both through their passionate books on SSB and their enthusiastic talks and lectures to devotee groups all over the English-speaking world and beyond. However, it was the mild, humble but spiritually questing Hislop who achieved the closest personal rapport with his “Swami”. Sathya Sai Baba, in return, responded fully to his devotee’s constant respectful and appreciative questioning and performed some of his most sensational (and, it must be added, least credible) ‘miracles’ for Hislop’s benefit. Therefore, Hislop’s individual influence in disseminating these extraordinary aspects of the SSB story and his teachings is incalculable.

The proselytising work of all three of the above-named foreign devotees (along with other spokespersons and writers) is also of considerable interest for the study of the development of the Sathya Sai Baba Mission, as I have attempted to explain elsewhere on this web page. Between 1943 and approximately 1965, SSB had concentrated on his Indian “constituency” (which remains, and will continue to be, the largest). With the formation of the first Sathya Sai Seva Samithisin about 1963, and the Sathya Sai Organisation in 1965, when Indulal Shah became a prime associate and organiser, a major expansion began (coinciding also with the sudden Western interest in India marked by the Beatles and “the Maharishi”). In 1969, after 26 years of Sathya Sai Baba’s close association with the name of Shirdi Sai Baba, this familiar name disappears from his Discourses (though not from worship within the SSB ashrams and Centres) for about twenty years and quite suddenly (as I have also documented), Sathya Sai Baba develops a strong interest in discoursing on Jesus Christ and the perceived similarities between the two teachers. As I show more fully in my companion article, the American interest in SSB had become quite strong during the period 1965-1970. By 1971, the following Americans had been attracted to SSB and were already publicising his name back in USA:

Indra Devi, Arnold Schulman, Charles Penn, Hilda Charlton, Bob Rayman, Elsie and Walter Cowan, Dr John Hislop, Tal Brooke and Howard Levin. (All, except Schulman, became devotees and proselytisers, although Tal Brooke was also soon to become the first ‘defector’ and critic.) 1971 saw the publication of the first books about SSB by foreigners: (American) Schulman (Baba) and (Australian) Howard Murphet (Sai Baba [sic]. Man of Miracles). The 1970s would see a strong growth in foreign devotee numbers and SSO Centres.

Following the creation of SSB Centres in New York and California and the opening of Elsie Cowan’s Sathya Sai bookshop in Tustin, California, the American Sathya Sai Organisation was formed in 1974, with Hislop as President. (It may be of interest to point out that the creation of the US SSO was largely carried out by Christians, Jews and New ‘Agers’ rather than by Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) as was the case in some other countries, notably UK, which had a growing NRI population including recent refugees from East Africa). The U.S. Sathya Sai Organization was quickly to become by far the largest and most influential – and independent – of all the overseas national SSOs. Although a promised visit from Sathya Sai Baba to USA did not materialise, his close associate Dr Gokak toured U.S. (and UK) SSO Centres in 1974″.

Select writings from Brian Steel’s Extensive Opus

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)

Brian Steel Indexes

• Sathya Sai Baba: The Guru Who Claimed to be God on Earth

• Recent Research on Sathya Sai Baba

• A Bibliography of Apologetic Writings

Barry Pittard On Brian Steel

Revealing Materials On Sai Baba Of India

Brian Steel’s Surprise Visit To Sathya Sai Baba’s Ashram

William Aitken’s Book Fails to Answer Sai Baba Critics

For Brian Steel’s detailed exposure of severe inadequacies of a foremost Sai Baba hagiographer mentioned in this article refer to Steel’s:

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)

…………………………………………………………………….

See:  Petition For Official Investigation Into Sathya Sai Baba Cult

BBC and Other Film Footage Shows India’s Top Guru Sathya Sai Baba Faking Miracles

The Sathya Sai Baba Organization has tried to stem a major exit from congregations via an entity it internally refers to as ‘the waverer’s committee’.  This wealthy and highly authoritarian organization, which seeks to infiltrate mainstream civic, religious, education and political venues, will not be so frank as to show the waverers the following videos. For the Sathya Sai Organizations recruiting drives in luxurious venues, See: ‘Secret Swami’ Cult Recruits At Prime Public Venues. For the dangers posed in its infiltration of unsuspecting communities, while concealing its agendas, and often from its own rank-and-file, See, Sathya Sai Baba Sect and Its Hidden Agendas. A Caution

To carefully go through these stark video revelations that expose Sathya Sai Baba cheating with his (so-called) miracles is to see why his chief defenders like Dr G. Venkataraman and Gerald Moreno have raised profound smokescreens and engineered such markedly distorted ‘pictures’ of hundreds of former Sathya Sai Baba devotees. Many of the latter, from many countries, spent deeply dedicated years of their lives serving him. Some of these were leaders such as Terry Gallagher (Australia), Stephen Carthew (Ph.D Program Candidate, Australia), Al Rahm (USA), Richard Nelson, Rick Raines (USA), Timothy Conway Ph.D (USA), Dave Lyons (USA), Serguei Badaev (Russia), Artur Wisniewski (Poland), Britt-Marie Anden (Sweden),  Robert Priddy (Norway) …. Although it is men who in real fact lead the Sathya Sai Organization, prominent women leaders who have left after years of work on behalf of the organization include:  Shirley Pike, Sharon Purcell and Elena Hartgering (both deceased), Lori Kaplowitz, Ella Evers, and many others …. Shirley Pike and Elena Hartgering have a long professional background as very qualified, experienced mental health counselors, as are a number of former devotees who have very carefully studied the accounts of Sai Baba’s sexual abuse survivors – and some have had personal contact with the terribly stricken individuals and their families and others who know them well.

Despite extraordinary attempts to blacken their names, such former devotees have spoken out on behalf of the many boys and young men Sathya Sai Baba, has sexually abused, and large numbers of other individuals abused in a variety of shocking ways. Four individuals were killed in Sai Baba’s bedroom on June 1993 – when he was in control of the cirumstances at the Puttaparthi ashram – and the circumstances extensively covered up by successive Indian central, state and local governments. Former devotees have been attacked libelously, stalked, themselves and their families harrassed (including those who have had nothing to do with the exposure of Sai Baba and his cult), and constantly disparaged. The fact that Sai Baba devotees who have known, respected and loved those who have left the organization having investigated the facts bear a great weight of failed conscience. They know perfectly well that their earstwhile co-faithful are not, and have never been, the devils Sai Baba has said that they are. I add that most Sai devotees do not actively attack former devotees – because, simply, they are not like this. However, some who are prominent followers, and close to Sai Baba himself, have been long engaged in the attacks on the Internet supporting their proxy, Gerald Moreno.

The BBC, DR and other footage is a valuable resource for those who, in their families, friendhip circles, professions, communities and so on are deeply concerned and wish to have evidence by which to confront those who have been attracted by the Sathya Sai Baba sect. Although approaches through reason and evidence frequently will not work with members who are blinded to the facts, there are many others who have successfully been shown the facts before they got around to joining or else those who having joined are nonethless still of a mind capable of questioning.

For Longer Video Viewing

The Secret Swami (BBC Television):

(154 MB, Broadband)

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

http://home.hetnet.nl/~seduced/seduced.wmv
(21 MB, Modem)

Video Clips

‘The Secret Swami’ showcased with selected transcripts and brief
video clips

Sathya Sai Baba Chief, Dr Goldstein, Explodes. “I am the consummate professional” (See Film Clips)

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

BBC Footage Exposes Fake Sathya Sai Baba Miracle

Michael Goldstein explodes with anger (710kbs) (i.e., the world chairman of the Sathya Sai Organization. The BBC’s hidden camera caught Dr Goldstein in a display far from spiritual. Though the BBC’s team asked perfectly reasonable questions about accountability)

Dr. Goldstein again reveals his higher self (1.500Kb)

Michael Goldstein and the sexual allegations (2,10 Mbs)

Michael Goldstein admits his view is merely a belief(456kbs)

Reading (With Links to Video Clips)

BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ and British Press Praise

Sleight Of Hand. The Sleightness of Sathya Sai Baba (Exposing film clips)

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

Censored Indian National Television Film of Sai Baba Cheating

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Sai Baba). Revealing Footage

Articles At: https://barrypittard.wordpress.com Referring to the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’

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

BBC Hidden Camera in ‘Secret Swami’. Ethical?

BBC Caught UNESCO Head Bowing To Indian Government

Indian Minister Shields Sai Baba on BBC television

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

Guru Sex Abuse Testimony To BBC – After Years of Silence

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

India A Mature Democracy? BBC Probes

V.P.B. Nair. B.Premanand. R.Priddy: Sai Baba Bedroom Killings

Recent Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba Cult in Australia By Channel NINEMSN

(Note: Video footage Links available within these articles)

Sathya Sai Baba Cult Exposure By Major TV Channel In Australia

Australian Current Affair Exposes Sathya Sai Baba Cult

Australian Current Affair: ‘Infiltrating A Cult’ (Sathya Sai Baba)

Sathya Sai Cult Under Media Scrutiny In Australia

Sathya Sai Baba’s Failed Moon Miracle Under Heavy Cloud

An article that has continued to gain many ‘hits’ long months after the posting at: https://barrypittard.wordpress.com is: 

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

The almost acrobatic contortions of Sai Baba’s defenders are well-nigh tortuous to read. Perhaps they impart some kind of imagined bliss to those who habitually refuse to look carefully at the evidence against him. To scholars or other students of the Procrustean nature of cultist defence, issues like this provide a fertile area of scrutiny: 

rationalization, psychological denial, demonizing of critics, distortion of critics’ facts and arguments, absence of self-questioning, group-think, euphoric states imagined to be Joy, Bliss, Love, Life and Spirituality, etc., …

The blog referred to above was posted in the same month as Sathya Sai Baba’s extraordinary statement (via his close aide and frequent translator Professor Anil Kumar on October 4) that he would give ‘visvarupa darshanam’ on the moon. He also turned up a while later in his car that same night, when the sky was cloud-covered! and the police, as reported in the media, had a serious time preventing threats to life and limb in all the milling of the crowds who had rushed to the designated site, the airport.  It is but one of many Sai Baba declarations and predictions that have been falsified. Let his followers take deep breaths and gaze steadily upon the facts. They cannot. They dare not. It is easier to vilify those who present the facts. A fact which, with whatever intellectual honesty, people like Joe Moreno and Dr G. Venkatarman do not appear likely, with other than heavy blinkers, ever to deal with. See: 

Slander by Dr. G. Venkataraman & Joe Moreno

Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘Minister of Propaganda’ – Dr G. Venkataraman 

‘The Sathya Sai Organisation’s Deception and Propaganda Exposed’ (Extensive analytical article containing many key links. Co-authored by Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard) 

Parts  One Two Three Four