Sai Baba EXPOSED!: Sai Baba's Internet Ban CONFIRMED!

The Sai Exposé arguably began in 1999 with the publication of The Findings, a document produced by David and Faye Bailey, that was a compilation the experiences of other former devotee of Sai Baba that detailed serious charges of homosexual paedophilia, faked miracles, involvement in murders, and other things.

Shortly after the Finding's release and a mass exodus of Sai devotees from the movement, Sai Baba had the following to say in a public discourse:

"Swami has nothing to do with internet. Not only now, even in future also you should not indulge in such wrong activities." - 15 October 1999

Along with other negative statements about the Internet in the same discourse, Sai devotees were faced with a very momentous decision to make: Obey or disobey Swami's order. The huge Sai-NET online satsangh was dismantled and discontinued as a direct result of Sai Baba's statements. As with all things, some chose to obey whereas others disobeyed. The Sai-NET was ressurrected as SATGURU with a new administration shortly after the shutdown and, understandably, the topic of Sai Baba's opinion of the Internet was the hot issue of the day. Aside from all the expected platitudes and rationalisations about how great the Internet was to communicate with devotees around the world, it soon became apparent that the online community of Sai devotees were busy trying to find a workaround Sai Baba's teaching by continuing to guiltily rationalise their continued online interaction.

Sai Baba, as usual, did not provide any consistency between his words and his actions; in February 2001, he personally inaugurated the official website of the Indian Sai Organisation. Several endorsed (and blessed) websites have sprung up since then. This exemplifies Sai Baba's typically hypocritical position in regards to any media that he considers a vice; bookish knowledge is geeky unless you're reading books by or about him, movies are evil unless they are about him, television is trash unless he is on it, the Internet is evil unless you are surfing his websites - what's going on here?

And so I heard that a drama was staged by the children of the Deenajanoddharana Patakam in Puttaparthi recently, in full view of Sai Baba and the assembled devotees. According to the report, one of the drama skits was along the following theme:

The futility of cell phones when one is not able to connect with the heart and the dangers of the internet if used indiscriminately for everything was highlighted. They also showed how television has today become televisham [telepoison].

So it seems that Sai Baba's contradictory policies on the Internet have earned their place in Sai lore so much so that they are dramatised by kids! I wonder what Swami had to say about this new and interesting development? Clearly he approved, according to the report: