tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-165303992024-03-07T05:32:15.222+00:00Sai Baba EXPOSED!Thoughts and musings on the Sathya Sai Baba controversy, where his philosophy, theology and personal behaviour are analyzed and discussed.Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.comBlogger286125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-42255821906661415932007-08-08T03:35:00.000+01:002007-08-08T03:36:26.887+01:00Sai Baba's Karma & Retribution<div style="text-align: justify;">A veteran of the Sai Exposé from it's earliest days, Hari Sampath, has provided this report and his own reflections on Sai Baba's current situation:<br /><blockquote><br />Sathya Sai Baba's extremely negative karma accumulated for long has been slowly catching up with him and approaching fruition. The countless victims of this fraud, victims of false promises, sexual abuse, cheating, deception and every known act of Adharma had been put to physical , mental, emotional and spiritual misery for a lifetime, and the combined effect of these people's misery is certainly recoiling back on the collosal fraud Sai Baba.<br /><br />Most people will remember that in the early days in the 1940's an old saintly man was brought to sb by his disciples. This man was considered a Guru locally, and had 2 stumps for his legs and was carried around by his disciples. Sai Baba publicly scolded him for that and instead of expressing even basic human sympathy, chided him for being a burden on his disciples by being dependent on them to be carried around. Now the wheel has come a full cycle and the poor, accursed wretched soul Sai Baba himself is being carried, wheeled around, and dependent on his personal staff for even performing basic physical functions.<br /><br />So many thousands of people , promised "divine cures" and stuck to wheelchairs etc , having been cheated by this fraud and even abandoning conventional medical treatment for disabilities like Dorothy/Pink Twins among many others, people without physical vision, hearing, paralysis, mental ill health, and so many other types of physical disabilites, had been cheated deliberately by this false messiah of deception, and Sai Baba's karma has caught up.<br /><br />Now he is reduced to a gibbering, senile, drooling, old fool, in a pathetic condition in full view of the world. He is dependent on his staff even for eating food, going to the toilet etc, what a cruel fate he has invited upon himself. His situation is so pathetic that he has asked his devotees to pray for him and also conduct healing yagnas etc.<br /><br />The hand that promised to lift a "range of mountains" can't even cut a cake now or wear his dress properly when it slips !<br /><br />The feet that promised to walk across the skies is unable to even hobble across the hall for a few feet !<br /><br />While I do feel somewhat sorry for this pathetic condition, I also realise he has inflicted many many times more on innocent sincere seekers of God, who trusted him and were promised solace from all problems, only to be cruelly cheated for the most selfish of reasons by Sai Baba. At least God has been kind in dealing with Sai Baba in that there are people to attend to him and he has material comforts, but then these folks are also doing so so that they may share the loot gathered over years and for their own selfish ends.<br /><br />Its got to a point that even the SSO officials and gangsters are sick of waiting on him hand and foot, and apart from the outward civil behavior in public, I know that in private they are quite rude to Sai Baba knowing he is an exhausted incapable senile old man, and also he had been putting many of these officials through his spiritual/divine bullying for years, now they are happy to get back at him. I believe these personal staff sometimes don't even respond promptly to Sai Baba asking to go to the toilet, resulting in even bed wetting at times. How terrible and sad. Just like an old, aged senile relative being barely tolerated because of his bank balance and hopes of being remembered in the will and legacy.<br /><br />These people are just hoping Sai Baba dies soon, but I don't think he will die soon, because afterall the god of death is Dharmaraja or Yama, who himself wouldn't want to come anywhere near sb soon to put him out of his misery, such an extreme case of adharma is Sai Baba.<br /><br />I in fact feel that Sai Baba's misery has just started and after losing his legs and one hand, soon he will lose his hearing, speech, eyesight and mental sanity, one by one, and his misery will be shown to the whole world, and he will be exposed for what he truly is : the retribution for a lifetime of massive fraud, debauchery, trickery and self seeking, for name and fame as God, resulting in an old age drooling, gibbering, legless, blind, speechless, paralysed and broken, and humiliated old wretch.<br /><br />His life will indeed be a message to humankind. And it will end only when God finally acts mercifully to put him out of his misery.<br /><br />It was not said lightly that "he whom the Gods want to destroy, they make him mad first", and we would see this too.<br /><br />Hari Sampath</blockquote></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com66tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-91263634146344586552007-08-07T05:11:00.000+01:002007-08-08T03:17:38.064+01:00Sai Baba's Tattvavada Troubles 2<div style="text-align: justify;">While reviewing <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2007/08/sai-babas-tattvavada-troubles.html">Sai Baba's Tattvavada Troubles</a>, I realised that I could undertake a little more in-depth clarification of some of the pertinent issues and explain why this is of significant importance for devotees of Sai Baba.<br /><br />I have always held that Sai Baba's devotees are largely uneducated about the fundamentals of Vedantic philosophy and of the vast body of knowledge that exists in regards to spirituality. Of course, this is not a fault per se on their part but I rather think that simple reliance on Sai Baba's teachings and a blind belief that they represent the sum total of Vedantic philosophy is extremely foolish. As such, it would be of considerable benefit for Sai devotees to familiarise themselves with the very basics of philosophy if only to increase the scope of their education. It may very well involve <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/08/breakdowns-and-renewals.html">breakdowns and renewals</a>, but all for the better.<br /><br />In the days of yore, young students would be sent to gurukulas (residential boarding schools) and be taught under the instruction of a guru for several years, in which they would learn the classics of Vedanta dialectics and gain some kind of qualification before attempting to speak on any subject. It befuddles me completely when I see Sai devotees discussing lofty spiritual issues with no clear indication of their qualifications on the subject. Needless to say, the reasoning they display in such discussion tends to reveal that they don't know what they are talking about. It <span style="font-style: italic;">may</span> no longer be necessary for such long-winded processes such as attending gurukulas but the very minimum I would expect is for someone to have some basic understanding of the fundamental precepts of each school of Vedanta before attempting to speak on other elaborate issues.<br /><br />In any case with all this talk of "poorna" avatars and the like, it is interesting to see that Sai Baba himself is largely responsible for the emphasis on this subject, stating that the hallmark of a poorna avatar lies in his possessing sixteen particular qualities (kalas). The first time I read of this idea was in Dr. Samuel Sandweiss' first book, 'Holy Man and the Psychiatrist', and he didn't seem very clear on what these sixteen qualities were. In fact, not very many of the Sai devotees I spoke to were very sure about it<span style="font-family:georgia;">. I distinctly remember being asked about it even in Sai Baba's ashram on my<span style="font-size:100%;"> first trip there, so it seems they don't know either! I eventually found an unclear mention from Sai Baba himself:</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span><blockquote><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;" >“</span><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;" >Now again, amongst the descending Avatars, there are POORNA AVATARS. Poorna Avatars are the Masters of the sixteen kalas. The fifteen kalas are : The five Karmendriyas or working organs which have to do with talking, taking, walking, rejecting (exertion) and eating. The five Jnanendriyas or sense organs: hearing, touch, sight, taste, smell, and Panch Mahabhootas or the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, space. The 16<sup>th</sup> Kala: the all - knowing Paramatma (the Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent aspect)." </span>- <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >John S. Hislop, 'Conversations with Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba'.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />In any case, it is repeatedly mentioned in Sai literature that a poorna avatar is defined by the possession of all sixteen kalas, though how one may determine this in the case of Sai Baba remains unknown. However in the light of how this concept is seen within the Dvaita Vedanta philosophy it is safe to say that it would be treated derisively at best. The late Dr. B.N.K. Sharma was a devout Dvaitin and a scholarly academic who undertook valuable research in the subject and produced works of a superior quality in the field of Vedantic philosophy. I recently spotted his brief discussion of this subject in his famous work, 'Philosophy of Sri Madhvacharya':<br /><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">"The Supreme Lord of all creation remains wrapped up in His glory and bliss at a time when the entire universe is in a state of nebulous chaos (Rig Veda 10.129.2-3). Later, He puts on a multiplicity of forms to evolve the universe through different stages. These forms, though innumerable, are nevertheless identical with one another, save for their numerical distinction. The first in the order of divine manifestations is the quarternion of Vasudeva, Pradyumna, Aniruddha and Sankarsana, popularly known as the Catur-Vyuha, credited with redemptive, creative, sustaining and destructive functions.<br /><br />"The Supreme further differentiates itself into ten (familiar avatars) or twelve, hundred, thousand and so on ... But there is one important different that in Madhva's view, these various manifestations are absolutely on a par with one another. There is no gradation among them in respect of powers or potentialities. Madhva is vehemently opposed to the idea of making any invidious distinctions among these manifestations of God or putting some on a higher pedestal than others. </span>There is no room for <span style="font-style: italic;">'svagatabheda'</span> (internal difference) in the Supreme (neha nanasti kincana). It is the same Infinite in every manifestation ... <span style="font-weight: bold;">To Madhva all avatars are of equal merit and status. There is no question of degree of fullness among them, no 'partial' and 'complete' avataras.</span> He takes his uncompromising stand on the authority of the Upanisads and Pancaratric texts ... He has thus no partiality or preference for any particular avatar of God and treats all of them as equal in rank, attributes and powers". - <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">'Philosophy of Sri Madhvacharya', p. 353-355.</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.dvaita.org/madhva/index.shtml">Sri Madhvacharya</a> is traditionally believed to be an incarnation 0f the deity <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vayu">Vayu</a> in much the same way as <a href="http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/sankara.html">Sri Sankaracharya</a> (the founder of a rival school, Advaita Vedanta) is believed to be an incarnation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva">Shiva</a>, though it would surprise me greatly if any Sai devotees knew this fact. Equally interesting is that Madhvacharya quotes a well-known verse from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (5.1) in support of his contention of 'equal' avatars, a verse that is known very well to Sai devotees and is frequently quoted in discourses by Sai Baba himself:<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;">pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidaṁ pūrnāt pūrṇamudacyate |<br />pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate ||</span><br /></div><br />"The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete<span style="font-size:100%;"> balance."<br /><br />Though this translation was chosen in order to provide a broader meaning, the specific import of this terse statement relates to the innate 'completeness' of anything that emanates from the Complete Whole, in this case God. In other words, avatars are not regarded as "smaller portions" of the Supreme Lord, they are fully "complete" in themselves and are <span style="font-weight: bold;">as</span> complete as the Supreme Lord.<br /><br />This in turn provides more and more evidence to support my contention that Sai Baba devotees are essentially uneducated about all of these things. In spite of repeating such mantras frequently, they appear to have little knowledge of the meaning of the same (despite Sai Baba's repeated urgings to chant with full knowledge of meanings!) or of their significance in dialectical positionings within Vedantic exegesis. </span>I even wonder if Sai Baba himself knows the meaning of what he chants and tells others to chant; if he did or if he paid more attention to Vedanta dialectics he wouldn't make spurious claims to "full" avatarhood or even that his brand of spiritual teaching is all-inclusive! After all, how can Sai Baba claim anything "special" about his status when his claim doesn't even exist in the Dvaita Vedanta religious paradigm? :-)</div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-40060645927979456372007-08-06T03:39:00.000+01:002007-08-08T03:11:50.529+01:00Sai Baba's Tattvavada Troubles<div style="text-align: justify;">In discussing the premise of poorna avatars and how they relate to the Sai Baba schematic paradigm, it might be interesting to briefly discuss the concept for those who are unfamiliar with it: Hindu theology holds that incarnations of God appear on earth at critical moments when there is a serious threat to the natural order and divine intervention is necessary to avert the threat or destroy it completely. There have been many such incarnations (called 'avatars') throughout human history, which has led to ten of them being listed as the prominent and known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar#Dasavatara:_Ten_Avatars_of_Vishnu_in_the_Garuda_Purana">Dashavatars</a>. Of these ten, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama">Rama</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna">Krishna</a> are perhaps the most popular deities in the Hindu pantheon and are known as 'poorna' avatars (also, 'purna avatars'), the reason being that they are believed to have fully displayed the fullness of power of God's glory during their incarnate mission. Poorna means 'full' or 'complete'.<br /><br />One may wonder why there is a distinction between all the avatars. A popular answer is given is that other avatars advented for a particular purpose, and when that purpose was achieved they returned to their abodes. A good example of this would be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsya">Matsya</a>, an incarnation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu">Vishnu</a> who appeared as a fish to protect the endangered scriptures when the world was suffering devastating floods. The lives of Rama and Krishna were in sharp contrast to Matsya and others in which they lived full humanlike lives from apparent "birth" to "passing" (Hindu theology holds that avatars are never "born" and never "die", they simply appear to do so). And in so doing, Rama and Krishna performed natural miracles and feats that bespoke of the full glory of God, things that other avatars did not do during their own advents.<br /><br />For the sake of brevity, I am being deliberately superficial and shallow in describing these concepts, as we would not want to unnecessarily enlarge this article. In any case I suppose that the general ideas about poorna avatars are now clear.<br /><br />It shouldn't come as a surprise that Sai Baba also claims to be a poorna avatar. Of course, nothing else would be appropriate enough to describe his great magnificence. :-) Sai Baba's 'poorna' status is supposed to be exemplified via the sensational nature of his "astounding miracles", welfare works, <span style="font-weight: bold;">all-inclusive spiritual teachings,</span> and the like. After all, wouldn't GOD be perfectly capable of transmitting <span style="font-style: italic;">new</span> holy teachings for the benefit of the world, which explain absolutely <span style="font-style: italic;">everything?</span><br /><br />Here comes the crunch: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvaita">Dvaita Vedanta</a> is one of the three major philosophical schools of Hindu theology, the other two being <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishishtadvaita">Vishishtadvaita Vedanta</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta">Advaita Vedanta</a>. Whereas seekers of Eastern spirituality are likely to have heard of or be influenced by Advaita above all, Dvaita (also known as Tattvavada) has an increasing reputation for having formed its conclusions on a strong basis of sound reasoning, admirable rigorousness and textual clarity. In other words, Dvaita followers have extremely good reasons for believing the way they do, and Dvaita holds that there is no such thing as poorna avatars. :-)<br /><br />The reason for this is rather simple: Since avatars are descents of one deity, Vishnu, it naturally follows that they are <span style="font-weight: bold;">all</span> emanations of his and would naturally possess <span style="font-weight: bold;">all</span> of his potencies. In theory, it is possible for Matsya and other "minor" avatars to exhibit and fully display all the astounding powers of God displayed by the 'poornas' like Rama and Krishna, and the reason for why they <span style="font-style: italic;">didn't</span> do so is really because there was no call to do so. Otherwise it is regarded that each and every incarnation of Vishnu is possessed of 'full' and 'complete' power and are thus equal to each other. There is <span style="font-weight: bold;">no</span> gradation among the incarnations of Vishnu as they are <span style="font-weight: bold;">all</span> him.<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><br />Not everyone will agree with this, but there you have it: the viewpoint of Dvaita Vedanta on this subject. This leads us to the natural consequence that Sathya Sai Baba's claims to 'poorna' avatarhood will have no credibility among the followers of Dvaita Vedanta and they are not likely to brook such nonsense either.<br /><br />At the very least, this is a perfect example of how Sathya Sai Baba's divine and supposedly all-inclusive teachings are incompatible with Dvaita Vedanta philosophy. :-) One of the Baba's oft-quoted platitudes urges Hindus to be better Hindus, Christians to be better Christians, Muslims to be better Muslims, and so on. This will not apply for the Dvaita Vedantin, as Sai Baba's meaningless witterings about 'poorna' avatars will hold no weight with such people. After all, how can Sai Baba claim anything "special" about his status when his claim doesn't even exist in their religious paradigm? :-)<br /><br />--<br /><br />For further discussion of these issues, please see <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2007/08/sai-babas-tattvavada-troubles-2.html">Sai Baba's Tattvavada Troubles 2</a>.<br /></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-86518203811437208682007-07-20T02:55:00.000+01:002007-07-20T03:00:45.828+01:00Sai Baba - A Pointless Guru?<div style="text-align: justify;">I caught this extract from <a href="http://www.mothertalkers.com/storyonly/2007/7/19/02936/2413">MotherTalkers.Com</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Years ago I was involved with a man who was a guru-phile. He was always looking for God in human form, someone to worship and stand in the presence of. Someone to set up little altars for. I didn't share his psychology; my cynicism is like a mothball around the neck, keeping me guru-free. For awhile my boyfriend glommed onto Sai Baba, a goofy orange-robed guru with a 'fro who performed miracles. His miracles--like making great quantities of ash billow out of an empty urn--didn't seem <em>useful</em> to me. If God were to manifest as a human, surely he wouldn't waste his time performing lame magic tricks. Like, who needs <em>ash</em>?</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br />Indeed. Who needs <span style="font-weight: bold;">ash?!</span></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1142407391601212352007-04-10T01:59:00.000+01:002007-04-10T02:05:20.906+01:00"I'll Be Back."<div style="text-align: justify;">Dear readers and friends,<br /><br />As you may already know, this blog has not been updated with any new articles in several months. The main reason for this is that I am now at a sensitive stage in my personal life that requires more time and commitment than I can presently afford to update this site. I would like to thank those who have written to me in support and encouragement of my efforts to expose Sathya Sai Baba and his massive deceptions, and also to enquire about my whereabouts. I am still largely unavailable via email and such although comments to postings will continue to be published.<br /><br />I also need to consider the fact that spending a a significant amount of time on Sai Baba topics tends to overtake other hobbies and interests of mine, so it is beneficial every once in a while to take a well-earned break. Please feel free to read and review the archives; there is much to read, discover and expand upon, even I look to them occasionally to gain inspiration for a new topic. You may also like to look over a new blog run by Barry Pittard that is updated regularly with fantastic articles:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://barrypittard.wordpress.com/">Call For Media and Goverment Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba</a><br /></div><br />I will certainly return to this blog when I have gathered up even more energy and resources that are needed for this task, and to present a whole range of hard-hitting exposés that will continue to display Sathya Sai Baba to the world as an utterly hopeless conman, cheat, fraud, liar and deceiver.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet! ;-)</span><br /></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-66988254378235212462007-04-10T01:58:00.000+01:002007-07-20T03:03:05.989+01:00Sai Baba Slammed By Newsweek<div style="text-align: justify;">Although I just said I'm too busy for these matters, I found this gem that is too good to pass up. Enjoy!<br /><br />Samuel H. Sandweiss, M.D. published his first book about his experiences with Sathya Sai Baba, entitled: <span style="font-style: italic;">'Sai Baba: The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist'</span>. It has since remained a favourite in Sai literature and a staple product in the Baba's own ashram bookshop. Apart from a graphic description of the Baba's <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/06/sandweiss-principle.html">fraudulent miracles personally witnessed and rationalised</a> by Sandweiss, I noticed an observation near the end of the book about how Sandweiss spotted a photo of Sai Baba in <span style="font-style: italic;">Newsweek</span> magazine. Well actually, it was a photo of a yogi, and a <span style="font-style: italic;">picture</span> of Sai Baba just happened to be in the corner of that yogi-picture. Sandweiss chuckled to himself as he mused over that extent of the Baba's media exposure to the West, and how he believed it was all in the Baba's hands.<br /><br />That was in 1976.<br /><br />It took until April 2007 for Sai Baba to earn a mention in Newsweek, and which is still generally a passing mention and not a public and positive article about him. Rather, a recent article entitled <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17889148/site/newsweek/"><span style="font-style: italic;">'The God Debate'</span></a> features a discussion between atheist Sam Harris and Christian pastor Rick Warren. You can guess what they argued about - the existence of God. Quite a profound subject for some people where you wouldn't normally expect someone like Sai Baba to get a look-in. But there he is, mentioned right there smack-dab in the middle of the debate, in a <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17889148/site/newsweek/page/3/">key point</a> by Harris about the authenticity of Jesus Christ's miracles:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Harris: </span>Now, there are many testimonials about miracles, every bit as amazing as the miracles of Jesus, in other literature of the world's religions. Even contemporary miracles. There are millions of people who believe that Sathya Sai Baba, the south Indian guru, was born of a virgin, has raised the dead and materializes objects. I mean, you can watch some of his miracles on YouTube. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Prepare to be underwhelmed. He's a stage magician.</span> As a Christian, you can say Sathya Sai Baba's miracle stories are not interesting, let's not pay attention to them, but if you set them within the prescientific religious milieu of the first-century Roman Empire, suddenly miracle stories become especially compelling.</blockquote><br />Oh dear. Yet another major media source lambasts Sai Baba's extremely poor and pathetic magic show as an excercise in futility and showbusiness. And this time the humiliation is greater as it didn't even require a dedicated article to make the point. What is only necessary to observe is how Sai Baba's "miracles" are now openly derided and mocked as uninteresting and stage-managed, things we have been saying all along. It's about time the world was informed about the Baba's cheap parlour tricks through responsible news media like Newsweek inasmuch as serious allegations of child sexual abuse perpetrated by him are now being documented for posterity in <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/08/sai-juvenile-sex-abuse-now-academic.html">college textbooks</a>.<br /><br />Isn't it time that the old goat <span style="font-weight: bold;">takes the hint</span> and buzzes off? He can ride off into the sunset on his wheelchair, incoherently muttering some inchoate and senescent ramblings before looking back, <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/saibabafu.jpg">displaying two fingers to the camera</a> before breaking into maniacal giggles.<br /></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1167018397337252562006-12-25T03:45:00.000+00:002007-01-12T05:24:01.976+00:00Sai Baba: Riding His White Horse<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>"I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. 'He will rule them with an iron scepter.' He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">'KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.'"</div> </blockquote><br />Sound familiar? Yes, that's from the Bible, <span style="font-style: italic;">Revelations 19.11-16</span> to be precise. This is a staple of Sai literature by way of their incorrigible attempts to prove that Sathya Sai Baba is the Messiah and his coming was foretold in ancient scriptures. Without complicating the present issue, we may also observe that such claims of messiahship extend to other religions besides Christianity.<br /><br />I say incorrigible because history bears witness to the justification of the vilest acts that were legitimised by the twisting of scripture. Irregardless of the intent of Revelations 19, Sai devotees interpret all of the scriptural qualities as being present in the person of Sai Baba, not least the fact that the Baba himself is responsible for this. Let us take a look at his own words of <a href="http://sssbpt.info/ssspeaks/volume11/sss11-54.pdf">Christmas Day, 1972</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>"There is one point that I cannot but bring to your special notice today. At the moment when Jesus was merging in the Supreme Principle of Divinity, He communicated some news to his followers ... The statement itself has been manipulated and tangled into a conundrum. The statement of Christ is simple: 'He who sent me among you will come again!' and he pointed to a Lamb. The Lamb is merely a symbol, a sign. It stands for the Voice - Ba-Ba; the announcement was the Advent of Baba. 'His Name will be Truth,' Christ declared. Sathya means Truth. 'He will wear a robe of red, a bloodred robe.' (Here Baba pointed to the robe He was wearing!). 'He will be short, with a crown (of hair). The Lamb is the sign and symbol of Love.' Christ did not declare that he will come again. <span style="font-weight: bold;">He said, 'He who made me will come again.'</span> That Ba-ba is this Baba and Sai, the short, curly-hair-crowned red-robed Baba, is come."</blockquote><br />No, there is no use rubbing your eyes in disbelief, he really <span style="font-style: italic;">did</span> say that in front of a packed crowd of Westerners on Christmas Day. Talk about seizing opportunities, just check out the way that he is not content with declaring himself the Messiah (Christ come again) but insists upon being recognised as <span style="font-weight: bold;">GOD,</span> He who supposedly <span style="font-style: italic;">sent</span> Christ into the world.<br /><br />One thing that I absolutely love about Sai devotees is the way they manage to take everything completely out of context while keeping a straight face. By this I am referring to the 'Rider of the White Horse' mentioned in Revelations; <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2019:19-21;&version=31;">Verses 19-21</a> speak of both a 'beast' and a 'false prophet' who will war with the horse's rider (ostensibly the Messiah) and be defeated by him by a sword that emerges out of the rider's mouth. All's fair in love and weirdness as some may say, but who are these beasts and false prophets running around all over the place? For that we must turn to <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2013;&version=31;">Revelations 13</a> (of course, which other number would work?) to find out all about the Beast and the infamous '666' number. Yup, it's our old friend the <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/06/sai-baba-antichrist-superstar.html">Anti-Christ</a>.<br /><br />Now if Sai Baba is identifying himself as the rider on the white horse mentioned in the Bible, what does it mean to suggest that he will be responsible for the killing of the Anti-Christ? What does it say about Sai Baba's leanings towards Fundamentalist Christianity? What does it say about Sai Baa-baa's apparent endorsement of mythical and devilish figures? What does it say about Sai BlahBlah's infinite capacity to <span style="font-weight: bold;">talk crap?</span><br /><br />In any case, isn't it ironic how Sai Baba is viewed in some quarters as being the <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/06/sai-baba-antichrist-superstar.html">Anti-Christ incarnate</a>? With all his relentless self-flattery about being the very same God who sent Jesus Christ, he <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2005/12/sai-babas-contradictions-on-jesus.html">can't even get his story straight</a> about that. Constant confusion is par for the course with this Baba, and it was one of the reasons why I felt unable to continue following him in good conscience. Sai Baba could perhaps redeem himself and return to his former glory as Superbaba again if only he made the effort, bearing in mind that claims to be God or Jesus have lost their novelty when they are made by practically every drunk, drug addict or schizophrenic. There's an idea I'll submit to him for his New Year's Resolutions; Think up some more creative ways to keep a grip on your dwindling followers by re-asserting your godhood and absolute control over their lives. If in doubt, hire a good PR consultant.<br /><br />Happy Holidays. :-) </div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1166934086308442792006-12-24T04:16:00.000+00:002006-12-24T04:23:54.910+00:00Sai Baba Caught In British Controversy<p style="text-align: justify;">The <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1876148,0005.htm">Hindustan Times</a> has published a follow-up of sorts to the recent <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/guardians-sensational-sai-scandal.html">Guardian</a> and <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/dna-holy-furore-rages-in-britain.html">DNA</a> articles about the 200-boys Sai Youth trip to Sai Baba, and the embarrassing connection to the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. Some extra information has been added:<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;">------------------------<br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Satya Sai Baba caught in British controversy</span><br /><br />Indo-Asian News Service<br /><br />London, December 22, 2006<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Satya Sai Baba, one of India's best known spiritual leaders, has triggered a fresh controversy in Britain after association with The Duke of Edinburgh's Award charity involving young people.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Duke of Edinburgh's Award is a London-headquartered charity whose patron is Prince Philip.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It gives three kinds of awards (bronze, silver and gold) to anyone aged between 14-25 for achievements in four categories: community service, skills, physical recreation and expeditions. Each year it is estimated that over 2,25,000 youngsters vie for the honour in Britain alone.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This year, when the charity celebrates its 50th year, it has chosen to send about 200 young volunteers to India to work with the Sri Satya Sai Organisation.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">However, the feat, pulled off by Sai Youth UK, a division of the parent body, has created a furore. Several people, including some of the Satya Sai Baba's former Western disciples, questioned the decision in view of the mixed reputation the godman enjoys. Sai's devotees deny the allegations.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><em>The Guardian</em> was the first to raise its voice saying the award scheme had chosen as its accredited partner a spiritual group "whose 'living god' founder has been accused of sexually abusing young boys".</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Satya Sai Baba hit bad press in Britain two years ago when a BBC programme, The Secret Swami, interviewed young Western disciples who alleged that the godman had sexually coerced them.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><em>The Guardian</em> quoted Tom Sackville, a former Home Office minister and chairman of Fair, a cult-watching and victim support group, as saying: "It is appallingly naive for the award scheme to involve young people and the royal family with an organisation whose leader is accused of paedophilia. Parents who plan to send their children on this pilgrimage... should be aware of the danger their children are being exposed to."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The daily also said Michael Gave, a conservative MP, planned to write to the charity to say it should monitor the organisations they chose as partners more strictly.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">"As a society we need a more determined effort to identify and expose those religious cults and extremists that pose a direct threat to people, so that they do not enjoy patronage that should be directed elsewhere," he was quoted as saying.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In the 1990s, when Prince Charles visited India, he had expressed a desire to visit the Sai Baba but was quietly dissuaded by the British Embassy in New Delhi.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Since <em>The Guardian</em>'s article, it was reported that there was mounting pressure on the charity to distance itself from the Sai group.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">However, charity spokesperson Shona Taylor did not answer repeated queries as to whether the volunteers had left for India and how they could be contacted.</p><div style="text-align: justify;">------------------<br /><br />Also carried at: <a href="http://www.keralanext.com/news/?id=928894">KeralaNext.Com</a>, <a href="http://www.india4u.com/india4unews/newsview.asp?ID=10747">India4u.Com</a>, <a href="http://www.nerve.in/news:25350028158">Nerve.In</a>, <a href="http://www.ibnlive.com/news/brit-boys-to-kept-off-sai-babas-reach/29144-2.html?xml">IBNLive.Com</a> ("Brit <b>Boys</b> To Keep Off Sai Baba's Reach"), and <a href="http://wwrn.org/article.php?idd=23781">WorldWide Religious News</a>.<br /></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1165342673396301082006-12-05T18:08:00.000+00:002006-12-15T02:14:51.813+00:00Sai Baba on Gender Equality<div style="text-align: justify;">Sai Baba is not well known for his views on gender equality. In private he harbours views that are repressive and controlling, despite externally allowing celebrations such as "Ladies Day" in his ashram in order to give an impression of equal rights.<br /><br />Some extracts from past Ladies Day discourses do well to illustrate his views on this matter:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Today women, because they are educated, compete with men to take up jobs. There is nothing wrong in going for a job. However, they must take care of their home needs before taking up a job. When wife and husband go to offices, who will look after their children at home? As the mother is not at home to guide them properly, the children go astray. If both the parents go out for jobs, they may be able to satisfy their desire for money, but there is every possibility of their children getting spoiled, as there will be nobody at home to discipline them. Whatever moral values you have learnt, you have to teach your children." (19th Nov. 2002)</blockquote><br />Sai Baba is a proponent of the traditional Indian view that women must stay at home and look after the children, and only gives permission for women to work in the case of dire financial need. In private he has told his close disciple, Prof. Anil Kumar, that women are good for nothing except cooking and cleaning.<br /><br /><blockquote>"Today we find many children with bad character and bad behavior. The reason for this can be attributed to the bad thoughts of their mothers." (19th Nov. 2000)<br /></blockquote><br />That's right, he blames the parents just like everyone else!<br /></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1164776217286986202006-11-29T04:55:00.000+00:002006-11-29T05:51:38.026+00:00Sanghvi's Truth About Sai Baba<div style="text-align: justify;">Vir Sanghvi, a journalist for the leading Indian newspaper - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustan_Times">Hindustan Times</a> - has <a href="http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=26_11_2006_008_003&typ=0&pub=47">published</a> a <span style="font-weight: bold;">scathing exposé</span> of Sathya Sai Baba to mark the occasion of the Baba's 81st Birthday. Read on:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">----------------------------------------<br /></div><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">COUNTERPOINT - The Truth About Sathya Sai Baba<br /> <br />If Sathya Sai Baba is a sort of God come down to earth to help us, credulous humans, then why doesn’t he use his powers for the public good? What’s the point of materialising a sandesh when you need to materialise mounds of rice for the poor?</span><br /> <br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Vir Sanghvi</span><br /><br />So, The Sathya Sai Baba turns 80 this week. The celebrations have already begun. TV channels show us footage of an Afro haired old man in a saffron robe being wheeled out for the adoration of teeming devotees. And naturally, all the old staples of the Sai Baba story have been pulled out: the ‘miracles’, the claim to be the reincarnation of the Sai Baba of Shirdi, the assassination attempts (two that I know of), the legion of celebrity devotees (including, apparently, former President R Venkataraman and current incumbent Abdul Kalam — perhaps there is a vibhuti corner in Rashtrapati Bhavan), and, alas, the sordid controversy about the old boy’s behaviour with little boys. <p> As you may have guessed from my tone, I am not big on the Sathya Sai Baba (I have more time for the Shirdi original), but I am continually amazed by the unwillingness of his devotees to concede that there is any truth to the many allegations made against the Baba during his long career as king of the godmen. </p> <p> The homosexual abuse allegations are now too numerous to dispute. (Enter ‘Sathya Sai Baba’ and ‘homosexuality’ on a Google search and you will get an astonishing 18,000 references.) I am prepared to believe that at least some of the young men who claim to have been fondled or otherwise assaulted by the Baba are liars. But can every single person who claims to have been fondled be a liar? By now, the list of complainants runs into triple figures. And that’s just the Westerners. (The Indians seem less able to speak out against the Baba.) Surely, there is a case for the old boy to answer? </p> <p> Bizarrely, none of the fondling-of-devotees stuff seems to perturb any of the Baba’s high-profile followers. And, when you ask the many senior politicians, who turn up at the Puttaparthi ashram to fling themselves at the Holy One’s feet, whether they are legitimising the Baba’s activities, the only responses you get follow predictable lines: “Even Jesus had to face criticism” etc etc. </p> <p> Then, there’s the business of the ‘miracles’. There’s enough evidence to suggest (eye-witness accounts mainly) that Sai Baba can materialise rings, expensive watches, sacred ash and the odd locket almost at will. It is also true that portraits of Sai Baba have been known to ‘weep’ even when the swami is far away. And, the Baba has been able to regurgitate a shivling from his insides on days of special significance. It is clear that no ordinary man can do any of these things. But does it follow that, by virtue of these ‘miracles’, the Baba is some kind of God as many of his devotees argue? </p> <p> There are two objections to this claim. The first is that while sacred ash may be unavailable to the average Joe, there are large numbers of people to whom it is as easily accessible as it is to the Holy One. </p> <p> I refer, of course, to stage magicians. </p> <p> The sad reality of the Sai Baba’s ‘miracles’ is that every single one of them can easily be duplicated by even a moderately talented conjuror. In the old days (dating back to the 1960s), when scepticism was first expressed about Sai Baba’s ‘magic’ powers, critics asked why it was that the watches he produced, seemingly out of thin air, all said <span style="font-style: italic;">‘Made in Switzerland’</span> and why they tended to be much advertised brands. (Rich devotees got <span style="font-style: italic;">Omegas</span>, the poor just got sacred ash.) Sai Baba’s defenders retorted that the great man had never claimed to be a holy watchmaker. His skill did not lie in creating watches or rings. These already existed. All the Baba did was to invisibly teleport them through solid matter till they reached his sacred fingers. </p> <p> Problem: this is exactly what magicians claim to do. No magician claims to have created the rabbit that emerges from the hat. He claims to have teleported it. And so, what is so special about a man whose tricks are roughly on par with K. Lal but well below the standard of David Blaine or David Copperfield? </p> <p> Sai Baba devotees are sensitive to the ‘Afro-haired conjuror’ sneer. Over a decade ago, the magician PC Sorcar was refused entry into Sai Baba’s presence. He went under a false name and when the Baba miraculously produced a sandesh, Sorcar returned the compliment by miraculously producing a rasgulla. The Baba began shouting and Sorcar was physically evicted from the ashram. The magician wrote about the encounter in Sunday magazine. But since then, he has come under so much pressure from the Sai Baba lobby that he’s reluctant to repeat the experience. No matter. There are enough people who can do the same tricks. Sanal Edamaraku of the Indian Rationalist Association, who does not even claim to be a magician, will cheerfully reproduce any of the old boy’s ‘miracles’ on demand. </p> <p> The second objection to the Baba’s ‘miracles’ is also fundamental. His devotees now take the revised position that the <span style="font-style: italic;">Omega</span> watches are merely his ‘calling cards’ meant to show ordinary mortals how cosmic he is. The real God-like stuff, they say, consists of the Baba’s ability to see into the future, to change destiny and to heal the human body. All this is highly dubious. If he can heal other people, then why doesn’t he just heal himself first, and kick away that wheelchair? If he can see into the future, how come he failed to predict the two assassination attempts? And if he can change destiny, why doesn’t he start by changing that Google search that portrays him as a bit of a sicko? </p> <p> I am familiar with all the arguments against my position. There’s the traditional one of how the Baba does not want to interfere with the karmic cycle of good and evil. Well, in that case, he should stop pretending that he can heal people and remove karmic sickness. The moment he bends the laws of nature, he is already mucking about with the karmic cycle anyway. Then, there’s the he-does-so-much-charity argument. I do not for a moment dispute that he spends many of the crores his devotees shower on him for very good causes. And I accept that he has built hospitals, colleges (and, incongruously enough, a planetarium) for the people of Puttaparthi. But all that this proves is that he’s a philanthropist of some description. Nor is religious philanthropy novel to Hinduism. The Ramakrishna Mission does much more than the Sai Baba has ever done or ever will. (Actually, it’s done more work in Calcutta than Mother Teresa’s better-publicised missionaries — but that’s another story.) However, none of its monks claims to be God. And they don’t need to produce <span style="font-style: italic;">Omega</span> watches out of thin air. They are too busy helping the poor. </p> <p> But, my basic objection is this: if this man is a sort of God come down to earth to help us, credulous humans, then why doesn’t he use his powers for the public good? What’s the point of materialising a sandesh when you need to materialise mounds of rice for the poor? Why bother giving some crooked politician an <span style="font-style: italic;">Omega</span> watch when you can stop the Tsunami? Why do these Godlike powers never extend to any more than mere conjuring tricks? Why do they never translate into anything that is substantial and truly helpful? </p> <p> If this is the best that God can do, then surely PC Sorcar is God too?</p><p> Mail your responses to <a href="mailto:counterpoint@hindustantimes.com">counterpoint@hindustantimes.com</a></p></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1164429946141826982006-11-25T04:45:00.000+00:002006-11-29T18:29:34.303+00:0081st Birthday Report (England)<div style="text-align: justify;">Don't ask me why, but I just thought it would be fun to attend the 81st Birthday (2006) celebrations here in London. From the moment I walked into the place I knew I had made a bad decision. I was shocked and appalled to find that, in the six or so years that I've been an ex-devotee, <span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>nothing</u></span> has changed. If you were a devotee then you might have found it a "blissful experience". If you're like me, you'd have been bored out of your skull with the same old platitudes and "shit". Disorganisation, chaos, long awkward silences, minor power failures, sound system failures, embarrasing pleas for patience, it went on and on while my legs were mangled to bits through a torturous four-plus hours of sitting on the floor. You'd think that with these people being Sai devotees, this is the one day in the year where they should excel and indulge their faith in him to the grandest possible extent! And, to be fair, they have performed better in previous years so what went wrong?<br /><br />First they got a couple of adolescent teenagers to introduce the show; him dressed in a suit and tie with a long and goofy hairstyle dripping with gel and a half-broken voice, her miles shorter than him and desperately trying to act and sound like an adult. Here's a tip: Do <span style="font-weight: bold;">NOT</span> work with children or animals! As anyone in showbusiness will tell you. Then some Indian lady took the mic and started talking energetically and telling fast-paced jokes in a lame bid to sound cool. And she was a bit on the plump side shall we say. She introduced a dance program to be performed by students from the <a href="http://www.saischool.com/">Sai School of Harrow</a> while the poor kids posed in their starting positions for a full ten minutes before they figured out that the sound system wasn't working for the music to start. Then they were taken off the stage so that the "technician" could fix the problem, and we were led straight into the next item: A live report on the birthday celebrations from Puttaparthi.<br /><br />This means that she called someone there on her mobile phone and placed the mic to the speaker, so we could all hear about some basketball game that had been played in the new Indoor Stadium that had been built especially for the occasion. Whoop-de-doo, I am regularly informed about happenings in Puttaparthi and I knew about these events weeks in advance. Nothing new, it's not like they placed a call to Sai Baba himself or something! Your sound system is hardly working, you take the kids off the stage and then you yap your head off on the phone talking about some bloody basketball game. Cue more lame jokes about how the speaker should climb up on the roof of the Poornachandra Auditorium so that Sai Baba receives the goodwill and best wishes from the UK devotees. Aww sweet, not.<br /><br />When the kids were taken off the stage, I couldn't help disguising my audible chuckle as a cough. I wasn't laughing at them but at the situation. Mixed with that chuckle was an undercurrent of indignation; I was reminded of why I had left Sai Baba and his Organisation in the first place, because his <span style="font-style: italic;">devotees</span> are so hopelessly inept and disorganised that they couldn't even bring themselves to worship him properly. Presuming that Sai Baba is God, don't you think that his birthday celebrations should be planned and practised well in advance to meticulous detail? Did they even rehearse anything? What if Sai Baba had been personally present, would they have been so lacking then? <span style="font-weight: bold;">Nothing has changed</span> in the six years I have been an ex-devotee, I can't believe that these guys can sit there and act as if everything is happening by divine will. They were just so oblivious and apathetic to what was going on, silently tolerating the mishaps ("Swami says we should be unruffled by pleasure and pain, even on his burfday"). It is largely because of the conduct of devotees that I left Sai Baba, it is just so embarrassing to be associated with them when they act so foolishly trying to hold an event. And don't make me start on the non-existent philosophical debates!<br /><br />So while everyone was waiting for the sound system to be fixed, the volunteers started handing out covered plastic plates of food. The food wasn't bad, typical Indian fare, but the fat lady wouldn't let up, asking various people to come forward and tell the crowd of some experience of Baba's presence that they've had. Now look, I've heard about it not being over until the fat lady sings but that doesn't mean that she has to yap her head off while we're eating! Every five seconds someone says something nice and the audience claps because of some wonderfully goofy experience they've had that "proves" Swami's "omnipresence". For Christ's sake, just leave us alone and let us eat! It was nice of them to provide food though. In past years it has ranged from nothing at all to a cheese sandwich and apple, so this was almost like a small meal which was quite nice considering that a lot of people had given up their evening (and probably their dinners) to come and sit here on the floor for hours listening to a fat lady squawking excitedly about some dratted basketball game.<br /><br />The highlight of the evening was a concert by Ravi Nasery (<span style="font-style: italic;">aka</span> Ravi Raj Nasery), a singer from India who has composed and sung many of the currently popular Sai bhjans. I've got to admit that I was interested in hearing him sing as I still have a couple of his tapes around somewhere, and he does have a very nice voice. In this way this birthday event was also different from previous years; the usual fare would be a bhajan session, a couple of dance and drama performances, a special guest or two waffling on and on about how they kissed Swami's feet before the whole thing ends and they kick us out. This event was almost all taken up by Nasery. The sound system did get fixed in time for the schoolkids to do their dance, but it looks like they had too many plugs in too few sockets which caused occasional power failures. At least three times during Nasery's concert the power went off and the mics became silent which made him look a bit of an idiot on stage, singing passionately while no one could hear him. And this even happened at the climactic moment of a song, sadly I couldn't help smirking about the ineptitude behind that too.<br /><br />But on the whole it was quite nice. Nasery sang <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> the old favourites that I have on tape plus a few new songs. I couldn't enjoy them as much as I would like to have done because, after fours hours of sitting on the floor, my legs were shot to shit. Plus-sides included getting a photo taken of myself with Nasery as well as an autograph too. Just to stick the knife in, I also got photos taken of myself with top-level Sai devotees. ;-)<br /><br />One of the most poignant things about this occasion is that, while Nasery was singing, a movie of Sai Baba was being shown on a large projector screen. I later found out that this was a <span style="font-weight: bold;">very recent video</span> brought by somebody who had just returned from the ashram a week ago. As such, it was a video record of Sai Baba's recent travels around South Indian cities by aeroplane and suchlike, as well as the usual darshan footage. As expected, this was also a record of a strange episode in the Avatar's life: his being wheelchair-bound. It was so damn strange to see him continuing as if nothing had ever happened and that everything was normal apart from the wheelchair. It also showed how devotees continue to pleadingly hold out letters to him for him to take, and he is being wheeled around by a small mafia of white-clad devotees.<br /><br />Reports of Sai Baba's now being able to stand are exaggerated. Yes, he can stand and walk a few steps but only with the support of a student. Imagine a very old person walking and stumbling when they're without their walking stick? That's exactly how Sai Baba is when he uses a young boy as a walking stick (and probably for other purposes too). He has become a <span style="font-weight: bold;">very weak old man,</span> speaking haltingly and delicately, every move being supervised and planned. As I was watching the devotees in the movie still fawn on him adoringly, as well as the devotees in the hall with me, I couldn't help but wonder what the hell is going on in their heads? How can they deal with this, their beloved God, in a wheelchair and suffering like a geriatric? Doesn't it niggle them in their hearts, doesn't it nag away at the back of their minds? They drown themselves in self-serving platitudes about how merciful he is to take on someone else's karma, when the Baba has publicly revealed that <span style="font-style: italic;">he is <u>not</u> suffering anybody's karma</span> except his own, reaping the results of his slip in the bathroom earlier this year.<br /><br />It's one thing seeing the latest pictures from the ashram on websites, but it's quite another to see him on video. Sai Baba has changed for the worse, there is no doubt. While his plans to usher in the Golden Age appear to have been shelved, he <a href="http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Eex_baba/engels/articles/confused/confused.html">sits and cries</a> his eyes out about being an invalid. And his devotees continue to love him as before. Where have they left their brains and their critical thinking faculties? I feel nothing but pity for those who cannot open their eyes to see nor their ears to hear.</div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1164299642025119462006-11-23T16:30:00.000+00:002006-12-03T18:05:08.266+00:00The Truth Behind Sai Baba's Homosexuality<div style="text-align: justify;">A shocking discovery of Sai Baba's various personality disorders reveals a trend of femininity. The Baba himself had indicated this by making a sensational <a href="http://www.sathyasai.org/discour/1963/d630706.htm">public declaration</a> in 1963 of being a dual incarnation of Shiva and Shakti, male and female Hindu divinities. In a later speech made in 1974, he expanded further on this:<br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><blockquote>"Giving the appearance of a strange person, having a basket-like hair on his head, showing no signs which indicate any particular religion or sect, with no specific mark on his face indicative of any particular caste, he appears quickly in a moment and vanishes equally quickly, then suddenly comes into your presence, wearing a robe that comes right down to his feet and sometimes covers the feet and sometimes does not cover the feet. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Inherent beauty and attractiveness are obvious in his playing and singing. These are the aspects of Shiva Shakti that are contained in him.</span> Neither his hair nor any particular mark on his body nor the kind of robes that he wears give any clue to his divinity. All these signs point to the young Sathya Sai as he appears in his external form. He always smiles. <span style="font-weight: bold;">In him, you will find the aspects of Shiva and Shakti.</span> How is it possible for anyone to understand the secret of Sathya Sai whose form answers this description?"- <span style="font-size:85%;">Summer Showers in Brindavan 1974, <span style="font-style: italic;">'Who is Sathya Sai Baba?'</span></span></blockquote><br />The incorporation of masculine and feminine elements in one's personality is correctly known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgyny">androgyny</a>, a quality that was noticed in Sai Baba as far back as 1970 by Tal Brooke, who was sexually molested by the Baba and who proceeded to write the first landmark exposure book: Avatar Of Night. At the outset I should mention that this article focuses on the Baba's feminine aspect in the light of continuing and devastating claims of <span style="font-style: italic;">homosexual</span> paedophilia on his part, and Sai Baba's own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgyne">androgynous</a> tendencies have been brought to light by <span style="font-style: italic;">'Love Is My Form',</span> a well-researched biography.<br /><br />Indeed, from the age of five onwards, it was observed thus:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Sathya never hesitated to assist his family in household chores. He would help his sister Venkamma cook and go shopping for his father, returning with four-donkey-loads of provisions ... Sometimes Sathya was even called <span style="font-style: italic;">Aadamari Sathyakka</span> (Sathya the elder sister), as he would help his parents in cleaning the house; fetching water from the well and doing other chores that were considered girls' work in those days." - <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF,</span> p. 39.</span></blockquote><br />A clarificatory footnote elsewhere expands on why preoccupations with "worship, rituals and music sometimes had made others feel that he was often too genteel and not one of them." Devotees would seize on this as evidence of Sai Baba's (then Sathyanarayana Raju) divine otherworldliness except for the fact that his gentility is clarified as referring to his being appelled as "<span style="font-style: italic;">'ammani'</span>, because he was dancing, cleaning houses, bringing water, <span style="font-weight: bold;">wearing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sari">saris</a> and so on, like ladies did"</span> (<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF, </span>p. 560</span>). And although I am loathe to say this, it has been observed that a significant proportion of homosexuals exhibit feminine behaviour not unlike that described above, and close relationships with female family members often feature strongly. And so it was with Raju and his elder sister, Venkamma, of whose closeness to each other was especially prominent in his childhood and youth. As Raju loved to take part in dances and dramas, his lithe form often qualified him to take on female roles almost all of the time. Venkamma and another sister, Parvathamma, frequently took responsibility for his cosmetics and costumes, <span style="font-weight: bold;">often clothing him in their own saris</span> for the part.<br /><br />This was especially noted in an instance in the mid-1930s whereby a popular dance artist, Rishyendramani, went touring around South India to entertain towns and villages with her impressive show. She was famous for feats such as dancing to music while picking up handkerchiefs off the floor with her teeth. Once when Rishyendramani and her troupe were due to perform at Raju's Annual School Day function, a last-minute announcement informed that the artiste would not be appearing and the event was cancelled. To prevent the disappointmentment of the crowd, Raju rushed into action and decked himself in fancy clothes and enabled an announcement to say that the artiste had turned up after all. Due to his lithe form he was able to pass for a young female, and reportedly improved upon Rishyendramani's feats to the delight of the crowd. The funny part was when the District Board President wished to present a prize of a silk sari to the 'artiste', asking for 'her' to come up on stage to receive it. Raju had changed back into his male clothes by then but walked towards the stage to claim his prize. He was stopped by officials and the situation was defused when a senior teacher informed that it was actually he who had saved the day and thus he deserved a prize, though it is unknown whether he received the sari!<br /><br />What this tells us is that, by now, Raju had identified with females closely enough to take his prize in spite of having his deception unravelled. Any average individual who had done such a charitable and altruistic act to help in a time of disaster might have fought shy of admitting that they had to dress up as a female to do so, but not for Raju apparently. It should be noted that it is quite common in some Indian drama performances for the actors to switch gender roles; a play on Radha and Krishna may sometimes feature a female in the (male) role of Krishna. In any case Raju's relishing of female roles seem to be a prominent feature, as he often starred in female roles in <span style="font-style: italic;">dramas that he wrote himself</span>.<br /><br />This whole business with saris was first brought to my attention in 1997 when I purchased the book <span style="font-style: italic;">'Recapitulation of Baba's Divine Teachings'</span> by Grace J. McMartin in the ashram bookshop. The following image was published within it with an accompanying history provided by the preface's author, Pramod Kumar Suri:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/775107/sbsari4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 147px; height: 246px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/887301/sbsari4.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />The story behind this image follows, with significant cleanup from myself:<br /><br /><blockquote>"I am reminded of the actual miracle of Bhagavan [Sai Baba] performed five decades ago with Mrs. Thippamma of Anantapur. Thippamma offered prayers and prasadam in a tray and paid obeisances. When she raised her head, she saw Swami standing in front of her. Mrs. Thippamma asked Swami, 'Just now I offered prasadam to a lady goddess and paid respects, where is she?' Swami waved His divine hand and materialised the photo of 'Swami wearing a sari' and asked, 'Was it this you saw?' This rare photo is being printed in this book."</blockquote><br />As a devotee, I did not think much about it at the time since this was apparently a <span style="font-style: italic;">materialised </span>photograph, although I did have some suspicions about it's being so unusual. Upon reading all of the anecdotes above I was forced to take another look at the picture and see it in a different light. What surprised me was that this same picture was also printed in <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span></span> (cleaned up and clearer) with significant differences to the story!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/101563/Transvestite%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20sari.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 161px; height: 280px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/582920/Transvestite%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20sari.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />As per the <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span> account:<br /><br /><blockquote>"The families of Gummagatta Thippamma, Yadalam Nagamma and Subbamma assembled at the mandir with <span style="font-style: italic;">Kudumulu</span> and other items to perform Gouri Puja in Baba's presence ... The ladies petitioned to offer the [valedictory offering] to Easwaramma. Baba said, 'Why Easwaramma? I will receive it myself.' They were confused and looked at each other. By the time they looked back at Baba, he had transformed himself into a lady wearing a white sari, bedecked with a lot of jewellery, flowers and kumkum ... They touched <span style="font-weight: bold;">her</span> feet and received <span style="font-weight: bold;">her</span> blessings. After receiving the [valedictions], <span style="font-weight: bold;">she</span> transformed <span style="font-weight: bold;">herself</span> back into Baba.<br /><br />"Thippamma expressed her desire to see the lady again. Baba materialised for her a photo of him as the same 'lady' and gave it to her. (To prove that he was the very same Gouri Devi, he hassumed the form of the lady that had received the [offering].) He said, 'I am not that Parvathi of those days.' In the photograph was a 'modern' Parvathi - dressed in a silk sari and adorned with necklaces and bangles. Characteristic of Baba's humour, <span style="font-style: italic;">she</span> was wearing a pair of glasses too! Thippamma bowed down at the feet of Baba shedding tears of happiness and contentment." - <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span>, p. 523.</blockquote><br />If that didn't blow your mind enough, we are observing a notable outbreak of transvestism in Sai Baba's lifestyle. A more in-depth look is needed at his childhood but, suffice to say, continued bullying at school, an aptitude for female-oriented tasks, regular performances in female roles and cruel beatings inflicted on him at home may have affected his psychosexual development in a major way for these cross-dressing tendencies to exhibit themselves at the most inopportune of times. Of course I don't believe that either of this photograph was "materialised"! It so obviously leads us to conclude that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sathya Sai Baba had dressed up as a woman and posed for these pictures.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-------------------------------------<br /></div><br />What follows herein is a brief photographic record of various incidents in Raju's young life that invariably reveal more evidence of Raju's patent effeminacy. These are not the only indications of his burgeoning androgynous and effeminate characteristics; as with the above photographs, these two photos were snapped during a visit to the palace of the then King and Queen of Chincholi, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karur">Karur</a>, in June 1949, at a time when Raju was openly advertising himself as an avatar on a mission to save the world:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/124278/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20wearing%20jewels.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 183px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/213536/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20wearing%20jewels.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/231330/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20wearing%20jewels%202.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 186px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/452409/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20wearing%20jewels%202.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Bangles and pearl necklaces? Need any more be said? Unfortunately yes.<br /><br />In 1958 the Prashanti Nilayam temple had completed construction and was ready to be inaugurated. The date for the opening was 23rd November of that year and it was a momentous celebration. After years of living in a dilapidated shed in the village that was full to the brim with visiting devotees all the year round, Sai Baba finally had his own grand temple (paid for by wealthy benefactors) to live in and call his own. How did he dress for the opening ceremony and procession from the old shed to the new temple?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/617511/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%201958%202.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 198px; height: 198px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/210998/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%201958%202.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/55044/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%201958.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 192px; height: 197px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/437505/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%201958.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/301564/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%201958%203.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 195px; height: 198px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/55810/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%201958%203.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/382959/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%20and%20sari%201958.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 202px; height: 197px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/447667/Girly%20Sai%20Baba%20in%20veil%20and%20sari%201958.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Click to enlarge)</span></span><br /></div><br />It seems that Sai Baba was rather a habitual wearer of saris and other feminine clothes. Eyewitness accounts of devotees present during the ten-day Dassera festivals (dedicated to the Divine Mother) in the mid-1940s have given testimony to the fact that for each day of the festival Sai Baba wore a different colour of sari and was paraded in public on a palanquin. It is not without cause that many who have seen him for the first time mistook him to be a woman, explicitly citing his long hair and robe as causing that impression.<br /><br />And let's face it: the long orange robe that Sai Baba wears is not that much of a fashionable style among most of India's gurus, who almost always retain traditional styles of dress. Early photos of the Baba in his robes invariably reveal that they were oversized to say the least. And when you consider that the word 'robe' is rather flattering (and misleading), a more apt name for his choice of costume is <span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>dress</u>!</span><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/903301/Beauty%20Queen%20Sai%20Baba.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 194px; height: 268px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/457582/Beauty%20Queen%20Sai%20Baba.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/748064/Beauty%20Queen%20Sai%20Baba%202.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 269px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/486987/Beauty%20Queen%20Sai%20Baba%202.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><br /><br />To think that all this time Sai Baba, the Androgynous Avatar, has been beautifying himself with cosmetics, hair dye, and effeminately posing for photos wearing long dresses for pretty much all of his career in an odd bid to satisfy his cravings for transvestism and generally behaving like a drag queen. In the light of all these cold and hard facts, it's no surprise that the Baba has been the butt of jokes (pun intended) and speculations about being a practising homosexual. Happy 81st Birthday, <u>Swamini</u>!</div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1164244895225606492006-11-23T01:18:00.000+00:002006-11-24T09:33:41.540+00:00The Truth About The Sai Baba Rock<div style="text-align: justify;">A popular episode in Sai Baba's life relates to when, after sensationally declaring that he was renouncing material life and beginning his mission to save the world (six months after he had declared himself to be the <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-baba-shirdi-lies-index.html">reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba</a>), he proceeded to the garden of a local devotee's house - Anjaneyulu, a Salt (Excise) Inspector and wealthy man - and sat on a large rock there. Here's the official version of the story from N. Kasturi, Sai Baba's authorised biographer, which has been replicated in several later accounts of his life:<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote><br />"People came into the garden from all directions bringing flowers and fruits. The grove<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/shirdideclaration2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 168px; height: 225px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/320/shirdideclaration2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> resounded to the voices of hundreds, singing in chorus the lines that Sathya Sai taught them. The first prayer that He taught them that day was, as many still remember:<br /><br />'Meditate in thy mind on the Feet of the Guru. This can take you across the difficult sea of existence in birth after birth.'<br /><br />"... Three days passed thus in that garden, three days of worship. A photographer came who wanted Sai Baba to remove a crude stone that was right in front of Him, but Baba did not pay heed to that prayer. The photographer took the picture nevertheless, <span style="font-style: italic;">and lo, the stone had become an image of Sai Baba of Shirdi!</span> But only in the photograph, not for all the people who had assembled there." - <span style="font-size:85%;">Sathyam Sivam Sundaram Part 1, <span style="font-style: italic;">'<a href="http://www.saibaba.ws/avatar/sss/sss1.htm#SerpentHill">The Serpent Hill</a>'.</span></span></blockquote><br />Or so they say. Take a good look at that picture, it is renowned throughout Sai literature as being the 'first photograph' of the "Avatar" after officially embarking on his mission, widely believed to have taken place on 20th October, 1940. Sathya Sai Baba himself told it like it was:<br /><br /><blockquote>"At that time, the Commissioner’s son ran inside, brought a camera and clicked a photo. In the picture, Shirdi Sai could be seen in front of Swami." - <span style="font-size:85%;">Summer discourse, 2000.</span><br /></blockquote><br />We now know that this took place in 1943 thanks to <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-babas-shirdi-lies-3.html">new research</a>. What the above narrative doesn't say is how there was something of a strong culture of Shirdi Sai worship in Uravakonda too, <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-babas-shirdi-lies-2.html">just like in Puttaparthi</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">'Love Is My Form',</span> a well-researched devotional biography, informs us that Anjaneyulu was a devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba and was requested by the young Sathya Sai (then known as Sathyanarayana<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/712109/littleshirdi.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/200/492431/littleshirdi.png" alt="" border="0" /></a> Raju) to procure a small statue of Shirdi Sai Baba from the nearest marketplace. This took place on 9th March 1943:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Anjaneyulu ... created a personal shrine for [Shirdi] Sai Baba in his garden, spreading a tigerskin on a boulder and placing the statue there for puja [worship] every Thursday. The boulder later became a landmark with the name <span style="font-style: italic;">Sai Baba Gundu</span> (Sai Baba Rock)." - <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF, </span>p. 134.</span></blockquote><br />Needless to say, Raju attended these Shirdi Sai worship services regularly <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-babas-shirdi-lies-2.html">just as he used to do</a> in Puttaparthi, which shows that - contrary to official information - the fame of Shirdi Sai Baba was so much widespread that it was possible for the residents of remote backwoods villages like Puttaparthi and Uravakonda to procure pictures and small statues of the Baba. And Anjaneyulu's statue is <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> being worshipped in the personal shrine of Goddumarri Sai Maruthi, his youngest son. Interestingly, <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span> doesn't mention a single word about the "Shirdi statue declaration miracle" that is described in official sources although that same photo is carried within it's pages (the picture above is scanned from <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span>), even when the narrative reaches the point at which Raju threw away his schoolbooks and announced his mission.<br /><br />Given that <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span> has explained the truth behind the Shirdi statue and how it had been present on the Gundu for months before Raju threw his tantrum, there is yet another reason to believe why the popular story is a fraud. The <a href="http://www.sathyasai.org/">international website</a> of the Sathya Sai Organisation carries an old photo in it's picture gallery of this event that is <a href="http://www.sathyasai.org/imagecol/BalaSai/images/bala327.jpg">still there</a> at the time of writing:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/514416/Shirdideclarationalt.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/814913/Shirdideclarationalt.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Immediately the difference is obvious: the camera is at a slightly different angle and young Raju is looking even further away from the camera than in the other photo. The background is different and there is no tigerskin on the boulder. It is possible that the two photos were taken on the same day, however, and that this discounts the "miracle" even further. If Raju refused to move out of the way because of a crude and obstructive stone with the <span style="font-style: italic;">intention</span> of performing a miracle (that the stone would transform into a small statue of Shirdi Sai Baba), how can this be possible for <span style="font-weight: bold;">two different photos?</span> To my knowledge this alternative photo has never been published before (it's not in <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span>!) so very few could have known of it's existence, while the large majority believes the official narrative of the miracle.<br /><br />To highlight the differences between the two photos, I created this composite:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/1600/533520/Sai%20Baba%20Gundu%20Boyz.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7618/1571/320/366197/Sai%20Baba%20Gundu%20Boyz.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The uncovering of this <span style="font-weight: bold;">bald lie</span> represents yet another mephistophelian working of the Puttaparthi Propaganda Machine generated by the dynamic duo, Kasturi and Sai Baba, in a shameless and deceptive attempt to divinise each and every <span style="font-style: italic;">mundane</span> event of his life in order to impress and attract followers. The arrogation of Shirdi Sai Baba's legacy has continued throughout his life and continues to be bowdlerised and plundered.</div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1164241925358359852006-11-23T00:30:00.000+00:002006-11-23T01:01:09.696+00:00The Truth About Sai Baba's Birthplace<div style="text-align: justify;">When I first became acquainted with the Sathya Sai Baba sex controversy in 2000, I came across some information that he had not been born in his home village of Puttaparthi as popularly described, but that he had been born in Karnatanagapalli - a nearby village located across the local river. A photo (currently unavailable) of the birth site was also provided, and it was alleged that Sai Baba had been born there because it was the local custom for pregnant women to travel to their home villages to give birth. Whispers about this have circulated even amongst devotees for several decades; I personally conversed with the wife of a Sai Organisation National Co-Ordinator about this matter when we were both in Puttaparthi. As I was a devotee at the time, I dismissed it all as malicious bunk.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />I was extremely surprised to come across this information again during recent readings of <span style="font-style: italic;">'Love Is My Form',</span> a devotional and well-researched biography that - for obvious reasons - unwittingly smashes many of the <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-baba-shirdi-lies-index.html">myths</a> <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/06/sai-baba-born-of-incest.html">and</a> <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/10/sai-babas-school-records-index.html">legends</a> that surround Sai Baba. It seems that the circumstances of Sai Baba's birth is no exception, hence a fitting topic to be discussed today on his "<a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/10/sai-babas-school-records-index.html">official</a>" birthday of 23rd November.<br /><br />As I've discussed the topic of the Baba's supposed immaculate conception <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/05/white-light-blue-light-sai-light-not.html">before</a>, I'll just briefly note the glaring discrepancy between the testimonies of Sai Baba and his mother Easwaramma regarding whether it was a blue or white light that glided into her stomach and how this signified the entrance of the Baba into her womb. Here's the <span style="font-style: italic;">official</span> version by Easwaramma about how it happened:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Mother said, 'She [Easwaramma's mother-in-law] had dreamt of Satyanarayana Deva and she had cautioned me that I should not be frightened if something happens to me through the Will of God. That morning when I was at the well drawing water, <span style="font-weight: bold;">a big ball of <u>blue light</u> came rolling towards me</span> and I fainted and fell. <span style="font-weight: bold;">I felt it glided into me.</span>' Swami turned to Rama Sharma with a smile. 'There you have the answer! I was not begotten. It was Pravesha [divine conception], not Prasava [human intercourse]." - <a href="http://laluni.helloyou.ws/askbaba/guide/easwaramma.html">Source</a>.</blockquote><br />It should be of public interest that Vengamma, Easwaramma's youngest sister, presented a very different account of what happened. Needless to say, it differs significantly:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Pedda Venkama Raju [Sai Baba's father] owned a few cows. One day, Easwaramma went to collect some grass for the cows, from the fields across the<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/vengamma.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/200/vengamma.png" alt="" border="0" /></a> Chitravathi river. It was hot and she was very thirsty. She collected the grass, made it into a bundle and was returning across the Chitravathi riverbed. She put the bundle aside and sat down to rest on the riverbank. She dug a hole in the sand to get some water. Some dirty water surfaced, which she threw away. She then scooped up some clear water with both hands and was about to drink when she saw a luminescence merge into the surface of the water and finally become a part of it. She did not know what to do, and was very thirsty. Thinking of God and keeping faith in Him, she drank the water. The luminescence was so powerful that, in spite of the glare of the hot sun, she could still see it. She returned home and reported the incident to her mother-in-law. Shortly thereafter, she found herself 'expecting' again." - <span style="font-size:85%;">Vengamma, as told to R. Padmanabhan, <span style="font-style: italic;">'Love Is My Form,'</span> p. 19.</span></blockquote><br />Hot sun? Burning thirst? Luminescence? Ever heard of a mirage?<br /><br />Ccould have been a hallucination too. That aside, there's no reason not to believe this interesting testimony either! It is a raw and contemporaneous account given by a family member who is perfectly qualified to describe what actually happened. And that's not the last we've heard from Vengamma; she also happens to be a reliable source for claiming Sai Baba's <span style="font-weight: bold;">real</span> birthplace as Karnatanagapalli! As in <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">"Easwaramma spent her confinement in her mother's house at Karnatanagapalli village. Her mother's family maintains that Sathya [Sai Baba] was born there." <span style="font-size:85%;">- <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span>, p. 21.</span><br /></div></blockquote><br />Footnotes affirmatively furnish readers with the information that, according to the local customs, pregnant women stay at their previous family homes to give birth. This is in marked contrast to the statements of the official hagiographies that maintain Easwaramma stayed in Puttaparthi throughout the duration of her pregnancy, even mentioning that she was engaged in formal worship rituals before she started experiencing labour pains. This is also corroborated by Chandramouli Raju (Easwaramma's brother) and his son Ganapathi Raju, who remembers his father telling him of these events on several occasions.<br /><br />As <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span> is a devotional work, it unimpressively attempts to explain away these problems:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Since the two families had always been very close and resided in adjacent villages, it<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/karnatanagapalli.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 165px; height: 228px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/320/karnatanagapalli.png" alt="" border="0" /></a> is quite possible that they may have mistaken one for the other. Moreover, the flooding of the Chitravathi made movement from one bank to the other a frequent affair. The third day after the child was born, the family feared that the Chitravathi River would flood, and Easwaramma moved to Puttaparthi with the child." - <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF,</span> p. 21.</span></blockquote><br />Hardly likely. No matter how much fun one may make of country bumpkins, the least one can expect from them is for them to know perfectly well in which villages they reside! In their clumsy attempt to resolve the conflict the editors of <span style="font-style: italic;">LIMF</span> have unwittingly confirmed that Sathya Sai Baba <u><span style="font-weight: bold;">was</span></u> born in Karnatanagapalli. After all, where was Easwaramma coming from with a child to escape a supposed flood?<br /><br />Ganapathi Raju also testified that, years later, Sathya Sai Baba supervised the construction of a bhajan hall on the site of Easwaramma's family home in Karnatanagapalli. It was a colour version of this picture that I saw back in 2000 when I first encountered this matter of controversy. The clear implication of this is the Baba's tacit acknowledgement of this venue as his <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/shivamandir1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/200/shivamandir1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/shivaputtaparthi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/200/shivaputtaparthi.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>birthplace and a subtle tribute to his maternal family. Why would he do this when had also supervised the construction of a "birthplace temple" in Puttaparthi circa. 1980 and installed an idol of the god Shiva, supposedly on the spot where he was born? It should be noted that he was loathe for <span style="font-style: italic;">years</span> to construct a birthsite building in Puttaparthi in spite of the numerous requests and prayers from devotees to do so. <span style="font-style: italic;">'Baba Satya Sai'</span> by Ra. Ganapati, originally published in Tamil in 1976, mentioned that the birthplace then was in a state of "shambles", and that requests for a commemorative column there by devotees in celebration of Sai Baba's golden jubilee (1975) went unacknowledged, in spite of the fact that the huge <a href="http://www.sathyasai.org/images5/ashram.JPG">world-religions pillar</a> was being constructed within the ashram at the time.<br /><br />In consideration of all of these facts, one might wonder why exactly Sai Baba seems intent on insisting that he was born in Puttaparthi, as the reasons are not immediately clear. What's going on here that we don't know about? Why are members of Sai Baba's maternal family still claiming to this day that he was born in Karnatanagapalli? At the very least we can say that he has <span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/10/sai-babas-school-records-index.html">much</a> <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/06/sai-baba-born-of-incest.html">to</a> <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-baba-shirdi-lies-index.html">hide</a></span> and that this represents the latest uncovering of yet another strange episode in his dubious past.</div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1164335865907672892006-11-23T00:15:00.000+00:002006-11-24T02:38:39.376+00:00Sai Baba's 81st Birthday Triple-Whammy!<div style="text-align: justify;">Dear Swami<span style="font-weight: bold;">ni</span>,<br /><br />many happy returns of the day to you on your 81st Birthday, even though we all know that <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/10/sai-babas-school-records-index.html">you are really 78</a>. May you continue to entertain and amuse us for many more years, and please grant us the courage, strength and determination that is necessary to continue exposing you as a fraud, a sham, and a coward. We hope that you will be merciful enough to allow us to serve you in this way. Please accept some humble tokens of my unending love and gratitude, I hope this triple-whammy of a present will bring great joy to you as much as it has done for us:<br /><br /><ul><li><a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/truth-about-sai-babas-birthplace.html">The Truth About Sai Baba's Birthplace</a></li><li><a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/truth-about-sai-baba-rock.html">The Truth About The Sai Baba Rock</a></li><li><a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/truth-behind-sai-babas-homosexuality.html">The Truth Behind Sai Baba's Homosexuality</a></li></ul><br />Kind regards,<br /><br />His Holiness Swami Saiexposedananda<br /></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1163821068551147352006-11-18T03:36:00.000+00:002006-11-18T06:58:11.116+00:00Puttaparthi BAN On Meat And Liquor<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/348180.cms">ANANTAPUR</a>:</span> The Puttaparthi police have banned consumption of liquor and non-vegetarian food within a radius of 9 km around Puttaparthi to maintain holiness of the international spiritual centre. Even though the ban was announced four days ago, the authorities have been treading a cautious path on the new rule.<br /><br />Puttaparthi security wing DSP Gangaraju told TOI on Monday that police and ashram authorities decided to prohibit liquor and non-vegetarian food in and around Puttaparthi on the line of Tirumala. He, however, clarified that they were not harassing people and were only counselling them to maintain the holiness of the spiritual centre. At least 12 of the 15 owners of the liquor belt shops running in the surrounding villages have been counselled to stop selling liquor. Meanwhile, hotels outside the Ganesh Gate have also been asked to stop serving non-vegetarian food.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Officials said Puttaparthi town with a population of 20,000 never had a liquor shop,</span> but visitors used to be served by the local belt shops.<br /><br />Meanwhile, president A P J Abdul Kalam is likely to participate in the 81st birthday celebrations of Sri Satya Sai Baba at Puttaparthi on November 23. Official sources, however, said that the President's programme was yet to be finalised.<br /><br />The President would be the chief guest for the annual convocation ceremony of Sri Satya Sai Deemed University on November 22. He will also participate in the birthday celebrations of the Baba at Prasanthi Nilayam on November 23. The President is also likely to inaugurate an indoor stadium constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 10 crore.</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sai Baba Exposed says:</span> How cute. And a lovely <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">9km</span> too! As if the radius wasn't a bit much, how fitting that it is nine kilometres - Sai Baba's favourite number?<br /><br />And what was that about "officials" stating that Puttaparthi never had a liquor shop? What officials? Ashram officials? I wouldn't be surprised at these <u>blatant liars</u>. I was in Puttaparthi once and, after deciding to stoll outside the ashram to visit the local bookshop, I was accosted by a small child who couldn't have been older than six. He was repeating something to me over and over again in a low voice, and I ignored him because I thought he was begging for money as is typical in India. Only when I paid a little attention to what he was saying - "beer, beer" - did I realise that he was inviting me to a local liquor shop to drink alcohol!<br /><br />As I was a devotee at the time I immediately refused to take him up on it and quickly proceeded to the bookstore. I was shocked to my core; how could liquor and meat be openly served in the "Kingdom of Heaven" where "God" personally resides? And yes, I discovered on my first trip to his ashram (back in 1993) that there was a non-vegetarian restaurant in the village. So now, in the run-up to Sai Baba's birthday (November 23rd) it looks like Puttaparthi police have been harangued by ashram authorities to <u><span style="font-weight: bold;">ban</span></u> the sale of alcohol and meat. The impression I got from this article was that this is some sort of temporary measure to "maintain the sanctity" of the village in view of the upcoming celebrations, but on a closer reading I see no mention of any temporary provisions. It looks permanent!<br /><br />As usual you can expect the devotees to fully approve of this strategy. Here's a comment from one such that I found on another forum:<br /><blockquote><br />"I am glad to read this news item. True, we need to educate the people living there about the ill-effects of consuming alchoholic drinks and other pollutants like drugs etc. Also we need to educate all concerned about cleanliness and the need for keeping Puttaparthy spick and span. While the police is expected to do their duty in enforcing prohibition, the Sai devotees have also a responsibility for bringing necessary transformation in the hearts of those who are given to such addictions. Police can, at best, put an end to public drinking places and the sale of country and sophisticated liquor within a radius of 9 Kilometers. <span style="font-weight: bold;">But how about drinking privately at homes by residents of Puttaparthy? How can the police nab such drinkers who are not a source of nuisance.</span> Pl. think."</blockquote><br />What-ho! As anyone knowledgeable about American history will know, the US Govt. <span style="font-style: italic;">already tried this</span> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition">Prohibition era</a>, and what was the result? Massive lawbreaking and arrests all over the place; no matter how hard the law was enforced, people will find a way to continue indulging in their habits. If these Sai Baba goons think that they are on the way to achieving something great then they had better think again. "Please think", it won't work! And what's the problem about consuming alcohol <span style="font-weight: bold;">within one's own home</span> in Puttaparthi? Since when did devotees start leaning towards fascism?<br /><br />Although I understand the intentions behind this new rule even though I do not consider Puttaparthi as a holy place as much as I don't consider Sai Baba as a holy guru or avatar, I don't think that banning liquor and meat is the right way of going about things even if it is being enforced cautiously. For a start, there must surely be a <span style="font-style: italic;">human rights issue</span> what to speak of trade and business revenues making a significant downturn. Puttaparthi also has a sizeable Muslim population who are not bound to be vegetarian like their Hindu fellowmen, so does this ban apply to them too?<br /><br />In their fundamentalist and frothing-at-the-mouth rabid enthusiasm to follow Sai Baba's teachings, it's clear that the ashram authorities haven't thought this through properly and are only interested in cribbing up some good publicity for themselves. They desperately want to join the ranks of other well-established (and <span style="font-weight: bold;">real</span>) pilgrimage centres and are intent on improving their surroundings so that they can perhaps apply for privileged status if they haven't already done so.<br /><br />Just one thing though: The Prashanti Nilayam Township is a separate entity from the Puttaparthi village. It is a legally-incorporated entity in itself and does not have connections with the village as such. Is this yet another example of Sai Baba and his goons poking their noses where they don't belong?</div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1163738116234743422006-11-17T04:14:00.000+00:002006-11-17T04:35:16.463+00:00A Few Words Of Shirdi Praise...<div style="text-align: justify;">Although this was received some weeks ago, I have been terrible at keeping up with all of the positive (and negative) emails that I get in relation to this blog. In response to the recent and devastating <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-baba-shirdi-lies-index.html">Shirdi Lies exposé</a>, I received this nice letter from a devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba who had some very interesting points to make. Needless to say I am in agreement with their views. The sender has given permission to post their letter but chooses to retain anonymity:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">---------------------------------------</span><br /></div><br /><blockquote>Hello! (I don't know your name, excuse me).<br /><br />I have had all my life devotion towards Shirdi Sai Baba. I agree with you that Satya Sai Baba is not the reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Nath. Since I discovered your blog yesterday, I felt the need to share this thought with you:<br /><br />Shirdi Sai Baba was an avatar. Avatars do not reincarnate. That's the very simple reason why Satya can't be Shirdi's reincarnation. Avatars come from the Absolute directly, they are not subject to reincarnation, nor are they beings that have evolved to mukti. They come already complete, from the Divine, not the result of a chain of births. Reincarnation and avatarhood are not compatible. God, the Supreme, manifests as an avatar, a man, and that's it. Again and again, but no reincarnation implied.<br /><br />Satya could have said that he is an avatar, like Shirdi Baba was, like Krishna was, and so on. But saying that he is the reincarnation of Shirdi Baba shows his ignorance about what avatar is and means. If Shirdi Baba was God incarnated (avatar), what of him could reincarnate and be passed to another body? If that other body (Satya) is an avatar, what he needs from the past Shirdi Baba when he can do all and knows all? Reincarnation only operates on the basis of ignorance and limitation, does not apply to avatars. They come from the Supreme, are the Supreme and return to the Supreme.<br /><br />Best regards<br />[Anonymous]<br /><br />OM Sai Amita Parakrama</blockquote></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1162972877843385282006-11-08T08:00:00.000+00:002006-11-21T02:24:04.156+00:00"We Do Not Care"<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size:85%;">(Read this in <a href="http://www.saiguru.net/russian/articles/061118_dont_care.htm">Russian</a>!)</span><br /></div><br />Readers might have noticed from the recent <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/dna-holy-furore-rages-in-britain.html">DNA article</a> that Sai Baba and his ashram goons are ambivalent to serious questions of sexual abuse. What's new?<br /><br />In 2001 the US State Dept. published a <a href="http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1139.html">travel advisory</a> for India that stated:<br /><br /><blockquote>"U.S. citizens should be aware that there have been unconfirmed reports of inappropriate sexual behavior by a prominent local religious leader at an ashram or religious retreat located in Andhra Pradesh. Most of the reports indicate that the subjects of these approaches have been young male devotees, including a number of U.S. citizens."</blockquote><br />As State Dept. officials will confirm, this announcement <span style="font-style: italic;">does</span> refer to Sathya Sai Baba. Five years later we have an <span style="font-weight: bold;">unnamed</span> public relations officer representing Sathya Sai Baba and making the following callous statement:<br /><br /><blockquote>“<span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>We do not care</u></span> what the advisory says. People and organisations can write whatever they want to believe. We have no more to say on this issue.”<br /></blockquote><br />No shit, Mr. Chakravarthi! If ever there was proof that the Sai Organisation is an isolated and secretive cult, you just provided it! It appals me how the Sai Organisation has been named and shamed by the United States administration, and a specific <span style="font-style: italic;">warning</span> against him and his ashram is listed on their official website as a potential danger to US citizens, and these guys say they don't care.<br /><br />This is consistent with their attitude to killing people too. In 1993 six people died in a police shootout at Sai Baba's ashram that was believed to have been an assassination attempt on the guru. Two of the dead were his disciples while the others were former students of the guru's educational institutions. This incident was hushed-up and swept under the carpet by a number of influential politicians and High Court judges, but not before the news had made it's way into the international media. Speaking to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Hindu</span> newspaper, the then World Chairman of the Sai Organisation, Indulal Shah, had the following to say:<br /><br /><blockquote>"The matter is purely internal and we do not wish to have any law enforcement agency investigating into it." - <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Hindu, July 10th 1993</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><br />Excuse me? <span style="font-weight: bold;">Six people <u>died</u>,</span> and this guy tells the press that investigators should "buzz off" and keep their noses out of the ashram's "private affairs"?! What kind of harebrained attitude is this? I don't need to explain the importance of proper police investigations into the unexplained deaths of six people, much less the <span style="font-style: italic;">circumstances</span> of their deaths by knives and gunshot wounds. And Indulal Shah is disturbed when the media come sniffing around? What does he expect? Sai Baba is arguably India's biggest and most popular guru, and when an event of this magnitude takes place it is inevitable that all eyes will be on Puttaparthi.<br /><br />But no, the ashram authorities have <span style="font-weight: bold;">never</span> had a good record of press interaction when it comes to discussing Sai Baba's peculiar proclivities. When the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fhealth%2F2000%2F10%2F28%2Ftlbaba28.xml">Daily Telegraph</a> ran a story into the allegations, they related how Chakravarthi had slammed the phone down on their reporter when asked for comment:<br /><br /><blockquote>"When the Telegraph Magazine contacted K Chakravarthi, secretary of the Puttaparthi ashram, he said, 'We have no time for these matters. I have nothing to say' and terminated the call."</blockquote><br />Cripes! "We have no wish", "we have no time", "we don't care", does any of this sound like wallowing in denial? It is this <span style="font-weight: bold;">arrogant and irresponsible attitude</span> that leads to many unsuspecting youths and boys being led into Sai Baba's inner apartments and asked to take their trousers off, and to be given the "boon" of an oiling on their genital area. With the "lucky ones" being afforded privileges of oral and/or anal sex with the guru, no police or judicial investigations bear fruit when all players in this deception engage in a conspiracy to hush it all up and deny it. Not even an internal investigation within the ashram. They just don't care. </div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1162712012515275112006-11-05T07:29:00.000+00:002006-11-05T07:33:32.520+00:00DNA: A Holy Furore Rages In Britain<div style="text-align: justify;">Now <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1062221">DNA-India</a> follows-up on the Guardian story:<br /><br /></div>---------------------------<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">A holy furore rages in Britain</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ginnie Mahajan/Brajesh Kumar</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sunday, November 05, 2006 02:00 IST</span><br /><br />DELHI: Old allegations of sexual abuse of boys by spiritual guru Sathya Sai Baba have created a fresh furore in Britain.<br /><br />The issue snowballed after the British press reported that 200 boys would visit India on a month-long humanitarian pilgrimage starting November 13, organised by the Sai Youth Movement, a division of the Sri Sathya Sai Organisation.<br /><br />These boys are to receive the Duke of Edinburgh award for their humanitarian work. According to the Guardian, the British public is irked by two issues — safety of the boys at Sathya Sai Baba’s ashram at Puttaparthi in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh and the involvement of royalty with the Sri Sathya Sai Organisation.<br /><br />The newspaper quotes a former home office minister Tom Sackville, who also runs a victim support group, as saying, “It is appallingly naive for the award scheme to involve young people and the royal family with an organisation whose leader is accused of paedophilia.”<br /><br />Interestingly, the United States Department of State has a travel advisory against the Sathya Sai Organisation: “US citizens should be aware that there have been unconfirmed reports of inappropriate sexual behaviour by a prominent local religious leader at an ashram or religious retreat located in Andhra Pradesh.” The Guardian says US state officials have confirmed that this is a direct reference to Sathya Sai Baba. There have been rumours for years that the spiritual guru, who calls himself an incarnation of god, molested young devotees during interviews. Both Indian and foreign visitors to the ashram have come on record to say how he has abused them.<br /><br />The public relations officer of Sathya Sai Baba’s ashram, however, told DNA: “We do not care what the advisory says. People and organisations can write whatever they want to believe. We have no more to say on this issue. Yes, the boys are coming to India in about two weeks’ time.”<br /><br />The visit coincides with Sathya Sai Baba’s 80th birthday. He had apparently given a ‘divine commandment’ to the Sai Youth Movement to visit him on the occasion. </blockquote></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1162710481842050272006-11-05T06:59:00.000+00:002006-11-05T07:49:10.730+00:00Cybernoon: "Superstition; A Crutch"<div style="text-align: justify;">An interesting op-ed published by <a href="http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=editorials&xfile=November2006_roundup_standard156&child=roundup">Cybernoon.Com</a> about Sathya Sai Baba. It appears to be separate from the recent Guardian article but a very timely publication nevertheless, highlighting exactly why the Indian Government would be reluctant to arrest Sathya Sai Baba for his crimes.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">----------------------------------------<br /></div><blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Round Up - A.R.Kanangi</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Superstition; a crutch</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Saturday, November 04, 2006 8:59:12 IST</span><br /><br />There is only a thin line between superstition and faith. People who are frightened and confused about life and death want a crutch, even if it is shaky. The new law on superstition, however, is necessary, as it will stop some horrible, cruel practices.<br /><br />If the <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/07/maharashtrian-govt-set-to-ban-sai-baba.html">bill on superstition</a> was passed 45 years ago, Satya Sai Baba would have attracted arrest. He was successfully cashing on the gullibility of people by claiming to be an avatar — endowed with supernatural powers. What he actually did was some cheap tricks like getting watches and kumkum from nowhere. Yogi L.S. Rao, a contemporary, wrote in a newspaper that the rascal knew how to impress people. A baba or sadhu had to first perform some miracles in order to attract attention. When once they were won over, nothing could change their faith.<br /><br />Yogi Rao – from Bangalore – was a big hit with newsmen. The beedi-smoking yogi told me: "First you have to create an image, you can’t be a sadhu if you wear trousers and jacket. In India, you have to wear saffron or pale-orange brown clothes. No shirt – the torso remains exposed. And then, you must spread the word you went to the Himalayas and kept your head at the feet of the guru. Nobody will check of course whether you have actually been to the Himalayas. That Himalaya tag is very important. And then, armed with powers extraordinary, you descend to the plains and begin performing miracles. I can do better than that rascal. I can drink nitric acid, drink water and bring it out of the nose, walk on burning embers," the yogi said.<br /><br />He did hold a demonstration before newsmen. It was so convincing. And then, he failed in one demonstration. He charged a fee for the public for the performance of a unique feat. It was at Versova – at that time almost deserted – that he dug a large pond. He said he would walk on water. He had a small kutir at the place. I was with him the previous night and I strongly advised him not to perform the water feat. He would not listen and strangely enough, he appeared to be quite confident.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Technical failure</span><br /><br />Next day — in the evening — he stepped into the water and went down. There were loud protests, but everyone was pacified and told to collect the ticket money from a newspaper office. The crowd dispersed and the yogi looked at me pathetically and said: “The bubble burst in the arse. It was a technical failure.” A bubble in the arse?<br /><br />Very few people went to the newspaper office to get back their money. The yogi made a neat pile and went to Bangalore. “Are you not doing something wrong — cheating people?” I asked him once. “It is not cheating. People want this. They want to believe in miracles. They are confused and afraid. They all want a crutch. I am doing this for a living. My life is simple, but I have to support three wives. That rascal down south is doing the same thing — but in a big way. He is scared of me because I can expose him.”<br /><br />Yogi Rao was not the only one who could expose Satya Sai Baba. There was a rationalist in Bangalore, who at a big public meeting, did all the “miracles” of Sai Baba and proved they were all just tricks. We have thousands of babas in our country who perform all such miracles and earn their living. What will happen to them if the <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/08/sai-baba-in-govt-blacklist-imbroglio.html">new bill is passed and becomes an act</a>? It is a fact they are cheating and they need to be stopped.<br /><br />No human being has seen a ghost, but go to a village, which at night is pitch dark and silent: ghosts – many and varied kinds – are said to roam round the village. The villagers say they can hear the frightening moans and wailing of the ghosts, the sound of the bells round the ankles of the ghost and sudden flashes of light etc. you tell the villagers there is no ghost on earth and they will not believe you. With ghosts ensconced in their minds, they become easy victims of unscrupulous village chiefs and hoodlums. When the fear of the ghosts is put into them, they are prepared to do anything.<br /><br />And very loud rituals take place to force the villagers do what the chiefs want. A man with painted face and torso does a vigorous dance, salivating and muttering something all the time — until the Goddess or the ghost enters his body. Then he does a frightening act-shuddering from head to toe. Then he issues orders – calls out names and ask that it — the demon within him — be given rice, money. And he orders fiercely that someone the landlord does not like, must go out of the village for a month. And rebellious, cheeky, inconvenient young men are bashed up till they fall unconscious because demons inside them have to be punished. Every now and then, there are reports of women charged with practicing witchcraft being exposed to cruel punishment. The women are stripped naked and paraded through the village — getting beaten up all the time. Women receive such humiliating and cruel punishment because of false charges that they are practicing black magic, that rains do not come because the rain God does not like them, crops perish because of their very presence in the village.<br /><br />The superstition with regard to “sati” sees quite a few women on the burning pyre with their husbands. It is nothing but murder, but thanks to prevailing superstition, the burning horror takes place. It looks like there is only a thin line between faith and superstition. A priest tells a man who has lost a dear relative that the latter cannot enter heaven until certain pujas are performed. The man has to feed Brahmins, pay the priest money and incur expenditure on certain other items. Will the priest be liable for arrest under the new act?<br /><br />Out of over 100 crore people in the country, at least half of them are ignorant, illiterate and superstitious. Our country is fertile ground for superstition. Our knowledge of the superstitions is limited. Even rationalists are dumbfounded sometimes how actually action based on superstition results in harmonious, better collective living. There is nothing wrong with being superstitious, but what is wrong is its exploitation by unscrupulous men. And all of us — even the rationalists — are in some way on the other superstitious. There is nothing surprising about this. The life and death mystery frightens people. There is no answer. There are things beyond reason — many things we cannot explain. So we cling to superstition — like the sophisticated, educated folks rely on spirituality. Both indicate a certain helplessness, a certain attempt to find some meaning. A crutch.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Clean cheat</span><br /><br />And today, we see the unique phenomenon of those who derive mileage from superstition and fears in the minds of innocent, gullible people, making it big. Once their own survival is ensured, <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">they start building towns. They start colleges, hospitals, charity institutions, industrial units and other enterprises. They use the huge money they get from worshippers as well as from foreign sources to build a township. People then forget about the cheating and exploitation and give them a clean chit.</span> It will be said they did not misuse the funds but utilised it for collective good. And if they did the tricks, they were done deliberately as per a definite vision. Nobody will arrest Satya Sai Baba today.<br /><br />And I will end this piece with a Chinese joke. A China man was placing some rice at the grave of his relative in Beijing. A foreigner from Europe laughed derisively as he placed a bouquet at his friend’s grave and said: “Ho ho, will your dead relative come to eat the rice?” The China man replied: “Tell me whether your dead friend come to smell the flowers?”<br /></blockquote></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1162624198038657262006-11-04T07:08:00.000+00:002006-11-05T07:28:43.223+00:00Sai Youth Take BIG Hit From Guardian<div style="text-align: justify;">In May 2006 we brought you the news that the Sai Youth of UK were <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/05/uk-youth-heading-to-sai-baba-abuse.html">gearing up for a massive pilgrimage</a> to the home base of Sathya Sai Baba, in full knowledge of the fact that any or all of them may suffer the grossest experience of homosexual paedophilia, and that it was the Baba himself who called for them to visit him this November. We also undertook an extremely <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/05/shitu-chudasama-man-with-plan.html">brief and cursory analysis</a> of Shitu Chudasama's Sadhana Plan for said trip.<br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Now we take extreme pleasure in noting how the recent Guardian article has completely blown apart all expectations and put Sai Baba and his crimes in the public eye <span style="font-weight: bold;">yet again.</span> It wasn't enough to suffer from an <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/3791921.stm">hour-length BBC documentary</a> especially since a new angle has recently been cynically exploited by the Sai Organisation. Somehow or other they succeeded in their plan to win the Duke of Edinburgh Award and claim praise and encouragement from H.M. The Queen and, just as predicted, they went into a frenzy of self-glorification and patting their own backs for receiving "Royal Recognition". As due punishment for their misrepresentation of the facts, the Sai Organisation were <span style="font-weight: bold;">forced to pull the page down</span> and which now turns up a '<a href="http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/Vol_04/01SEP06/uk_youth.htm">Page Not Found</a>' error.<br /><br />The thing which I like most about the Guardian article is the number of heavyweight names that are dropped; Tom Sackville (former UK Home Office minister), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gove">Michael Gove</a> MP (Surrey Heath), Brig. Sir Miles Hunt-Davis (personal secretary to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip,_Duke_of_Edinburgh">HRH Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh</a>), among others. And all of them driving themselves dizzy about their glaring oversight of how the British Royal Family came to be associated closely with an organisation that has a widely-accused homosexual paedophile and murderer as it's head. You can't beat it!<br /><br />And let's remind ourselves of the Guardian's eminent status; it is not some backwoods village newspaper. This is a full-blown and extremely highbrow <span style="font-weight: bold;">national newspaper</span>, and which is why I am in fits of giggles when I read quotes like this:<br /><br /><blockquote>"The trip coincides with Sai Baba's 80th birthday and has been arranged, organisers say, after <span style="font-weight: bold;">he gave a divine commandment</span> for the UK's Sai youth movement to visit him for the occasion."</blockquote><br />Combined with the 'Backstory' section at the end of the article, British elitists will be reading this and thinking that Sai Baba is completely nuts! <span style="font-style: italic;">Divine</span> commandment? I love it! And this is just the Internet edition that is out before the print edition, who knows how different it will be with a full spread on Page 3? :-)<br /><br />And what did Michael Gove say?<br /><br /><blockquote>"As a society we need a more determined effort to identify and <span style="font-weight: bold;">expose those</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">religious cults and extremists that pose a direct threat to people</span>, so that they do not enjoy patronage that should be directed elsewhere."</blockquote><br />Right on the money! Shitu Chudasama weakly responded by saying that the paedophilia allegations were "totally unfounded" and bleated further:<br /><br /><blockquote>"We hope to have an interview with Sai Baba but it's not guaranteed. If he wants to see us, he'll call us."<br /></blockquote><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">WHAT?!?!</span></span><br /></div><br />Reality check: Who gives a monkey's over whether Sai Baba will "call" them on a whim when the UK Sai Organisation has just suffered their biggest attack since the acclaimed BBC documentary? This is their idea of PR: "we hope to be called for a non-guaranteed interview"? Chee.<br /><br />What to speak of the fact that - <span style="font-style: italic;">yet <u>again</u> - </span>Sai Baba's <span style="font-weight: bold;">ill name</span> is splashed all over the pages of of a highbrow British newspaper on suspicion of homosexual paedophilia, compounded by the very public ignominy of having members of the Royal Family dragged into this classless and sordid affair. And to top it all off, the latest news holds that their trip to Sai Baba is still going full steam ahead despite the widespread concern effected by the news report. An announcement on the Sai Youth (UK) website notes the following:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/SaiYouthMeeting.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/400/SaiYouthMeeting.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Yep, the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Final Meeting</span> for the National UK Pilgrimage is being held <span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>tomorrow</u>,</span> Sunday 5th October 2006 at the following address:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.stanburnfirst.harrow.sch.uk/">Stanburn First School</a><br />Abercorn Road<br />Stanmore<br />Middlesex<br />HA7 2PJ<br /><br />Telephone Number: +44 208 9541423<br />Fax Number: +44 208 954 3227<br /><br />Meeting times: 18.00-22.00</blockquote><br />And which is none other than the <a href="http://www.saischool.com/findus.asp">Sai School of Harrow</a>! Should be an interesting meeting. What I'd give to be a fly on the wall there. No prizes for guessing what'll be on the agenda. </div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1162613073808330502006-11-04T04:03:00.000+00:002006-11-09T01:53:18.086+00:00Guardian's Sensational Sai Scandal!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/Guardian1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/400/Guardian1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Click to enlarge)</span></span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards</span></span><br /><br />· Sexual abuse accusations against group's leader<br />· 80th birthday invitation to hundreds of youngsters<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Lewis</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Saturday November 4, 2006</span><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Guardian</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A spiritual group whose "living god" founder has been accused of sexually abusing young boys has become an accredited partner of the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme, the Guardian can reveal.</span><br /><br />Last night pressure was mounting on the charity to break its links with the group whose followers are devoted to the preachings of 79-year-old holy man, Sai Baba. About 200 young people will fly to India in two weeks' time on a humanitarian pilgrimage run by Sai Youth UK, a division of the Sri Sathya Sai Organisation. The teenagers and young men earn their Duke of Edinburgh awards for humanitarian work, chiefly distributing medical aid. The trip coincides with Sai Baba's 80th birthday and has been arranged, organisers say, after he gave a divine commandment for the UK's Sai youth movement to visit him for the occasion.<br /><br />For decades male former devotees have alleged that the guru molested them during so-called "interviews". During the last youth pilgrimage, in 2004, young people were granted group interviews with the guru after administering medical aid to villages surrounding Sai Baba's ashram in Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, although there was no evidence of abuse. Large numbers of young men have travelled from across the world to study alongside and meet the guru. His supporters say their encounter was spiritually enriching. Others, including participants in a BBC programme, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/3791921.stm">The Secret Swami</a>, two years ago, accuse him of abuse, claiming he massaged their testicles with oil and coerced them into oral sex.<br /><br />Sai Baba has never been charged over the sex abuse allegations. However, the US State Department issued a travel warning after reports of "inappropriate sexual behaviour by a<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/Guardian2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/320/Guardian2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> prominent local religious leader" which, officials later confirmed was a reference to Sai Baba. Tom Sackville, a former Home Office minister and chairman of <a href="http://www.fair-cult-concern.co.uk/">FAIR</a>, a cult-watching and victim support group, said: "It is appallingly naive for the award scheme to involve young people and the royal family with an organisation whose leader is accused of paedophilia. Parents who plan to send their children on this month's pilgrimage ... should be aware of the danger their children are being exposed to."<br /><br />But Peter Westgarth, chief executive of the charity, last night faced down calls to terminate his organisation's relationship with the Sai organisation. He said: "This is not the only religion accused of paedophilia. Young people who are participating on these trips are doing so because they choose to," he said. "The awards accredit the good work they do for poor people in India. We make no judgment about their religion. We would no sooner intervene here than we would the Church Lads' and Girls' Brigade."<br /><br />The Conservative MP Michael Gove said he would write to the charity asking it to consider a stricter monitoring of the organisations they they work with. "As a society we need a more determined effort to identify and expose those religious cults and extremists that pose a direct threat to people, so that they do not enjoy patronage that should be directed elsewhere," he said.<br /><br />Shitu Chudasama, Sai's UK national youth coordinator, defended the trip, saying it was primarily a humanitarian mission to help impoverished people, saying that the sex abuse claims were "totally unfounded". He added: "We hope to have an interview with Sai Baba but it's not guaranteed. If he wants to see us, he'll call us."<br /><br />Sai Organisation's UK branch has also came into contact with royals through the awards, something Buckingham Palace was made aware of in September. In correspondence seen by the Guardian, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, Prince Philip's private secretary, wrote: "[We] are very keen to get this sorted out properly and finally." He said trustees of the award would undertake legal advice before deciding how to proceed. In July the Sai Organisation received a certificate for their "invaluable contribution" to the awards at a Buckingham Palace garden party. A news story which appeared on a Sai Baba website after the ceremony was removed after an intervention by Peter Westgarth, who said the event had been misrepresented.<br /><br />In the posting, Mr Chudasama recounted the moment he delivered a speech to "various dignitaries, diplomats, ministers [and] famous celebrities" at the palace. "I was the last speaker called up, and suddenly a confidence, a joy, engulfed my being," he said. "I attributed everything to our founder Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. As I spoke I watched the sea of faces, they were hanging from my every word and there was a look of excitement on their faces as if to say 'why have we not heard of this organisation before?'." Mr Chudasama also attended a private audience with Prince Philip at St James's Palace last year. "Prince Philip showed a very keen interest in our youth and asked many questions," Mr Chudasama wrote in a Sai newsletter. "I also had the opportunity to mention ... that we drew our inspiration and motivation from our founder Sri Sathya Sai Baba; he paused for a few seconds and then said: "Very good".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Backstory</span><br /><br />Sathya Sai Baba, who has an estimated <span style="font-weight: bold;">30 million</span> followers worldwide, is possibly India's most controversial <span style="font-weight: bold;">holy man.</span> He gained a following in his teens when he claimed to have divine powers and, later, said he was an <span style="font-weight: bold;">incarnation</span> of God. His teachings are benign - his most famous mantra is <span style="font-weight: bold;">"Love All, Serve All"</span> - and he encourages followers, which include many of India's <span style="font-weight: bold;">political elite,</span> to undertake humanitarian work. He purports to be able to miraculously conjure <span style="font-weight: bold;">sacred ash</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">expensive jewellery</span> into the palm of his hand, as if out of thin air. Opponents dismiss his <span style="font-weight: bold;">miracles</span> as party tricks. The Sai Organisation claims to have more than <span style="font-weight: bold;">1,200</span> Sathya Sai Baba Centres in more than <span style="font-weight: bold;">100 countries.<br /></span><font><br />--<br /><br />This article has three follow-ups:<br /><br /><a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/sai-youth-take-big-hit-from-guardian.html">Sai Youth Take BIG Hit From Guardian</a><br /><a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/dna-holy-furore-rages-in-britain.html">DNA: A Holy Furore Rages In Britain</a><br /><a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/11/we-do-not-care.html">"We Do Not Care"</a><br /></span></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1161885681878798002006-10-26T18:55:00.000+01:002006-10-26T19:14:09.316+01:00Wheelchair Blues Boogie!<div style="text-align: justify;">To think that devotees of Sathya Sai Baba hardly know how to react when their <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/06/aged-avatar-of-age.html">Aged Avatar of the Age</a> is consigned to a <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/03/why-does-sai-baba-continue-to-torture.html">wheelchair</a>, except of course with the usual brainwashed explanations of "taking on someone else's karma" and whatnot, they are now <span style="font-weight: bold;">glorifying</span> these "wheelchair pastimes" of the Lord by playing around with Photoshop and coming out with some pretty snazzy results!<br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Check it out:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/1600/sai_baba_wheelchair_avatar.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7618/1571/400/sai_baba_wheelchair_avatar.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1161884333828516852006-10-26T18:37:00.000+01:002006-11-12T04:14:06.990+00:00Sai Org's Deception & Propaganda Exposed 3<div style="text-align: justify;"> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE SATHYA SAI ORGANISATION'S DECEPTION AND </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PROPAGANDA EXPOSED</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">PART THREE</span><br /></div><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-weight: bold;">(Part <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-orgs-deception-propaganda-exposed.html">One</a>, <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/10/sai-orgs-deception-propaganda-exposed.html">Two</a>)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-weight: bold;"> 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, as follows:-</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-weight: bold;">[Comments by the undersigned are in blue text:]</span><br /> <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE OF CALUMNY<br />[by Dr. G. Venkataraman]<br /></div><br />[Black text from <a href="http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/Vol_04/01JUL06/collapse-of-calumny.htm">Radio Sai Listener's Journal</a>: Volume 4 - Issue 07 July 2006]<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">UNESCO Withdraws Its Criticism</span><br /><br />Where the media advisory of the UNESCO was concerned, we took a different approach. The UNESCO is a part of the United Nations and India is in fact one of the founder members of the UN – it was a signatory to the original declaration, way back in 1944. We in Prashanti Nilayam took up the matter with the Government of India through suitable channels, and for its part, the Government, through its Ambassador in Paris, protested to the UNESCO.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> This is a <span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>gross</u></span> untruth! UNESCO has NOWHERE stated that it withdraws its criticism of Sathya Sai Baba by updating its website; there is no evidence of that on their website or anywhere else. Their official spokesperson, Sue Williams, stated to the BBC in mid-May 2004 that UNESCO (Paris) did not regret having posted this document adverse to Sai Baba and “<a href="http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Eex_baba/engels/articles/barryunesco.html">certain of his organizers</a>”! Further, the removal of the posting was the “result of a routine system purge”, a fact clearly stated by another UNESCO Office spokesperson, Isobel le Fournis.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Most noteworthy, however, is that, since UNESCO posted its advisory, there is no proof that UNESCO has sponsored or involved itself in any way in a single Sai Baba-related event anywhere in the world, despite the Sai Organisation’s intense lobbying through diplomatic and governmental channels! Unlike the Sathya Sai Organisation, UNESCO is most definitely not an amateur organization that bases its advisories on mere rumours, non-investigation or wishful guesswork!</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I shall not go into the details here but merely say that the Indian Government took strong exception to the UNESCO posting a hostile media advisory, merely on the basis of hearsay, thereby maligning Sai Baba, who is a revered figure in India and has done enormous good to Indian Society. This strong protest worked and the UNESCO backtracked.</span> This retraction by UNESCO was a big set back for the anti-Sai group<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> The label ‘anti-Sai group’ points to a common untruth promoted by many Sai devotees that we number only a handful. Instead, there are hundreds of disaffected <a href="http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/saiorg/index.htm">former devotees and ex-leaders</a> of the Organisation in many groupings. Most workers conduct activities well away from the Net because of security reasons. The UNESCO Advisory remains a huge setback for Sai Baba and those who defend him. It is independently <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20001017142401/http:/www.unesco.org/education/highlights/media_advisory.htm">available on-line</a>. UNESCO posted its Advisory only after they had investigated the allegations and were satisfied that they were well founded!</span><br /><br /><br />but they now attacked from another angle, namely television. As you well know, most TV channels have sunk to depressingly low levels. It was no surprise therefore that some channels in some countries seized the opportunity to come out with negative programs on Swami.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Professional media critics and the general public did not deem the BBC to have “sunk to depressingly low levels". Indeed, the contrary was true!</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Venkataraman, Indulal Shah, other Sai leaders and Sai Baba himself are alike in playing the ‘blame-the-media game’! When local Indian journalists investigated the murders of four devotees in Sai Baba’s apartment on June 6, 1993, Sai Baba ridiculed them. They published a number of perfectly reasonable questions on his role in relation to the incident (in his supposedly holy building). For example, they asked where he was during these events, and why the Central Trust or ashram authorities reported nothing to the police. However, Sai Baba’s officials hindered them at every point, and, some weeks later, Sai Baba attacked them in a public discourse for publishing "nothing but flights of the imagination" and for being "malicious". The eviction by Sai officials of the BBC crew from Prashanti Nilayam was but another in a long series of suppressive moves. Of course, nothing banishes “flights of the imagination” better than proper accountability and openness!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Sai Baba has often said never to criticize or slander others, and always to speak sweetly and softly with love. Yet his actions frequently belie his words. Being absent, those attacked in this way could not present their case. This behavior Sai Baba often calls ‘back-biting’.</span><br /><br /><br />Given the scepticism of many in the West about Gurus, such a program naturally commanded an audience, though not among viewers with discrimination. Hence, though we received complaints from many overseas devotees, we did not bother too much. It was not worth getting into arguments with third-rate TV channels.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> The phrase “third rate TV channels” –encapsulates Venkataraman’s opinion of the world’s most respected news and comment provider since radio and television began! He imagines perhaps that his Radio Sai propaganda station is first rate – but it serves the most boring, verbose, repetitive, preachifying and syrupy hypocrisy! Western cultures have their own traditions of critical enquiry skepticism, and include issues about fraudulence and superstition about gurus. There can be little wonder about “skepticism in the West about Gurus”. There is plenty in the East too – happy to say.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The BBC Shames Itself</span><br /><br />Things went into a different gear altogether when the BBC came out with an anti-Swami film. This was absolutely shocking because like the London Times, the BBC is an icon - in the broadcasting world that is. <span style="font-weight: bold;">And yet, for reasons best known to it, the BBC produced a program that was not only poorly researched but also deplorably low in taste, quite in contrast to what it is known for.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> As Venkatarman would have it, in the face of thousands of programs that maintain the BBC as an “icon”, suddenly it deviates and becomes “absolutely shocking”. Autocratic and corrupt regimes and organisations with much to hide invariably complain like this when the BBC exposes them after exhaustive research!</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sad Case of Alaya Rahm</span><br /><br />Central to BBC’s vilification campaign was one Alaya Rahm.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> The BBC never carries out “vilification campaigns”. Only corrupt and unaccountable people or organizations would claim so. Venkataraman’s statement amounts to slander against the BBC! The fact is that the ashram officials treated the BBC team high-handedly, throwing them out because they dared to ask for responses to the worldwide allegations of sex abuse, etc. This eviction alone shows how secret and autocratic a cult the whole Sai hierarchy has become and how they use all the political power they can muster to suppress anyone who speaks up and cover up everything. It is a cult with despotic tendencies. That led the BBC to dig deeper and they uncovered a great deal, only a small part of which could be included in a </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">coherent</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> one-hour film. Indeed, there remain eighty plus hours of footage in storage.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">In “The Secret Swami”, Venkataraman’s superior in the Prashanthi Council, Dr. Michael Goldstein, would not reply to civil, sensible questions, which are those a responsible public would wish to ask. The BBC wanted him to explain the notorious Hislop letters [<a href="http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Eex_baba/engels/articles/dr_john_hislop/dr_john_hislop_letters.html">signed copies of which they had with them</a>] which mention Goldstein as a recipient along with other leaders in the US Sai Organisation (but we do not know if the US bosses confided in their ‘brothers’ among the top leadership in India). Therefore, the BBC filmed him with hidden cameras. It acted entirely within the law (including the libel laws of the many countries where the film screened, as Goldstein found out when he tried to pursue them legally) and in the public’s best interests. Dr. Venkataraman has no tenable case.</span><br /><br /><br />I have to mention the name of Alaya Rahm because he is the one who filed a case on January 6th, 2006, in the Superior Court of California, Orange County. It was a lawsuit in which the plaintiff sued for money damages. The Court set the case for trial April 28, 2006.<br /><br />At this point, I shall quote, with permission of course, from a letter we have received from Brother Robert Baskin of California, who is himself a lawyer. He has full knowledge of this case and I think it is best to quote from his report since it would be factually and legally the most accurate account we can present. This is what Baskin says concerning what happened to this lawsuit.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Although Alaya Rahm’s accusations received some publicity before he filed his lawsuit, his claims were not thoroughly investigated until after the lawsuit was filed. The legal proceeding provided a forum in which his claims could be thoroughly and critically examined. Through this process of investigation, it was discovered that the plaintiff and his family had spoken at a number of retreats and conferences between 1995 and 1999, during the time that the events were alleged to have occurred. Inconsistent with his later accusations, these conference talks, many of which were recorded and have been transcribed, contain no suggestion of any wrongdoing and the earlier words spoken by the plaintiff would appear to refute his later accusations.<br /><br />Through the process of discovery during the handling of the lawsuit, witnesses were identified and interviewed who were present in the Ashram in India when the events were alleged to have occurred which formed the basis of the plaintiff’s lawsuit. One of these witnesses brought the plaintiff to India in 1995, accompanied the plaintiff to India in 1997, and was present for some of the alleged interviews. The deposition of this witness was taken as a process of discovery in this lawsuit. The witness testified that he had a close and confidential relationship with Alaya Rahm from 1995 to 1997, spoke with the plaintiff on a daily basis when he was in the ashram in 1995 and 1997, discussed the details of each of the plaintiff’s interviews during that period and that Alaya Rahm never suggested during this period of time that any misconduct or wrongdoing had occurred. The deposition of the witness was taken in March 2006. Alaya Rahm dismissed his case after the deposition was taken.<br /><br />"No offers of settlement were made in this case and no money or any other consideration was paid for a dismissal of the lawsuit. This dismissal should be the conclusion of this lawsuit.”</blockquote><br />I must at this point, express my deep and personal thanks to Brother Baskin for that succinct account.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> The lawyer who advises the Sathya Sai Society, which set itself up to avoid accountability, is Robert M. Baskin. As such, “Brother Baskin” gives an account that twists and ignores facts in a very tendentious way. Alaya Rahm’s claims, fully supported by his mother and father, were NEVER thoroughly investigated! A wholly predjudiced Sathya Sai Society opposed them. One of its defendants was Dr. M. Goldstein, who the BBC soundly exposed (see the BBC’s “The Secret Swami”) for his rigid prejudice towards Alaya Rahm’s allegations. The Rahm family’s meeting with him in September in La Fayette in Arkansas 1999 is typical of this sort of inaction.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The untruthful deposition by the devotee of Sai Baba, Lewis Kreydick had no effect whatsoever on the decision of Alaya Rahm to withdraw his case. The withdrawal was purely because his attorney could not find any person or accountable body to answer to the Alaya Rahm’s suit. He fully maintains these claims. There is nothing proved against them.</span><br /><br /><br />I do not know what you think about it, but as far as I am concerned, this case withdrawal by Alaya Rahm, before the suit came up for formal hearing before a Judge, knocks the bottom out of all the allegations that have been circulated during the last several years.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Not one accuser, out of scores around the world, has withdrawn his allegations. Read the statement by the International JuST Group, the Rahm Family and the family’s lawyer.</span><br /><br /> <br />And please remember that Rahm would not have dismissed his own case, if he thought he had a chance of winning. The fact is he had no case, none at all, at any time. For years, Alaya Rahm got away with wild allegations, and the BBC made much of it. Why? Because they were never put to the legal test.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment: </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Nor was Alaya Rahm’s case put to the legal test. For reasons former devotee lawyers in the USA and elsewhere are having trouble in understanding, Rahm’s attorney embarked on the case only to discover that there was no legally incorporated entity to sue.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Kreydick's main point is that Alaya never mentioned the abuses to him. In the television documentaries, Alaya stated that he believed, at the time of the abuses, that if he spoke about them his family would reject him. Lewis Kreydick’s deposition is that of a blindly subjective devotee who attempted to slur Alaya Rahm. Kreydick claimed that he was a close friend and advisor to Alaya and made constant speculations about Alaya's state of mind (repeatedly objected to by Rahm’s attorney), claiming he could not have been abused and unhappy because he was all smiles. The attempt was to sully Alaya’s character (and, disgracefully, that of his mother, too!). This was heartless. Kreydick’s testimony totally disregarded the situation that Alaya was going through a tremendous inner upheaval while having to put up a brave face. Experts in sexual abuse attest that abusees, in the face of a situation too painful to admit fully into consciousness, can hide the turmoil about a situation beneath smiles. Here was an individual, knowing the terrible consequences in a US court should anyone perjure themselves, striving to tell his story of a very confusing and traumatic sexual abuse by his former guru, whom he had been raised to regard as God. </span><br /><br /><br />Emboldened by the apparent wide acceptance of his claims in the West, Rahm then thought he could seek damages and filed a lawsuit. But his attempt has backfired and the chief accuser has realised that. Quietly, he has withdrawn the case.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment: </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">This is calumny! Venkataraman - </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">who claimed he never listened</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> - does not know Alaya Rahm’s motives. Alaya Rahm’s and his family’s active support of the JuST Public Statement on the case is not an example of ‘quiet withdrawal’, nor that of his lawyer, William Brelsford, which is plain testimony to Alaya Rahm’s reason for self-withdrawal of his case. Furthermore, there is no evidence whatever that Alaya Rahm proceeded out of a selfish motive, though he did wish to make the Sathya Sai Organisation accountable, although hindered by legal technicalities. He was bravely trying to create a legal precedent for the scores of alleging victims of Sathya Sai Baba, also so they might more easily obtain just compensation for the destruction to their lives. An increasing number of the many Indian Sai alumni (whom we carefully check for their </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">bona fides</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">) contact us. They relate that Sai Baba has sexually abused them or their brothers or friends. Recovery from serious abuses and preparing for public and legal confrontations takes those affected a long time, inner struggle, organization and effort. This is proven by the decades it took for victims of sexual abuses in the Roman Catholic Church, the Hare Krishna (ISKCON) movement and many other institutions to come forth and take action, not least after major top-down cover-ups by top officials in these bodies very similar to those current in the Sai Organisation.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">His lawyer, William Brelsford, makes plain Alaya’s reason for self-withdrawal of his case – obstructive legal technicalities. Recovery from serious abuses and preparing for public and legal confrontations takes a long time, and much organization and effort by the survivors. The dossier is growing and some day will illuminate all. The depths of the depravity amaze even us. They will not remain hidden forever. Yes, though very differently from the reasons Venkataraman gives, eventually the truth will out!</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><br />signed,<br /><br />Barry Pittard </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">(<a href="mailto:bpittard@optusnet.com.au">bpittard@optusnet.com.au</a>)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><br />Robert Priddy </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">(<a href="mailto:rero@chello.no">rero@chello.no</a>)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Note: Several paragraphs from Venkataraman’s article were omitted in the above since they required no comment.</span><br /></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Extra Sources:<br /><br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/3813469.stm">BBC on Basava Premanand's claims against Sai Baba</a><br /><a href="http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/4/">George Orwell's 1984</a><br /><a href="http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/MurderReview.htm">Unresolved, quashed investigations of murders in Sai Baba's bedroom, 1993</a><br /><a href="http://www.saipetition.net/">International Sai Petition</a> </span>(over 1,100 signatures)</span><br /></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16530399.post-1161882665202340042006-10-26T18:10:00.000+01:002006-10-29T06:32:36.936+00:00Sai Org's Deception & Propaganda Exposed 2<div style="text-align: justify;"> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >THE SATHYA SAI ORGANISATION'S DECEPTION AND<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >PROPAGANDA EXPOSED</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div> <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" ><br /></span> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >PART TWO</span><br /></div> <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-weight: bold;">(<a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/09/sai-orgs-deception-propaganda-exposed.html">Part 1</a>)<br /><br />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, as follows:-</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-weight: bold;">[Comments by the undersigned are in bold blue text:]</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE OF CALUMNY</b><br /><b><br />by Dr. G. Venkataraman<br /><br /></b> [text in black from Radio Sai Listener's journal: <a href="http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/Vol_04/01JUL06/collapse-of-calumny.htm">Volume 4 - Issue 07</a> JULY 2006]<br /><br /></div> </div> <p class="para" style="margin-left: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US"><strong>The Eternal Struggle Between Good And Evil</strong></span></p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p class="para" style="margin-left: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"> The Indian scriptures say that practically every <em>Avatar</em> has had enemies.</span></p> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Comment:</span> Most of the world does not accept Sai Baba as an avatar, nor ever will, as any student of religion knows. Despite his claims that in his own lifetime that he will first transform his own backyard, India, and then the rest of the world he will never succeed. His claims - such as that he will never look old - become daily ever more absurd as he becomes sicker-looking. He has undergone hip operations. His students and other aides have to prop him up. Several times, he has fallen over in full public view. He has walked around in circles, muttering incoherently. He has said - fully caught by BBC cameras! - that he had three tons of gold in him. This is to give but a few examples of his increasing physical and mental decay. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Many countries have laws stating that all are equal before the law. Those uninvited touchings - and much more invasive handling - of the genitals of young males that even many Sai devotees are forced to admit are true are not permitted by law. Only in most circumscribed medical circumstances may a medical doctor touch a person’s genitals. Sai Baba is not a doctor. He is answerable to the law, if only successive corrupt regimes in India did not protect him. Simply to “march ahead ignoring the background noise” is a central tenet of the authoritarian top-down Sai Organisation. No genuine feedback is accepted from rank-and-file members, who have relinquished all rights regarding it according to the Organization’s Charter and to whom even the slightest criticism is banned. We have thoroughly documented this <a href="http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/saiorg/index.htm">from official sources</a>. Statements by virtually every official and major document in the Sai Organization’s massive website propaganda make this clear.</span><br /><br /><br />I will not go into the details, but during every Incarnation there are enemies who challenge the Avatar in various ways. Sometimes, they even attack physically. Apparently, the enemies symbolise the evil on earth, and a struggle between the good and the evil is needed from time to time to establish the Eternal Truth that in the end, Good always triumphs over Evil.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> <u>This is sheer anathema again</u>! If Venkatarman persists in calling former devotees ‘evil’, perhaps one day enough Sai devotees who know the quality of many who have left the Sai Organization will realise his bare-faced untruthfulness. To use one’s right to freedom of speech against provably false claims and criminal actions is not ‘evil’; on the contrary, it is just and right, hence good!</span><br /><br /><br />In the Krishna Avatar, for example, there was a demon called Jarasanda who repeatedly attacked Mathura, the city that was the capital of Krishna’s kingdom at that time. In fact, to protect His people, Krishna moved from Mathura to Dwaraka. Krishna was God Almighty in human form. He commanded all the Powers of God. If you recall, He revealed Himself as the Supreme Lord to Arjuna in the battlefield. And yet, why is it that the same Krishna did not dispose of Jarasanda, which He surely could have done in a jiffy? Well, those are the mystifying aspects of the Avatar! Such aspects are present in every Avatar. By the way, to complete this story, it was finally left to the hefty Pandava Bhima, to tear Jarasanda to pieces, literally.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Venkataraman clearly reveals his unspoken wish – and that of similar Sai devotees – to see Sai Baba’s critics torn to pieces, literally! How very loving and spiritual of him. To stamp people as demons, as he and his his supposedly compassionate Lord and master do, is to revert to primitive superstitions. No truly educated, rational person today would accept this perverse worldview.</span><br /><br /><br />Not many realise that attacks on Swami have always been there, almost from the time Swami declared His Avatarhood. If you read the accounts of people who used to travel to Puttaparthi in the good old days, they always tell us how the locals were quite hostile to Swami.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Now one can understand there were doubtless some very good reasons! The devotee Smt. Vijayamma’s account of Sai Baba’s relentless and continued beatings of her two-year old baby are just one point in case. Moreover, that Sai Baba was in a homosexual partnership even then is very evident <a href="http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Eex_baba/engels/articles/childsdignity.html">from her text too</a>! </span><br /><br /><br />For them, a little boy who used to be one of them simply could not be God. How on earth was that possible, they asked. But that phase soon passed off, and now we see how that very same Swami is being venerated by the people of those very same villages, who were once so hostile to Him.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> It is in their economic interest - his becoming a major tourist attraction has raised their standard of living greatly. To try to oppose him now - when he controls the police, and has Supreme Court and High Court judges, Prime Ministers and Presidents and various government Ministers in his hand - would be far beyond any villager. So why, given their dire health problems, do they not swarm to his hospitals as they do to hospitals elsewhere in India? Relative to their size and opulence, his hospitals have very few patients. Are they not primarily Sai Baba promotional showpieces for the world and for use mainly by rich Indian and foreign devotees?</span><br /><br /><br />Later, came Vedic scholars who scoffed at Swami. How could this young man who never spent even a single day in Veda Patashala [Vedic school] know anything about the Vedas, they asked. But soon they realised that this was no ordinary young man but the One who was the very form of the Vedas, or Veda Pursusha, as He is known in ancient Indian scriptures.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Many Vedic scholars in India do not think that Sathya Sai Baba is God incarnate. The attempt to claim otherwise must be <a href="http://saibabaexposed.blogspot.com/2006/08/breakdowns-and-renewals.html">deeply offensive to many Indians</a>. </span><br /><br /><br />In the sixties and seventies, it was Swami’s miracles that came under heavy attack. A whole bunch of rationalists pooh-poohed Him, challenging Swami to do this and that, so as to convince them. Swami has not come to convince anybody about His Divinity. Rather He has incarnated to tell man, “O man! <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Realise you are Divine</span> and start acting Divine if not at least as a human. Do not be a slave to your senses and behave like an animal or worse still, like a devil.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> “Behaving like the devil”, or that ‘the devil’ exists, are totally discredited ideas among educated people. Among Christian sects, they take the form of fundamentalist Bible-thumping ideas, but each culture has its own weak-minded variants.</span><br /><br /><br />The rationalists made a lot of noise but the world soon got tired of them. However, some serious intellectuals like Murphet, Hislop, and Sandweiss came with open minds and realised that Swami was the Embodiment of Pure Consciousness.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Venkataraman cites those whose assumptions themselves are under well-founded and strong critical scrutiny. Whatever competence they may have gained in their own professions, they are not recognized as scholars in religious studies or as probing intellectuals commenting on great public questions. Sai Baba elevated Murphet, Hislop and Sandweiss to a pantheon-like position among his devotees.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Blitz Interview</span><br /></div><br />In mentioning all these names, I must not forget Rusi Karanjia, a self-declared atheist and Marxist, who published from Bombay, the then highly-popular weekly BLITZ.<br /><br />Karanjia wrote many things against Swami until someone asked him, “How can you write about something when you have not checked the facts? Have you ever met Sai Baba? Have you checked out whether what you are publishing as facts are really facts and represent the truth?”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Indeed! Painstaking checking of facts at the expense of much time and energy by many Sai critics is why a range of agencies, and gave valuable time to the of the alleging victims – for example, Interpol, FBI, the Australian Federal Police, the German State Prosecutor’s Office, UNESCO, the State Department, and other governments, civic and religious institutions and many newspapers world-wide. When he generalizes about critics of Sai Baba, Venkataraman shows no evidence of checking his facts.</span><br /><br /><br />When his journalistic credentials were challenged, Karanjia came to Puttaparthi and Swami graciously granted him many interviews.<br /><br />Being the journalist that he was, Karanjia asked many probing questions and Swami answered them all, patiently. Karanjia had to admit that he was mistaken and he wrote a book not only retracting all his earlier biased and critical opinions, but went so far as to describe Swami as the living God walking on earth! By the way, to my knowledge, with the exception of Karanjia, Swami has never granted interviews to pressmen in this fashion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Why does Sai Baba refuse all other press interviews? We submit that questions from the independent press would be searching and would soon expose him.</span><br /><br /><br />For devotees, it is always a matter of great astonishment that the Lord could have enemies. “Why Swami,” many of them asked, “do You have enemies?” Swami always gave the same Comment: “It is only when there is darkness that people appreciate the value of light.”<br /><br />In the same way, Avatars need enemies so that people understand better the difference between Good and Evil. In short, the appearance of villains in the Lord’s Story is preordained, and we need not be overly surprised by it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Like the defenders of so many other personality cult leaders who come under serious and honest questioning, Venkataraman identifies critics as villains and enemies, his only basis being a false perception of all as fate predetermined by Sathya Sai Baba! Critics include many former Sai Organisation leaders who write incisive articles such as Stephen Carthew , Terry Gallagher, Serguei Badaev, Reidun Priddy, Britt-Marie Andén, Conny Larsson, Timothy Conway. Other writers who, in Venkataraman’s amusing scheme of things are ‘preordained’, include Brian Steel, Jorge Reyesvera (Mexico), Sanjay Dadlani (UK), (Sweden), Alexandra Nagel (The Netherlands), Åsa Samsioe (Sweden), Dr. Dale Beyerstein (Canada) Paul Holbach (Italy), Basava Premanand, Dr. Nayendra Nayak (both India), and numerous other ex-devotees and known independent journalists such as Duncan Roads (Australia), Mick Brown, Dominic Kennedy, Tanya Datta (all UK). Then, of course, there were the revealing investigations of the former top favourite of Sai Baba and adored by many devotees, David Bailey (UK). He went to great lengths, and suffered great and despicable calumny from Sai devotees when he, with the support of his wife Faye, formerly a key figure in the Australian Sathya Sai Organization, self-sacrificially set about to find out and <a href="http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Eex-baba/engels/findings.html">disseminate the facts</a>.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">One of Sathya Sai Baba’s favourite long-time devotees was Dr. Naresh Bhatia, former head of the blood bank at Sai Baba’s Super-Speciality Hospital at Puttaparthi. He confirmed to the <a href="http://www.saiguru.net/english/media/001028divine.htm">Daily Telegraph</a> that he had had sexual relations with Sai Baba for 15 or 16 years, and that he was aware that Sai Baba had had sexual relations with “many, many” of his students, and had brutally raped a minor whom Dr. Bhatia examined afterwards and referred to a physician in Bangalore. Strangely, he still believed Sai Baba to be God. Dr. Bhatia, a top favourite lecturer to students and foreigners, was banished and silenced, his previously acclaimed book ‘Dreams and Realities…’ being stopped directly by the US Sai publisher, Leela Press, on the order of the Organisation).</span><br /><br /><br />Let me now focus on the more recent events, because the Court case I referred to earlier is connected with these.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Now the Opposition Uses Powerful Media</span><br /></div><br />Starting from somewhere around the late-nineties, began what might be called the fourth anti-Sai wave. Thanks to the internet, this time, it was global. In the past, the targets of attack were Swami’s Divinity, His knowledge of the Vedas and His miracles. This time, the detractors went to the extent of questioning Swami’s purity and character itself. During this period, I was always quite busy with my work, and I therefore heard very little about the non-stop chatter in the gossip circles.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Comment:</span> Former devotees are not gossips but men and women from a large array of social, educational and professional backgrounds. Does Venkataraman think that his accusations would endure in a proper court of law, or among the educated public? Many leaders and devotees know the integrity of those who have left the Sai Organisation for ethical and moral reasons. Acts of concealment and falsification of such facts by Sai Baba and his leaders will forever condemn them.</span><br /><br /><br />From time to time, someone or the other would try to tell me something about this nonsense but I politely kept my distance since I neither had the time for this sort of thing, nor any patience to listen to falsehood.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> It takes patience to listen to anything critical, and folly to deem a matter false before even listening.</span><br /><br /><br />The slander campaign started amongst a few disgruntled devotees, and soon spread to those eager for sleaze and scandal.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Here we have the same old hypocritical mantra “disgruntled” chanted about defectors - it is the standard widely-parroted Prashanthi misconception. Former devotees have no heart for sleaze or scandal, but only for proper investigation of the facts. Many have made detailed investigation of the facts but leaders who remain in the organization have not done so. In their hearts, most of them know the valid reasons why so many have now left Sai Baba.</span><br /><br /><br />In that sense, the anti-Sai campaign did not amount to much and could be ignored. However, encouraged by the prevailing social atmosphere, the people bent on vilifying Swami now got a toehold in important circles.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Defectors sought justifiable exposure of vast-scale fraudulence, and, on a historic dimension, the worst spiritual betrayal and moral hypocrisy. Using the stark testimony of Sai Baba’s own printed words, we have demonstrated dozens of Sai Baba’s patent lies, false promises, manipulation of individuals and the masses, and his tremendous betrayal of trust when he maintains that ‘Swami is pure’ and that he represents Truth. He has said that he has magnetic feet that the earth pulls so that he cannot walk <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba">(miraculously?)</a>. That he never suffers from any illness (yet he is visibly senile). That – in his own words – he can “cure <u>uncurable</u> diseases”, and yet many Sai devotees know that his promises have proved false, though they often rationalize by saying e.g., “Swami must have meant cure him/her permanently by taking them away to Heaven”. That he has said he spat out a three-ton Siva lingam, which actually came from a towel on his lap, and rested lightly on a tray afterwards - captured for all to see on the BBC film!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">He has stated that he will - going yet further than Krishna - lift a chain of mountains and fly through the air. Now, Venkataraman (supposedly a man of science?) defends all this claptrap. Such published statements by Sathya Sai Baba with his <span style="font-weight: bold;">self-proclaimed</span> omiscience ensure he will be a sectarian curiosity and a laughing stock.</span><br /><br /><br />First, there was a very negative article that appeared in The Times of London.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Actually, it was three articles, all appearing on August 27, 2001, which Venkataraman’s colleague, India’s Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) and others tried to get the Times of London not to publish: 1. ‘Suicide, sex and the guru’, 18 by Dominic Kennedy. 2. 'I sought peace and couldn't find it' by Michael Dynes in Durban and Dominic Kennedy. 3. ‘Three die after putting faith in guru’, by Dominic Kennedy.</span><br /><br /><br />After this came an anti-Swami Media advisory by the UNESCO, and to cap it all, there was the film by the BBC. I am sure you all know about these things and so I shall not spend much time on them. For the present, let me just mention the following:<br /><br /><blockquote>When the Times article appeared, I was shocked as were many others. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Here was one of the leading newspapers of the world, and it was publishing negative material without even a casual inquiry about the accuracy of the content.</span> Some of us wrote letters to the Editor, but, contrary to the usual practice of giving some space to those with differing opinions, none of these letters were published. So much for objectivity of the Press!</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Unlike Radio Sai, The Times is a respected world press leader, with high standards of source checking. Does Venkataraman really believe that such a paper (and other respected media) would publish “without even a casual inquiry about the accuracy …”? Why should the Editor publish the Sai leaders’ attempted propaganda on behalf of an organisation <span style="font-weight: bold;">not willing to investigate disturbing allegations?</span> The Times would not retract, despite the initiative of the autocratic and unaccountable accountant, Indulal Shah and retired Indian Air Chief Marshal N. C. Suri to influence this newspaper. The Times and officials of important institutions (UNESCO, the State Department, etc.) acted upon the allegations <u>only after strenuous investigation of credentials and documentation by former devotees</u>.</span><br /><br /><br />The fact that the Times refused to extend media courtesy due to us did not mean the end of the matter. One could not simply remain silent when wild allegations were being made and atrocious aspersions were being cast in so-called responsible quarters. That was when our respected Mr. Indulal Shah took the initiative and met the then Prime Minister Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee.<br /><br />As a result of this meeting, a statement was prepared that was later signed by Mr. Vajpayee, the Prime Minister, Justice Bhagavathi, former Chief Justice of India, Justice Ranganath Mishra, another former Chief Justice of India, Mr. Shah made sure that the letter was seen by the top leaders of Europe, including the then Prime Minister of Britain.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Comment:</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> However, Exposé personnel in London convinced the Foreign Office to warn the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He then ignored the invitation from Sai Baba to visit him at Brindavan when Blair was visiting literally across the road at the new IT center there! </span><a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Eex-baba/engels/photo%27s/from_tony.gif">See Blair’s letter on this matter</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The ‘respected’ Mr. Indulal Shah, chief functionary of the Sri Satya Sai World Trust went on record with </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The Hindu</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">, 10-6-1993 as follows: “When press persons met, he said, ‘the matter is purely internal and we do not wish to have any law enforcement agency investigating into it.” In this statement, he perfectly reflected the despotic methods favoured by him and the Sathya Sai Organisation.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">signed,<br /><br />Barry Pittard </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">(<a href="mailto:bpittard@optusnet.com.au">bpittard@optusnet.com.au</a>)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><br />Robert Priddy </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">(<a href="mailto:rero@chello.no">rero@chello.no</a>)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:85%;" >Note: Several paragraphs from Venkataraman’s article were omitted in the above since they required no comment.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Extra Sources:<br /><br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/3813469.stm">BBC on Basava Premanand's claims against Sai Baba</a><br /><a href="http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/4/">George Orwell's 1984</a><br /><a href="http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/MurderReview.htm">Unresolved, quashed investigations of murders in Sai Baba's bedroom, 1993</a><br /><a href="http://www.saipetition.net/">International Sai Petition</a> </span>(over 1,100 signatures) </span></div>Swami Saiexposedanandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16286805401253448909noreply@blogger.com0