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Over the years, thanks in large
measure to the Internet and the ability it provides
for devotees of Sai Baba to connect with one another
and share their personal experiences, the controversy
surrounding the Indian guru has continued to grow.
This Saturday, the Electronic Telegraph published
another thought provoking expose' (see below).
So what is it about Eastern gurus
(or Western gurus with Eastern philosophical leanings)
that tends to produce "masters" who self-destruct
in various scandals?
The most insightful comment I have
ever seen on this issue comes from the Pathwork
Lectures of Eva Pierrakos:
"There are two basic approaches
to human spirituality. The first one is to emphasize,
concentrate, and focus on the divine possibility
within until this possibility becomes a reality.
Many movements exist that have practices, teachings,
and exercises that help actively and effectively
toward this end. All energies and concentration
are directed toward cultivating and enhancing,
manifesting and expressing, the divine reality
within. However, this does not necessarily mean
that the other fragmentary levels of consciousness
are thereby automatically eliminated and incorporated
into the divine center. It is quite possible and,
indeed, a frequent occurrence that such practices
genuinely bring out the real, Higher Self yet
leave the underdeveloped aspects of consciousness
intact.
"Many entities have such an intense
longing to realize their divine, inherent nature
that they forget, while in the body, that they
came to fulfill a mission in the universal plan.
This mission is the purification and growth of
undeveloped cosmic matter. In order to do this,
the second approach must be adopted. And that
is to shed the light of conscious awareness and
experience on the inner distortions, the ugliness,
the darkness, the evil, the suffering, as well
as on the inner truth, the beauty, the love, the
goodness, the joy."
"It is necessary to attempt, again
and again, to get in touch with the Higher Self,
the divine consciousness that is ever-present,
immutable, and immediately available within you.
When this is done for the purpose of making distorted
levels of soul substance conscious and in order
to reorient them, so as to unify all split-off
soul substance, meditation must take a different
road from the kind of meditation that is used
for the sole purpose of realizing the Divine Self
while disregarding the dark aspects of the self.
It is a current illusion and wishful thinking
that this latter approach automatically deals
with the dark side of human nature. This cannot
be so. You cannot overcome what you have not consciously
and fully experienced. This wishful hope with
which you are all familiar is nourished by the
fact that it is indeed possible to realize the
already potentially present part of the God self.
It is very important, my friends, to understand
this clearly. This is why it is often true that
entities once they shed the body who have led
a difficult and apparently unspiritual life, do
more toward the universal process of evolution
than some others who have led an extremely spiritual
life, who may even have been so-called 'masters,'
but who have cultivated their beauty and disregarded
their ugliness. They have thus failed to unify
and so have unwittingly perpetuated the dualistic
state of consciousness in which this earth finds
itself."
--- From Pathwork Guide Lecture
193, "Resume of the Basic Principles of the Pathwork:
Its Aim and Process"
You can find out more about the
Pathwork lectures of Eva Pierrakos at these addresses:
NHNE Special Report on The Pathwork
Lectures of Eva Pierrakos:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srpathwork.html
The Pathwork Foundation:
http://www.pathwork.org/
And you can find out more about
the latest developments in the controversial world
of Sai Baba by reading the Electronic Telegraph's
recent overview...
--- David Sunfellow
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
SAI BABA: DIVINE DOWNFALL
Electronic Telegraph
By Mick Brown
Saturday 28 October 2000
(Some names have been changed. Additional research
by Chloe Veltman.)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000647321007942&rtmo=0iRJ0KNq&atmo=lllllllx
&pg=/et/00/10/28/tlbaba28.html
The guru Sai Baba has left India only once, yet
his devotees across the world are estimated at
up to 50 million. They worship him as a living
god who, at the very least, can change people's
lives and possibly even work miracles. But now
his followers are bitterly divided by allegations
that their guru has for years been systematically
sexually abusing boy disciples summoned to his
presence.
------------
Driving into town from the small
Midwest airport where Carrie Young and her husband
had met me off the plane, she pulled a large picture
from the back seat of the station wagon. Framed
in gilded-gold, the picture showed the couple
and their three children posing with an elderly,
chubby-faced Indian man with an ostentatious Afro
haircut, dressed in a red robe. Staring out of
the picture, it seemed the Youngs were shining
with happiness. 'And to think,' said Carrie, 'this
is the man we used to think was God.'
I had been with the Youngs for less
than 30 minutes, but I had already decided --
in the way you sometimes do -- that I liked them,
that they were what Americans call 'straight arrows':
honest, decent and truthful. A handsome, clean-cut
couple in their mid-40s; both worked in the computer
industry. The past year, said Jeff, had been difficult,
what with all that had happened, but they were
pulling things together. Any experience offers
potential for growth, he said; even one as traumatic,
as unbelievable, as this one. The Youngs put a
lot of value in growth.
A year ago, their son Sam had come
to them with a shocking assertion: Sathya Sai
Baba, he told them -- the man the Youngs had revered
as God for more than 20 years -- was, in fact,
a sexual abuser. Over the course of four years,
in his ashram, while Sam's parents sat a few yards
away - thrilled that their son should be in such
close proximity to the divine, secure in their
belief that the god-man was ministering to their
son's spiritual welfare - Sai Baba was actually
subjecting him to sustained and systematic sexual
abuse. 'You'll meet Sam at the restaurant,' said
Carrie. 'He's prepared to talk about this. He
thinks it's important too.'
Sam was a tall, blue-eyed, dreadlocked
boy with a look that could only be described as
angelic. The Youngs ordered hamburgers and beer
-- a gesture, it seemed, almost of defiance; for
the 23 years they followed Sai Baba the family
were all strict vegetarians. For the next four
hours, they told me the story of how they had
come to Sai Baba; of their spiritual aspirations,
the dreams, the visions, the miracles -- and the
nightmare their lives had turned into. And always,
throughout the conversation, the same question
repeated itself: how could it possibly have come
to this?
For more than 50 years, Sai Baba
has been India's most famous and most powerful
holy man -- a worker of miracles, it is said,
an instrument of the divine. His following extends
not only to every corner of the Indian sub-continent,
but also to Europe, America, Australia, South
America and throughout Asia. Estimates of the
total number of Baba devotees around the world
vary between 10 and 50 million.
To even begin to appreciate the
scale and intensity of his following, it is necessary
to have some understanding of what his devotees
believe him to be, and of the powers that are
attributed to him. Much of what follows exists
in a realm beyond rational explanation. Among
his devotees, Sai Baba is believed to be an avatar:
literally, an incarnation of the divine, one of
a rare body of divine beings -- such as Krishna
or Christ -- who, it is said, take human form
to further man's spiritual evolution.
According to the four-volume hagiography
written by his late secretary and disciple, Professor
N Kasturi, Sai Baba was born 'of immaculate conception'
in the southern Indian village of Puttaparthi
in 1926. As a young boy, he displayed signs of
miraculous abilities, including 'materialising'
flowers and sweets from 'nowhere'. At 13 he declared
himself to be the reincarnation of a revered southern
Indian saint, Shirdi Sai Baba, who died in 1918.
Challenged to prove his identity, Kasturi writes,
he threw a clump of jasmine flowers on the floor,
which arranged themselves to spell out 'Sai Baba'
in Telugu.
In 1950 he established a small ashram,
Prasanthi Nilayam (Abode of Serenity) in his home
village. This has now grown to the size of a small
town, accommodating up to 10,000 people, with
tens of thousands more housed in the numerous
hotels and apartment blocks that have sprung up
around. So great are the numbers of pilgrims that
in recent years an airstrip has been constructed
near the town. There is a primary school, university,
college, and hospital in the ashram, and innumerable
other institutions around India bearing Sai Baba's
name.
In India, his devotees include the
former prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao, the present
Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and an assortment
of senior judiciary, academics, scientists and
prominent politicians. Unlike other Indian gurus
who have travelled in the West, cultivating a
following among faith seekers and celebrities,
Sai Baba has left India only once, in the Seventies,
to visit Uganda. His reputation in the West spread
largely by word-of-mouth. His devotees tend to
be drawn from the educated middle-classes.
It is said that as an instrument
of the divine, Sai Baba is omniscient, capable
of seeing the past, present and future of everyone;
his 'miracles' include materialising various keepsakes
for devotees, including watches, rings and pendants,
as well as vibhuti or holy ash. Like Christ, he
is said to have created food to feed multitudes;
to have 'appeared' to disciples in times of crisis
or need. There are countless accounts of healings,
and at least two of his having raised people from
the dead.
Unlike the infamous Rolls-Royce-driving
guru Rajneesh, who preached a philosophy of heady
libertarianism, or the Maharishi of Beatles fame,
who marketed traditional meditation techniques
as an aid to better health and efficiency, Sai
Baba's teachings resemble a synthesis of all the
great faiths, with a particular emphasis on Christian
charity, enshrined in his most ubiquitous aphorism,
'Love All, Serve All'. Perhaps his most improbable
disciple is Don Mario Mazzoleni, a former Vatican
priest and the author of "A Catholic Priest Meets
Sai Baba", in which he expresses his conviction
that Christ and Sai Baba are the same manifestation
of God on earth. Mazzoleni was excommunicated
in 1992 because of his belief.
The principal event in Prasanthi
Nilayam is darshan, in which Sai Baba emerges
twice daily from his quarters adjacent to the
main temple and walks among the thousands of devotees
seated on the hard marble floor. Hands reach forward
to touch his feet or to pass him letters of supplication.
Occasionally he pauses, to offer a blessing or
to 'materialise' vibhuti in an outstretched hand.
It is during darshan that Sai Baba, by some unseen
criteria, chooses people from the crowd for private
interviews. When I visited the ashram three years
ago, researching a book on India, my application
to the secretary to interview Sai Baba was politely
refused; a formal letter of request to Baba himself
went unacknowledged. For the next week I sat on
the marble floor of the temple waiting to be chosen
for interview. I never was. Some devotees might
wait for years.
It is difficult to describe the
atmosphere of fervent devotion that permeates
the ashram. Devotees talk of having been 'called'
by dreams, visions or curious flips of synchronicity,
impossible to explain and too powerful to ignore.
People jockey for favour and position, endlessly
recycling stories of his miracles and powers.
It is a catalyst for every imaginable emotion
-- piety, hope, desperation, jealousy and pride.
One person described it as 'like metals being
smelted -- all the crap comes up to the top'.
Inevitably for such a potent figure,
Sai Baba has, for years, been the subject of rumbling
allegations of fakery, fraud and worse. But he
has proved remarkably immune to controversy, the
accusations doing little to dent his growing following
or the esteem in which he is held. But all that,
it appears, is about to change.
In recent months, an extraordinary
storm of allegations have appeared -- spurred
by a document called The Findings, compiled by
an English former devotee named David Bailey --
which threaten to shake the very foundations of
Sai Baba's holy empire. Sai Baba may represent
an ancient tradition of belief, but the instrument
of accusation against him is an altogether modern
one. Originally published in document form, The
Findings quickly found its way on to the internet,
where it has become the catalyst for a raging
cyberspace debate about whether Sai Baba is truly
divine or, as one disenchanted former devotee
describes him, 'a dangerous paedophile'.
It is one of the many imponderables
of this story that the charges against Sai Baba
should have begun with a rotund and jocular concert
pianist from Llandudno.
David Bailey became a devotee of
Sai Baba in 1994, at the age of 40, drawn by an
interest in the guru's reputation as a spiritual
healer. 'I couldn't see him as a God,' says Bailey,
'but I did think, this could be a great holy man
who has certain gifts.'
An extrovert man, Bailey quickly
became a ubiquitous and popular figure among devotees.
He travelled all over the world, speaking and
performing at meetings and would visit the ashram
in India three or four times a year, often performing
during darshan and teaching music to students
at the Sathya Sai Baba College. Over the course
of four years Bailey claims to have had more than
100 interviews with Baba. At Baba's instigation,
Bailey married a fellow devotee, and together
they edited a magazine to propagate Sai Baba's
teachings. But the closer he came to Sai Baba,
Bailey told me, the more his doubts multiplied.
The 'miracles', he concluded, were 'B-grade conjuring
tricks', the healings a myth, and Baba's powers
of being able to 'see into people's minds and
lives' merely a clever use of information gleaned
from others.
Bailey's dwindling faith was finally
crushed when students from the college came to
him alleging that they had been sexually abused
by the guru. 'They said, "Please sir, can you
go back to England and help us." They were unable
to tell their parents because they were afraid
of being disbelieved, and feared for their personal
safety.'
Shocked by the allegations, Bailey
severed his association with Sai Baba and began
to assemble a dossier of evidence from former
devotees around the world. The Findings is a chronicle
of shattered illusions. It contains allegations
of fakery, con-trickery and financial irregularities
in the funding of the hospital and over a Sai
Baba project to supply water to villages around
the ashram, which is habitually trumpeted as evidence
of his munificence.
Some of these allegations have been
aired before. A former devotee, B Premenand, has
made a virtual career out of debunking Sai Baba
through his publication, The Indian Skeptic. But
the charges contained in The Findings are of an
altogether different magnitude. They include verbatim
accounts of abuse from devotees in Holland, Australia,
Germany and India. Conny Larsson, a well-known
Swedish film actor, says that not only did Sai
Baba make homosexual advances towards him, but
he was also told by young male disciples of advances
the guru had made on them.
In April, Glen Meloy -- a retired
management consultant and a prominent Californian
devotee of some 26 years standing -- received
a letter from an American woman who had read The
Findings on the internet. Her 15-year-old son,
she said, had also been abused. Included in the
letter was a four-page statement from the boy
himself alleging multiple sexual abuse.
Meloy launched his own internet
campaign to spread the allegations. The effects
of this have been enormous.
There has been a rash of defections
from Sai Baba groups throughout the West. In Sweden
the central group has closed down, and so too
has a school based on the Human Education Values
programme devised by educationalists at the Puttaparthi
college.
From other devotees, however, the
response has been one of disbelief and denial.
'Sai Baba', says Bailey, 'is a simple sex maniac
who's on an ego trip, after money, after power.
He is a sheer conman.' No, say others, 'Sai Baba
is God.'
The Young family are not among those
listed in The Findings, but the story of how they
had come to Sai Baba was not atypical. In the
early Seventies, Jeff had become interested in
'the spiritual quest', initially through psychedelics,
then through yoga and meditation. He learned of
Sai Baba through a friend, and in 1974, at the
age of 18, visited India for the first time, driven,
he says, by 'an intense and burning desire to
feel and experience God'.
The teachings of Sai Baba, he said,
struck him to the core. 'The first thing I read
by him was, there is only one caste, the caste
of humanity; there is only one language, the language
of the heart; there is only one religion, the
religion of love; there is only one God, and he
is omnipresent. That made perfect sense to me.
He wasn't claiming to be part of any religion.
It was just all about love.'
A month before leaving for India
Jeff had a dream in which, he says, he was in
a queue, waiting to see Sai Baba. Baba passed
him by, then turned, looked over his shoulder,
winked and said the word 'talk'. On his first
day in India he sat in a queue as Sai Baba walked
past. 'Then he stopped and he looked over his
shoulder, and he winked at me and he said "Talk"
-- exactly as he had done in the dream.'
Three weeks later Jeff had a private
interview with Sai Baba. 'And I remember feeling
peace like I had never felt before; feeling loved
like I'd never been loved before.'
He returned to Los Angeles, where
he lived in a community with fellow Baba devotees.
He met Carrie, whose childhood had been characterised
by parental abuse, and her teenage years by drug
abuse. She too became a devotee of Sai Baba, putting
her troubled past behind her. They married, moved
to the Midwest and started to raise a family.
Over the years, they visited Sai Baba from time
to time. They founded a community, home-schooled
their children according to his teachings, and
strove to lead a life of purity and self-discipline
based on the principles of 'Love All, Serve All'.
Then, in 1995, things began to change.
Their son, Sam, who was now 16, visited the ashram
with a family friend and was singled out for a
private interview with Sai Baba. Eighteen months
later, the Youngs returned to Puttaparthi; again
Sai Baba singled out Sam and called him and the
family for an interview. 'He made [a big fuss
of] our group,' said Jeff. 'He materialised a
ring for my son. He told everybody that Sam had
been a great Shirdi Sai devotee in a previous
life -- he just poured it on.'
During the course of that visit,
the Youngs were called for seven interviews, while
Sam had some 20 private meetings. The family felt
blissfully privileged. Baba advised Jeff on his
business, signed the bylaws for their community
and told them that one day he would come to their
home. He materialised rings, watches, bracelets,
gave them robes and the silk lungi he wore next
to his skin. 'People were saying, what's with
you guys?' said Jeff. 'One guy actually said to
me, when I die I want to come back as you. And
Baba was telling us not to talk a lot, to keep
it quiet, because it causes jealousy in others
-- which is true.'
The following year, the family returned
to Puttaparthi three times. On each occasion they
would be gifted with two or three interviews.
Sam had twice as many. 'We had no idea what was
going on,' said Jeff. 'We'd ask Sam, and he'd
say Baba was talking about his future. Every day
there'd be another watch, a ring. We thought maybe
our son deserved this attention because he'd done
so much for Shirdi Sai. We just rationalised things.
You can rationalise everything.'
In 1995, Sam had come to his father.
In a private interview, he said, Sai Baba had
'materialised' some oil in his hand, unbuttoned
Sam's trousers and rubbed his genitals. Jeff told
his son he had had a similar experience when he
first met Sai Baba at 18. 'I said to Sam, what
did you think about it? He said he didn't feel
there was anything sexual about it; it was like
Sai Baba was doing his job. And I'd kind of had
that experience. A doctor gives a boy an exam.
I'd taken it as some kind of healing.' Thereafter,
Sam said nothing about his experiences.
What had actually occurred was this:
from anointing with oil, Sam told me, Sai Baba's
advances had grown progressively more abusive
and forceful. Sai Baba, he said, had kissed him,
fondled him and attempted to force him to perform
oral sex, explaining that it was for 'purification'.
On almost every occasion Sai Baba had given him
gifts of watches, rings, trinkets and cash, in
total around $10,000. He had told him to say nothing
to his parents.
So why had Sam continued to go into
interviews, and to say nothing? From the day he
was born, he said, he had been raised to believe
that Sai Baba was God. 'All my life, that was
my goal, to get an interview and have Sai Baba
talk about my life. And then I get in there, and
my mum's so happy out in the crowd, and then I
see what's really in there for me... I'm thinking,
maybe this is for love, and he might want to be
experiencing that with me, but I don't want that.'
When Sam asked Baba why he was doing
this, he would tell him it was because Sam was
'a special devotee -- that it was a great blessing'.
When Sam attempted to resist, he said, Baba would
threaten not to call his parents for any more
interviews. 'I felt obligations, to my parents,
our friends, all the thousands of people sitting
outside who all wanted to be in the position I
was in, not knowing what was really there.
'And then the big thing was the
concept that he is God, from day one, so when
he says, don't tell anybody...'
In fact, Sam did tell somebody.
He confided what was happening to two other American
teenagers who were students at the Puttaparthi
college. They had had similar experiences. 'They
justified it as a divine experience. But we didn't
talk about it too much because of the idea that
he was omniscient, that he'd know what we were
talking about and what was in our heads.
'If you listen to what Baba says,
he's talking about taking charge of your life,
and I was thinking, "I'm with you, so everything
must be good." But he was doing things to me that
I didn't want to do, and I was just letting it
happen.'
In 1998, according to Sam, Sai Baba
attempted to rape him. The following year, the
day before the family were leaving for Puttaparthi,
he told his father he did not want to see Sai
Baba alone, without specifying why. Jeff sensed
something was amiss: 'I told him, you must always
be true to your conscience. The family don't care
if we never have another interview again.'
In Puttaparthi Sam was again called
for a private interview. When Sai Baba attempted
to get him to perform oral sex, Sam walked out
for the last time, although it would be some months
before he summoned the nerve to tell his parents.
Jeff said it took some weeks to 'process' what
they were hearing. 'We knew that Sam was telling
the truth, but I still asked myself, what could
this mean?'
The Youngs contacted a leading figure
in the American Sai Baba organisation. 'He said
it must be some kind of test,' said Jeff, 'and
for a moment we felt better.'
Then Dr Michael Goldstein, the man
in charge of the entire Baba organisation in America,
flew in from California to meet them. 'He said,
we've got to talk to Baba about this; words are
not enough; faith must be restored.' Goldstein
immediately flew to India. He returned to tell
the Youngs that Sai Baba had told him 'he is pure',
and that Goldstein accepted that. He asked Jeff
if he thought his son might be 'delusional'. The
Youngs no longer speak with Goldstein.
I attempted to contact Goldstein
in America, but was told he was away, in Puttaparthi.
However, another senior devotee, a trustee for
the Sathya Sai Baba Society of America, did return
my call. Jerry Hague told me that he and his wife
had been devotees for 25 years. He said he was
deeply shocked at the allegations and could not
begin to understand them.
'All I know in my heart is that
Swami is the purest of the purest, and that everything
he does is for the highest good of everybody.
If other people feel something else, that's how
they feel. It's a mystery to me, and that's how
I'm leaving it. I just know in my heart what I've
found.'
This denial -- Sai Baba is God,
God doesn't do these things -- was a theme that
was echoed by innumerable other devotees I spoke
to in America and Britain. One woman told me the
allegations were 'utterly inconsistent' with her
experience of Sai Baba over the past 30 years.
Others said they were convinced they were a result
of 'delusions', or 'the projections' of boys and
young men at a difficult time sexually.
Surfing the internet, I came upon
a site called The Sai Critic, established by some
devotees to answer The Findings and to 'counsel'
those whose faith might be wavering in the face
of the allegations. The anonymous authors of the
site urge devotees to believe only their own experiences
and quote an aphorism of Sai Baba's: "When doubt
walks in the front door, faith walks out out the
back door. Keep your doors closed."
Addressing the allegations of sexual
abuse, the authors state that because 'Sai Baba
is a divine incarnation, one cannot attribute
human sexual motives to him, nor interpret him
in the light of human sexual experience.' In other
words, because Sai Baba is divine, whatever he
does is beyond understanding and beyond accountability.
Among those people named in The
Findings is Dr D Bhatia, the former head of the
blood bank at the Sathya Sai Super Speciality
Hospital, who, it is claimed, had a longstanding
sexual relationship with Sai Baba. Bhatia resigned
from his post at the hospital in December 1999
and is now an administrator at a hospital in New
Delhi.
Contacted by phone, Bhatia said
that he had become a devotee of Sai Baba in 1971,
at the age of 20, and that he had had sexual relations
with Sai Baba for a total of '15 or 16 years'.
In that time, he said, he was also aware that
Sai Baba had relations with 'many, many' students
from the college and school, and with devotees
from overseas.
Bhatia said he had never questioned
Sai Baba over his conduct, or Baba's explanation
that it was 'God's activity'. 'Devotion,' said
Bhatia, 'doesn't need any justification. In my
philosophy of life, everything good and everything
bad belongs to God. That is my belief, and that
is why whatever he does, does not affect me in
that way.' Was he saying that he still believed
Sai Baba is God? 'Yes.'
Like many people I spoke to, Isaac
Tigrett described himself as a spiritual seeker.
Among devotees, Tigrett is famous as the man who
built Sai Baba's hospital. Co-founder of the Hard
Rock restaurant chain, Tigrett sold out his share
in the business in the early Nineties and donated
$20 million to build the Sathya Sai Super Speciality
Hospital. He went on to found another chain of
club-restaurants in America, the House of Blues,
and now lives in London, where he is setting up
the Spirit Channel, an internet site dedicated
to exploring spiritual teachings.
A large, barrel-chested man in his
early 50s, dressed in an immaculate double-breasted
suit, Tigrett has the ostentatious appearance
and expansive charm of a theatrical impresario.
We met at his London club. Tigrett drank beer
and smoked cigarettes; a man, it seemed, firmly
grounded in the real world.
By normal standards, Tigrett's story
of how he came to Sai Baba is extraordinary; by
the standards of stories one hears of Sai Baba,
it seems almost commonplace. Born in the American
South and raised as a Baptist, Tigrett had always
had a curiosity about spiritual matters. In 1974,
he told me, he was travelling in India, checking
out the guru scene. Eating breakfast one morning
in the dining-room of a hotel in northern India
he heard a voice clearly saying, 'You've come
at last; I've been waiting for you.' Turning round,
he saw a picture on the wall of Sai Baba, whom
he had never heard of and knew nothing about.
He travelled immediately to Sai
Baba's ashram. It was a festival day, he remembered;
5,000 people were gathered for darshan. 'He just
came right over to me and said, "You've come at
last; I've been waiting for you." ' Sai Baba then
'materialised' vibhuti in Tigrett's hand. 'He
said, wait here; we have many things that we are
going to do together.' It would be another 15
years, he said, before Baba spoke to him again.
Tigrett said he was 'very cynical
and very suspicious. I believe in the inner guru
-- following your own heart -- not the outer guru.
It had never occurred to me that it would be some
sort of outer master that would draw me down the
path.'
Over the next 15 years, however,
he found himself subject to a range of 'amazing
teachings' that he attributed to Sai Baba. The
most extreme occurred in 1976. It was a time,
he said, when his doubts about Sai Baba were at
their greatest. Driving a Porsche Turbo through
the Hollywood Hills after a late-night party,
he came off the road at 80mph and crashed through
a barricade into a 200ft gully. 'I had no seatbelt
on. At the moment I knew I was going to die I
could feel pressure on my shoulders, and I look
and, seemingly to me, there is Sai Baba sitting
beside me with his arms around me. The car hits
the ground and turns more than a dozen times before
it lands upright, totally demolished. And there's
not a scratch on me. I'm thinking, this can't
be true. Was it him? Was it my imagination? Did
I call him and somehow create this belief in my
mind that he was there?'
The next day Tigrett flew to India,
'to thank him'. Tigrett spent three months sitting
in darshan, 'and he didn't so much as look at
me once'. It would be another 13 years, he said,
before Sai Baba finally summoned him for an interview.
'I said, why did I have to wait
so long? He said, "Big ego." '
These things were difficult to explain,
Tigrett said, impossible to explain. He does not
believe that Sai Baba is God, he said. He would
not even describe himself a devotee. 'But to me,
it's as simple as this: whatever it was I experienced
changed my life; whatever it was he did kept me
on a spiritual path, for which I am ever grateful.
And I will never be able to deny that experience;
nothing he could do could change that.'
How then could Tigrett square his
experiences of Sai Baba with the allegations of
sexual abuse? 'I can't. There's two camps here.
Are you against Sai Baba or are you for him? I
think if you say you're for him, you're just in
denial, saying these things didn't happen, that
it's made-up stories. I don't believe that. I
believe the allegations are true. And if you're
against, you're supposed to take up your sword
and kill him. I'm not in either of those camps.
For me, the only meaningful relationship with
him is the personal one, and everyone has to make
a personal decision based on that.'
As to trying to understand Sai Baba,
Tigrett said he had given up on that many years
ago. 'I know that he materialises things, because
I've seen him do it. And I know he fakes materialisations,
because I've him seen him do that too. I don't
know why. Maybe it's just a game.'
Tigrett said he believed that everything
Sai Baba does is 'a teaching'. Perhaps, he said,
the growing scandal was also a teaching, a way
of forcing devotees to stop worshipping the form
of Sai Baba, and instead consider the divinity
within themselves. 'I remember him telling me
three or four years ago that people would be leaving
him in droves. He said, "I'm not a new religion;
I'm not a personality cult. People come here to
see miracles, to have a vacation, and they don't
even get the teachings." He said this several
times, it's about following the inner guru, not
following Sai Baba.'
Tigrett has been back to the ashram
several times since then, he said, but he has
never again been called for interview. He sipped
at his beer. For those who worship Sai Baba as
a god, he said, the allegations 'must be totally
devastating. Because they've lost their god, their
master. But I never saw him as God.' How then
would he describe Sai Baba? Tigrett shook his
head: 'A total and complete enigma.'
Among the most remarkable facets
of this controversy has been the role of the internet.
Even 10 years ago, it is doubtful whether the
allegations against Sai Baba would have spread
so far and so fast. In a discourse in October
1999, Sai Baba instructed devotees that 'Swami
has nothing to do with internet [sic]. Not only
now, even in future [sic] also. You should not
indulge in such wrong activities.' But in the
realms of cyberspace the accusations, the justifications
and the denials continue to multiply. Alongside
the lurid accounts of abuse, there are accounts
of miracles, healings and calls to faith.
Conny Larsson has set up a support
group for those claiming abuse by Sai Baba, and
says he receives some 20-30 emails a day from
victims 'crying out for help. You cannot leave
these people in the desert.'
In America, the campaign organised
by Glen Meloy has concentrated on 'e-bombing'
copies of the allegations to senators, the White
House, the FBI and Indian newspapers. The most
conspicuous success of the campaign came in September
when Unesco withdrew its co-sponsorship and participation
from an education conference at Puttaparthi, citing
'deep concern' over the allegations of sexual
abuse.
Meloy is also attempting to bring
a class action lawsuit against the leaders of
the Sai groups in America that, he said, have
'conspired to cover this up'.
In this country, similar representations
have been made to the Charity Commissioners (there
is a British branch of the organisation registered
in this country) and to the Home Office, urging
them to issue a public warning to visitors to
India about the allegations, and pointing out
that failure to warn could constitute a breach
of the Government's international obligations
under UN Human Rights covenants.
For all the allegations laid against
him over the years, Sai Baba has never been charged
with any crime, sexual or otherwise. And his exalted
position in India has until now kept him safely
insulated from any kind of public inquiry.
In June 1993 he was the subject
of an apparent assassination attempt when five
young men broke into his private residence. Two
of his personal attendants were stabbed to death
and four of the assailants were shot dead by police
'in self-defence'. Sai Baba allegedly escaped
by rushing out of his room and activating an alarm
system. In a subsequent discourse, he said the
attack was caused by 'jealousy'. Dr Bhatia told
me he believed the attack was linked to Baba's
sexual activities. The guru was never interrogated
by police over the attack. The Indian press raised
the obvious question: if Sai Baba is omniscient,
why couldn't he see it coming?
Among former devotees, there is
a sense of shock, betrayal, anger -- a hunger,
if not for revenge, then for accountability. We
know that many victims have been physically molested,'
Glen Meloy told me, 'but in reality all the former
devotees have been spiritually raped because we
chose to believe that this man was the highest.
I certainly considered him to be the God of gods,
the creator of all creation, my friend, my everything.
The intense desire I have to expose him now is
directly proportionate to the amount of devotion
I gave him.'
Meloy said he shredded all the pictures
he had of Sai Baba in his house the moment he
heard the allegations. He knew of former devotees
who were now selling their homes, determined to
purge any taint of association with Sai Baba from
their lives. 'We completely gave away our power.
And now we can look back and see
what we did. You cry and out and wonder, how in
the world could this happen?'
How does this happen? In an imperfect
world, we crave some evidence of perfection, some
symbol of ineluctable goodness. The guru becomes
the expression of the dream.
Sitting in the restaurant in a small,
homely Midwest town, Jeff Young struggled to understand
what had led him to believe that an Indian guru
could be God. Thinking back to his first interview
-- 'I remember feeling peace like I had never
felt before' -- he now thinks he was simply deluded.
'There were so many people who desired to have
that interview, I convinced myself it was so extraordinary
and special and I must be in bliss, because I'd
been chosen.'
Now, he said, he could see how he
had ignored all the contradictions, manufactured
explanations for anything that didn't fit. 'I
knew the materialisations were fake. I'd sit there
and watch him pulling things from under a pillow.
It was totally obvious. And he'd see that we saw
and he'd kind of laugh. But I just thought, he's
testing me to see if I'm focused on the love or
on the external. Because Baba says, love my uncertainty.
You'll never be able to understand the avatar.'
Looking back, he said, when Sam
finally told him about the sexual abuse, he didn't
find it difficult to believe at all. 'I realised,
I'd really known this for a long time but didn't
really know it.' Jeff shook his head. 'It goes
so far into your mind. You ask yourself, how could
millions of people be wrong? How could millions
of people be tricked? I think a lot of people
deny these things are happening because they're
afraid of being embarrassed. I felt that myself.
We'd spent 23 years raising our family to believe
in him, going upstream against a river. You think,
how could I have been so wrong?'
When Sam told Jeff and Carrie the
truth about his meetings with Sai Baba, Jeff said,
both of them threw their arms around him. 'We
said, that's it; we don't care if we never see
Sai Baba again. He told us it was the happiest
day of his life.'
Since leaving Sai Baba, he said,
the family had been trying to find a basis for
faith in their own hearts. He believed following
Sai Baba's teachings for 23 years had made him
a more humble, honest and kind human being. 'My
wife hates him for what he did to our son. I feel
betrayed. I think it's despicable. But as I look
back over my life I would have to say that I honestly
don't regret anything that's happened and that
I've grown through all of it.' Finding Sai Baba,
and then discarding him, 'I'm happier now than
at any point in my life.'
Sam said the experience had brought
him to see his life in 'a whole other perspective.
It made me realise, all my life I've spent following
some other human being around, trying to do what
he says.' Freed from the prison of false belief,
he said, 'I'm just trying to live up to myself.'
Whether he is divine, 'a demented
demonic force', as Glen Meloy now describes him,
or simply the most accomplished fakir and confidence
trickster, Sai Baba has said nothing publicly
about the allegations laid against him. 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.
Sai Baba's principal English translator,
Anil Kumar, was more forthcoming. Every great
religious teacher, he said, had faced criticism
in their lifetime. Such allegations had been levelled
at Sai Baba since childhood, 'but with every criticism
he becomes more and more triumphant'. Kumar said
he considered the controversy 'all part of [Sai
Baba's] divine plan. It's a paddy field with husks
around the rice. Eventually all the unwanted parts
will go to leave the true substance inside.'
Jerry Hague, the American trustee,
seemed to share that view. Sai Baba, he told me,
would never say anything about all this. 'Why
would he? That's the human way. That's not his
way.
'You can try and write about this,'
he cautioned me, 'but you won't be able to make
any intellectual sense of it. Nobody can.'
'Some people,' said Jeff Young,
'when we tell them our story, they drop Sai Baba
like a rock. Some just don't want to hear it.
And others hear it all and say, well, he's God!
It's all a test. I laughed when I heard that.
Because to me, passing the test is having the
courage to stand up on your own two feet and say
this is not acceptable.'
It's a curious thing, said Young,
but when he first told his friends and fellow
devotees he was leaving Sai Baba, he had the sense
-- 'and I still feel that way' -- that Baba was
'standing over my shoulder, saying, 'Good boy,
you're doing a good job.'
------------
SAI BABA RESOURCES:
Sathya Sai Baba [official site]:
http://www.sathyasai.org/
NHNE Special Report on Sai Baba:
http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srsaibaba.html
The Findings - NPI News:
http://www.npi%2Dnews.dk/page152.htm
The Sai Critic:
http://www.geocities.com/the_sai_critic/
The Neural Surfer Website:
http://vclass.mtsac.edu:940/dlane/saidebates.htm
Sathya Sai Baba Exposed: Cult, Magic,
And Brainwashing:
http://www.myfreeoffice.com/saibabaexposed/index.html
Sai Baba: A Critical Page:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/4972/eng/main_e.htm
Beyerstein's Critique of Sai Baba's
purported miracles:
http://psg.com/~ted/bcskeptics/sbmir/contents.html
Freedom of Mind's "Sathya Sai Organization"
Resources:
http://www.freedomofmind.com/groups/sathya/sathya.htm
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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& CONTACT INFORMATION
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is the origin and purpose of life? Instead of
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life, from all parts of the world, lay people
and professionals alike, that can pool talents,
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We also believe that our planet
is passing through a time of profound change and
are seeking to create a global community of like-minded
people that can safely pass through whatever changes
may come our way and help give birth to a new
way of life on our planet.
------------
David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
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