Sathya Sai Baba: “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”

One of Sathya Sai Baba’s well-known prescriptions is the famous ‘three monkeys’ aphorism: “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. This penny proverb is hundreds of years old (origin not known) and is a key to much of Sai Baba’s ‘teaching’ on correct behavior. He has several variants of this like “See only good, hear only good, speak only good.” and “See good, be good, do good” or “Always speak softly and sweetly”.The monkeys proverb is often represented by three monkeys covering their eyes, ears, and mouth respectively with their hands. No one can avoid seeing people act in bad ways, immorally and criminally. If one calls anything ‘evil’ (as the aphorism names it), then it can only refer to actions of those kinds. The phrase is often said of people who don’t want to be involved, which fits with Sai Baba’s unrealistic teaching about avoiding attachment to friends or even family, and never criticizing others.

Like so many such penny proverbs, is not only vague but also impossible in actual life.The advice not to see, hear or speak ‘evil’ is taken by some to mean one should never criticise or condemn anything anyone does as wrong. It implicitly admits that evil is perceptible and hence even that it occurs… only one should ignore it entirely. Sai Baba also frequently insists it is wrong to criticise anyone. This advice is not only misguided but plain dangerous! Without criticism and condemnation the law could not operate and total social anarchy would take over. No advances in scientific or other forms of knowledge, or in social and political life, could be made either. The practically impossible demand is a simplistic and extreme form of the Pollyanna principle.The predominant focus in many news media is often investigate and to report matters which are not good - on immoral and criminal actions. This critical and investigative attitude is the necessary social function of the press as the fourth branch of government.

More insidiously dangerous, however, is the likelihood that, by following this self-styled ‘divine, sublime advice’, one will even come to view immoral and criminal acts as not being such at all, but as being blameless. Yet worse, on the same principle if really followed one may tend to see them as inherently good. This tendency is well exemplified by those who condone Sai Baba’s widely testified sexual abuses of many young men as being the will of God, or at best, something the true meaning of which we cannot understand. Another version of the three monkey’s aphorism - worded differently - by Sai Baba is “Hear, see, speak only good”. This is equally vague and open to ambiguity, and is therefore also easily taken in most unfortunate ways as already noted. On the best possible interpretation it could mean to forget and ignore what is not good (even though one has heard otherwise).

This leads on to the kind of absurd variant of extreme ‘positive thinking’ in speaking and writing only positively about everything. This comes fully to expression in the hagiographic literature about Sathya Sai Baba by his devotees, where one finds lavish and excessive praise of him and his acts without a single honest word about his failings and faults like broken promises, proven lies, meretricious claims, or many criminal acts of which he stands accused.The three monkeys’ aphorism - though vague and misleading - was probably originally intended to curb excessive negativity as in undue criticism of the libelous and slanderous kind.

At best, the three monkey’s aphorism has some relevance to that part of the media concerned mainly with ’sensational’ scandal, the so-called ‘gutter press’.The three monkeys’ aphorism ought to be rejected in favour of a much more useful and practicable ‘human value’. This can be expressed as “Hear, think and speak constructively”. This also necessarily involves the recognition of facts and a minimum of frank comment and open honesty between people about things both good and bad. This, however, is anathema to Sathya Sai Baba and all who belong to his Sathya Sai Organisation, as is shown by the dismissal of office-bearers who try to correct bad treatment of foreigners by staff at Sai Baba ashrams, who speak out about the many ills there, who ask about inconsistencies between word and action, or about murders, sexual abuse and various other such crimes there. See other vague and absurd ‘teachings’ of Sathya Sai Baba analysed click here

ON INDIAN SAI BABA FOLLOWERS’ GREATER ACCEPTANCE OF SEXUAL DEVIANCE IN GURUS

Below is an e-mail sent to me shortly after the David Bailey revelations had caused a large number of defections from the UK Sathya Sai Organisation. Its sender, a good friend of mine - the former long-serving President of the U.K. Sathya Sai Organisation and subsequent Central Coordinator for U.K. and Ireland, Aime Levy - had already been most unfairly and peremptorily dismissed by the then International Chairman of the Sathya Sai Organisation, the autocratic Indulal Shah, in favour of an ethnic Indian after long and bitter conflicts between most Indian and non-Indian leaders in the UK Sathya Sai Organisation. Aime Levy and his wife Sandra led a very large number of large groups of devotees to India, selflessly providing services for them on a very large scale through many years, and receiving over a score of interviews for their groups. Aime Levy started the major Sathya Sai Bookshop, 19 Hay Lane, Kingsbury, London, buying the premises and donating the profits to Sai Baba’s Central Trust. When forced out of the offices he had served in for years, he donated the entire bookshop - including the valuable property in which it was situation, to the Sathya Sai Organisation of UK, even though he was still under attack from its representatives.

At the time of the e-mail below, the Levys were still not disaffected, though they later became so and broke all connection to Sathya Sai Baba and his organisation. Nevertheless, I find the mail of interest in the attempt to understand why so many devotees of Sathya Sai Baba, especially Indians, take no notice whatever of the massive international allegations of sexual abuse or, if they do, they often rationalise it as something acceptable or even good!

MAIL FROM THE FORMER CENTRAL COORDINATOR FOR UK AND IRELAND: for rpriddy@online.no; Wed, 30 Aug 2000 20:14:37 +0100 Message-ID: <001801c011c0$91209ac0$d93c073e@aimlevy> From: “Aime Levy” <aimelevy@btinternet.com> To: “Robert Priddy” <rpriddy@online.no>Dearest Friends,Thanks for your last message. We are in touch with devotees here in UK and I am afraid that the David Bailey business is doing more damage. Our yearly “looked forward” Crewe Retreat has been cancelled at the last minute. That is after 15 years of regularly holding the retreat at the same University Campus. I reckon that a large majority of Western devotees have left the organisation. It is such a shame that some people will not see beyond.Talking to some Indian devotees (who by the way are not affected at all - hardly any of them have left) they tell us that it is common knowledge that “Gurus” generally have some of those tendencies. Frankly Sandra and myself still do not know what to make of all this. We love Swami and our love for Him has not changed. Lots of love to you both, Aime

Did Sathya Sai Baba give secret instructions to Despot Idi Amin?

THIS [MANIPULATED] IMAGE INDICATES THE ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP

In a discourse held on Christmas Day (2007) Sathya Sai Baba was most affirmative about his meetings with the brutal despot and Dictator Idi Amin (on Christmas Day of all days of the year!). Idi Amin was a known and self-confessed murderer who had at least five wives and 23 children (plus hundreds of ‘lady friends’), who fed enemies to crocodiles, reportedly kept some of his victims in his deep freezer, and - according to persistent reports of his staff who escaped - even tasted human flesh! One can see the man himself tell how he knew who to eliminate among his opponents [click here]One story about Sai Baba and Idi Amin circulated in the Sai movement during the near two decades when I was the national leader for Norway in the Sathya Sai Organisation. This was that Sai Baba had gone to stay with a Mr. Patel (in Uganda) and not least so he could meet Idi Amin and tell him to postpone the extradition of Asians (mostly Indians) from Uganda for one year. It was said that those few Indians who were devoted heeded Sai Baba’s alleged warning to them and supposedly left without losing their possessions, others left later and lost most or all they had. However, this does not fit with the dates or any known facts at all. There is no reliable testimony to support the story… nor could I get any sensible, consistent answers from some Indians who were Sai followers whom I met in London in the 1980s who had fled Uganda.Sathya Sai visited Kampala and met Amin in 1968, while he was head of the Ugandan Army and a well-known figure, but this was about three years before Amin came to power and got in a position to expel the asians! Not long after he usurped power in a military coup, Amin suddenly announced that he would send all Asians (most of whom were Indians) packing from Uganda within 90 days, causing untold sufferings to many of them. He famously claimed that God had instructed him to do this in a dream! Sai devotees who dream frequently of Sai Baba have not commented on this, and one may guess why! The rumours about Sai Baba’s intervention and Amin’s postponement of the event is yet another of the many myths and stories which multiply and spread around Sai Baba [and very often by him in the privacy of interviews] by his blind believing followers. See more on Idi Amin from a journalist who met him here http://home.chello.no/~reirob/idi/amin.htm#saiami

See also “The Last King of Scotland” - God’s orders and Sai Baba at http://barrypittard.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/the-last-king-of-scotland-gods-orders-and-sai-baba/

Sathya Sai Baba and Co. - corrupt words and actions

INDIA’S FUTURE LINKED TO A SELF-PROCLAIMED CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, SATHYA SAI BABA WILL BE PROBLEMATICAL
It is instructive to see the huge damage to India’s reputation being caused now [and without doubt for the future] by its top politicians and most of its press in supporting Sathya Sai Baba – a self-proclaimed God Incarnate, Deity of All Deities, Father who sent Jesus, Creator of the Universe and much more like that! It is actually illegal under Indian law to claim to be God! But Sai Baba is strangely never brought to book for this! Nor for anything else, because he has had the protection of Indian Prime Ministers, Presidents, Home Ministers, Supreme and High Court judges. This is a well known fact to all involved. The CBI investigation of the murders by police in Sai Baba’s bedroom in 1993 was quashed and no court proceedings nor thereby any verdict was ever achieved.

Sai Baba has repeatedly condemned both the possession of atomic weapons and those countries which develop them, calling their leaders ‘moral dwarves’. Despite this, he befriended for many years the man who was known as ‘the father of India’s atom bomb’, Dr. S. Bhagavantam. (Scientific Advisor to the Defence Ministry). Dr. Bhagavantam left Sai Baba after many years, and V.K. Narasimhan told me that Bhagavantham was mainly dissatisfied with Sai Baba’s neglect of poor devotees and his gifts of gold rings etc. almost only to the wealthy, along with diverse other reasons not excluding Sai Baba’s untruthfulness. Bhagavantam’s one time friend, Dr. G. Venkataraman, is just another of those scientists grown wealthy from dirty hands in atomic research, who self-servingly accepted a most expensive gift from Sai Baba (a new Japanese vehicle) taken from funds donated for the poor, which Venkataraman is himself involved in dispensing as a member of the Central Trust! This is nothing but another example of corruption in action in the book of any civilised people!

Sathya Sai publicly supported the government of Vajpayee, which revelled in the explosion of Indian nuclear devices, and even now in 2006 he made the man who developed the first rocket delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons, India’s President, A.J.P. Kalam, the guest of honour at his 81st birthday celebrations in Puttaparthi. Sai Baba has extended his full support to all these ‘nuclear’ governments! In his Janus-faced way, Sai Baba is a Dr. Jekyll in word and a Mr. Hyde in action! Only blind faith devotees cannot realise this. So how does all this fit with Sai Baba’s maxims like “Help Ever, Hurt Never”, “Serve All, Love All”? What happened to Sathya Sai’s much-touted “human value” of non-violence (ahimsa), in this ever more militaristic State? “Why Fear When I Am Here” when India increases its defence budget by leaps and bounds (28% in 2003, 17% in 2004 and 10% in 2005) to ca. 830 billion rupees ($19 billion) in 2005.When Sashi Tharoor wrote praising Sai Baba in the New York Herald Tribune, it may have helped speed the failure of his candidacy to the post of UN Secretary General, which devotees believed had been promised him by their ‘omnipotent’ Avatar, Sai Baba! No wonder - how can a man whose bad judgement allows him to admire such a charlatan God be trusted in the top UN post? At the same time as Tharoor’s press campaign for Sai Baba, a New York Times journalist was induced to write and article on Sai Baba entitled ‘A Friend to All the World’. However, considering Sai Baba’s close alignment with President Kalam (designer of India’s nuclear device delivery vehicles) and others involved in advancing India’s nuclear weapons programme, one may well ask what kind of ‘friend to all the world’ this may be?