BABA IN WONDERLAND

AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

“Sathya Sai Baba promotes a veritable Wonderland which none can enter without the blessing of God (i.e. himself, the Incarnate Creator of the Universe, so he said). He spoke of  this spiritual wonderland as the best place for ‘liberation from the wheel of existences’ (or ‘’moksha”). Any other feature this haven for ‘liberated souls’ may have is totally unknown – for all purposes like a dark night or perhaps a blinding light in which nothing is visible – and Sai Baba never describes it in any way, for evidently he is not up to that job!

However, ‘down here’ in the real world where he struts his stuff in his now-failing ‘perishable body’ – and so as to attain name, pelf and fame for himself – he has tried to create some kind of semblance of Wonderland, calling his residence ‘The Abode of Supreme Peace” (Prashanthi Nilayam). It is a Disney-coloured extravaganza of buildings, temples, museums, colleges, VIP palace-like buildings and an opulent hospital. A make-believe place, and to help in making such a belief is to erect a tinsel-gilded cage around oneself from which one may resign one’s freedom other than to sing saccharine songs, but one can no longer live intelligently and openly in the wider world of human learning and experiencing, for then one must follow all doctrine, taboos, rules, restrictions and commandments. What is this ‘Supreme Peace’ like? Well, no outward peace prevails there, for not only are the milling crowds of undisciplined devotees constantly pushing for privileges and best places, but it is quite often an auditory hell – with blaring distorting loudspeakers and every imaginable building racket by day, howling pi-dogs warring at night. The staff who rule the ashram with iron rules are mostly either conceited small Napoleons ordering their inferiors about (i.e. visitors and ‘Seva Dal’ servitors), making all kinds of hindrance and difficulty for normal living – and being open to corruption for privileges.

The meaning of ‘Abode of Supreme Peace’ therefore boils down to the idea that it is the Abode of Sai Baba, the Supremely Peaceful Presence! Even his peace is interrupted at times, such as when six young men were murdered in his apartment in 1993 from which he fled in the middle of the night! Sathya Sai is occasionally yet less predictable and more imperious that ’s ‘Red Queen’, ruling students and servitors with an iron fist when he sees fit (eg. Prince Gopal ). Even the Red Queen, however, was not called a major sexual predator. The ashrams are visited by many disturbed people, who are often dealt with in draconian ways, and no more peculiar collection of true believers could probably be found anywhere… March hares and mad hatters abound, no less dormice (the slothful and unhelpful residents who hope for salvation just by being there). There are any amount of battling egos around Sai Baba – Tweedledums and Tweeledees. It is not hard to find the worldly equivalent of the hypocritical Walrus and the Carpenter among some of the stranger inhabitants and hangers-on, of whom there are an unusually large percentage compared to in most other large personality cults.

One cannot but think that even talking of pink string and ceiling wax and whether cows have wings would not be out of place in this fantastic environment. In fact, they talk of yet stranger things as facts – Sai Baba has himself told them that he has magnetic feet which pull the entire earth towards him. He has actually also said in a discourse that the whole of him is magnetic, literally – that things stick to his body! He also said that he made a three ton golden egg-shaped lingams in his stomach and spew them out! In Wonderland, no one gets any straight or frank answers – least of all from Sai Baba or his officials on anything but what they wish one to hear – for intense secrecy and covert surveillance prevails throughout. Finding out what actually happens behind closed doors is impossible except to those very few who chance to learn deeply buried facts in one unexpected way or another.

It is extremely difficult even then for those who have been inculcated into the whole divergency and disconnentedness of the Sai Baba belief system to do what Alice did in ’Through the Looking Glass’, namely, discover that it is all really a house of cards and knock it down!