Sai Baba: Prayer, not environmental awareness?

If Indians do worship the earth, what effect does it have? It can’t be measured in any scientific way, of course. Everywhere across the globe, the earth is being over-exploited, and particularly in developing countries. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to be affected one iota by praying to the earth… that is a superstition prolonged by religionists like Sai Baba from the era when there was no natural science and one could only believe that deities like Indra ruled the rain and thunder… and so forth. It is the government and many Indian corporations which control of major industry, agriculture and the whole environment in India. They cannot be “worshipping the earth” in any appreciable way (or praying to the ‘earth mother’ (Bhoomidev), for the land is being raped and polluted on a huge scale by the activities under their regime. The situation has doubtless not improved since international companies were allowed to engage in the Indian economy, but then the economy has improved beyond recognition since the Narasimha Rao government opened the country up more. It is material need and corporate greed that drive over-exploitation and the destruction of eco-systems.

Sathya Sai Baba’s contribution to raising awareness of ecological issues is minimal and mostly as ill-informed as the above quotation – claiming that the inner significance is lost on “foolish scientists”. What kind of illumined inner significance has his vague prattle about “reflection, reaction and resound” and example of echoes in mountains? Sheer empty talk, compared to the knowledge science now has of the inner workings of genes, the origins and causes of nearly all natural phenomena, of stars billions of light years away. Science alone has traced ‘natural reactions’ in a comprehensible way… not Sai Baba, who continues to flaunt his ‘otherworldly’ vaguenesses and his ignorance of science, as already shown here (and more to come!).

India and Pakistan celebrate independence, still at stalemate

 

This absurd and demeaning charade where India and Pakistani soldiers must strut like adversarial fighting cocks formalises the impossible stalemate situation sustained throughout by the governments and backed respectively by Muslim and Hindu religious leaders - despite the horrific massacres of Partition, two wars and a most terrible regular death toll in Kashmir. The conflict has led to the ever-increasing militarization of both countries and even a nuclear arms race.

Religious strife was the key to Partition.
Religious differences remain the scourge of the Indian sub-continent. It is mainly a Hindu-Muslim issue, though Sikhs and other denominations are party to the issues. Pamela Mountbatten, daughter of Lord Mountbatten, interviewed on BBC World (Hard Talk) this week, was asked what her father would have thought of India since Partition. She expressed the opinion that he would have deplored two things above all else: the sheer betrayal of constitutional promises to the rajputs, maharajas and independent states by Indira Gandhi during the 1970s Emergency and the Hinduization of the Indian Government, contrary to both the letter and spirit of the Constitution. In short, India is only a secular state on paper, but is dominated almost totally by Hindus, who suppress all religious, tribal and other non-Hindu minorities in every way they see fit.

Sathya Sai Baba shows he is powerless to intervene
One may ask why has Sathya Sai Baba - who claims to be all-powerful and all-knowing - never visited Pakistan?  He has annexed to himself the name of the saint (Sai Baba) of Shirdi, who always made great efforts - often successful - to remove strife and create unity between Hindus and Muslims. Sathya Sai talks glibly of unity of faiths but is himself the epitome of a Hindu guru - claiming to be God Incarnate and an avatar. Sathya Sai Baba has often demonstrated his ignorance of the tenets of other world faiths, and he does so most grandly as to Islam. No orthodox Muslim can ever accept an avatar or God Incarnate, for it breaks with the most fundamental tenet of their faith - that Allah is beyond all forms and can never be incarnated or even represented in a human form. No wonder that Sai Baba has but a small handful of followers who (confusedly) claim to be Muslims. Yet the Indian Government embraces him and totes him to surrounding nations as their ‘national treasure’! Sathya Sai is worshipped as the embodiment of all the Hindu deities and is overwhelmingly surrounded by Hindus and Hindu ceremonials and cultural traditions. How can he ever have been so ill-advised as to claim he would rule the world one day?

 

‘God’ patronising the poor in India?

WHO IS SURROUNDED BY POMP?
Note that Sathya Sai Baba is ever surrounded by material comforts and has had to do nothing whatever for himself for his entire adult life. This is in total contrast the lot of the vast population. Rather, Sathya Sai Baba speaks a great deal about the need to regenerate India’s faith in it’s glorious past, religious culture and to reform the country entirely. Now, the glory of the past is a miasma, unsupported by historical research. But Sai Baba is right about the need for an entire reform, if dissatisfaction with the system by more than half its population is anything to go by. However, the authoritarian guru-ridden religious and otherworldly undemocratic culture Sai Baba stands for is probably the last thing that would create a humanitarian and caring society… for both religious faith and superstition of the Sai Baba type – throughout India’s caste-ridden and violent past - have failed signally so far.

While many Indian gurus and swamis like Maharishi, Maharaji, Osho Rajneesh, Ravi Shankar etc. travel abroad to seek followers and financial fortunes - Sai Baba does not need to travel as the money flows in from abroad after four decades plus of intense prosetylising to foreigners. This comes not least from his original claims not to ask for anything, not to accept or own money, but purely to heal and bless, teach and give. At first he lived what appeared to be a life of considerable renunciation and the ashrams to which he invited foreigners were very Spartan and tough going… which he recommended as a cure for the soft life. All that has changed completely. The ashrams and surroundings at Puttaparthi and Whitefield have undergone a sea change – top class hotels, a gigantic property boom and higher and higher standards. The Indian middle classes were long the mainstay of Sai Baba, and their standards have prevailed. Sai Baba is known to all to favour the rich, speak more to those ladies with very luxurious saris. And to foreigners whose qualifications and riches are known to (and carefully monitored) by his staff. No one has seen a ragged and truly poor person enter his interview room for decades.

Flood problems hit India’s poor but not the rich

Once again Indian Authorities gives low priority to its poorest citizens - 14 million flood victims. The top national Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten (9/8/07) reports that critics consider the Indian authorities should have done more to hinder death and destruction which comes of the yearly monsoon. “Every single year, the monsoons rain clouds gather over the Indian subcontinent, and every year thousands die in flood resulting from the predictable rains. India has been struck by an unusually heavy monsoon this year. Numerous experts say that Indian authorities could have done more to strengthen defences, build necessary dams and make evacuation plans. They point out that several years of preparations in Bangladesh have contributed to reducing this year’s sufferings. A permanent flood warning system was set up, but similar warnings do not exist in India. Nineteen million people have been driven from their homes in India. The flood banks in Bihar fell like card houses, says Rabri Devi, the acute opposition politician in the poor state of Bihar. Norway has sent ca. US $2.5 million in extra emergency aid to flood victims in South Asia.

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The Indian leadership have other priorities than to compensate the worst hit
As reported on the web, here for example, we read: [http://www.awakenedwoman.com/flood.htm ] : “The national government has not organized any emergency relief. But it has this past week spent $1.6 billion on 66 Hawk Jets. One church agency is helping in 20 villages but there are 300 villages in one district of Chhattisgarh alone, and international aid agencies are absent. Local government help is limited to 200-500 rupees, ($5-$10) and even that goes only to a few homeless families, and a one-off ration of 7-10 pounds of rice. As in the recent flood in Argentina, corruption by officials is widespread. They have been refusing the meagre compensation to households headed by women and are as usual discriminating against Dalit and Tribal families.”

The current government has a PM and Ministers who are followers of Sathya Sai Baba

He has in the past called on his followers for service activities for flood and tsunami victims, but he has been silent this year, probably due to his increasingly reported senile symptoms. Despite many efforts by local authorities, there have been angry protests, road blocks and the kidnapping of an official by the affected who were neglected too long. Apart from paramilitary direct aid action to prevent death (the toll is near to 1,5000) The governmental devotees of Sai Baba (PM Singh, Home Minister and many more, including the new devotee President Patil) certainly appear to have no plans to provide adequate compensation for these flood victims - many of whom have lost everything and who are overwhelmingly poor people (in the eastern states of Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal). Rich interests constantly ignoring those of the poor. The help that is given, when it eventually arrives, is never sufficient to compensate the losers. Meanwhile the Indian economy races ahead and vast wealth is created, yet it is evidently NGOs and international relief agencies on which most of the survivors must depend to avoid mass hunger and disease.

See Hunger and disease stalk India flood children

Is India a Moral Engine and Social Ideal to Emulate?

  

The statement that Bharat (i.e India) is the engine that alone is capable of drawing all other countries after it towards a moral world is among the least convincing of Sathya Sai Baba’s many wild prophesies. It expresses a chauvinistic nationalism of a kind like ‘India Uber Alles’, but it absurdly bases this (in the above quotation) entirely on the fact that the decline in the practices of sacred rituals (yagnas and yagas) is the main cause of all the troubles of humanity. Anyone can see that this is definitely not a winning formula, not least because surely at least 90% of the world’s population who are not very traditional Hindus will simply ignore it. To emphasize strictly Hindu rituals as the key to world regeneration is hardly a way to spread ‘universal religion’, as Sathya Sai claims to do. On this day, the 60th anniversary of Partition, Muslims can hardly be enthused by this religiously-divisive claim, which may well have contributed ideologically to the eventual tearing down of the Ayodhya mosque and the agitation to replace it with a Hindu temple.

How could a Country with so many well-known social and ethical failings guide the world?
For decades I admired much about India and its people, which I still partly do. But I became more and more aware - through personal experience and learning about India that I had been badly misled by all the propaganda of its rulers and politicians, and not least also that spread by Sai Baba as a confidence builder for India (in which I rather wanted to believe and hoped was true). I now say that, had India been the original home of democracy, human rights, women’s rights, social justice, equality, fraternity and liberty, then this would have been credible. But it is falling down on every one of these precepts. The non-violence movement of Mahatma Gandhi was truly admirable, but it was a flash in the pan which passed away with him while millions of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other in the late 40s. The intensity and number of massive wars of the most brutal and destructive nature which India has undergone speaks against the claim that it has ever been any kind of Utopia. This is known to have been so ever since the time of Krishna, when the Mahabharata war was no picnic but a vast killing field. There were gigantic ravages under Emperor Ashok - literal mass genocide until there was hardly anyone left to kill. India was then subject to the ghastly horrors of the Mughal invasion which destroyed much Hindu culture in the north. In the wake of all this, wars between local kingdoms continued until the British subjugated much of the sub-continent. From Independence onwards, India has fought wars against Pakistan (also China and Tamils) and there had been continuous internal strife between Hindus and Muslims, the State and indigenous peoples and minorities of all kinds to this day. As almost every visitor to India soon discovers, criminality and corruption are rife today, which is often so in societies where there is large scale extreme poverty.

Yagnas and yagas have so far failed India
India has evidently not improved because of the practice of ritual prayer and offerings (Yagnas and Yagas…). It is generally regarded today the world over as a mad idea of fanatical religionists that a countries’ ills are due to non-observance of Divine will, prayers and sacrifices etc.!  India has declined morally, according to Sathya Sai Baba’s repeated harangues in many discourses. He sets up the same old story of India having been the cradle of mankind as a place of harmony and light (indicated by the ancient name ‘Bharat’).  But there is simply no evidence of there having been a ‘Golden Age’ in India, except in the imaginings of priests and moralists and in texts similar to the Bible’s Garden of Eden myth. That India once was the perfect spiritual land - a moral paradise - as Sai Baba preaches - is a kind of deception based on wishful thinking more than any historical fact that has survived. India has no doubt ever had all the problems that have plagued humanity since time immemorial, but which modern civilisation has at last begun to defeat.

It can be confidently concluded that Sathya Sai Baba suffers from a variant of serious cognitive derangement that can fitly be called ‘mythomania’. As to the current state of affairs on humanitarian morals in India, I have already briefly summarised some of the dire calamities which prevail there. (See here)

Sai Baba prophesies he will lift “a whole range of mountains”!

As one can see from the above quotation, Sathya Sai Baba continually repeats the fantastical mythicial events from Indian scripture as being historical fact. This is but one of many statements he has made where he presents what are ’stories’, myths and legends in a way which leads his uneducated and unsuspecting countrymen to believe in them as literally true. He has spoken of Krishna’s lifting a mountain to protect his devotees from a flood of rain as historical fact! Worse than that, he made the famous statement in a discourse - published and checked by himself -that he too would lift - not one but a whole range of mountains:-

When dharma declines or rather, when those who have a duty to regulate their lives according to dharma lose faith in it, then, its restoration cannot be taken up by all and sundry… The Lord has come again on this Mission. He has collected the engineers and contractors and the labour for this purpose. He is not set on the task.”Let me tell you one more thing: Nothing can impede or halt the work of this Avathaara… Formerly when the Govardhanagiri (mountain) was raised aloft by a little boy, the gopis and gopalas realised that Krishna was the Lord. Now, it is not one Govardhanagiri , a whole range will be lifted, you will see!” (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 3, p. 106)

Indeed, we shall see if this happens!

GLOBAL WARMING OR GLOBAL WOBBLING?

More rubbishing of geophysical science by Sathya Sai Baba - the self-named “Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent Incarnation of God the Creator”. Since there are earthquakes, the earth is too heavy on one side, he implies? Who or what removes material from one side, though? Since Sai Baba has made crystal clear (see here) that earthquakes are due to human moral failings, then humans must be the culprits. [Perhaps he thinks it is because of the exporting of masses of raw materials? Who can tell?] But, then, there have been earthquakes for millions of years before humans walked the earth. As Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers used to say: “It’s all rather confusing really!”

So how is Sathya Sai Baba - who has stated that he alone has come now to save the world from disaster - going to right the balance and bring the earth back to normal, if that is the real problem? (If!). He is bound to his wheelchair or golf buggy all day, for a start. Aha! Do not be deceived (as he says) this little man is not what you see, for ‘He’ the One who keeps the planets in their orbits, and no doubt also the stars in their courses too, dontcha know? Now what I find REALLY amazing is that, after the exposure of all this repeated drivel, Indian Prime Ministers, Presidents, High Court judges and many Indian, US and even a few Danish professors, supposedly therefore of some level of learning, can continue to believe in Sai Baba! Above all, it is a disgrace that the Indian people should be told formally by their rulers that Sai bab - a widely-accused sex abuser, whose claim to be God is actually illegal by Indian law - is one of India’s ‘National Treasures’.
“The earth is spherical”, he reveals to us - now, not many people know that.

THE ‘WISDOM’ OF SATHYA SAI BABA

 REALLY, CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS CAN BE FUN
(the new series begins here)

“We have to investigate why we lose our health. Excessive thinking, worrying and studying is the main cause for man’s illness. Some students are absorbed in studies all the time, because of which they lose their health. There is a limit to everything, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, conducted extensive research on the digestive system of man and as a result of too much of thinking, his health deteriorated and ultimately he died of digestive problems.” Sathya Sai Baba. Sanathana Sarathi‘ Jan. 1999, p. 15.

SO DID ARISTOTLE  ACTUALLY DIE FROM ‘TOO  MUCH THINKING’? 

Forgive that this is not exactly ‘breaking news’, but intriguing it is! Sai Baba admits that Aristotle studied the digestive system of man and then - in the usual garbled way - failed to make everything entirely clear. Let’s first assume Sai Baba is saying that Aristotle concluded that too much thinking leads to digestive problems and death (”ultimately”)? Then surely mankind today, with our vastly enhanced mental activities, mental professions, mental interests (the media, internet etc.) , must be suffering from digestive problems on an equally massive scale? But where is the evidence for that? In short, there is none. If there were, would it not be a massive medical breakthrough to revolutionise much medicine? It is more likely that Sai Baba confuses figurative ‘mental indigestion’ with the actual physical sort.

Sai Baba states in so many words that Aristotle himself died of thinking too much, causing digestive problems caused by thinking too much (such as about human problems of thought and digestion)? There is no historical evidence for that protracted surmise, though (as Kasturi probably knew and told him) Aristotle reportedly did die of a ’stomach ailment’, though not specifically indigestion. It could have been food poisoning, cancer any number of ailments. If indeed too much thought was what really caused his death, how did Sai Baba arrive at that conclusion… by paranormal and divine powers, no doubt! Of course Aristotle “ultimately died”, uncontroversial… but was it that overripe peach, that indigestible Kalamata olive that caused his death… or was it from thinking? Or perhaps rather a result of Divine Will, Lord Yama’s inevitable decision (to which deity Sathya Sai also attributes the decision on every human death)? “There is a limit to everything” says Sai Baba… now, really? I read in Sai baba Discourses many times that the Atma is limitless, that God is eternal and unencompassable. But it is reassuring too, for a limit to Sai Baba and his influence is also therefore promised.

One must conclude once again that Sathya Sai Baba suffers for not thinking enough about what he says - or claims to know… or from too much confusion of the mind (and bad dreams, which he also says in another context come from bad digestion)? That he has lost his health is observable to everyone… so was it from too little thinking? Is his digestion not well exercised and still perfect? I don’t know. So I leave it to readers to decide - and see whether their own digestive tracts are over-sensitive to thoughts - or how much they might dare to think so as to preserve themselves for as long as possible…

Super-Rich Indian Gurus who don’t deliver what they promise

 

Billionaire Non-delivering ‘Spiritual gurus’ The ‘many-billion dollar question’ is not really so much how Sai Baba has generated such huge coffers, for this is almost ‘par for the course’ for Swamis, gurus and temples in India. Tirupathi is reckoned to be the most fabulous as to wealth, and the Puri Temple of Jagannath is not far behind. Sathya Sai Baba may still not have become top of the ‘national treasure’ pile yet. The self-entitled ‘Baghwan’ Sri Rajneesh (aka Osho) had vast sums before he was indicted by the US Government on so many criminal charges that he had to sell of cheaply his 84 tax-evasion Rolls Royces to a second-hand car dealer in Texas and flee justice, yet he still could lord it over most Indians financially when he settled in Pune. The sect of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is likewise in the money beyond any accounting, his people even having taken over an African state’s economy more or less! [One may pause to wonder whether all this - with the massed chanting of mantras etc. - has stopped drug taking, urban violence, terrorism and brought about peaceful communities and a better world, as the Maharishi has many times guaranteed it would? I’d say no more than Sathya Sai Baba’s promises that India would be transformed by now (due to his 1960s students’ taking over important positions) and become the moral and spiritual engine of the world in a Golden Age (which is long overdue after repeated but unacknowledged ‘postponements’ .

No, the question without a price tag is still why Sathya Sai Baba, who vociferously disdains ownership and filthy lucre, should be one of the richest persons and biggest property owners in that land of such poverties and sufferings? That he claims to own nothing is just a front for the gullible and his trusting followers, for it is a mere technicality. It is the Sathya Sai Central Trust and he rules over it totally, even signing every cheque, so he has stated himself in 1993. The tax-free charitable Central Trust remains essentially behind closed doors, no minutes revealed and no accountability for the expenditure. Is it’s wealth being properly used? Or squandered on too great a scale to build yet more temples and white elephant ’spiritual museums’, all clearly designed and decorated so as to trumpet the name and fame of Sai Baba himself. Questions as to the misuse of funds expended in building an isolated Super-Speciality Hospital is cogently discussed in Serguei Badaev’s overview of the Sai Baba Super Speciality Hospitals’ wastefulness. If this had not been so, the answer would have been clear and acceptable.

 

The putative fact remains, Sai Baba’s monies are also used for gaining influence and political power, and without any visible beneficial effects on politics or politicians. The current state of political dishonesty, disinterest for the poor of India, and scams at all levels in India suggest nothing is changing, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer (certainly relative to each other and to the basic cost of living). Sathya Sai’s much heralded “Divine Plan” for changing India - promised to be soon even in the 1960s to Dr. J. Hislop in the well-known interviews he published is not a fact, but a vehicle of falsehoods and foolishly placed faith. See also ‘How far is it to dharma?‘ Ask devotees about it all and they will tell you “Baba has divinely good plans that no one but He can fathom. We are all but puny minds, how can we possibly know?” That is a great conversation stopper to end on!

The Sathya Sai Doctrine for Cover-up

Sai Baba’s Dark- and Rose-coloured Glasses

One of Sai Baba’s well-known prescriptions is to hear, see and do only what is good, to put on “rose-coloured glasses” and view the world thereby. Nonetheless, Sai Baba himself constantly describes both the world, modern life, Indian society and even often his own devotees in far from ‘rosy’ terms! - seeing rather through ‘dark’ glasses. This is his stock-in-trade, to preach but act contrary to his words. He does, however, turn a ‘blind eye’ to the embezzlements and other crimes of his followers, not least towards the Kulwant Rai family, with whom he stays when in Delhi.

Sathya Sai Baba always encourages what he presents as a “healthy” tendency among his followers not to report on anything untoward. About him, his activities or connections. This tendency, to erase the traces of any unfortunate events at ashrams and ensure the silence of any visitor as far as can be done, is well known in religious cults. It is most unhealthy to suppress and censor facts, and this has a way of turning back on the culprits.

Truth and being constructive, however, presumes the fair and open recognition of facts and a minimum of frankness and honesty between people. The outward appearance of rosiness alone does not avert inevitable problems that come from this and from cover-ups of crimes, child abuse and sexual abuse. See also  here.

RICH AND POOR IN INDIA

The Great Indian Divide - Rich and Poor

Everyone knows that India has riches and now dollar billionaires. Everyone also knows that it has enormous poverty. Just now, 12 million flood victims in India are homeless and many report total disinterest by responsible authorities after many days, causing many riots and roadblocks by the homeless (1028 deaths so far from flooding in India alone). Each new Indian government uses increasingly vast sums of money on such things as the military and nuclear weapons , while the hundreds of millions of the very poor suffer terrible conditions and indignities. Further, the upper 10% or so of the 1.1 billion Indians spend freely on excess luxuries. The most prestigious Norwegian national daily newspaper ‘Aftenposten’ (4-8-07) reports on India’s nouveau riche, who spend lavish sums on children’s birthday parties in great and increasing numbers - even comparable to Indian weddings. While eight hundred million Indians live on less than half a dollar a day (reported on BBC World 19-8-2007), these parties can easily cost $400.- and the annual value to the economy of weddings is around $10 billion per annum, while the total expenditure on children’s parties soon will approach a similar figure at the current rate (stated Aftenposten). Meanwhile, the United Nations declare 42% of India’s 330 million children under 15 to be undernourished… a higher percentage even than in most African countries. A fisherman called Gupta reportedly said to Aftenposten: “India is the world’s best country to be rich in. But it is also the worst country to be poor in.

Sathya Sai’s Charity and Propaganda About it

Accumulated riches should be matched by charity, so what kind of charity do rich Indians who worship Sai Baba provide? One can see that they build plently of temples and other such unproductive showpieces rather than use the funds in a humanitarian way. For example, a vast and plush auditorium with a retractable glass roof (the Kulwant mantap) filled with hundreds of expensive (and useless) chandeliers, was donated by the rich Indian industrialist from Delhi, Kulwant Rai (whose son is under investigation for massive financial crimes by the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation see here). Another case of ‘Cash for Honours’, meaning cash for blessings by God Incarnate? Two very costly and large museum buildings, which serve only to glorify Sai Baba as the Divine Creator and originator of all religions portrayed there, were reportedly partly financed by Indian donors. The two luxuriously-appointed hospitals (at least one of which was financed entirely by foreign funds) provide hi-tech heart surgery and the like, but can of course cope with only a tiny proportion of the needy population. They seem almost empty and there are no queues to be seen, as there are for other health services in poor districts. The hospitals consist too much in marbled empty spaces adorned with portraits and sayings of Sathya Sai - while the clientele are hand-picked and the data about who they are, how rich or poor, is kept secret, though it is known that Sai devotees are strongly favoured. All this while countless people have to subsist on a dollar a day. The new huge indoor stadium is surely an unnecessary white elephant - used only a few times a year, and the expensive Sathya Sai airport stands empty of aircraft with hardly any flights per week. Sathya Sai Baba also charters passenger jets to take him and his boys etc. on holiday annually to his Kodaikanal residence.

The Sathya Sai Water Project has been much praised. They supply water to villages near his ashrams, when they work - for much of all this was reportedly bungled, not completed, gerry built tapped for funds etc.. That it is all presented as a Divine Wonder shows that there is something very wrong about it all… the pomp and glory does not sit well. Further, Sathya Sai has many grand apartments exclusively for his use wherever he chooses and the array of top class vehicles he has owned through his life is very considerable. He has frequently ridden on a golden chariot made just for him, and he constantly speaks of his social works (while saying it is a sin to advertise one’s service because it makes it worthless). He has repeatedly discoursed on his tremendous self-sacrifice and tireless work to raise the masses - no one else does one thousandth of what he does, according to him. However, the outside observer cannot but notice that he does no visible work - other than two 1/2 hour appearances on most days, and inaugurates a few buildings, and occasionally takes car trips to visit other places. (Nice work, perhaps, if you live for that sort of thing!). It is time to see things as they are and change the tune!

India - God-driven or God-forsaken?

 The words “God Lives in India” have been bandied about by numerous people, always referring to Sathya Sai Baba (who has proclaimed himself as God, Deity of All Deities). It is a film title, a song title, a book title and so on. Sai Baba has stated that God never incarnates as the Full Avatar anywhere else but in India and then only after many thousands of years, and now he has come as a triple incarnation in this disastrous Kali Age so as to save humanity. The implication - drawn firmly by Sathya Sai Baba himself, is that India is the only world culture to which God would deign to ‘descend’ because it is the ‘most spiritual’ and is the only country in which all genuine and full incarnations of God have ever incarnated (from Vishnu on through Krishna, Rama etc. etc.).

This kind of ’God claim’ may make many Indians - even its lowly peasants - proud of their country - which possibility is not ignored by vote-hungry politicians and their supporters. It also underpins the absurd extreme nationalism of the Indian rulers, as witnessed in the utterly childish daily face-offs supported by the authorities for decades at the border vis-a-vis Pakistan, just for a start. Meanwhile, much of the callous and grasping ruling class are content to allow huge parts of all cities to be vast and growing slums, and the dwellers are treated by police and the law if they had no rights (which is often the case legally). Consequently, the mafias are often their only remaining line of defense against summary eviction.

In support of a rising New India, with genuine equality rather than bogus spirituality! 
I write this blog not least in support of the majority population of India, that is, the dispossessed majority of over 600 million of its inhabitants who lack social justice and even have no real equality before the law, being entrapped within a corrupt system, - and I do NOT to support the many corrupted and self-seeking ruling politicians and privileged castes. That India is a land of “the direst calamities” is a fact pointed out even by Sathya Sai Baba (from his insulated luxury fortress-palaces and the benefits of his money-laden tax-free Sathya Sai Central Trust). Sathya Sai Baba’s still far too neglected ‘backyard’ is a ‘flawed democracy’ (as a ‘Times’ of India editorial names it - see here) from which Sai Baba recently stated that he is minded to travel on tour abroad, breaking his oft-repeated promise to clean things up in India before setting foot anywhere else! Such are most of the promises he makes and the otherworldly and moralistic ’spirituality’ he mostly promotes!

Is [traditional] India a spiritual country?
Judging by the state of human rights and its decadent social practices, corrupt political decision-making and huge injustices and inequalities, India is not a spiritual country at all. It is also plagued by the old guard’s vast militaristic spending, far from Gandhi’s peaceful ideals.  ’Spirituality’ is meaningless it it is not practiced in daily living and embedded in a society’s practices and practical values in real life. India is rather an overwhelmingly religiously superstitious country in which the goodwill and relative ignorance and powerlessness of the lowly is exploited to the extreme though widespread political and business corruption. This is part of India’s traditional caste-ridden way of life! The violent and consistent suppression of minorities, Muslims, Dalits, indigenous native populations, hiras, bonded labourers, and many other minorities is sustained by callous impassivity and top-down corruption in much of the police, judiciary and governing bodies. Indian leaders, in the main (with a minority of honourable and courageous exceptions), have the most hardened consciences towards the gigantic number of poor and suffering and their crying needs (over 40% being officially regarded by UNO as living below the poverty line). The gap between India’s rich and poor is mind-boggling!

As to ’spirituality’, while India’s millions are worshipful and passive, this is also a land of frequent communal carnage (eg. Hindus vs. Muslims) and bomb blasts galore, massive female infanticide, religious killings (of Christians), extreme beggary, horrific mutilations of babies to make them into beggars (as ‘rat children’, ’spidermen’, diverse amputees) major human organ theft, literal ‘witch-hunts’ and black magic killings, physical and sexual child abuse on a massive scale, millions of children labouring under dreadful condition, and enormous health problems. The seriousness is still very widely denied by Indian politicians, despite many and constant international studies and warnings. Even worse, most of the sufferers are treated as total outcasts by most Indian communities (AIDs, lepers. polio sufferers and many other diseases largely eradicated elsewhere), not least because of the heartless ideas so widely held there about divine retribution as ‘karma’ for sins in past lives.

Probably, India has everything yet to gain
The hope for India’s future lies in its younger classes and not least their rapidly increasing use of information technologies, and in those highly educated professionals and modern citizens who (not least also via the diaspora) are increasingly seen as India’s international role models and who share global human values, fairness, pragmatic inquiry and the spirit of science and human welfare. May they speak out more and more, and may they soon enter some of the corridors of real power and may the old, backward-looking guru-worshippers be removed for the sake of India’s prestige and prosperity!

God Lives in India

The title phrase ‘God Lives in India’ - [meaning that Sathya Sai Baba is God and he lives in India] has been used for a film by Jan Dorresteijn, a song album by the Bailey sisters, a book by R. Karanjia and is often cited by Sai Baba writers. The implication drawn by many Indian devotees of Sathya Sai is that therefore God does NOT live anywhere else. The absurdity of a God Creator who ‘lives in’ one particular country is self-evident, though most devotees cannot even see this! God would not be located in any one place, if in any place at all! However, blinded by the claims of Sathya Sai Baba - with his delusions of grandeur - millions of Indians apparently need to believe this for also to boost condifence in their nation and themselves. For Sai Baba has time and time again emphasised how Indian pride should be based not least on the reasons for his incarnation there as the first God ‘avatar’ descended to earth for many thousands of years.

On Google we also find this by Jed Geyerhahan, who has charged Sai Baba with sexually molesting him on the Danish film ‘Seduced by Sai Baba’:-

“God lives in India”. Now that I knew how Baba cheats, I picked up on the part of “God lives in India” where he is cheating materializations of Vibuti.  I did not bother to watch any other movies though.  That was enough evidence for me.

Note, however, that the link(http://people.delphi.com/bongiovanni/vcr.htm) is now dead, since the Sai apologist Bon Giovanni surely found it best to suppress the material, for it is very compromising. The vital clip showing sleight-of-hand was preserved nonetheless (study it here)

In the 1990s a film called ‘God Lives in India’ was made in the Netherlands. It has disappeared from most sources, probably because it showed a major case of sleight-of-hand by Sathya Sai Baba, who pretended to make vibuthi for devotees, but was caught in the act of deceit. As to the film ‘God Lives in India’ one can see the following exchange on the web:

Originally Posted by queenstown3 Hi everyone, Many years ago I remember watching on TV a film call God lives in India. I’m wondering if anyone has it or knows where I can get a copy. I’ve often thought that I’d like to watch it again. Can anyone help.

My name is Jan Dorresteijn and I am the producer/director of the documentary “God lives in India”. My email is jan@dorresteijn.net You can contact me. Kind regards. JanD
——————— 

The same title was used by an Indian journalist: “GOD LIVES IN INDIA. R.K. Karanjia. 111 p. pap. $ 4.95″.

Later I shall examine some more consequences of this claim for India

Sai Baba (Baa-Baa Black Sheep) a misunderstood ‘Second Coming’

After almost 30 years of Mission (24 -12 72, in Bangalore), Sathya Sai Baba gave the first of a series of annual Discourses on Jesus Christ. . The Discourse culminates in a preposterous claim that Jesus announced Sai Baba’s future Advent from the Cross. This is still taken seriously by devotees and the Sathya Sai Organization (who accord this Discourse and three others pride of place on one of their websites).

Sathya Sai Baba makes a categorical and surely megalomaniacal claim (at the end of the Discourse), extraordinary even by his inflated standards:
“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, which was interpreted in a variety of ways by commentators and those who relish the piling of writings on writings and meanings upon meanings, until it all swells up into a huge mess.”
“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 blood-red 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.’
But that is not all. Sathya Sai Baba adds that he is not just Christ, but God the Father:
“Christ did not declare that he will come again. He said, ‘He who made me will come again.’ That Ba-ba is this Baba and Sai, the short, curly-hair-crowned red-robed Baba, is come. He is not only in this Form, but he is in every one of you, as the dweller in the Heart. He is there, short, with a robe of the colour of the blood that fills it.” (Sathya Sai Speaks, XI, 54:346)
“The great teachers belong to mankind. It is wrong to believe that Jesus belongs only to the Christians and that Christmas is a holy festival for the West only. To accept one of them as one’s own and discard the rest as belonging to others is a sign of pettiness. Christ, Rama, Krishna - they are for all men everywhere.” (XI, 54:33

To see the ignorance and confusion of Sathya Sai Baba about the historical Jesus and Christianity in general, see Brian Steel’s academic analyses here.

Sathya Sai Baba and the Turin shroud photos

1) Original photo of the Turin Shroud negative image by National Geographic  

2) Painting by Ariel Agemian, combined with the image on the Holy Shroud of Turin, scanned it from a three-dimensional card which had both images on it.

3) Alleged colour photo ‘transformed by Sai Baba miracle’ from the black-and-white version

It was shown on a recent exhaustive Discovery Channel research programme exactly how one can recreate the exact three-dimensional effects as seen on the Turin shroud with technology available at the time of Leonardo (involving stereoscopic mirrors and lenses) . Whatever the truth about it, however, Sathya Sai Baba has exceeded himself in allegedly taking a black-and-white photo of the Turin shroud image, passing his hand over it and thus turning it into the colour image seen above right! As one would expect, there is no documentation of this event, no independent witnesses and even the Australian lady who made the claim that she had handed him the photo and experienced this cannot be found, nor has she deposited any affidavit or other verifiable statement anywhere to affirm this, as far as can be found.

Robert Perry has written an article (‘The Face of Jesus’) on the image on the Sai Baba photo where he traces the original of it - which a painting created in 1935 by an Armenian artist named Aggemian and which is copyrighted in 1979 by VARI-VUE in Pelham, New York. Sai Baba’s alleged ‘manifestation’ is a poor reproduction, but of exactly the same image including the facial dimensions  and every hair in the moustache and beard!

It is not hard to palm a colour photo of a well-known image (which was probably held out to Sai Baba for days on end  - as is the rule - before he deigned to touch it). This gave him time to arrange for the substitute and for palming it at darshan. He uses misdirect of attention quite skilfully often. However, if you believe in Sai Baba, you would have to believe in anything and everything that is claimed about him, because he says he adheres 100% strictly to the truth. He has never denied that story, and it has been spread far and wide throughout the Sai Organization and movement, not least by the fully signed-up believer and devotee, David Jevons of the Ramala Centre in Glastonbury, and on various websites.