How standpoints change as understanding progresses

As writer of this blog, I would like to inform visitors that my current standpoint as regards Sathya Sai Baba has changed very considerably since I first became disaffected. Having had to discard the belief in his truthfulness, despite my attempt to explain away the mounting mass of evidence to the contrary, which is an attitude typical of those who have been his followers, and understandably so when one’s contribution has lasted for decades and one’s entire project has been to forward what one believed was his genuine goodness. 

Having studied every single writing of Sathya Sai Baba - concentrating on the positive aspects and disregarding what failed to make sense or seemed misguided (explaining this away in many different ways from bad translation to his inscrutability and ‘testing’ of faith etc.) I grew more and more uncomfortable. I had trustingly accepted that his materialisation were genuine, they seemed so and thousands insisted they were. But I was as naive as all the others then in that I had little knowledge of the techniques of stage deception and powerful suggestions (’instant hypnosis’). In the years following my final disaffection, I began to look critically at all I had experienced and read of him and all the testimony and behavioural traits of other follower I knew very well. This was an entirely taboo approach for anyone who was still a service worker, a leader in the Sathya Sai Organization and so on, but not so after resigning. Though I had been extremely uncomfortable with an increasing number of Sai Baba’s bogus atatements on scientific, historical and scientific, I had not let that influence my overall positive agenda as to some of the main ideals Sai Baba supports which I always did accept. After 2000 and my forced rejection of Sai Baba’s basic claims of truthfulness, a very instructive process of new understanding began and continues to this day, i.e. the deconstruction of the deceptions backed by the huge myth of Sai Baba and most of the ’spirituality’ he proclaims. Despite his having forwarded some good works in India (also, it is fair to note, with financial and other contributions from myself), I am no longer inclined to believe much of what he says at all, nor do I believe in his so-called materialisations - I reserve judgement on the issue, for I now know there are alternative explanations for everything I had experienced, but had interpreted (mistakenly) according to the inculcated Sai Baba ‘teaching’, which relies on long tried and tested Indian forms of religious self-indoctrination (as do most religions, once one has for some reason taken the first steps of believing).

I have written a credo for those who may be interested to understand more about how a follower of Sai Baba for so many years can be liberated - and subsequently further free oneself - from the labyrinth of explanations, deceptions and powerful social and other cultish influences.See here.   As my knowledge concerning these matters and insight into it all has developed, my standpoint has changed gradually on many issues. A a former professional in philosophy and social science,  it is natural for me to explore every avenue of explanation and change standpoint as the evidence emerges, rather than stick in one position and theory. This is not comprehensible to those whose minds have stultified or are trapped in indoctrination, and none more so than most persons who are still under the influence of Sathya Sai Baba or other deceptive and unwholesome Indian gurus. 

Robert Priddy