Sathya Sai Baba in hindsight

I first wrote the following around 2001 in a web page: “Some of what I experienced of Sai Baba’s extraordinary and positive powers through many years is undeniable, even after the most rigorous sceptical investigations, and I do not regard him as any ordinary person. After much soul-searching and disturbing discoveries, however, I have simply had to realise that his actions in the worldly and human sphere are not infallible and are not always setting a perfect example for others”.

Then I did still think things undeniable which I am now fully aware are not so! I was then still suffering from a degree of denial about Sathya Sai Baba himself. I should have noticed this before and corrected it long ago, but better late than never! One lives and learns. Many of what I believed to be Sai Baba’s extraordinary and positive powers I have since had increasing reason to doubt. The still emerging evidence of fakery and fraud, miracles that never occurred, deceptions and lies has mounted to proportions which cause me to consider him a charlatan, though not any “ordinary” one but rather a particularly gifted one. At that time I had not, despite the depth of my investigations while still a devotee (i.e. which automatically means  basically biased towards excessive positivity about him and all reports about him) reached the level of “most rigorous sceptical investigations”. This is proved by my record in the past decade during which I have unearthed more and more fraudulent claims, doubtful testimonies, conflicting accounts and counter-evidence concerning Sai Baba’s activities, especially his bogus materializations.

It will probably never be possible to reach conclusive evidence that all of Sai Baba’s supposed ‘powers’ are bogus since these events are in the past and were never observed by independent witnesses trained in detecting false or confused claims, crony-assisted ‘tricks’, sleight-of-hand and even virtual ‘instant hypnosis’ (as demonstrated extraordinarily in many different settings by Derren Brown of Channel 4 TV in UK). Even my friend Erlendur Haraldsson, who had consulted with magicians, did not look for Sathya Sai Baba’s hand to move behind his cushions in advance of ‘materializations’ (which Sai Baba does at the best psychological moment of misdirected attention), nor did he investigate the genuineness of the alleged ‘diamonds’ or availability of trinkets identical to the Sai “materializations” at many shops in Bangalore. (Neither did I do that until after 2000, unfortunately). He stated his opinion that the objects Sai Baba gave to people were unlikely to be provided by shops, and failed to consider that they could be brought in surreptitiously by a helper, as we now know from a student witness was done on a regular basis.