Sathya Sai Baba exposed by German person

The dispute over the divinity of Sathya Sai Baba

No master of the Indian kind has aroused so much hope and expectation in such large crowds of people as has Sai Baba. With his “miracles” – materializations staged before thousands of supporters,- he binds in the psyche of the believing masses. The religious experiences can be impressive when so much captured spiritual energy and healing force from around him may be going on. Sai Baba is an authority for tens of thousands.

Probably, but no other master has disappointed so abysmally those who came to him, as seen in the report compiled by Faye and David Bailey – “The Findings”. The Bailey couple glorified Sai Baba in their earlier books. They later suffered traumatic experiences, and after many conversations with people who did so too, they collected reports and observations of the disillusioned. Their reports document harrowing experiences of the many victims who had thought they had “found God” – after a life of unquestioning devotion to that they were cheated.

The love of Sai Baba was rejected by most dissidents due to observation that Sai Baba’s “miracles” are pretty unprofessional tricks. From a distance, the trick difficult or impossible be to see  – as I experienced too.  The throng of the faithful wonder at every so-called materialization and acknowledge all the ashes created from nothing with applause. Many who get close to him  that he seem to see him to create ash from nothing (from his right hand). However, he clearly carries the ash in pill form in his left hand from which the. The ashes “materialise”.

What weighs heavier for devout disciples than these tricks are reports of the meeting with Sai Baba by some young male followers, who have told their own personal experiences. A tragic attack by former pupils of Sathya Sai Baba’s college in 1993 led to criticism by political observers who discussed Sai Baba’s ritual of ‘anointing’  of young men, relating it to homosexual inclinations. More recently, reports of sexual abuse by Western and Indian students of Sai Baba provided a broad documentation of the degradation and disappointment.  Western observers’ critical question is, why was Sathya Sai Baba not convicted by Indian courts.

While the management at Sai Baba so far managed to go a long way towards silencing some of the disaffected, the abused have  since begun to organize. Despite their heavy accusations tens of thousands still believe in the divinity of their Master, of his super-human and divine qualities and his miracles which they compare with the miracles of Jesus. Christians reject this comparison. The miracles of Jesus do not remind of the kind of circus where Sai Baba performs miracles almost to entertain the masses while Jesus would have done so for the relief of distressing hardships. All these objections contest the claim of Sai Baba to be the authoritative divine incarnation of our time. But they do not diminish the feeling of success  in Puttaparthi:  Sai Baba is still rallying an army of idealistic-minded and self-sacrificing people who really want only one thing: an encounter with God. But, given the present evidence, how long – we ask ourselves –  will it take to break down their hopes and expectations under the weight of the accusations?

Georg Schmid, 2000

The above is translated/abstracted from the German text at:  http://www.relinfo.ch/sai/streit.html

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