Sathya Sai Baba’s discourses: gross falsification by editors

Falsification and subterfuge is the endemic sine qua non of Sathya Sai Baba’s propagandists and the editors of his discourses.  Around 2003, there was an international group of young persons who claimed to post full literal translations of Sathya Sai Baba discourses because the Sanathana Sarathi versions were over-edited and corrected. That group posted their results under the name ‘Premsai’. However, some of the original words of Sai Baba were so damaging that even these allegedly ‘literal’ translations were altered.

The main translator of all these discourse from Telugu to English was the former US devotee Eileen Weed (who learned Telugu). All the other language translations were made from her originals, but the group insisted on editing the worst blunders by Sai Baba (i.e. changing, that is – making direct falsifications of what Sai Baba actually said to make him seem sensible), Eileen Weed finally lost her last vestige of faith in Sathya Sai Baba during this work, which she did for money contributed by the group so that she could manage to survive in the ashram.
Fortunately for the true record, she preserved many of her original translation texts and these are  have also been preserved and are posted here alongside the Premsai version, for comparison. 

On the site called ‘premsai’, students and others claimed to make made complete, allegedly accurate translations of discourses given by Sathya Sai Baba between 2000 and 2003 (once posted at http://www.internety.com/premsai.htm – now defunct, of course).  They were translated from Telugu to English, then into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Dutch, and Swedish. Because there were constant and serious discrepancies between these documents and other versions of his discourses as edited, sanitised and published in the official Sanathana Sarathi journal, they were forced to delete all their translations because the Sai authorities demanded it on grounds of copyright. However, these were nonetheless saved and posted by exbaba.com in 2003, as are also the new original unedited translations). The premsai translations were made from cassette recordings of Sai Baba, not from anything printed and published under copyright protection by the Sathya Sai Publications Trust.

Click then click again

But the dishonest authoritarian ashram people knew they could force the devotees to delete their work or they would soon beblacklisted by the ashrams and denied access to any Sai Organization events,  failing which harassment and police removal were on the cards, as so often used by the Sai Baba people before. See one small example click on thumbnail image:- 

The following account by Eileen suffices to document the issue here.

From: Eileen <eileenlweed@gmail.com>
Subject: Literal Discourses
Date: September 22, 2012 5:32:27 AM GMT+02:00

Please see attached all the original discourse translations that I have with me – 50 discourses total. These are my own, personal completely literal translations made from audio cassettes of Sathya Sai Baba’s Telugu discourses, sold in Prasanthi Nilayam bookshop and available (at that time) for anyone to buy. I was a member of the Premsai group and shared my translations with them from 1999-2003. Unfortunately, I only got the bright idea to digitally save all my original versions after I had been doing it for years, so most of them are only from 2002. In July 2002 the Trust started putting the following on their official discourse translations: “Discourses are copyrighted by the Sri Sathya Sai Books & Publications Trust, Prasanthi Nilayam, India, with all the rights that pertain thereto. Please use discourses for personal use only.” We disbanded our Premsai group in early 2003. Whether the ashram officials ever said anything or not, I know not. However, by mid-2002 our Premsai group was well aware that our translations were being used as fodder by the anti-sb groups online.

Letter to a friend on May 19, 2003: “As you may know, I have been helping with translations of Swami’s discourses (complete and nearly unedited). These were being published on a website in several languages. Then, the discourses were copyrighted by the Sai Organisation in July 2002 and so we stopped that website. However, the Italian Sai Organisation continued to publish our translations (in Italian) because they are the most complete version, and exactly how Swami says them.
Suddenly, near Maha Sivarathri we found out that the head of the European organisation decided that only the official Ashram (Sai Organisation) versions should be translated and published on their website in Italian, but not our privately done, unofficial versions. So, we decided that it was Swami’s way of ending this project and bringing us onto different things.”

After I translated from sb’s original Telugu on audio cassette into English, I took it to a native Telugu lady, (the late) Prabha. She was a Telugu native, fluent in English (a lawyer, in fact) and highly knowledgeable and would listen to the audio cassette again, while reading what I typed up. She would make corrections if there were any errors in my Telugu translations (which was rare – perhaps a word or two or three in each 10-15 page discourse). We were both under very strict instructions to translate exactly what sb said, no matter how mixed up he was – absolutely no changing anything he said allowed!

After Prabha (and occasionally, a visitor named Mr. Rao corrected a discourse) made sure my Telugu was perfect, we would schedule a “translator’s meeting,” when all of us (who translated into various languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, German, Persian, etc) would gather together and read out my translations, line by line. This meeting was also attended by three native speakers in the English language (besides myself). If there were any facts waaaaay out there, which there often was (on every page, in fact), there would be long arguments and lively discussions on whether to include it, perhaps with a footnote (because, after all, whatever he said had MEANING and was TRUTH ITSELF!) or, on occasion, whether we should change what he said (gasp!) because it would obviously be too far “out there” and was obviously a PERSONAL MESSAGE to an individual in the audience, who would understand what it really meant. (A well-remembered example is when he was referring to Abraham Lincoln as the “Prime Minister of London,” even the Premsai version was changed to “President of the United States.”)

If there were any very sticky points that we felt uncomfortable changing or deleting from the discourse, I would be asked to meet with Anil Kumar and ask “what Swami really meant,” and how we should deal with the issue. Due to numerous times him just saying, “I have no idea what he meant!” and advising us to change or delete it, we avoided consulting with him at all. He was, by the way, the most skillful, brilliant and awe-inspiring translator ever! No matter how much sb would muss things up and be completed muddle-headed and way out there with wrong facts, Anil Kumar was ever-ready with his sharp intellect, to translate it into a concise, deep philosophical truth that made perfect sense. No wonder sb loved his translations!

The understanding amongst us devotees was that sb was God and was not concerned about facts (and many older devotees would agree that was the case from the beginning of his teaching career). When, in reality, wouldn’t any clear-thinking person know that if someone claimed to be GOD, he would get his facts perfectly straight, at least MOST of the time??!

Regarding the file names: discourses checked by Ms. Prabha or Mr. Rao have their name at the end; if I don’t have their version saved on my computer, the date of the discourse has my name at the end.