‘Evil forces’ undermining a religious organisation?

from Sathya Sai Speaks Volume 10, p. 234. Discourse 22-11-1970

In 2003, the Secretary of the Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust, Prasanthi Nilayam, issued the following: “I would again like to stress that to achieve the goals that our organization stands for and respect the commitment that we made adhering to it as associate members, it is essential to focus our thoughts and our time, unilaterally on our Divine Master Sathya Sai Baba, avoiding all distractions and diversions proposed by imitators taking on the attitudes, clothes, and gestures of the Master and who are presented as his peers.“

Anyone who takes the trouble to read the discourses of Sathya Sai Baba, or who has been involved within his Organisation, will know that he made tremendous efforts to publicise his own name and to try to protect his own reputation from the incursions of others. He was well aware of the many who tried to claim he had given them special powers, or who simply copied him and his methods in detail. Through his acolytes and retainers, he exercised strict authoritarian control on his organisation and what its members could say or express in public – a rigorous thought control whereby devotees were discouraged from thinking for themselves, but were fed with his pre-packaged “thoughts”. All that the perfect devotees should do was adopt these and make them their own.

Sathya Sai Baba was a master of guile and understood better than any contemporaries how to present himself and his ‘Mission’ so that it would have maximum appeal, claiming that the collection of money or soliciting donations were forbidden, that not a single penny (‘paisa’) was ever wasted by him or his various institutions. He proposed many voluntary social works (which his followers should do to gain blessing and spiritual benefits) and promised to clean out corruption and wrongdoing in India and eventually in the whole world… Nonetheless funds were collected on a huge scale, often in thankful return for ‘miraculous manifestations’ of objects that seemed to be most valuable (but were almost worthless). The huge sums expended on social works, including clean water projects and museums celebrating himself, were eventually actually solicited by him, and there was massive wastage, graft, outright embezzlement and swindle by entrepreneurs and others involved.

His claiming to perform countless unique miracles (many shown to be bogus) to attract the gullible was one of his cleverest means to fame, none of which he would perform for independent investigators (of course!). See SAI DECEPTIONS FRAUD, LEGERDEMAIN, RUMOUR-SPREADING AND LIES BY SATHYA SAI BABA