SAI BABA HOWLERS

Sai Baba’s Substitute for Science: ‘Saience”

The great tsunami that devastated countries around the Indian ocean in 2004 was dealt with by Sathya Sai Baba succinctly. It was retribution against us (humans) for our bad conduct! The clownish ‘saviour of mankind’ himself [claiming omniscience, omnipotence and what have you] illumines his followers with a superior kind of science which he has name ‘Saience’ after himself! I quote:- “Many natural calamities are entirely due to man’s behaviour. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wars, floods and famines and other calamities are the result of grave disorders in Nature. These disorders are traceable to man’s conduct.”
p. 290, Sanathana Sarathi, December -1992 & p. 375 – Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 25.

So it is all the fault of ‘man’. This information may be manna to poor peasants or cringing servitors, but no one with a smattering of education can rationalise this away. Now wars – and the economic exploitation that cause pollution, deforestation, or global warming may (if with some difficulties) be attributed partly to ‘spiritual lapses’ on behalf of humanity. But tsunamis, volcanic eruptions?  Major earthquake calamities took place for millions of years before and during humanity’s emergence and are known to be caused by the regular releases through aeons of vast pressures built up in the gradually-moving continental tectonic plates. The Guardian’s science correspondent Ian Sample, has a different view: Click here to see ‘Stark Effects of a Seismic Shift’

Sathya Sai Baba lives in Andhra Pradesh – and it was hit very hard by the tsunami. His teaching and vagueness imply that those who were hit hardest were those most guilty of spiritual lapses etc. Or who?
Just to show that Sai Baba really meant what he said, consider his following statement about one year later: “Nature is causing various disasters such as earthquakes, famines, floods and volcanic eruptions. What is the reason? The spiritual lapses of man account for these calamities.” p. 11, Sanathana Sarathi, Nov. 1993. – or – p. 342 – Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 27

‘Take It From Here’
Beware of sensual pleasures and unsacred vision – it plays havoc with your eyes and shortens your life-span… or so the man says:-
“Today man is putting his senses to misuse and as a result his body is becoming weaker day by day. He shortens his life-span by his unsacred vision and by indulgence in sensual pleasures. Lakhs of light rays in his eyes are being destroyed because of his unsacred vision. That is the reason what man is developing eye defects.” (Sai Baba, discourse on 5/7/2001 Sanathana Sarathi, August 2001, p. 226)

This is the kind of absurdly non-scientific doctrine that students have to swallow at Sai Baba colleges (so much trumpeted for ‘excellence’ by Sathya Sai Organisation propaganda machines)!  So man is developing eye defects and shortening life span… doesn’t Baba know about the vast improvements in health, life span and eye-care made by science in recent centuries? Age expectancy has risen progressively in almost all countries in the world – even India but notably excepting Russia since the Soviet State fell – when the economy was wrecked.

Bjorn Lomborg writes in his 2001 book “The Sceptical Environmentalist”, referring to world age expectancy: “Fewer and fewer people are starving. In 1900 we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 67. According to the UN we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country.” So, any shortcomings in world health certainly have quite other causes than unsacred vision!

The mote in Sai’s eye
Ironic that Sathya Sai has the use of only one eye himself! Perhaps he was thinking of himself again when he condemned indulgence in sensual pleasures (by now you would know which ones!). Sai Baba loves scriptures, though he has shown how ignorant he is of much of the New Testament. Yet he has harangued the crowds with a paraphrase of the following preaching:- “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” [Matthew 7:5] Read all about how he lost sight in one eye in his own words here.