Cash for Honours, Sai Baba style

Buying Into ‘God’s Time’ – Sai Baba’s favouring the wealthy

It is considered a great heresy among believers to point out that Sai Baba’s time can be bought, for he is God who has all the time in the world etc. Unfortunately for this bent reasoning, all this time does not allow the earthbound Sai Baba to talk and give interviews to more than a small fraction of the very large and pressing personality cult around him. Considering this it is not surprising that people try to use the normal ‘short cuts’ like money, personal power and influence and numerous other ways of obtaining what is then treasured as ‘grace from God’. But this is what often happens in fact, however rosily the transaction is described as ‘receiving grace’ or ‘rewards for being a great Sai worker’. There is, of course, no deal and no exchange of the blatant sort. The transaction is much more subtle than that, and from the donors viewpoint there does not seem to be any connection between what they give and what Sai Baba ‘donates’ of his attention or time in return. However, one way to obtain donations from wealthy persons is to make much of them, praise and flatter, and give privileges, manifest so-called ‘diamond’ rings for them and give them free accommodation etc. If they have any decency, they will invariably respond with whatever they can contribute. This is just what occurs in case after case, and has done so since long before the famous Dr. N. Bhagavantam left Sai Baba around 1983 at least partly because he evidently detested this! To refuse a donation – as Sai Baba often does – only increases tenfold the fervour of many donors, who then wish to give much more. It supposedly helps one feel one is an acceptable person in God’s eyes after all!

At Kodaikanal in 1991, I daily observed that Mr. James Sinclair, the precious metals magnate and donor of well over a billion dollars in all to Sathya Sai, had unheard-of daily half-hour private interviews before darshan for over a week 4 (his wife included). Money talks! Interestingly, Mr. Sinclair has published (in the U.S. Sathya Sai Newsletter – 80th Birthday Commemoration edition) the fact that his wife was personally called by Sathya Sai Baba so that she could be killed in a massive taxi accident! This he saw as a blessing to her and wrote the following amazing words: “thank you, beloved Swami, for having such compassion to your totally devoted child, Barbara, to have cured her of the most insidious disease, ‘I am the body'” One cannot but wonder how much money Barbara Sinclair left by testament to the Sathya Sai Central Trust and where it now is.  (The poor taxi driver was killed too… presumably a double blessing and cure of the alleged disease of life?)

See Mr. Sinclair’s full account of his wife’s death incident

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