Sai Baba’s ‘Religious Universalism’ is based on gross ignorance

Sathya Sai Baba has preached with extreme insistence and constant repetitively that all religions have the same essential, good values. This is very easy to say, but not possible to back up reasonably, let alone prove – especially to the heads of the main religions. The present Pope, for example, leader of over 600 million Catholics, rejects as heretical all religious doctrines which do not accept the primacy of Jesus Christ. Islam rejects Hinduism at a very most basic level – that God cannot incarnate in a human body (as Sathya Sai Baba constantly claims for himself) and cannot be represented in any idol (while Hinduism accepts thousands of deities and idols of all kinds). Judaism awaits a Messiah, but Sathya Sai Baba most evidently does not fulfil their conditions so Judaism does not proclaim him as their Messiah. Buddhism, in the main, rejects the whole idea of a God Creator of the Universe, as Sai Baba claims he is. What Sathya Sai Baba also asserts again and again is that all the religions are ignorant of God, who is unknowable (i.e. himself, as he has repeatedly boasted).

Sathya Sai Baba has claimed that he is the Father who sent Jesus to the earth. But he is ignorant of much about Jesus and his life. How can this be so in one who claims to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent? Here is one of his classic blunders – one of many, many – about the Christian religion. The personal name of the betrayer of Jesus is very widely known: Judas. But what was his second name, or the name which singled him out among the many Judas’ of his time? Anyone familiar with the Christian literature knows that he is referred to as Judas Iscariot. Sathya Sai Baba, however, also refers to him as ‘Judas Simon’: “Judas Simon is well known today as the disciple who was treacherous to his spiritual guide and guardian.” Sai Baba stated that “Judas Simon is well known today as the disciple who was treacherous…” Equally important, in Gospel materials, the betrayer of Jesus is referred to simply as ‘Judas’, or as ‘Judas Iscariot’, or as the son of a man named ‘Simon Iscariot’. Actually, ancient materials do not recognize Judas Iscariot as ‘Judas Simon’ any more than people today do. Another disciple of Jesus, however, was named Peter Simon (see for example, Mark 14: 37) and it appears that Sai Baba has confused these names. This was not just a single slip of the [omniscient?] mind, because Sai Baba also stated: “Jesus Christ had twelve foremost disciples. Among the twelve only Judas Simon would injure Jesus, their teacher and spiritual saviour.” [Sai Baba, quoted in An Eastern View of Jesus Christ, p. 111]. The issue of whether Judas actually betrayed Jesus, or simply delivered him to the Romans according to Jesus’ intention (and reent research has shown that such  payment s were a known Roman legal formality and not a bribe at all.  See this:-

William Klassen, “Judas: Betrayer or friend of Jesus,” Fortress Press, (1996).

Sai Baba claims that all religions worship the same God. However, this is also a facile statement… for even the different mainstream religions worship each their own peculiar and theologically-determined ideas of God, and whether any being exists which fits with one or other of these often distinctly different ideas is itself, of course, beyond any proof. That all people worship the same god is just about equivalent to saying that all cows which are black at night are the same cow. However, some see God as creator of the universe, others do not accept God created the universe (Official Catholic doctrine today!) Besides, most Buddhist sects do not accept a God creator, but only a supposedly fully realised human being as a Buddha. Apart from all this, there are thousands of ideas of deities, gods, goddesses and powers worshipped by every variety of tribe, sub-culture, sect and cult. Who can know that this is the same God? Nobody! And certainly not anyone who is ignorant of human history and other cultures than Sai Baba’s own childhood faith, namely, an eclectic hodge-podge, superstitious, multi-deity, idolatrous version of Hinduism. He believes this to be ageless and the true origin and essential truth of all religion. Thus, he has stated: “The Hindu religion knows no growth or decline. It belongs to all countries. It is acceptable to all people.” (Sathya Sai Speaks p. 172, Volume XX11)

Under the tutelage of his history professor, lifelong Ramakrishna devotee and student of English culture, Prof. N. Kasturi, Sathya Sai came to understand that the main religious approach of the West was towards an external God, while the Eastern view seeks the God within oneself. He also learned – quite mistakenly – that all Westerners regard death as that not only of the body, but also the soul (totally wrong, of course, as regards Christian belief). This illustrates how ill-informed he is about other religions than those on his doorstep, and even there he is completely untutored as regards Islam (which he therefore only mentioned in a few brief, vague sentences throughout all his thousands of discourses). Yet he preaches the ‘Sai religion’ as a universal religion, yet it is based primarily on the Hindu ‘Sanathana Dharma’ or way of righteousness. This latter is not at all the basis of Christianity or Islam, though some similarities are obviously found.