Sathya Sai Baba and the Vedas – part one

Sathya Sai Baba makes the phenomenal claim that he is in reality the Almighty form of the Vedas (i.e. “Vedarupa“) [Sanathana Sarathi July 1974, p. 170]

Sathya Sai Baba is worshipped as the creator of the Vedas

He writes and speaks much about them, that they are the result of sages’ (i.e. rshis) “high spiritual vision” including “body, mind and spirit” and claims that  they reveal “astronomical wonders and science, atom theories, how to acquire supernatural powers”. Their essence is contained, he states, in the Bhagavad Gita and deals with the eterrnal nature of the soul. Further they are supposedly a compenium of medical rituals and details and that chanting them and their mantras with correct pronunciation is essential.

The so-called ‘wisdom’ about the atom, nature and the cosmos is entirely speculative and non-experimental and is wrapped in a kind of  lifestyle philosophy for “discovery of the true self” with the aim of total freedom from all suffering. As to knowledge of the causes of virtually everything in nature and human life – Vedic knowledge was less advanced than that of the early Greeks. It is of course far inferior to the wealth of tried and thoroughly tested knowledge available today. The Vedas are  a body of hymns, mantras and unempirical speculations, mostly based on the sheer belief in Deities so fantastic and unlikely, so ineffectual and so totally invisible and intangible, as to be nothing but fictional fantasy, not even worthy of the title of ‘Science Fiction’. This is indisputable to all qualified, working evolutionary and earth scientists…  upon whom the survival of mankind as we know it is most likely more dependent than those of any other branch of applied human intelligence today.

The Vedas and all the myth-based “wisdom without knowledge” that followed upon them – the Ramayana, the Gita, the Bhagavatha and much more, are utterly failed attempts to understand the earth, the physical universe, or the evolutionary origin of mankind or the psychological, social or medical causes of the ills of humanity.  This is shown by the comparatively immeasurably vast progress in all branches of human knowledge through scientific methods and information and research technologies from which “sages” of the Vedas were totally remote. Just as brief examples, the causes of different weather conditions were believed to be deities, while bacteria, viruses and a host of other causes of medical conditions were completely unguessed at by the “sages”. Nothing in Indian scripture suggests that they had anything approaching a true concept of energy per se – that is, of anything other than diverse forces in nature. The concept of a unifying energy  was first conceived and established by the exact scientific experiments Michael Faraday. No one in known history had any idea of electromagnetism before the 17th Century, which was put on a sound basis by the experiments and equations of James Clerk Maxwell, a crucial step towards Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Creationism is the belief that God exists as the creator of the universe. It is a dire travesty on human intelligence and knowledge in the modern age. Only those ignorant of the sheer breadth and quality of evolutionary science can adopt this merely speculative and unfounded belief. This ignorance envelops Sathya Sai Baba’s world view. It is religious moralism in a very ‘fundamental’ and strictly puritan form… fighting the ‘seven deadly sins’, denigrating the use of the senses  and the discursive intellect and all manner of emotional attachment (other than to the Atma) and not least the benefits of ‘materialism’.

The primitive faith in divine creation of the universe and mankind (without evolution) and consequently in universal supernatural causation [known today known as primitive superstition] suffuses Hindu scripture and literature.   The causes of all natural phenomena were – and are by many today – believed to be deities, including all acts of the human condition in the form of supposed ‘karma’, so religious practices were the only solution to all ills – so generations performed worship of countless idols of deities and implored both worldly and ‘spiritual’ assistance through repeating mantras and holy names and ever more futile and convoluted ritual. This is seen demonstrated in the teachings and daily rituals of Sathya Sai Baba and his followers.

See some of Sai Baba’s many pronouncements on the Vedas

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Please go to the Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization