Seeking the truth about Sathya Sai Baba

There can be a stark difference between what one tells about honestly as one perceived and interpreted and – on the contrary – the facts as based on independent and more penetrating investigation. An honest witness who has been unknowingly misled will misrepresent actual states of affairs. One can be truthful about ones subjective experiences, while these experiences may remain very far from the truth of things which lie behind (or otherwise hidden from) those experiences. Not only may the experience be the result of doctrinally framed perceptions but it may conflict with the evidence of both collective experience and systematic rational investigation.

Commonly shared perceptions and beliefs are often supported and reinforced largely by so-called ‘group effect’. This is group pressure to conform in belief and outward behaviour to what the group, organization, sect or cult stands for. Group effect is founded on what is most agreeable in a social environment – i.e. agreement rather than disagreement. Finding that someone agrees with us – about a favourite film or book for instance – is undoubtedly one of life small pleasures. But now scientists appear to have put their finger on why we take such delight in being of the same mind. Discovering that we are agreed with lights up the brain’s pleasure centres, they say. (Daily Mail) Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) in collaboration with Aarhus University in Denmark have found that the ‘reward’ area of the brain is activated when people agree with our opinions. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, suggests that scientists may be able to predict how much people can be influenced by the opinions of others on the basis of the level of activity in the reward area (See here).

Obviously, to be truthful is not the same as knowing or stating what is actually true.  The bending of one’s perceptions and distortion of the meaning that can fairly be read into them is achieved through indoctrination, which can take many and varied forms – from the blatant to the most subtle and invidious. When one has developed a mindset which is largely organized by spiritual doctrine or religious faith, the truth of any matter is always more or less clouded and impenetrable. Those who have a very wide and well-balanced mindset will usually be able to interpret their perceptions in a less subjective manner than those who lack training in comparative studies, critical thinking, and psychological self-understanding.

In the case of Sathya Sai Baba, most considerable investigation is required to remove or dispel not only rumours but what seem to be solid facts, and all the more so in that censorious secrecy, and cover-up operate in his movement concerning his actual behaviour most of the time. Faced by concerted conscious deceit, it is very hard to get to the true state of affairs. For those who have developed the ‘true believer’ and blinkered self-programming and self-denigrating mentality of an emotional and dependent devotee, the task is almost insuperable. It require a figurative ‘smashing of the mirror’ of one’s own preconceptions and even a dear part of one’s self-image (i.e. that one could be deceived so long and so much). For those – the majority of followers – who have no or little opportunity of meeting him and observing him close up, or who do not know or have the confidence of persons close to him, the task of getting to the truth is virtually impossible.

Though I was sometimes very close to being a ‘true believer’, I always had some reservations about a number of his statements because of my scientific and philosophical background.  Not being able to learn many things about him from anyone – nor what he meant by his unclear words and discrepancies of word and act – became especially frustrating. Increasingly I considered events around him in the ashrams and in the Sathya Sai Organization to be ‘fishy’ or unsatisfactory and improperly explained. However, I was not severely jolted out of my complacent acceptance of the main import of Sathya Sai Baba’s life and work and much of his more acceptable Hindu-based teaching until I became one of V.K. Narasimhan’s very few close and trusted companions. His many privileged observations of Sathya Sai Baba – combined with his inside knowledge of what went on around him – gradually whittled away my mistaken interpretations of many things, until the bombshell struck I learned from him of the facts about the infamous police cold-blooded murder of devotees in Sai Baba’s own bedroom. This I have described elsewhere (see links to the documented facts and views on this) and – after the spell was first broken – the aftermath of this is described in my subsequent long investigations. Freed from the self-programming that is inevitable if one becomes positively involved with the Sai movement – my attitude necessarily became the more questioning (I allowed myself to investigate the sexual abuse allegations in depth) and so progressively more critical of Sathya Sai Baba and a great deal of what he now represents.

---

PLEASE SEE THE SAI PETITION AND DECIDE WHETHER TO SIGN IT