While I was deeply involved in trying to realise the goals of Indian spirituality – seeking further within – I was attracted to the mystery and enigma of Sathya Sai Baba, whose claims were accepted by a very large number of apparently highly educated and realistic people professing high ideals and good values. Much of what he said was infused with very positive and optimistic ‘spirituality’ and succinct moral advice and values that I could already accept, while there was also much fascinating esoteric information which I wished to penetrate as far as possible. I knew that much of this was drawn from Indian religious and mystical traditions, about which I already knew a great deal – having read many of the supposed ‘masters’ and largely embraced the ideas and advice of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and others like him. It was. however, the amazing coincidences and apparently ‘paranormal’ phenomena I experienced in connection with my interest in Sathya Sai Baba that was the trigger for my visiting him through many years – having sufficient interviews with him to give me a sound basis for my further investigations.
I set about trying to practice Sai Baba’s advice – the ‘teaching’ to the full. I soon came up against the problem that his words are very often too vague and ambiguous, also self-contradictory – for clear practical application. During my many years of commitment to the aim of all genuine aspirants – and on the continued requests of Sai Baba’s journal editor V.K. Narashimhan, I wrote in one of my many truth-searching articles in Sanathana Sarathi at a time when I had not fully plumbed the issue to the extent that I have done since. Following Sai Baba’s advice, I had suspended disbelief and eschewed my long training in critical thinking and philosophical analysis. Not until after the final disillusionment about Sathya Sai Baba’s truthfulness and genuineness, did I gradually give these abilities full rein again, with the result that I was continually surprised by how little of his teaching stood up to the process of analytical deconstruction, scientific temper and even sound and well-tried common sense.
One key with which one opens the trap-door and enters the circular labyrinth of his ideas is this:
“the world is but a mental image of the individual. How this happens is a mystery. One can only say, that just as sleep is the cause of dreams, maya or the Basic ignorance is the cause of Creation.” (Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol.9. p.168).
This central part of Sathya Sai’s ”teaching” makes each person isolated from any external reality, livings with their private hall of mirrors. He holds that reality is only what is within us. This means, within the mind…even though spiritual teaching tries to convince people that the “true self “ completely transcends the mind. They call it ‘eternal spirit’ or ‘heart’ or ‘universal consciousness’. (Incidentally, consciousness must always be consciousness of something, or else it is not consciousness). However, the fact remains that the human mind is always there as long as we are conscious at all as the medium of everything we experience – for as long as there is life. [Note that claims presented so as to refute this – that consciousness persists after clinical death, and that people have been literally ‘resurrected’ in surgeries after total brain death – are so far not properly documented or scientifically proven. The drug ketamine reportedly recreates all of the phenomena described by ‘near death’ case studies].
Unfortunately, in trying to explain (i.e. rationalize away) some contradictions in Sai Baba’s teaching, I wrote an article in Sanathana Sarathi where I proposed (without taking any critical view towards Sai Baba’s teaching on this) :-
‘What is within is also without. A mirror reflects what images it receives, only in reverse and according to its clarity. This world around us, this interminable universe registers itself in our awareness as inconceivably intricate, eventful and whole. It appears to be massively ‘material’, not mental; it seems to be objective to consciousness and not to be conscious itself. The mind seems powerless to command it or even to penetrate its vastness, limited and localised as we (seemingly) are by the body. Yet because it is ‘absent’ for the mind which does not cognise it, we cannot be fully certain that it is not somehow a projection of mind.’ RP in Sanathana Sarathi, Apr, ’91, p. 101ff )
Further, Sai Baba’s view is that good and ill seen in others is only one’s own reflection and what is outside is a rough reflection of what is within. (see Sathya Sai Speaks Vol 25, p.296 and Sathya Sai Vahini ii). Therefore, it follows with logical necessity that one can never know anyone else, only oneself.
Obviously, this view can only be false. Yet Sai Baba and other sometime advaitist speculators disagree arguing that the self is the universal self within each of us, which is the same one self in every case – but it is only the individual ego’s which differ! This is useless speculation since for all who live in the world, knowing the similarities and differences between individuals – whether regarded as egocentric or unselfish selves – is an essential to life, and even to personal survival. Sai Baba’s unoriginal solipsistic ideas lead into a circular mental and emotional trap, ultimately tending to cut one-off mentally (and even emotionally) more and more from any real persons or objectively existent facts and realities. The human psyche invariably has tremendous flexibility and tolerance of conflicting ideas, however, so that those who believe in such a view still cannot bring themselves to apply it consistently in all things. Far from it. To ignore the existence of anything but the supposed universal self within oneself (which one cannot even find) means that one cannot carry function in the world of practical and social interaction, nor accept the assumptions and goals that society and living imply. The less one regards this theory as an absurd and impracticable fancy – the more one has to believe that one cannot really know anyone or anything in reality. That way lies madness.
On the solipsistic theory of ‘universal selfhood’: If I assume or attribute good of someone, it can only be my own good thinking. I am ‘projecting’ this onto them, them also being an aspect of myself. Likewise if I project badness, then it is my own badness. On the same principle, the same applies to everything else I seem to know outside of me; it is not outside me nor existent independent of my mind in reality, so I can only ever know them properly by self-examination! This is what Sathya Sai Baba believes and preaches constantly. Further, he repeatedly warns that, since the mind (in his view) creates all we experience, one should think, hear and see no evil but rather ‘wear rose-tinted glasses’ and only see good, think good!. As the teacher of this – Sathya Sai as a living person in the real world – puts himself beyond my mind and totally beyond everyone’s understanding.
Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions Exposed 