Mother Easwaramma’s ghostly visitations to Sathya Sai Baba

In a discourse on May 6, 1998, at Brindavan, Sathya Sai Baba told the audience how three boys sleep in his actual bedroom

One several occasions Sathya Sai Baba related at length and most bizarrely about visitations by the ghost of his mother, Easwaramma (alt. Eashwaramma). One such is shown in a scan of part of the discourse published in the official Sai Baba journal (see on right):

Some time after that, I asked my good friend V.K. Narasimhan – then the editor of Sanathana Sarathi –  why on earth he (with Sai Baba’s overview) had endorsed the publication of the revealing text, considering the allegations Tal Brooke had made about pedophilia against Sai Baba. At that time I was still a convinced devotee – though troubled by many inconsistencies and unanswered questions about him – and I had heard reports that Sai Baba was a homosexual, but I had consistently ignored and even ridiculed them, but I knew that a former close devotee, Tal Brooke, had written a book accusing Sai Baba of pedophilia, though I had never read it. Narasimhan said there had been no option, though he had disliked the account and its rambling nature. He even called it a concoction. 

Then I was still completely unable to believe that Sai Baba had any sexual relations whatever, and had some years earlier tried to convince a Belgian professor – Dr. Gabriel Spillers – that his strong opinion that Sai Baba had homosexual relations after talking to several young men could not possibly be true! (This is the classical response of an indoctrinated believer). During one of our many long private conversation sessions I asked VKN about the boys who slept in Sai Baba’s room and he was clearly uncomfortable, saying said it was a tradition (I assumed it was a boon granted by a spiritual master, such as to be allowed to massage his feet and legs etc. so I never thought to ask him more exactly what may be involved. According to him, the boys who slept in Sai Baba’s bedroom apartment were on the ground floor, while Swami slept in his room on the floor above, on his own. Despite this, in his discourse, Sai Baba stated definitively “Three boys sleep in Swami’s room.” Either VKN did not recall this or was embarrassed and so mislead me because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Narasimhan made clear that close relationships between elderly men and young boys, which he said is commonplace in India, were generally accepted (I then assumed he was referring to chaste guru-chela relations).  I asked him the age of the boys, which he gave as about 18 to 20 years old (which is above the age of assent). I do not recall his exact words when he asked me whether such things would cause any problems in the West. I said that if it involved sexuality it would it create a huge stir. (I did not pick up on the silent implication I now see that he was aware of the homosexual relations, not simply of cohabitation). He was evidently quite disturbed by that and – after a longish silence – said that homosexuality was not considered as abnormal in India as it is in the West, where he thought it was condemned too roundly. (I did not point out to him that homosexuality was still then a capital crime in India, though no longer even a crime in most Western countries). In what I now know was my too naive trust in Sai Baba, I did not pick up on the implication that he was aware of the homosexual relations, and not simply speaking of cohabitation. Further, I never wanted to be too invasive in questioning him about Sai Baba, but rather left it to him to tell me what he considered correct. Unfortunately, therefore, I failed to think of putting the crucial question which I have since wished I had pressed home… namely, did he know for certain of Sathya Sai Baba having homosexual relations. In retrospect, I am convinced from my recall of the somewhat awkward ambience of those exchanges – his various non-verbal language and silences – that he did know enough damning facts.

In the following he also related two more visitations by the spectre of his dead mother, Easwaramma, one in daytime and one at night when his “boys”(!) were sleeping in his room at 1 a.m. :-
 
That the above texts are not so popular with Sathya Sai Baba disciples is hardly surprising. They are just one part of the huge testament of wild accounts, superstitious beliefs and claims which reveal so much about the unruly mind and fictional views of reality propounded by that self-appointed “saviour of mankind”. – These revelations, which I later learned from many sources were known to many in the ashram, were very damning because of Sai Baba’s constant claims about his purity, abstinence from sensual pleasures and preachings about sexual celibacy outside marriage  and much more that turned out to be sheer deception.