Sathya Sai Baba cult’s destructive influence

The Daily Mail (18th July 2012) featured an article by former UK TV producer Samantha Brick entitled “The cult that tried to take over my life” subtitled: “It started with a massage — but soon she was paying thousands to a sect that preyed on the lonely. Years later, she still fears they’re watching her”. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2175543/Samantha-Brick-The-cult-tried-life.html#ixzz227ILtr3M

She wrote: “I became a follower of Sathya Sai Baba — an Indian guru and mystic, who died last year — for 12 months, during which time I spent close to £10,000 on various ‘services’.”
It is, however, unclear from the article how involved she actually was with Sathya Sai Baba and his doctrines. From what she wrote, she evidently could not have informed herself more than most superficially at best about Sai Baba. It seems rather that she let herself be duped by the worst sort of New Age pseudo-healer of the kind who worshipped Sai Baba and made a business out of people who followed him (see here). There is plenty of evidence proving that there are many such both well within and outside the Sathya Sai Baba movement.

The following account of how the Sathya Sai cult has been operating in UK was written by a person I know well who is a relative of the elderly lady who was virtually conned out of a very large sum of money that should have gone to her descendants.I also happened to know at least one of the sathya Sai Organization officials who was presiding at the time this lady was targeted. Here is the account I received as a comment on the above posting, which I am appending now:-

“This form of abuse so well described was and probably still is typical of the mechanics of the cult in London. In another case a wealthy widow was ruthlessly targetted for her money. She was taken to weekend retreats and told that as her family had moved abroad to work they had deserted her and so she must desert them . The group members with code words like Sai Ram were her new family now and Sai Baba would look after her. She was invited to make a contribution to the good works including the fatuous water project and was ordered to donate one-third of her estate in her will. this was a wholly cynical exercise as the cult knew from its legal advisers that if the family contested the will the legal costs would come off the rest of the estate. But she still gave lots of money and was clapped at weekend retreats to give her a feeling of importance. Her daughter returned from abroad to find her unconscious on the floor. She called an ambulance saving her life as she had a heart attack. When her daughter told her that she had saved her life there was a three-day silence while she went to her cult controllers and then cruelly she told her daughter that the daughter had not saved her life but Sai Baba had done so.

A former market trader selling fruit in the open air with a gift of the gab was put on to her as a sort of “minder”to keep the loving family away. She bought him a Mercedes car! But on her deathbed and before she could change her will she told her daughter that she was so sorry and had been conned and now realised the cruelty of her actions and begged forgiveness. The cult took her money, ruined her life and that of her family. When she died none of the cult members came to the funeral or even sent a single flower. The cult had moved on to its next victim. Meanwhile the family found out that cult members had taken her life savings from her bank accounts so that there was not even enough money to pay the outstanding gas and electricity bills until her house and shares had been sold. The family still cannot forgive the obvious calculated evil of the cult members who so obviously targetting such a vulnerable and sick old widow.

See also

Warnings against Sathya Sai Baba impostors
Sathya Sai Baba imitators and impostors