Powers of the avatar, Sai Baba

THESE MANIPULATED PHOTOS WERE POSTED BY SAI BABA’S OFFICIAL PROPAGANDISTS

Indian mythology contains many claims about the so-called ‘avatars’, especially the powers which these descended incarnations of the Godhead supposedly possess. Some avatars are supposedly not ‘full’ avatars (or ‘poorna avatara‘) and do not possess all the sixteen distinctive marks (kalas) of a full avatar. Many are the times Sathya Sai Baba claimed that he was the omnipotent creator of the universe and that he was a full avatar with all the powers possible. He proclaimed, in what has been called ‘The Milestone Speech‘, that: “There is nothing that divine power cannot accomplish. It can transmute earth into sky and sky into earth“. The powers as described by interpreters of the scriptures are, in a concise summary:-

1) The power to fulfil desires (of anyone) 2) bestowing the power of reasoning 3) removal of ego-sense (egoism) 4) to master the power of sound (to enchant etc.) 5) power of divine healing and sin-removing touch 6) power of attraction through divine radiance 7) attraction through sweetness, attractiveness 8) removal of karmic memories and consequences 9) the power of divine fragrance 10) indomitable self-confidence and courage 11) powerful memory of everything 12) transformative power of his name 13) creative power over all impulses among living beings 14) soul-power attraction 15) immortality through control of the elixir of life. 16) the totality of the other 15.The 16th is specific only to the totally realised being, becoming the all-knowing Supreme Being (‘Paramatma‘). (See http://www.saibabaofindia.com/16_attributes_of_sai_avatar.html>)

It is hardly possible to control what some of these named ‘powers’ actually are, how they might operate and whether they have any credibility. However, his claims in respect of the most important of these powers have been shown definitively to be false, especially clearly as regards omnipotence and omniscience, which serve as important examples:-

Failed omnipotence: One small example: V.K. Narasimhan (VKN) had remarked to Sai Baba that inviting the Indian President to his 70th birthday celebrations in 1995 was unnecessary for it always caused major problems. The special force, the Black Berets, made devotees suffer huge, life-threatening crushes and endless delays due to their insensitive and heavy-handed security arrangements. Sathya Sai Baba had replied that there was nothing he could do about it! The Indian President himself had decided to visit and he could not be stopped! He also told VKN another thing, “one thing I cannot do is to make a person choose to do good.” So much for Unfailing Divine Will and Omnipower! Sai Baba made many far-ranging promises of what his ‘advent’ as Sathya would achieve, especially in the total regeneration of India (i.e. immoralism, corruption, poverty, injustices etc.) and thereafter save the whole world. Enough said!

Failed omniscience: Professor Dale Beyerstein has pointed out that “To be omniscient is to be all knowing. Such a claim is impossible to confirm with certainty, for it would involve testing the person’s knowledge about absolutely everything! But it is very easy to refute if it is a false claim. All that is required is to show that the person making the claim lacks some knowledge that it is possible for a person to have. For example, one who is omniscient will know all the human languages of the world. But Sai Baba, by his own admission and that of his followers, only knows two or three Indian languages fluently. And in a country where vast numbers of people speak fluent English, Sai Baba’s English is too broken and unsteady for use in public discourses! In his letters to devotees, Sai Baba makes no pretences about this, and, for instance, excuses himself to one disciple for not having written earlier, explaining that he had no translator about so he could not get his letter translated” (see here)

One of the first comments I heard V.K. Narasimhan make in a lecture he gave for foreigners in 1988 surprised me: he said that all the talk of  Sai Baba  as omniscient was exaggerated! Afterwards he shocked me further in private by saying that talk about Sathya Sai Baba being all-knowing or omnipotent was sheer absurdity! He embroidered this theme with some examples, even though he saw that I already believed in this. However, I already saw that no one could actually know about omniscience – not without themselves being able to check all of his knowledge (thus also being omniscient). Yet at that time I eventually managed somehow to reason how the facts I learned from VKN did not disprove the claim of omniscience, for SB could have been concealing his knowledge of the many things which he appeared not to know or to be mistaken about. The more I got to know about him, however, the more difficult it became to maintain these rationalisations.

‘Immortality through control of the elixir of life’: This is of course utterly laughable. Sai Baba died many years before his own  predictions and died from multiple organ failures (heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, brain) as is unquestionably the case, repeatedly reported by most  Indian news outlets. See chronicle over his illness, death etc.

Power of divine healing: Though many person have written books, articles and testified to amazing instances of divine healing connected to Sai Baba, there is no published reliable medical proof of this, while some of his closest servitors and followers have denied that they have ever seen anyone healed by Sai Baba, especially VKN who was his daily attendant through many years. See also Sai Baba: Healings and Rescues  and Faith Healing, self-suggestion and Sri Saibaba