Lest one forget revelations about Sathya Sai Baba

It is easy to forget what it was that Sai Baba stood accused of, and how many close devotees told of many sexual abuses they had suffered, and also had witnessed, such as by one of the closest doctors – Naresh Bhatia – who himself had sexual relations with Sai Baba and maintained his accounts of serial sex abuses on a very large scale were perpetrated daily by Sai Baba on countless students in his colleges. The following account helps to bring home the seriousness of the crimes that were  covered up by all the top political figures who had compromised themselves by worshipping him long before the can of worms was opened due to the Internet. Unfortunately he was protected from prosecution for all his various crimes by them to the highest level in India, and is still endorsed by the Prime Minister, President and many other of the elite in India today!

To: sathyasaibabadiscussionclub@yahoogroups.com

From: harisampath
Delivered-to: sathyasaibabadiscussionclub
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 15:03:01 -0800
Subject: Betrayal by Sai Baba….
Message-ID: <ooOU5U4P5.001 ICGABD.1600075991-sathyasaibabadiscussionclub@…

These accounts are put together by direct first person testimonies given to Basava Premanand by former students at the Sathya Sai Higher secondary school, Prashanthi Nilayam, as well as the Sathya Sai Institute of Higher learning. These accounts are given on http://www.exbaba.com/sathyasaivictims/index.htm, under “molestation testimonies”, but repeated here, just to refresh the memories of everyone what Sai Baba is really all about and why this expose is being undertaken on a war footing. (repeating these accounts is at any rate better and more useful than repeating endless nonsense by demented Sai Baba followers) BETRAYAL BY SAI BABA

THE TRUE STORY OF LIFE IN THE SRl SATHYASAI HOSTEL FOR BOYS

This is the sad story of betrayal of faith and love, of taking advantage and exploitation of a very base nature. What is being written may sound blasphemy, sacrilege or fanciful, but if one opens his eyes and uses his brain, it will turn out to be nothing but truth. It is a truth which many know and ignore because it does not affect them in any way, then there are those who know nothing and are innocent.

This is the story of life in the Sri Sathya Sai Hostel for boys. Devoted parents send their tiny tots with firm belief that they will undergo all round development and will be under the direct presence of Baba. But few parents actually know what happens to their loved ones. What happens to boys is a saga of betrayal of the most banal kind known to mankind since ages.

Let us take it from the Primary school level itself The Principal of the school Mrs Munni Kaul knows it only too well that her survival there depends on sending in the front good-looking, usually fair and sometimes girlish boys, because as is well-known Baba has a weakness for such boys. These are innocent boys you see, who are forced to come to the front, on some pretext or other, holding cards, trays etc. this in itself is nothing serious, but what follows later is.

These young, good-looking boys who are generally not even in their teens are for sometime closely watched by Baba. Later some day these small boys are called in for personal interview. What happens to these tiny tots in the interview room is known to many but all keep mum because their very survival depends on it. These small boys are taken one by one in the inner interview room behind the curtain by Baba. For sometime he fondles them and then suddenly he opens their zippers and pulls down their pants and underpants, Now Baba massages and fondles the sex organs of the small boys, who know nothing and take it as some form of spirituality. Baba generally hugs and kisses the boys while they are stark naked, then sends them back. This is in itself a traumatic and sickening experience for the boy of about 5th or 6th standard. Then there are certain advantages too, these boys are labelled as FORM BOYS and are kept in the forefront by the Headmistress, who
actually is well aware of the fate of these young ones.

These boys generally get chains, rings and watches from Baba as special blessings or in a worldly sense, the ‘Payment’ for “selling’ their bodies; without their knowledge. For the kind information of the authorities (those who are aware and maintain silence and those who know nothing), Mrs Munni Kaul, the Head Mistress of the Primary School, herself is a confirmed child molestress. This can be ascertained by the Authorities (If they have the will and courage), if they could pick just a few good-looking (and fair) boys from class 6th and ask them with love and in confidence, what Munni Aunti forces them to do. She is known to sexually abuse good-looking boys and girls. Staff members can easily get this information. But then one cannot blame the headmistress because her survival depends on her supplying these boys for Baba.

A fuller list of sexually-abused young men and boys is found here, with their testimonies or other evidence.

Indian insight into the nature of gurus, godmen and godwomen

An elderly gentleman in India who wrote on a yahoo-group website has had an illumining mail exchange with the ex-Sai Baba follower Eileen Weed and has allowed me to reproduce it here. To avoid being dragged into any public controversy, his condition was to remain unnamed. He wrote:

“Although I am by nature an iconoclast and one who could never believe in any of the so-called swamijis, gurus, godmen & godwomen (of which the last one is a comparatively recent phenomenon). Being an Indian totally and not having any inkling about the workings of the western minds, my suggestions below may or may not be workable. Still, it is an earnest attempt. So, kindly forgive me if what I write does not appeal.

The basic cause of the phenomenal success of the Indian Gurus, godmen, godwomen, etc., among the western people seems to me to be the attraction for the mystic which is present in human minds. The western religion does not probably provide sufficient avenues for satisfying this “craving for the mystic” and making life meaningful, sort of. The gurus/godmen/godwomen project themselves as the very incarnation of the mystic element and this enables them to draw a large number of people to come and “accept” them as the unquestioned “guru”. Just like if you own a very costly car (like BMW or RR) it is generally considered that you will have very fast and comfortable road journeys, these devotees possibly think that by joining a world famous godman/godwoman’s cult, they will automatically have an assured, comfortable spiritual journey which will take them to some pre-conceived spiritual end.

The remedy lies in knowing that no human being, born in the usual biological process – to a woman, can be more “godly” than any other. This has been stressed by one of our great gurus – Shri Adi Shankara – in one of his very famous (sanskrit) verses as under:—

jaṭilo muṇḍī luncitakeśaḥ
kāṣāyāmbara bahukṛta veṣaḥ
paśyannapi ca na paśyati mūḍho-
hyudaranimittaṃ bahukṛtaveṣaḥ

(The body is emaciated, the hairs plucked out, different kinds of dress like the ochre robe etc., are used; but these fools do not understand the TRUTH even if they see it. Hence all these are nothing but various attires for filling the belly.)
This is the stark naked truth and if we analyze the case of the Indian gurus/godmen/godwomen we will find that perhaps none of them possessed any skillset for any other avocation than this “holy person” role.

Now, when people decide to throw in their lot with a certain guru/godman/godwoman their “ego” remains intact and powerful and it does not get attenuated at all; if anything the devotee’s ego further increases because he/she thinks that by associating with the guru/godman/godwoman, his/her spiritual status has increased, that he/she has risen a few steps higher (?) than the ordinary, run-of-the-mill people and so the devotee’s ego will stubbornly reject even the most sincere suggestions from friends, well-wishers, close relatives, etc. The western notion of “individual freedom” only adds to this complication. Unless the Karmas of a person are such that it provides the person with the willingness to listen to the advice of parents/friends and think differently from what is inculcated by the cult-like outfits which surround every guru/godman/godwoman, nothing much can be done to ameliorate the condition of your friend.”

In a reply to the above, Eileen Weed wrote: “Being a Westerner who was with an Indian guru for a long time, your analysis rings true for me. My question is, what about all the Indians that flood the ashram and the ashrams of so many other gurus? What are THEIR feelings about the Indian gurus?

It seems to me that Indians, in general, worship the gurus as a matter of course, like bowing at any temple or puja function, but they do not emotionally, physically and mentally invest their very souls into the person like us Westerners tend to do. Also, I think the Westerners tend to be much more exclusive. Though the gurus may warn devotees not to go here and there to other gurus (except themselves), the Indians don’t seem to take it as literally as we do.

In addition, looking at the people who tend to attach themselves wholly and exclusively in close physically as possible to the gurus, my observation is that the closest sevaks, if Westerners, are brainwashed fanatics exclusively worshipping that paticular guru; whereas the closest Indian devotees, not being enamored of the mystic side, tend more to want to take advantage of the money, power and fame of the guru, so they are not as devoted and don’t have scruples living an immoral life. Is my observation correct or not?

And the illuminating answer she received was:-

Madam Divya,
Your analysis is quite correct, I should say. The indians flocking to any guru will be one or the other of the following kinds:—

1. Folks with some intractable problems in their personal/family/working life who expect the so-called guru to solve the problem for him/her by miracle, so to say!

2. People who “style” themselves as spiritual seekers and usually tom-tom to the society around them, about all the special closeness they have to so many gurus. Some of these may be charlatans in reality.

3. Gullible masses who have a sub-conscious notion that the more time (and money) one spends with such ochre-robed gurus, temples, places of religious importance etc., will add to one’s “punya” or balance of good (meritorious) deeds and will bring good results in this life and the births to come hereafter.

4. Out-and-out opportunists who get close to a guru’s outfit so that they will get preference for contracts of various kinds and can make “a kill” in terms of money.

None of the categories above surrender their selves to the guru which, it seems, the foreign devotees are, somehow, prone to do. Our Indian folks know these so-called gurus probably by their sixth sense and very few get “trapped” mentally; may be that is the main reason why our gurus religiously search for foreign women devotees! It gives them unquestioning devotees who give themselves over, completely, and it adds to the glamour quotient for the guru’s outfit also.

I presume that your name divya reveals that you have integral indian connection (if not origin). According to our hindu notions a person has to “strive” himself/herself for aatmajnaana or the knowledge about the Self and this job cannot be outsourced to any guru. A really good guru can at best be an example – himself or herself – for the disciples to follow and emulate. Again, hinduism is highly patriarchal and women are uniformly considered as no more than mere chattel of men. Women are not allowed sanyasa or the ochre robe, even if their husbands take to sanyasa. I sometimes wonder, therefore, as to how craftily our gurus have managed to misinterpret the religion itself to suit their materialistic ambitions. Going strictly by our ancient scriptures, women gurus like the older Anandamayi Ma from East Bengal, Sarada Devi, Aurobindo Ghosh’s ‘mother’ and so on are not allowed, in the first place, even to become sanyasis or renunciates. 

Secondly, a sanyasi belongs to that order of monks from whom he gets or “receives” sanyasa …a woman cannot initiate another. This itself is irregular practice, so to say. The prime need of the times is to de-educate foreign people about the trappings and traps within all such guru/godman/godwoman apparitions particularly from the orient.
This certainly puts the claims being made by self-appointed ‘godwomen’ today in the true context of age-old Hindu tradition.

 

Malaysian lawyer on Sai Baba ‘miracle’ fraud, hemaphroditism etc.

The Malaysian lawyer, Mr. Hariram Jayaram, continued his correspondence with me explaining his efforts to awaken Malaysian authorities to the need to ban the Sathya Sai Baba cult in Malaysia. Having been a very enthusiastic follower of Sai Baba, Hariram was shocked out of his beliefs, and investigated thoroughly before denouncing the guru, as he explained as follows:-

Mail of June 21, 2004. Hariram tells of  the godfather of a Chinese boy from Malaysia who had been molested by Sathya Sai Baba. and made the godfather very furious and angry He had asked for Hariram’s assistance to expose Sathya Sai Baba. He told him the same thing he said he had told me before. He wanted ed to be left alone. Hariram Jayaram was evidently not interested in himself  going public with what he knew, having been scared off – it appears – not least by his former Sai colleague, Datuk Jegathesan – a very fanatical defender of Sai Baba with powerful connections in Malaysia.

However, the godfather, wrote Hariram, had done a great thing in that he had met the then Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, when he addressed the Press Club in Hong Kong and gave him a written memorandum about Sathya Sai Baba and his activities. It seemed he wanted the Malaysian Government either to ban the Sai Baba cult or take other appropriate action. Despite that, nothing happened in Malaysia.

Lingam ‘regurgitation’ and Vibuti shower (abishekam) exposed as fraudulent Hariram wrote in some detail about how he came to learn of Sathya Sai Baba and become inducted into his movement and organisation in 1976 when he was already a lawyer. He was present at Shivarathri in 1976 where Sai Baba performed the so-called lingodbhava’. When the moment came for Sai Baba to produce the lingam, he took his handkerchief and wiped his mouth several times, made movements to his chest, raising excitement to feverish pitch. A lingam came out of his mouth on to his handkerchief. Then he performed the so-called vibuthi abishegam (note: or ‘abishekam’), turning an urn (or ‘kodam’) upsidedown, put his hand into it and continuously churned out vibuthi to pour on to the lingam. Years later in 1980 when Hariram made his investigations he realised that Sai Baba kept the lingam in his handkerchief, only pretending to have its ‘birth pangs’ – coughing and wiping his mouth while merely transferring the lingam into his mouth to vomit it out later.

On one Sivarathri day, Hariram also came to know from a student who was helping to set up the stage that he had accidentally strayed into a section of the backstage where he found a ‘kodam’ with the opening covered with a tied cloth. The student was chased out from that place by a senior devotee, the obvious concluding being that the kodam was already packed with vibuthi. Hariram states that it was this ‘kodam’ from which Sai Baba churned out vibuthi on the following Sivarathri night.

On June 24, 2004, Hariram wrote me about the alleged cobra sleeping with the baby Sai Baba in his cot – a phenomena claimed to indicate the rebirth of Vishnu as Sathya Sai to save the world from mounting evil. In 1980 while in Puttaparthi to probe events, Hariram met the elder brother of Sai Baba in Puttaparthi village, a man who had been the one who really looked after Sai Baba in his childhood. The elder brother – though guarded in his answers to questions  – gave him hints that he was not a devotee of Sai Baba and replied to a question Hariram asked him about the snake. He had promptly and spontaneously told that no snake had formed a bed for Sai Baba to sleep on, nor had one come anywhere close to him. At the time of the birth of Sai baba, Puttaparthi was filled with snakes and, when the child was left on the floor, snakes would stray into the house and go past him, though at a safe distance. This was not unusual in the village which had so many snakes.

Professor Dr. V.K. Gokak On July 1, 2004, Hariram told how he was in Bangalore in 1980 with 3 Malaysian students who were helping him, through whom he met several persons, one from Eastern India  who was a graduate of one of the Sai Colleges. The Malaysian student who already knew him asked him whether Sai Baba had male or female tendencies. A prompt answer came that he was both male and female; he was Shiva Shakti. Evidently, this graduate was a victim even though he still believed the Shiva-Shakti claim, and did not realise that Sai baba was a hermaphrodite. Only after his discussions with the Malaysian students and Hariram did he become aware of the hemaphroditic homosexual character of the abuses.

Hariram told this graduate that he had plans to see Professor Gokak, who  had started the Sai institution in Whitefield. The student held Gokak in high respect and thought he should be alerted about the  rampant  homosexual activities between Sai Baba and the students – as well as between  students, going on in both the Whitefield and the Prasanthi Nilayam Colleges. Hariram saw Gokak in his house, a polished, tidy and dignified looking man who listened to every word said during 2 hours

I told him everything I had found out and I also expressed to him that it is the wish of at least one of his former students that he should resume the post of Vice Chancellor once again. Hariram recalled Gokak interrupting him only once and that was when Hariram said he had accepted Sai Baba as God and was heartbroken to hear of his homosexual activities on students. Gokak told Hariram that Sai Baba was not God, merely one of many avatars with some spiritual attributes, and discounted the fervour of those authors who tried to identify Sai Baba as having God’s attributes.

Hariram stated that Gokak said to him: “This is not the first time I am hearing about all these things regarding Sathya Sai Baba. You are not the only person to tell me this”.

Note: At one time a member of Sai Baba’s professorial board Dr. V.K. Gokak developed the ‘Education In Human Values’ (EHV) system. Sai Baba did not write any part of this system. Dr. Gokak left Sai Baba in the 1990s, reasons unknown. He was known for having said that Sai Baba liked ‘playing with boys’ (which is a known phenomenon in the subcontinent and is blatantly practised in Afghanistan to this day, known as “Bacheh-baazi (Persian: بچه‌بازی, meaning “playing with kids” in Afghan dialect), also known as bacchá (from the Persian bacheh بچه‌ “child, young man, kid”) or bacha bi-reesh(beardless boy), is sexual slavery and child prostitution in which prepubescent and adolescent boys are sold to wealthy or powerful men for entertainment and sexual activities. This business thrives in Afghanistan, where many men keep them as status symbols.” (from Wikipedia)

See source e-mail of the above excerpts here. Earlier e-mails from Jayaram have already appeared in previous postings here and here – here and here 

‘Baba Satya Sai’ film demotes the swami to a ‘Demigod’

Though dead and gone, Sathya Sai Baba got top film magnates, actors and actresses fighting his corner in Bollywood. Two films of his life were made, but their expected releases at least by February 2013 did not occur. In the flush of media fever after his death, it seems, some big-names in the business put together the films. Despite the original budget of Rs. 60 crore (which is app. 130 million dollars), the producer of ‘Baba Sathya Sai’  claimed that the film was not made for profits, but who will believe that dreams of reflected spiritual fame and a few dollar signs did not fill the heads of those involved? It is hard to think that the investment was made for charitable reasons, knowing how money is the No. 1 consideration in Bollywood.

The film ‘Baba Satya Sai’ with Dilip as the ‘ace’ star is apparently soon to appear on the Indian circuit (but almost certainly nowhere else). What else but a glitzed version of this glitzy swami can one expect of Bollywood? We can safely predict that the film will certainly steer very clear of the massive accusations of sexual abuse, murder involvement, major failed promises and predictions and constant documented false statements  by the ‘avatar’. 

One can already see from the publicity that ‘Satya Sai Baba’ will be highly laughable to all the misinformed, deluded or Bollywood-worshippers, and especially so to genuinely devoted followers of Sathya Sai Baba, considering the roles for glamorous women, including actresses who have been showers of flesh and sexy dancing. Sai Baba was known for his dislike of the female sex and the very strict puritanism against women and men together in public, inadequate clothing etc. In both films, there are pretty actresses – and Anup Jalota sits between two of them) . This strikes a very discordant note, of course, so where are the pretty boys (both young men and innocent male children)?  These glamour girls may excite some film-goers to expect  some wet clothes-clinging ecstatic group gopi dancing in the holy waters of the Chitravati river (even with Sai Baba dancing to his own flute in his Krishna embodiment?).

Amusingly, Sai Baba is referred to as a ‘Demigod’ (see above left – indiaglitz) and ‘The God Who Walked on Earth’ is attributed with ‘divine magic’. There is something in that latter term! Hinduism is sinking to new depths where it embraces this megalomaniacal claimant as a true representative of the sanathana dharma. Hindu mythology is not only ancient, for more of it is being created here and now through film fantasy. 

from an earlier version of India Glitz on-line

Two films on exactly the same theme would virtually halve the possible income (who could stand watching both?). Any such films would have their work cut out to keep out of the world-wide shadow of the BBC documentary ‘The Secret Swami‘, or the recently released award-winning Hollywood film ‘A Man Called God’, with a top star recently awarded a documentary prize in the USA. The endorsers of Sai Baba may vainly hope that the film may help to kill off the world-wide and Indian public controversy about his ‘premature’ death, its covered-up cause and, the vast secret treasure trove under his vast bed. Not to mention the disgraceful shenanigans over the control of his mini-empire, with police arrests, death threats and more. Yet all the crimes and failings of Sai Baba are widely recorded – not least through his own discourses – and therefore no future serious religious historians will be taken in by the propaganda, let alone any such film.

See The Return of the Great Pretender

The film ‘Satya Sai Baba’, long since filmed in Prashanthi Nilayam seems to have floundered since none of the former publicity has been up-dated for a long time. It does seem that there will be Bollywood-ghazal style music (“given by Anchal Talesra and written by Sachindra Sharma“) which could no way be less ‘mesmerizing’ than the boring and repetitive bhajans that Sai Baba ‘sang’ in his uninspiring hermaphrodite’s voice (neither he not any Sai bhajan recording ever had a single hit on any known music chart, for reasons obvious to most music lovers).

Making Sai Baba a fictional figure cannot be applauded by any devotees who took his extra-puritanical teachings seriously, and certainly not with any Western audience (other than a few Sai Baba groups at best). One may assume that the film effort concentrates on the Indian public (despite a version with English dialogue), and this is indeed now almost the only public which the Sai Baba inheritors can exploit financially since foreign devotees have almost entirely deserted the ashrams.

The large residue of devotees who support Sreejith Narain’s lunatic fringe prognostications and so still expect Sai Baba to resurrect in his body any day now will rub their hands at the thoughts of the filmmakers mind-boggled expressions when he arrives. Who wouldn’t ( except them)?  Probably, resurrection alone could make their films into profitable box office attractions. Even if – as all believers expect – Sai Baba eventually reincarnates as Prema Sai, he would surely discredit such a Bollywood glitz version of his appearance in his ‘former body’.

See The making of BBC’s film “The Secret Swami” and key unpublished facts

COMMENT eileenweed

Submitted on 2014/03/22 at 3:47 pm As you pointed out, the vast majority of the Indian public would scoff at such films and not go to see them; the few devotees would find fault with the representation or, at best, welcome the publicity of their ‘demigod’ with mixed feelings, knowing the ‘demigod’ himself would not want to be appearing onscreen by such ‘impure souls’. It is a lose-lose situation for all involved, and one wonders if the lack of interest in the film-world and doubt at profits are keeping the movies under wraps instead of being released?

Asaram Bapu case: goondas acid attack + beating defense lawyer

see Acid Attack video on Times of India too

20 MARCH, 2014:
BREAKING NEWS  20 MARCH, 2014:
ASARAM’S SUPPORTERS THRASH VICTIMS’ DEFENCE LAWYER OUTSIDE COURT
FIVE HELD FOR ATTACK ON WITNESSES IN RAPE CASE AGAINST ASARAM
ASARAM ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR INSOMNIA, BODYACHE

The criminal mentality of some of Asaram Bapu’s supporters belies all spirituality of any kind. Simultaneously Asaram Bapu’s pleasing that he is ill climaxed and he was taken to hospital… just as the proceedings against him have begun. The list of crimes for which he is known and accused is considerable and even huge bribery did not help in making the charges milder. Having tried most tricks in the book already, now his last-ditch attempts are a telling sign of desperation and knowledge that the case against him is cast-iron.

Kushwant Singh passes away at 99

Click image to see short  video

Winner of Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award

In his regular column in The Hindustan Times on March 20, 1999 (during a rare visit by Sai Baba to New Delhi) Khushwant Singh made the following enlightening remarks:

“The Indian soil is very productive of prophets and messiahs. We have always had men and women claiming to be incarnations of God, or even God Himself in human form. What would be regarded a sheer blasphemy and treated with ridicule by Christians or a sentence of death in Islam is acclaimed by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs as an avatar. So we have many Bhagwans (Gods), Swamis (Lords), Rishis (Sages), Maharishis (great sages), Acharyas (teachers), Saints (saints) and Gurus with large followings.”

“… If anyone is to be put on a shrink’s couch, it is not the godman but his followers who look upon him as God to find out what is missing in their lives which they hope to fulfil by associating with their chosen godman. It is not producing vibhuti (sacred ash), materializing watches and medallions from the air or regurgitating sivalingas – all such tricks can be performed by magicians and cannot stand the test of scientific scrutiny. The devotees’ faith has more solid foundations. They have unquestionable belief that their guru can do no wrong.”

Note how the BBC claims to have talked to many abuse victims, not just the few chosen for the final cut!  Also note that these abuse victims admitted to ‘genital oiling’ in Tanya Datta’s  words.  The Sai Baba ‘blow job’ to which Kushwant Singh refers is that reported by in the interview with American Mark Roche in the BBC documentary (wmv – see here 1.9Mbs). 

TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO CLIP
KHUSWANT SINGH: “Indians get impressed when they see white people becoming devotees, that applies to the Germans, Australian, Italians, Spaniards, Americans with shaved heads with their pigtails, wearing the mumbo-jumbo of the prayers that they carry out, dancing in the streets.”

TANYA DATTA: One of the things that a lot of the abuse victims we’ve talked to have said is that Sai Baba does the genital oilings because it is part of Hinduism. Have you heard anything…

KHUSHWANT SINGH There is no Indian tradition to support –  that worship of the linga includes  doing the ‘blow job’, if that is what you are referring to. I don’t think there is any basis for that whatsoever.  

(SEE THE SHORT VIDEO CLIP 2.1Mbs in Quicktime – SEE HERE)

ALSO KUSHWANT SINGH VIDEO CLIP  567Kbs in Quicktime (on Sai Baba’s homosexuality)

Kushwant Singh on prayer and meditation (“Prayer is useless” and he saw the hours spent in satsangs, religious discourse, gatherings, kirtans, bhajans etc. as a “staggering waste of time”)

P.K. Suri of the Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications Trust

Mr. P.K. Suri, who headed the Books and Publications Trust for Sathya Sai Baba was a liar and embezzler. He known by many residents and writers of Sai literature to be so, but no one could uncover this, since telling Sathya Sai Baba  had no effect. P.K. Suri had been a petty clerk in a governmental office before he came to Sathya Sai Baba.  Suri remained at his post. Sai Baba had favoured him since the man’s son, who was a student at the Institute of Higher Learning (I.H.L.) at Prashanthi Nilayam, was one of two killed when their omnibus hit a truck in 1989 in Andhra Pradesh when  students and teachers were travelling with them  on Sai Baba’s direct instructions! A third person was in a coma for several days.

I published a book, ‘The Source of Dream’ (later entitled ‘Source of the Dream’). It was issued in 1,000 copies, 900 of which were given by us to the Sathya Sai Book and Publications Trust ℅ Mr. Suri. He kept it mostly under the counter , selling it at the rate of Rs. 50/- per copy. Mr. N. Suri kept no accounts but had pocketed the money himself (piles of unaccounted cash amounting to Rupees 50,000.- being found in his room during the post-murder investigations at the ashram when Indian journalists were investigating affairs after the infamous 1993 murders episode.

The editor of Sai Baba’ journal, the famous ex-journalist V.K. Narasimhan, told me that P.K. Suri was a liar and a petty crook. Other authors of books donated to the ashram, including Al Drucker, Rita Bruce, and UK-based Indian, Mr. Taylor (publisher of the ‘Gufa Narayana Ashram’ books), all suffered similar or worse treatment from Mr. Suri. He would accept money for printing a book, then not print it and not refund the money given for the purpose (Al Drucker also experienced this but, in his extreme blindness, put it down to Sai Baba’s mysterious, inscrutable will!). Suri accepted printing plates of ‘Vision of Sai II’ from Robert and Rita Bruce for making an ashram edition (profitable for the Book Trust), but he did not use them, claiming he had lost them. The plates had to be made again in Bangalore by the Bruce’s at their own expense. When I asked Rita Bruce if it was Mr. Suri I had met – describing him as someone who hardly even smiled, she said it was, and that he only smiled when he lied!

To Narasimhan’s relief he could later tell me that, P.K. Suri had been removed from his post “on a good ‘pretext’ in a most ruthless manner” by Swami. The pretext was a book he published causing Sai Baba’s ire … about ‘Naranga Amma Sai Ma’, who claimed that she was Sai Baba’s spiritual mother etc. Narasimhan said the rogue Suri was still pretending he was in grace after being sacked, sitting on the verandah.

Malaysian lawyer’s exposure of Sai Baba sex and fraud (4)

The Malaysian lawyer, Mr. Hariram Jayaram, who had been a very active endorser of Sathya Sai Baba, found out – after meetings with victims and serious investigations – that the guru was sexually abusing Malaysian students at his college in India. Further he was informed by various devotees of the falsity of certain supposed spontaneous appearances of vibuti on pictures of Sai Baba. He became a whistle-blower and was harassed by his blind believing counterpart in the Sai movement in Kuala Lumpur, Jega Jegathesan. Having done what he could to expose the facts and protect the vulnerable, he withdrew from the controversy to concentrate on his law practice. He contacted me in 2004 to inform me that my campaign against Sai Baba was entirely justified, but did not wish to become publicly involved due to his professional connections. Since he passed away in November , 2013, I am making his statements known to the wider public.

One can read the e-mails I received from him on June 15th and 16th, 2004 in full by clicking here.

In brief summary, Hariram Jayaram stated that, of four Malaysian students he knew (who had been sexually abused by Sathya Sai Baba) one was the son of devotees known to him. He had also received a letter from U.S, student Terry Scott who was contemporary with the Malaysian students and who left the Sai college together with them for the same reason. He notes that Sai Baba’s sexual appetite had not decreased, so harm was still being done to young men under his trust.

Jayaram also details how he obtained an admission that ashes which had allegedly formed on a portrait of Sathya Sai Baba in a Krishna temple in Penang had been stuck on the picture with gum  so as to help increase the number of Sai Baba devotees, in which this was greatly successful. Though he remained in belief that not all such ashes on Sai Baba pictures were fake, he raised the issue with students in India while he was investigating the alleged sex abuses, whereupon a student took some ash and threw it at a picture, to which it adhered (i.e. without any gum or the like).

On 16 June Jayaram described how Sai Baba apparently ‘transformed’ his wife’s necklace into a ring. After 1980 when he became a dissident he reflected that the necklace had been of a precious metalmetal and valuable, while the ring was a worthless trinket. He discovered that Sai Baba had a supplier of such trinkets, Ramanathan Chettiar from Madurai. During his 1980 investigation he was convinces, especially by one Malaysian student, that Sai Baba was a conman with no powers. (See source e-mails here.)

See continuation of this blog at https://robertpriddy.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/malaysian-lawyers-exposure-of-sai-baba-sex-and-fraud-4/  Earlier e-mails from Jayaram on the sexual abuse issue have already appeared in previous postings here and here and here

Read about Datuk Jega Jegathesan’s ‘far out’ writings about spirits, possessions, miracles also Jegathesan and his troubled relationships

Prashanthi Nilayam cash-strapped despite all efforts

The Sathya Sai Specialty Hospital in Puttaparthi was based on voluntary labour by all staff and doctors, even though very minimal emoluments were provided. Our trusted informant, ex-devotee Eileen Weed, informs:- “People tell me that the hospital giving such low rates of pay is a BIG part of the reason they can’t find decent staff. Even diehard devotees run after as much cash as possible with jobs in the big cities. Doctors in PN had told me that the bulk of the staff is made up of those straight out of school who have no other options and no other job they could get. They work for several years only for experience and then move on when they get higher paying opportunities elsewhere.”

The foreign devotee surgeons and doctors who mostly carried out the difficult operations seem to have left since their guru, who died under such ignominious and suspicious circumstances, is no longer there to give darsan etc. No mention of this is made, of course, by any ashram or Trust sources. While the voluntary policy no longer works well, the authorities still persist in offering very low salaries for top jobs (less than US$17,000.- per annum for a senior consultant), as can be seen from their announcement:-

An amusing e-mail that has been circulated ‘In Sai Seva’ and “for the convenience of devotees’ tells of the revolutionary banking move in Puttaparthi, namely installation of a cash machine, provided by none other than the grace of Sathya Sai Baba acting from the beyond through the Sai Central Trust! Despite the ‘beautiful granite finishing’, it is not likely to attract devotees who want to part with much money. It would take a self-resurrection by Sathya Sai Baba himself to increase the cash flow. Or at least a public attempt to revive the embalmed body.

If the enterprising devotees of recently ‘departed’ guru Ashutosh Maharaj are anything to go by, it seems the Sathya Sai authorities may have blundered when they embalmed Sathya Sai Baba’s body. According to their information it would have a better chance of revival had it been frozen (presumably cryogenically):-
“The body did not decompose before we put it in the freezer. It was a spiritual experience. We thought of embalming it, but somebody told us that his chances of revival were less if we did it,” Swami Vishalanand said. “He has assured us that he will come back,” another devotee, Lakhwinder Singh, told the Indian Express newspaper.” The BBC article goes on to mention: “In 1993, the devotees of a Calcutta-based guru Balak Brahmachari refused to cremate his body for nearly two months, insisting that he would recover from a “meditative trance”. Eventually, some 450 policemen entered his religious centre on the outskirts of the city and took away his decomposing body for cremation in the face of fierce protests by the devotees.”

If Sathya Sai, the Avatar of the Age, Creator of the Universe himself and Deity of all Deities, could not cure or resurrect himself, what chance for the average Joe Lunchbucket Hindu gurus?

chrisdokter chrisdokter.wordpress.com

COMMENT Submitted on 2014/03/16 at 4:21 pm Well, Robert, thank you for this light note on a frosty Sunday. It seems the only specialty left to the Parthi hospital is a gigantic ‘ceiling on desires’-salary to draw die-hard devotee-consultants to the sticks. Granted, the premises look nice from the outside but I would not want to get caught dead there… An ATM, too, hmm? Now, ‘Automatic transfer’ around Puttaparthi should be a breeze, don’t you think? It was a life-long specialty of the master, after all. Nice touch indeed, a spot of granite. If that does not start some HARD cash from starting to flow, I am at a loss. The story of the refrigerator-guru hit the news here in Holland, too, much to everyone’s amusement. It reminded me of famous Dutch prophet (and guru avant la lettre) Lou de Palingboer (1898-1968), who preached he was God incarnate and therefore could not die. When he inadvertently DID die, his followers did not believe it and surrounded themselves on top of his body, ‘to keep it warm’ until he would return… They are still waiting, it seems, even 50 years after his burial. For more on these western and eastern ‘masters of enlightenment’, I refer to my blog Enlightened or made light (http://chrisdokter.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/enlightened-or-made-light/).

Malaysian lawyer on sexual abuses of students by Sai Baba (cont.)

Having had a long exchange of e-mails with the prominent Malaysian lawyer, Mr. Hariram Jayaram,, which he had asked me not to post then, I am now able to release these exchanges as a memorandum to the honour of an honest and decent gentleman who – learning in the early 1980s of sexual abuses of Malaysian student at his college by Sathya Sai Baba – stood up against the powerful and rich Sathya Sai Organisation to expose the facts. Earlier mails have already appeared here and here

On May 18, 2004, Hariram Jayaram wrote to me about Sai Baba factions in Malaysia, one led by J. Jegathesan. At that time (late 70s) Hariram travelled the length and breath of West Malaysia to encourage various Sai Baba bhajan groups and show the 35mm films he had bought from the United States. Eventually  two ‘leaders’ emerged in the Malaysian Sai movement, Jegathesan and Hariram himself. .Sai Baba recognised Hariram’s contributions and gave him his robe, also inviting him to come and teach law in his college permanently.

Back in Kuala Lumpur, Hariram was told by a devotee that he had received a telephone call from his sister to the effect that his nephew, a student at Puttaparthi College, was back home for holidays and had strange stories to tell about Sai Baba, and that he was not going back to the College because this uuru was a homosexual and fraud. Hariram was able to question this boy thoroughly later.  Another boy from Malaysia dropped out from the same college and went to continue studies in New Zealand.

At that point Hariram decided to investigate and, with a devotee friend and his nephew, he went over to Puttaparthi, Whitefield and Bangalore. Spending several days in India, Hariram met two other Malaysian male students and several Indian students, discovering from them that Sai Baba was carrying on a large-scale homosexual activities with several students. The students explained to him how Sai Baba was making vibhuthi and that every ‘miracle’ of his constituted a bluff, him having no powers at all.

On June 9, 2004. In 1980 Hariram also learned of two Indian student bothers who were studying in a Sai Baba college. When they had returned home for holidays, the younger brother complained to the parents that Sai Baba had carried out homosexual activities on him. The devotee parents were naturally shocked, but the elder brother who was not molested by Sai Baba, asked them not to believe his younger brother’s allegations, being crazy to have cast such aspersions on the living God. The parents took the older brother’s side.

Referring to the persistent rumours of all kinds that always circulated in the Sai Baba movement , one went “God is fractured”, that Sai Baba has fractured his leg, but Hariram could not tell if this was true.

Interestingly, Sathya Sai Baba’s  the hip injury occurred over 1 year earlier, but the news had been suppressed by the Malaysian Sathya Sai Organisation, as was invariably done wherever possible throughout all the world branches whenever anything remotely negative about Sai Baba arose, and continues to be so to this day!  The hip injury caused Sai Baba to take to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, so the facts could not be entirely hidden, though they were given fantastic interpretations by followers so as to preserve the cherished  illusion of his divinity!

On June 11, 2004, Hariram wrote that he had traced the name of the American student who was in Puttarparthi in the late 70s, a Californian whistle blower who he had come to know when making investigations with the help of Malaysian students. This was Terry Scott, who had been sexually abused and left the college in 1980 and returned to USA, telling of it in the USA. Scott had given him a pamphlet made by college students which gave  a step by step analysis on how Sai Baba made vibuthi. After reading that pamphlet, Hariram beame an expert in producing it before all those who came to see him to ask why he had dropped out from the Sathya Sai Baba cult.

Another rumour of which Hariram had not know but was rife in Malaysia was that Shanti (Datuk J. Jegathesan’s wife), committed suicide. Having made discreet enquiries, Hariram learned that the rumour had been around for a long time.  a

View the source e-mails in full here

See comment submitted by E. Weed, as follows:- “These are very important details about the widespread number of children that were abused, and the widespread knowledge of sb being a fraud and child molester! How appalling, though completely understandable, that it went on for so many decades without him paying for his actions. How many times have we heard of similar cases of people in positions of power and wealth, who could do similar things (such as Jerry Sandusky in USA, Jimmy Savile in UK, and countless Catholic priests)? Though sb claiming to be god himself, the avatar of the age, and continuing to abuse on a daily basis, is even more outrageously evil.”

Advaita: failed theory of unity/non-dualism

Advaita (metaphysical non-dualism) is often regarded as the ‘highest’ form of Indian theology and philosophy.  It is considered by those advaitists who deny God as an entity to be non-theistic, but – advaita having arisen out of Vedanta – the religious element is still there. Even they are essentially pan-theistic in outlook in holding all that exists is one unitary ‘being-consciousness-bliss’. This is a monotheistic pantheism of the kind, ‘God is everything, everything is God’ or ‘God is everywhere’ (Omnipresent). Having studied Advaita Vedanta in considerable depth for over 4 decades, both as a philosopher and as an initiate of Indian gurus, and I was impressed by the sophistication of its ideas, but I eventually went full circle and through analytical deconstruction rid myself of those unfounded (otherworldly) beliefs which are essential to all variants of advaita. Many Hindu religionists consider the doctrine to be intellectually the most deep… but in fact, it is most deeply confused!

How and why Advaita came to be what it is

The historical causes of the development of Indian non-dualism has been brilliantly summarised by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstead in their seminal book ‘The Guru Papers, Masks of Authoritarian Powers’ (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley). They show to what the idolising of that the master idea ‘oneness’ (first found in the Upanishads in the 1st millennium) has led, using thought to denigrate thought itself. I quote briefly: “Oneness, the pinnacle of religious abstraction, is the aspect of Eastern thought the West is currently the most enamoured of. The early Vedism of the Ayran invaders that superimposed itself on indigenous forms was a combination of polytheism, ancestor worship, and ritual sacrifice similar to Greek and other Indo-European religions.” and  “…traditions that made an ideology out of the concept of Oneness created a morality that denigrated or made unreal the individual self with the individual interests” (ibid p.203). “The ideology of Oneness constructs its hidden dualism by making the whole more sacred or more real than its parts. Sacralising unity places it in another realm, “the spiritual.“” (p.318)

They point out how the more sophisticated non-duality of all being (advaitism) came to be after more concrete had to be discarded and the clash of sects caused a need for more universal religious ideas.  This resulted in the increase in the level of abstraction towards an ever more abstract monism (i.e. products of thought that refer mostly to thought itself, rather than the deities with form and the particularized doctrines about them). “There is power in being able to incorporate one symbol into another. When the level of abstraction that people operate in is no longer satisfying or credible, for whatever reason (often because of advances in secular knowledge), the tendency is to look for a still higher level.” “The more abstract a symbol, the larger range of events it can include ” (ibid p. 349)

The advaitic experience?

Advaitists argue that only experience of the universal consciousness of satchitananda can validate and convince of the truth of the doctrine. That experiences of oneself having no boundaries, being in eternal peace without animosity or any kind occur is beyond doubt (at least for me and many others). Yet everything points to it being only temporary, as the necessities of life recall one from the intoxicating bliss and awareness. Upon return, the unity is lost and the mind sets about interpreting the experience in terms that were already familiar, some calling it ‘perfection’ and ‘eternal’ (though it no longer pertains for them), others ‘becoming one with God’, and others ‘knowing the ultimate truth’. All this boils down to differing subjective opinion, for yet others refuse to accept any descriptions as adequate. To describe unity in other than the divisive language of words. In short, “The actual experience of underlying unity is different from thought creating an abstract concept of it, and then making that concept more real than individuated existence.” (ibid p.306)

The attempt a making a rational metaphysical ‘spiritual doctrine’, but one which is entirely base on subjective experiences… makes any collective testing or control of the doctrine impossible. It has absolutely no empirical basis or scientific nature, but is a sheer metaphysical abstraction. “Concepts of spirituality became more abstract, moving from individual “spirits” embedded in nature to abstract principles and powers beyond nature. Through manipulating belief in the sacred symbols that represented these new abstractions, greater control over larger areas of human behaviour was made possible. …. The hierarchies within the emerging systems of sacred symbols mirrored and justified the developing hierarchies of secular power.” “The problems with abstracting unity from diversity come when unity is given more value and more reality than individuated life” (ibid p. 354) Abstracting the One from the Many and placing it in a higher realm involves, “…reifying a presumed quality or essence from life, and making that more important than the individual expressions of life itself.“

This shows clearly how that force of religion in society is used to control people. That what it’s all about and has always been about in most societies. In India, the huge variety of forms of deity, worship and sects there is no religious unity to which Hinduism can apply, but advaita would try to supply this lack, which is so strongly felt by Hindus today (witness the case of the pulping of a major scientific work, Wendy Doniger’s ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History”  to avoid a tiresome lawsuit filed by right-wing Hindu academics, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Committee. This case was promoted as part of the coming 2004 Indian election in which the Bharitaya Janata Party tries to assert ‘Hindu Unity’ as a tool to gaining power). See Arundhati Roy criticises Penguin (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/arundhati-roy-criticises-penguin-for-pulping-the-hindus-an-alternative-history-9126247.html).

Non-dualistic Vedanta anti-science and philosophical ‘nonsense’

Firstly, advaita currently appears in many variants as teachings of diverse gurus, maharishis, bhagawans, avatars, swamis etc. (such as Adi Shankara, Ramana Maharshi, Nidsargadatta, Sathya Sai Baba and many more) and has no single unitary doctrine accepted by all exponents. Furhter, it is impossible to express a fully consistent account of advaita, because language rests entirely upon making distinctions between things while advaita holds that such distinctions are all illusory and there is but one reality. Most variants of Advaita nevertheless regard ‘sat-chit-ananda‘ (i.e. truth-being-bliss) as the one and only origin of existence, but state that it cannot be described, it is totally ineffable. That reality is held to be beyond human expression, discoverable only by total immersion of the mind and ego in it (through meditation and other methods). Advaita is proclaimed as the ‘Highest Truth’ only known when experienced in immersion in Unity where no dualism whatever is perceived (i.e. in the highest ecstasy or ‘samadhi‘). Hence it is the ultimate in imagined otherworldliness. Advaitists may deny the truth of anything on their assumption that truth cannot be stated… that’s the beauty of inexpressibility, but this is a snare! They speak of ’emptiness’, like the Buddhist Nagarjuna. Some compare the mind to a radio receiver rather than as the initiator of thoughts and ideas, and yet at the same time advaita declares the mind, the human ego and all other worldly events to be wholly illusory.

In fact, human consciousness does not come into being or exist independently of impressions and perceptions, not even when it has only a representation of itself.  It always has a ‘content’ – some corresponding ‘intentional object’, which can be a thing, a perception, a memory, a reflected sense of a previous act of consciousness and so on. (See Brentano’s thesis of intentionality), In a nutshell, a consciousness has no independent existence as a source of anything.

Linguistic analysis is therefore one crux on which advaita break itself. At the outset, words and sentences derive meaning through referents (impressions and perceptions from a physical source). Subsequently the mind learns to interpret its impressions and derives complex perceptions and conceptual ideas. This process alone gives rise to the entire universe of conscious human discourse. These meanings cannot be developed without physical experience. This is backed up by most extensive scientific researches. Their meaning arises in consciousness only through physical experience and learning (but not from any primeval or transcendental inner source).

In short, Advaita is totally subjective and has no objective existence because all objectivity depends on the extension of space-time (‘object’-ivity of physical universe). Advaita is thus ultimately truly circular, being what Wittgenstein defines most accurately as ‘tautological’. That is to say, it is without sense (i.e. having no referential relation to any sense impressions or literally ‘nonsensical’). Advaita is a system of entirely ‘otherworldly’ concepts without corresponding ‘objects’, i.e. lacking any empirical foundation. The various advaitic doctrines amount only to speculation, however imaginative.

Advaitists will argue that only experience of the universal consciousness of satchitananda can validate and convince of the truth of the doctrine. However “The actual experience of underlying unity is different from thought creating an abstract concept of it, and then making tht concept more real than individuated existence.” (ibid p.306)

Malaysian exposure of student sex abuse cult & its defenders

Due to the considerable volume of the mails between myself and Hariram Jayaram, the following is a brief summary from the fuller mails (as they are posted they can be viewed in full by following links to each mail).

On May 3. 2004, Jayaram wrote to me telling that he had made facts available to a number of Malaysians and many left the cult and, of those who remained who had intended to send their sons to Sai colleges did not do so.   (see source e-mail here)

May 5, 2004 (concerning death of Jegathesan’s wife, Shanti and son Jaganaathat Sai), he referred to the speculation that the death of the wife was suicide, particularly after her son’s suicide. He was then inclined to accept that it was an accident, but thought it still quite possible that this was not the case. He heard that the son, who did commit suicide by jumping from the roof of a multi-storey building in Kuala Lumpur, was in a state of depression when his father, Jegathesan, did not approve of the Chinese girl he was going out with. He expressed surprise that Jegathesan did not keep his son away from Sai Baba, for he had told Hariram in 1980 that the questions about Sai Baba’s homosexual abuses were nothing new.

Hariram told how he had also met the famous Bangalore professor,  Dr. H Narasimhaiah, who stood up against Sai Baba.

Hariram was pleased that there was no let up in the work I and my friends undertook to expose Sai Baba and said that there are very few Malaysians who will openly say that they are Sai devotees because of the juicy allegations.

NOTE! The attachment I had sent to Hariram contained information as found at THE TOP MALAYSIAN SATHYA SAI ORGANISATION LEADER, DATUK JEGA JEGATHESAN & HIS TROUBLED RELATIONS  Later on Hariram Jayaram realised that he had not realised the strength of the rumours of the wife having taken her own life among those who knew of the case, as he reports in another mail. Of course, suicide cannot be proven in this case, but the circumstantial facts plus likelihood provide a motive for it.

The serial decades of sexual abuses against students and young persons by Sai Baba as referred to are summarised here

eileenweed eileenweed@gmail.com 67.182.29.191

COMMENT Submitted on 2014/03/16 at 1:15 pm What is fascinating about this account is additional proof that some of the top well-known people in the sb org knew very well about the allegations and have heard about it from multiple sources. There seem to be several types of opinions of people who heard about the abuse: those who hear but do not believe; those who are devotees, know it to be true and accept because ‘god can do anything, it is for our best’ or those who may not believe sb is god (people who run shops, serve in the ashram, or in positions of power in the org hierarchy) but who think, ‘this guy sb is my means of support and whatever he does is OK’.

Malaysian Sai Baba students abused – new revelations

This blog is to introduce a series of blogs with indubitable insider revelations about the situation in the Malaysian Sathya Sai Organisation when students were withdrawn from Sai Baba colleges due to sexual abuses there. Discoveries of materialization fraud and cover-up by Sathya Sai Baba and by the Malaysian Sathya Sai Organisation was also investigated.

The first I heard of the exodus of Malaysian students from Sathya Sai Baba’s college in Prashanthi Nilayam due to his sexual abuses was from Basava Premanand, who had written in an e-mail:-

“I had published in Indian Skeptic Vol. 10 No. 12, 15-4-1998 four article by one Hugh Emil De Cruz, ‘Divine Inner Light Life God Within Man,’ APTDO, 7, Santa Brigida, Gran Canaria – 35 300, Spain which mentioned the following:-
In 1979, The Singapore Straits Times and all Malaysian Newspapers carried an article of his homosexual nature, when a top Kuala Lumpur Indian Lawyer went to the press to warn the public that he had recalled his three sons from Sai’s Ashram on complaint’s of homosexual harassment. At that time Hugh Emil De Cruz was a follower of Sathya Sai Baba.” Basava Premanand (editor Indian Skeptic)

Later I was informed by Barry Pittard, the long-time follower of Sai Baba and lecturer in English at the Brindavan College for 2 years:-

In 1981, after I had returned to Australia from spending three years around Sai Baba, my neighbour Connie Raadsma of Cooma, New South Wales, decided to visit Sai Baba. On her stopover in Malaysia, she visited a family with a history of Sai Baba devotion, whose address had been given to her by a guest of mine. She said that she heard a disturbingly authentic cassette tape of an Indian Malaysian boy’s account of sexual molestation by Sai Baba at the Sathya Sai College at Whitefield. Horrified, his parents had withdrawn him from that institution. (We now learn that, over the years, many parents have withdrawn their children from Sathya Sai Baba’s educational institutions, concerned that their children are at moral risk from him). Disgusted, Connie Raadsma cancelled her trip.

In April 2004 I receive the first of a series of e-mails from one of Malaysia’s most prominent lawyers, Mr. Hariram Jayaram. He explained that he had been a Sai Baba devotee from 1976 to 1980 and not 1982. When he became aware of Sai Baba’s ‘activities’ on some male Malaysian students studying at the Sai institutions in Whitefield and Puttaparthi, he carried out his own inquiries and dropped out from that movement. He added that so did many devotees in Malaysia. In the interest of these male students, he was unable to reveal their identities as it would not have been fair to them. He said he had advised them in 1980 to keep their identities confidential and not be overzealous since they had lives to lead and they should forget about what had happened to them. He expressed appreciation of the good work being done by ex-Sai devotees to present the true facts in order that those seeking spiritual fulfillment would not be duped into following a false guru.

Due to much harassment he had experienced at the time, especially by Datuk J. Jegathesan, I was asked not to post his e-mails or their content, and so did not, despite the great importance of the information for people to decide about the facts of the matter. The prominence of his professional position and his law associates would have made a continual target for fanatical Sai Baba devotees (especially on-line, considering the stalking and dirt-throwing defamation Gerald Joe Moreno was posting against every critic at the time). In November, 1913, this much respected gentleman Hariram Jayaram passed away. Therefore, in remembrance of his honourable efforts to expose the heinous abuses and fraud of Sai Baba, and knowing that he is beyond any injury whatever, I will be posting his mails in full through the coming week or two.

See also: Whitefield Sathya Sai College defections (1980s)

Whitefield Sathya Sai College defections (1980s)

Referring to a long-standing Sai devotee friend who lived for decades in Prashanthi Nilayam, Eileen Weed (who first began to live there in 1984) wrote:-
“She said in the mid 1970s, soon after she arrived in India, there was an event like that, when many students just left the college in disgust. Another time that it happened was soon after I arrived in 1984; we had heard many boys walked out of college because of something which we never learned details of. That was when sb did not go to Whitefield for 18 months (waiting for the controversy to die down, no doubt). All of us, even those like me who were generally clueless in the early days, heard about the mass exodus of walk-outs in the Whitefield college in 1984.“

The above refers to an episode that was well-known to persons involved at Brindavan College at the time, but about which all information was systematically suppressed by the entire Sai Baba movement, as indeed has been and continues to be the policy. Barry Pittard, who lectured in English for two years from 1978 at Sathya Sai Baba’s Whitefield College, wrote:- 

“When I returned from Australia to India in 1983, I heard that the Whitefield college had been closed down, and that a number of parents had withdrawn their boys from Whitefield college because of sexual abuse scandals, in which SSB was central.” This came after Barry had defected from his nearly 3 decades of service to Sathya Sai Baba’s mission, having finally been convinced of the sex abuses when the magazine Nexus published a damning article. Barry has written:-

“Until the NEXUS article, I dismissed for many years as absurd no fewer than nine accounts of sexual abuse by Sai Baba, five of which I had heard between 1978 and 1982, and two shortly before I read the article, the rest between 1997 and 2000… Between 1979 and 1982 I heard four stories relating Sai Baba to homosexuality: from Joseph (U.S.A.) in 1979 (see below); Donna (U.S.A.), perhaps in the same year; Connie Raadsma, a close neighbour of mine in Australia 1981; and an Australian woman who spoke to me at Puttaparthi Sai Baba’s chief residence, in 1982. Like myself, Joseph and Donna were of the tiny handful of long-stay Westerners Sai Baba then permitted to live around Sai Baba, mostly in Whitefield. Donna, who Sai Baba had long not permitted within ashram precincts, claimed that she had spoken to older Puttaparthi residents who said that Sai Baba had been homosexual even as a boy. It appears to me now that Donna may have opened her mouth a bit too widely.

In 1979, in the crowd awaiting Sai Baba’s public appearance (darshan), Joseph, one of three or so – including Om (U.S.A.) and Trevor Freeman (U.K.) who remained after the hippies and others had departed from Sai Baba in the late sixties, began to talk out aloud – very audibly. I sat very near. With ever-increasing upset – indeed moral outrage – he repeated that some college boys had told him that Sai Baba had asked a number of them (in Joseph’s words) to “line up and masturbate.” On the third or so day of Joseph’s dark rumblings, six hefty Indian male service volunteers came and carried him out, ordering him not to return. None of the thousand or so who were present can ever forget the struggle that the immensely powerful Joseph put up, shouting out the accusations no doubt for all to hear. An hour afterwards, one of the same volunteers told me that his duty (which he clearly regretted) was “like wrestling a tiger.”

A very distressed Indian man said to me, “If Sai Baba is God, why do they need to use all this violence against this man?  I have begun to uncover the case of an admired and quite close teaching colleague of mine, P.K. Mohanti, at the Sathya Sai College at Whitefield. Sadly, he was instantly removed from the college before we could say our goodbyes. Again, it seems to relate to being ejected for speaking out against abuses.”

NOTE! Since this was posted, a former Sai Baba student has mailed me, asking for anonymity, and wrote:-
“…the 1983-4 batch defections at the Brindavan campus….this was always a hush-hush affair and many senior teacher know about it though they were uncomfortable talking about it. What angers me most is the mental stubborness of those professionals at parthi who know these things and still continue to work for the sake of money or whatever.How can they call themselves educated ….this reflects the very flawed status of the Indian upbringing…men are not what they can be but brainwashed to believe whatever they are told. It’s a very unfortunate thing.“

The International Sathya Sai Organization

DOCUMENTED INFORMATION ON ISSUES RELATING TO THE SAI ORGANISATION (SSO)

On the total Public Unaccountability of the Sathya Sai Organisation
The refusal of the Sathya Sai Organisation to answer the slightest criticism of any kind can be seen throughout its published websites and all documents released to the public on all its official and semi-official websites. The organisation does not practise duty of care, now does it conform with mandatory reporting of suspected  sexual crimes, and in this it exceeds even the Vatican in cover-up.  This question was raised by the BBC investigatory team, who approached the former world leader of the Sathya Sai Organisation, Dr. Michael Goldstein with questions about its accountability. Because they were never given any satisfactory answers to any of the issues they raised, they decided to film Dr. Goldstein with a hidden camera at their last questioning of him. The result was extremely revealing, both of the Sathya Sai Organisation’s policy, of the degree of deluded belief of Dr. Goldstein and not least as to his extremely unprofessional views on how to know whether sexual abuse has taken place (quite amazing from a qualified doctor supposedly conversant with this field). His total insensitive and aggressive attitude is a real eye-opener as to cult cover-up and can be viewed in transcript and in video clips –BBC DOCUMENTARY ‘THE SECRET SWAMI’ OVERVIEW 

Comprehensive overview of the SSO’s DECEPTION AND PROPAGANDA – in four parts
Concise Summary: Chief Failings, Deceptions and Nature of the Sathya Sai Organisation
Ten Questions about the Sai Organisation
Documentary proof that the SSO has long been informed about Sai Baba sexual abuses
Unanswered public letter from concerned persons as sent to Sathya Sai Baba’;s ‘Prashanthi Council’
The letters from Dr. John Hislop on sexual abuse complaints to him as President of the US Sai Organisation
The five letters by Dr. John Hislop about Sai Baba’s sex abuses
Major statement exposing Sathya Sai Organisation deceits about a US lawsuit by Alaya Rahm
Sathya Sai Organisation disinformation and subterfuge
The International SSO A major participant observational sociological analysis of its goals, structure, management and functions.
The Questionability of the Sathya Sai Organisation’s EHV statistics
False report from UK SSO on a meeting in Westminster Cathedral which never occurred
The Secretive and Authoritarian Sathya Sai Organisation
Sathya Sai Baba’s Super-speciality Hospitals as two-faced projects
Sathya Sai Baba’s Organised ‘Men in Suits’
Covered-up failures of Sathya Sai Organisation’s ‘Educare’ projects
Comment:  ‘Peace Education’ by Sathya Sai Organisation under the EEHV programme
The Sai Movement closes ranks and battens down against the media
Sai Organisation propaganda spending spree in Sydney- Part One -and- Part Two

The Sathya Sai Cental Trust was and is the overall decision-making body over all money and projects.
It’s deliberations are totally secret and it is totally unaccountable:-

Sathya Sai family bitter feud over Central Trust funds  Sai Central Trust money grabbing – Tehelka report Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust goes begging Sai Trust members accused of murder threat by Sai Baba relative Sathya Sai Central Trust gets away with it again Sai Trust: irregularities & secrecy on Sai Baba’s death Sathya Sai Central Trust still shrouds all in secrecy Former Minister accuses Sai Trust members of the death of Sai Baba Protests in Puttaparthi against Sai Central Trust The obvious illegality of the Sai Central Trust’s appropriation Sathya Sai Trust decoyed police and media on tax issues Sai Central Trust credibility totally destroyed Sai Trust plea dismissed by Court Sai Trust not yet transparent, despite Ratnakar’s bluster Donations to Sathya Sai Central Trust misused by/for directors etc. Sai Trust in the footsteps of Sathya Sai Baba

Sai Baba Trustee statements so false as to confirm greater suspicion  Sathya Sai Trust accounting ‘leela’? Sathya Sai Trust lost 16 key government exemptions Sai Trust gets bill for removed government subsidy Sai Trust member K.R. Prasad spread untruth by Sai Baba Sathya Sai Trust steps up damage limitation ploys and the aggro Sathya Sai Trust carve-up Baba’s secret treasure house continues Corruption India: Sai Baba cult hoard plunder by Trustees Sathya Sai Trust enmity in public, while their cover-ups reigns Sai Trust van impounded by Andhra police with treasure trove The Sathya Sai Trust propagandist, G. Venkataraman Sathya Sai Central Trust era of unaccountability drawing to a close? Police summons for two Sathya Sai Central Trust board members Sai Central Trust van impounded by Andhra police with treasure trove? Sathya Sai Central Trust untrustworthy! Sathya Sai Central Trust disinformation