SATHYA SAI BABA IN WONDERLAND

Sathya Sai Baba promoted a veritable inverted Wonderland which he said could only be entered by those blessed by God (i.e. himself, the Incarnate Creator of the Universe, (see documentation). This spiritual wonderland is where his devotees will get liberation from the wheel of existences’ (or moksha). This fabled paradisal haven for ‘liberated souls’  – a realm of eternal bliss, consciousness and being – he never described in any intelligible way! Where it is (can’t be in space-time) is anyone’s guess… as likely as not it is down a rabbit hole as through a looking glass’, or where devotees go – blinded like rabbits in a headlight –  into a dark night to become one with a non-existent God in oblivion.

However, ‘down here in the real world’, where thankfully Sai Baba no longer can strut his stuff, he claimed to have created its earthly semblance, calling it ‘The Abode of Supreme Peace” (Prashanthi Nilayam). It is a Disney-coloured extravaganza of buildings, temples, museums, colleges, VIP palace-like buildings and an opulent hospital. A make-believe place, and to help in making such a belief is to erect a tinsel-gilded cage of doctrine, taboos, rules, restrictions and commandments around oneself. Followers willingly resigned most of their personal freedom and autonomous will,  and ignored their own minds, concentrating on ‘the heart but not the head’, and ceasing to interact intelligently and openly with the wider world of human learning and experience.

The Abode of Supreme Peace amounted to the Abode of Supremely Peaceful Sai Baba, nothing more or less. So what was living at this ‘Abode of Supreme Peace’ like? Firstly no outward peace prevailed there, for not only were the milling crowds of undisciplined devotees constantly pushing for privileges and best places, but it was often an auditory hell – with blaring distorting loudspeakers and building racket by day, howling packs of warring pi-dogs by night. Due to a primitive open sewerage pit, large areas of the ashram stank to High Heaven (as the saying so aptly associates it). With a few honourable exceptions, the staff were mostly conceited small Napoleons (as if having ‘arrived spiritually’) who ordered their inferiors about (i.e. visitors), while making all kinds of hindrance and difficulty for normal living, remaining open to corruption for privileges and embezzlement wherever possible.

The supreme peace was interrupted most rudely at times, such as when young male devotees were murdered in his apartment in 1993! He fled away and orchestrated their cold-blooded murder, carried out by blackmailing the police. (See eye-witness account Night of the Murders)

Sathya Sai was occasionally yet less predictable and more imperious than Alice’s ‘Red Queen’, ruling students and servitors with an iron fist when he saw fit and ‘testing’ whether followers faith in him was sufficient through inexplicable statements, errant behaviour, and unacceptable acts (see one small example. Prince Gopal – here). Even the Red Queen, however, was not accused of major sexual abuses on young men and boys.

The ashrams were visited by many disturbed people, who were often dealt with in draconian ways, and no more peculiar collection of true believers could probably be found anywhere.  March hares and mad hatters abounded, no less dormice (the slothful and unhelpful residents who hoped for salvation just by being there). There were any amount of battling Tweedledum and Tweeledee egos and strange inhabitants and hangers-on around Sai Baba, of whom there were an unusually large percentage even compared to most other large personality cults.

In that fantasy-full environment people talked of yet stranger things than pink string, ceiling wax and whether cows have wings… because Sai Baba himself told them that he had magnetic feet which pulled the entire earth towards him – because the earth loved him! He actually also vouchsafed to his audience in a discourse that the whole of him was magnetic, literally – that things stuck to his body! (See here)

In October 2007, numerous reports claimed Baba ‘gave darshan on the moon’ as he had announced he would that evening. However, the sky was overclouded and the event had to be called off. That received much coverage in the Indian press and on Sai-promotional websites, though it was also debunked on various Indian news outlets like Sulekha.com and DNA India. (http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-puttaprthi-sai-baba-misses-date-with-miracle-1125805).

In Wonderland, the fewest visitors got straight or frank answers from Sai Baba – and least of all from the officials. Finding out what actually happened behind closed doors was impossible except to those very few who got the chance to learn deeply buried facts in one unexpected way or another and worked hard to investigate. Even apart from the continual cover-up by all his officials and institutions of all untoward incidents, it was extremely difficult for those who have been inculcated into the whole divergency and disconnentedness of the Sai Baba belief system to do what Alice did in ‘Through the Looking Glass’, namely, discover that it is all really a house of cards and knock it down!