Prashanthi Nilayam has become super repressive & mercenary – 2014

I received a comment on this blog asking if I had seen that a film has been relased in the US. I replied: “I have already blogged on the film:https://robertpriddy.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/sai-baba-expose-film-wins-docu-award-in-us/
I hope it will get on general release in the US, where ‘The Secret Swami’ was not shown on the requirement of Alaya Rahm when he became the main abused testifier.”

This was the response I received:-

Fra: “S Dan” <someway@yahoo.co.uk>
Til: rero@getmail.no
Sendt: 2. mars 2014 14:55:33
Emne: Re: wordpress.com

 Thanks  Robert,  Also  do  you know  that  now  there  are  a  lot  of  new Rules in  the  Ashram,  my  friend  who  was  talking  with  friends  in  the  Ashram   casually  about Yoga,  some  one  walked  up  to  him  &  said  you  are  only  to  talk  about  all  pertaining  to  Baba  in  the  Ashram,  he  thought  the  guy  was  joking,  but  then  he  discovered  he  was  not,  he  reacted,  &  was  made  leave  the Ashram!!

This  was  last  Nov,  also  I  used  the  Phone  in  the  Ashram  to  call  the  UK,  as  I  thought  it  would  be  cheaper!!,  but  for  approx  10 mins  I  was  charged  370 Rupees,  way  over  the  norm!,  they  had  rigged  up  the  machines!! But  what  was  amazing  was  masses  of  new  people  were  there  last  Xmas,  who  have  never  even  seen  Baba,  all  new  people,  mainly  from  the country side who  are  in  a bad  situation  economically!

They  have  also  started  to  sell  Baba  DVDs  out  side  the  Western  Canteen!!
Warm  Regards   L.            PS  Please  keep  my  name  confidential

The Sai Central Trust have stepped up their efforts to extract as much cash as humanly possible, especially from foreign visitors, about whom there is also increased suspicion and paranoia. There is clearly a widespread clampdown on freedom of speech and telling the truth, like Orwell’s 1984, no less! It should be of interest to those who may think of visiting again that, not only was a recent violent incident against an American lady by a former servitor in the Prashanthi Nilayam ashram administration, Sai Rohit Srivastava, under police investigation, but a later news report about four murderous attackers were arrested by police in Puttaparthi http://odishasuntimes.com/34433/atatck-minister-4-accused-arrested/ In short, the ashram is becoming a yet more dangerous place than formerly, when it was even than the scene of numerous murders, many disappearances, accidents  and suicides etc.

The former insider devotee, Eileen Weed, who still has contact with some believers, writes in her comment to this blog: “A long-time resident woman who I know personally, who’s over 40 years old, was also followed inside the ashram and harassed multiple times by various men, some wearing the blue Seva-Dal scarves. They would stand next to her and brush against her body! Complaints to the head Seva Dals stationed at the main gate went unheeded. He only said, “Yes, we know. Don’t worry about it.” I wouldn’t advise people to visit Prasanthi Nilayam, it sounds like it is becoming more & more dangerous and like you said, a hotbed of paranoia and desperation!”

Belief in Sai Baba miracles – Puttaparthi riches

V.J. Ram (aka Janakiram) investigated the long history of criminal incidents connected to Sathya Sai Baba and his coterie. Here he writes about the success of Sai Baba’s ashrams and institutions, and the beginning of the downfall in the 1993 incidents. Click here

See YouTube Sai Baba fraud here

See Sai Baba classic legerdemain fumble here – on YouTube

Main overview of the sexual allegations against Sai Baba through the decades and index of further pages detailing the accusations from all quarters See also: Security, surveillance and secrecy at Sathya Sai Baba’s ashrams

VISITING SAI BABA ASHRAMS (2)

Newcomers who have read some of the many gushing, over-rosy books about Sai Baba’s supposed perfection, purity and total overview and divine control of his ashrams and the intimate detail of everyone’s lives, expect ‘The Abode of Supreme Peace’ to be either a paradise or at least a place where people are more virtuous, kind, fair and civil than elsewhere. Many devotees from abroad who live long-term or permanently at Sai Baba develop a noticeable ‘residential patina’ which seems to serve as protection against all the abrasions and scours that they receive regularly from the native powers-that-be, from members of the Seva Dal, other residents, visitors and the inevitable low caste workers of all kinds. Particularly vintage ashram ladies have this veneer, along with carefully adopted Indian traits like perfect use of saris, outwardly condescending attitudes towards newcomers. I have never seen or heard of more than an exception few of these people doing anything except take care of their own quotidian affairs… no service work, no proper study or self-discipline… just following the routines, always knowing how to ‘cut corners’ and generally get ahead of others. The experience of many followers who I have accompanied to Prashanthi Nilayam as group leader was that very few people there – foreigners included – are at all helpful in giving a helping hand to newcomers.

From public discourses by Sathya Sai we learn: ‘Residents of ashram have derived little benefit’ Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 27, p. 78: ‘Residents at ashram who have aged but not grown’ Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 10, p. 28: and ‘Seniority imagined by long-term residents’ Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 5, p. 306).

A Vigilance Officer – a government official in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) – Mr. V. Ramnath, who moved about in India (eg. Madras, Coorg, Bangalore, Delhi) – himself a Sai follower – told me many of his experiences of people around Sathya Sai Baba. These included a variety of close Sai Baba devotees who were friends or relatives of his (some of whom I met)- including high officials in the Indian administration and in Sai institutions and ashrams. He said that people really believe that, once they have a place at Puttaparthi or Whitefield so they can spend their time near Sai Baba at darshan etc., they have done everything required for salvation! Because being within the area of ‘divine vibration’ ensures their spiritual development. They proceed to live lives empty of social or other useful meaning, waiting for heaven to fall into their laps like ripe fruit through gratuitous grace. In the rat-race to ‘Swami’s feet’, otherwise fairly virtuous persons there become as vicious as piranhas, very jealous of those who get interviews or other ‘grace’, whom they defame through back-biting. (This view is supported by many talks Sai Baba has held, both in public and not least in very strict correctives to the assembles Seva Dal in the various ashrams.

BABA IN WONDERLAND

AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

“Sathya Sai Baba promotes a veritable Wonderland which none can enter without the blessing of God (i.e. himself, the Incarnate Creator of the Universe, so he said). He spoke of  this spiritual wonderland as the best place for ‘liberation from the wheel of existences’ (or ‘’moksha”). Any other feature this haven for ‘liberated souls’ may have is totally unknown – for all purposes like a dark night or perhaps a blinding light in which nothing is visible – and Sai Baba never describes it in any way, for evidently he is not up to that job!

However, ‘down here’ in the real world where he struts his stuff in his now-failing ‘perishable body’ – and so as to attain name, pelf and fame for himself – he has tried to create some kind of semblance of Wonderland, calling his residence ‘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 around oneself from which one may resign one’s freedom other than to sing saccharine songs, but one can no longer live intelligently and openly in the wider world of human learning and experiencing, for then one must follow all doctrine, taboos, rules, restrictions and commandments. What is this ‘Supreme Peace’ like? Well, no outward peace prevails there, for not only are the milling crowds of undisciplined devotees constantly pushing for privileges and best places, but it is quite often an auditory hell – with blaring distorting loudspeakers and every imaginable building racket by day, howling pi-dogs warring at night. The staff who rule the ashram with iron rules are mostly either conceited small Napoleons ordering their inferiors about (i.e. visitors and ‘Seva Dal’ servitors), making all kinds of hindrance and difficulty for normal living – and being open to corruption for privileges.

The meaning of ‘Abode of Supreme Peace’ therefore boils down to the idea that it is the Abode of Sai Baba, the Supremely Peaceful Presence! Even his peace is interrupted at times, such as when six young men were murdered in his apartment in 1993 from which he fled in the middle of the night! Sathya Sai is occasionally yet less predictable and more imperious that ’s ‘Red Queen’, ruling students and servitors with an iron fist when he sees fit (eg. Prince Gopal ). Even the Red Queen, however, was not called a major sexual predator. The ashrams are visited by many disturbed people, who are often dealt with in draconian ways, and no more peculiar collection of true believers could probably be found anywhere… March hares and mad hatters abound, no less dormice (the slothful and unhelpful residents who hope for salvation just by being there). There are any amount of battling egos around Sai Baba – Tweedledums and Tweeledees. It is not hard to find the worldly equivalent of the hypocritical Walrus and the Carpenter among some of the stranger inhabitants and hangers-on, of whom there are an unusually large percentage compared to in most other large personality cults.

One cannot but think that even talking of pink string and ceiling wax and whether cows have wings would not be out of place in this fantastic environment. In fact, they talk of yet stranger things as facts – Sai Baba has himself told them that he has magnetic feet which pull the entire earth towards him. He has actually also said in a discourse that the whole of him is magnetic, literally – that things stick to his body! He also said that he made a three ton golden egg-shaped lingams in his stomach and spew them out! In Wonderland, no one gets any straight or frank answers – least of all from Sai Baba or his officials on anything but what they wish one to hear – for intense secrecy and covert surveillance prevails throughout. Finding out what actually happens behind closed doors is impossible except to those very few who chance to learn deeply buried facts in one unexpected way or another.

It is extremely difficult even then 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!