Prayers to ‘Bhagavan’ Sathya Sai Baba

Experiences of Devotees- Part Two: from http://www.saibaba.org/newsletter8-03.html

Lal Lachmandas
Sai Maharaj Ki Jai! Baba! Thank you for hearing my prayer. I passed my 12th with high marks and I know it is only because of your blessings. I am planning to do CA and rest everything is left in your hands. I had promised you that I would write all this if I happen to pass and so I am doing as I have promised you. Thank you Baba! Please bless my dad, mother, uncle, brother-in-law and sister.

Comment: The trivial wonder-struck awe at passing an exam! Diagnosis: Lack of self confidence. Lal has the ability but believes it is not his! Poor chap!

Vanita Kishan
Dear Baba I thank you for taking the reins of my household in your hands I know you are always with me. Baba I thank you for bring some peace in my house.

Comment: Why would anyone post that? Anyhow, it helps show how simple-minded most Sathya Sai Baba devotees are as to the causes operating in their lives. Tragic!

Prayer Club:

Nita
Sai this is my humble request to you my Sai to grant this wonderful job to my husband. Sai as you know all what we are going through please grant me this wish and save my family from misfortune.

Comment: As Sathya Sai baba says, most who pray to him want some worldly boon. He plays on that fact masterfully… pretending that he grants such boons. But various boons occur regularly in any case… but only anyone who wants to believe in Sai Baba can attribute them to him. Misfortunes also occur on a regular basis, but then one does not usually thank Sathya Sai Baba, or – if one decides that set-backs are lessons given by him – then one is grateful to him. he can sit and nod to it all… without lifting any kind of finger.

Meenakshi
This I my earnest request to you that please arrange for my marriage. Baba I cannot see my ageing parent worry for me any more. I am not doing well in my professional life because of this problem. Sai I know you as jut a merciful god who helps his devotees. Sai where do I go if you did not hear my request.

Comment: Another one who wants professional progress, and also through a marriage. Another example of people who clutch at straws.

Mallika P
From past three years I am trying to get pregnant, please bless me Sai, bless me that the treatment I am taking is successful.

Comment: How much time, energy, offerings and prayers have been wasted by women praying to gods, deities, gurus, swamis for fertility? If her treatment was successful, then – of course – she will put it down to divine intervention!

Sakshi
Baba, I did not know how to pray and ask for your blessings. I am leaving every decision of mine to you, show me right direction.

Comment: This is called drifting and almost giving up the ghost, surely?

Ramani
Please bless me and my family with time as that is running out. You know what I need, please bless me this time, I beg you with all my heart and soul. Sai you are everything to us. Please grant me this request.

Comment: Praying for time that is running out… what next? Such abject dependency on a distant figure, hopes and imaginings.

Rajyashree
Om Sai Sri Sai Jaya Jaya Sai. I bow to the almighty God Shri Saibaba. Dear Sai baba please bless me with a good teaching job in public schools in Texas. Baba I have teaching experience and so I think I can do a good job with help of your grace. Just today I am starting the process so please be with me all through the process and beg of you that everything should go smoothly. Baba you know what I wish and I have full confidence in you that I will be placed in a good decent job. Baba I need a job immediately. Bow to Sri Sai. Peace be to all.

Comment: Another job seeker at the feet of Sathya Sai Baba! No proper self-reliance, insufficient determination to learn and progress by ones own efforts. It would be better to learn about oneself more instead of writing begging postings. I suggest the following as a start (click here).

India’s state, Hindu nationalism and prayer

India is famous for its glut of temples everywhere and for amount of public prayers, their length too. No one denies that Indians pray a great deal – very much more than Western Europeans, without doubt. One might well say they have all reason, so difficult are the lives of the majority of them. India is beset by enormous problems of lacking social welfare, health care, nutrition, security for disabled or the aged, primitive labour conditions, many having to live on the pittance of ca. $1 per day and so on and so on. So Sai Baba’s exhortation to pray is not working for most people in India, while in Europe most people are doing better and better. Prayer has always served to empower the priesthood and religions generally and it serves to empower Sai Baba (many pray only to him!). Yet it also disempowers devotees who believe it will lead to help with their problems by distracting them from practical remedies, making them into beggars for boons. Because we all know they can, at best, only somehow solve things otherwise.

Sathya Sai teaching on the effectiveness of prayer is bogus
It defies all common sense and reason… we can see how so many pray for years without result. As soon as something good happens, such believers will probably impute it to the one they prayed to, so they remain trapped in the delusion. But consider the example of the Tibetans who, collectively, surely prayed more than any known people in recent times… until the Chinese invaded and everything they cared for was destroyed and those who escaped death were dispossessed and exiled, the country usurped. Were their prayers answered, then? Sathya Sai Baba has also said that God often answers your prayers with other things than you want or expect, but with what is best for you (especially also sufferings “for your own good”). See the duplicitous and completely self-defeating nature of prayer in that? To get what you didn’t pray for! What then of Sai Baba’s “There is nothing in the world that cannot be achieved by prayer”? That little or nothing can be achieved is far more likely (admitted, prayer can sometimes have a temporary psychological effect on the supplicant).

Believers may think that India’s economic surge, which increases living standards for the still small but growing middle class, is due to pujas, yagnas and temple visits? Still, acceptable standards of social care, health care and other social services common in rich countries are non-existent for tens of millions of Indias. Technological improvements are available to those with money, but is otherwise mostly of a very low level. According to international organisations, the country has somewhere in the region of 20 million child labourers, there are countless beggars, sick people and heavily handicapped persons living on the streets and camping out on pavements in most cities in absolute penury and many lepers (treated as ‘untouchables’ and isolated in primitive colonies). Corruption of all kinds has for decades been so endemic at all levels of society that most people there have lost all belief that it can ever be stamped out, it seems. Added to all these well-known weaknesses is a huge educational gap, plus a media information gap due to excessive top-down control of information. “God Incarnate” in Puttaparthi would control what his devotees can learn or discover (especially about himself)… so he advises praying, and even stopping all thought (more on this soon). This can only serve to hinder the growth of knowledge and awareness needed to combat India’s problems.