Sathya Sai Baba: self-proclaimed master of maya (delusion) and deception

Sathya Sai Baba spoke and claimed he is impossible to understand.

Sathya Sai Baba proclaimed himself as ‘the master of maya’, which means a master of delusive appearances, and that he is entirely beyond its illusion as an avatar of God. That nothing was as it seemed to be was doubly true in that he exercised massive deceptions on his following and much of the elite of India, and most successfully, though many decades.  Now, there is more than sufficient evidence – even from some devotees – that Sathya Sai Baba employed sleight of hand when seeming to produce objects from thin air. I also know two persons who have experienced him making mistakes in this, though I have not seen a clear instance of it myself. On the contrary, in 1986 I  saw at close quarters him manifest a laddu sweets underneath his hand, and all present ate  some of the warm, sticky product! The only explanation I have of this is that it was a most subtle form of mass hypnosis, though it seemed as real as anything else at the time. However, there are many others who can create such appearances through hypnosis and other means – perhaps the most convincing and extraordinary current practitioner being Derren Brown of UK whose abilities are legion, but are – on his own account – not psychic, spiritual or anything of that nature.  Yet, IF it were true that Sai Baba could – as so widely reported – materialize small objects and foodstuffs – why would he therefore ever have cheated? The study of mediumism and related phenomena shows us that many mediums assessed as genuine, later began to lose their powers and took to cheating due to the pressure to go on producing results. Madame Blavatsky is one such famous instance, and there are many more. Sathya Sai Baba has nevertheless been exposed widely as faking ‘materalization’ – even by currently believing followers. Notably, he was never put to the test as he refused to allow any investigative scientific or technological study validating his alleged ‘miracles’.

Anything Sathya Sai Baba did that caused doubts was said to be one of his inscrutable ways of testing people so as to teach them to trust him rather than their own (supposedly fallible) perceptions and minds! That is the entire aim of  ‘a test of faith’. So in what does the alleged ‘test’ consist? Is it to see whether one’s faith in Sathya Sai Baba and all he says and does is sound enough for one to continue to be a follower? Is makes clear who is reliably gullible enough to depend on, and hence how well you can be used for various tasks.  Had there been more than a very few percipient skeptics like V.K. Narasimhan around (even though he did not speak out his real doubts in public) Sathya Sai Baba’s reputation for ‘genuine miracles’ would surely have collapsed long ago. As it is, the exposé has done the job instead, so that few but zealous believer in his divinity and that miracles (surpassing any Jesus is accredited with) really occurred.

Sai Baba indoctrinates John Hislop

Taking the first baits until hooked and landed, the true believer became almost entirely in his power in the sense of losing a will of one’s own to assert anything whatever that went against him. Such confounded followers are ideal for spreading the word – that is, the countless stories, rumours and conveying his deceptions and lies to anyone who will give them a hearing. Their mentality amounts to a kind of cognitive trance into which only the most severe shocks can penetrate. Even then the loss of one’s cherished beliefs and self-image is evidently so powerfully felt that the person concerned retracts into the former cocoon of blindness and tries to salvage faith. Sathya Sai Baba has also used people repeatedly for conveying his lies to others since his teenage days is fully described by one of his most servile of devotees, Smt. Vijayamma (in her autobiographical book ‘Refuge there is none’ see Sathya Sai thrashed a 3-year old boy regularly in his mother’s presence!) who was subjected to extreme tests by him when her baby son was repeatedly beaten ‘mercilessly’ by Sai Baba before her own eyes. This was rationalized in the usual way: ‘The Lord knows what is best for each one of us’ and the bad karma from an imagined previous life of that baby was blamed, and Sai Baba revered as a corrective saviour of his soul!

Of course, many of the apparent tests of faith that arise were not designed as such at all by Sai Baba, but were simply disturbing observations or compromising facts that occurred. In the ashrams it was widely believed that every smallest event was under his cognizance and direction, hence even trivial matters were often taken as corrections by the guru, or tests he was setting up. Such as losing one’s place in a food queue, being told to move back at darsan by some imperious ‘servant’ (Seva Dal) or even more minor annoyances (leaving one’s spectacles behind when one needed them… just name it!) Sai Baba’s insistence that he was omnipresent in every heart  constituted a catch-all advance precaution against all the unfortunate facts that could arise, which was reinforced yet further by his insisting on total, unquestioning faith at all times, never ‘seeing or hearing evil’, thinking and saying only good things… and so on.

Can Sathya Sai Baba be deceived? And if so…

Here is a remarkable sentence from the book ‘ANYATHA SARANAM NASTHI’ [“Other than you refuge there is none”] by one of his most devoted lifelong admirers, Smt. Vijaya Kumari (known as ‘Vijayamma)’ reports that Sathya Sai Baba said:-

“NO ONE CAN DECEIVE SWAMI, IF THEY DO, THEY WILL DIE WITH THEIR HEADS SMASHED TO PIECES” (p. 276)

 

Direct quote of Sathya Sai Baba’s words by Vijaya Kumari in her authenticated self-biography.

Not only is it self-contradictory, but  from a self-pronounced “Embodiment of Pure Love” is plain talk! It exhibits either sheer duplicity or serious split-mindedness.  This lady was one of Professor Erlendur Haraldsson’s main witnesses on the various miracles of Sai Baba, being interviewed extensively by him for his book ‘Miracles are my visiting cards’ (also published under the title ‘Modern Miracles’). She is regarded with great reverence in much of the Indian Sai Baba movement due to her having been a child when Sathya Sai Baba was a rampant teenager in Puttaparthi (as she portrays him), leading his gang around and confronting adults with details from their private married lives etc. Her book is worth reading because she tells rather frankly of the younger Sai Baba’s behaviour, including his propensity to tell many untruths, to stir up trouble and –  last but far from least – how he relentlessly and regularly beat her baby son, Prudvi, only 2 years old – and for long periods. The son later became a ‘favourite’ and one can see Sai Baba’s proprietary relationship to him in the photo.

See text where Vijayamma details Sai Baba’s draconian punishments of her baby!

Gerald Moreno is entirely mistaken about my reference to the Vijayamma account. We see, yet again, as in myriad instances, Moreno’s penchant for untruthfulness and tendentious deviance from fact. There is desperation in his mammoth effort to defend his idol. There is his tendency to rationalize anything which would cast Sai Baba in an unfavourable light. For example, Moreno has himself related how Sai Baba “oiled on the lower stomach” (in private), and has given spurious rationalizations of the experience – explanations which any responsible citizen (and especially parents of children) would find objectionable. Adult touching of this kind is against the laws of India just as it is in many other countries. Gerald Moreno blunders and misrepresents me in stating that I am ‘smearing’ Sathya Sai Baba. It is nothing of the sort, for I have reported exactly what Vijayamma has written.

Moreno will most likely pass over the importance of this fact in silence, I expect, as he does with nearly all those undeniable facts about the man he admires so totally as to attack the outspoken Sai-critics full-time including harassing them (and sometimes their children!) in their community and personal lives. He condones everything Sathya Sai Baba says and does, for he never raises the slightest criticism of any of it, rather promoting him through his sickeningly obsequious but also hate-inflamed web log [entitled with unconscious irony “Sathya Sai Baba – Love, Light and Spirituality”]! What he lacks in facts, valid arguments and honesty he makes up for in seeking ever new avenues to spread his constant flow of spiteful disinformation and libel further onto Google – such as the Internet Thesaurus and Zoominfo.com! Meanwhile, I report about him and what he has written himself. HIS is a smear campaign, not what critics are doing! The work of critics such as Barry Pittard, Brian Steel, Kevin R.D. Shepherd stands on its own merits and is far remote from the libelous, defaming and demeaning language which is to be seen on almost any page that Moreno writes.

Moreno claims that I was threatened with a million dollar lawsuit (by a half-crazed Indian called Rebello). He knows this is a lie. I was never threatened, not even by mail – let alone from any lawyer. Let him try the impossible now, to prove his statement… with any genuine documentation. Rebello claims he wrote to a server and threatened them. Even that was never forwarded to me. Likewise, no critic of Sathya Sai Baba has ever been sued, nor even threatened in any credible legal way (except once by an incompetent Indian posing as a lawyer whose bluff was called immediately by no reply), yet Moreno claims to know better! He loves to grab a half-truth and turn it into a full lie, and then to claim that it is critics (whether former devotees or reputable media) who are engaged in falsification. He crafted his wholly untrue account simply so as to try to get oxygen for his libel pages… as he always does, even if the point concerned is utterly trivial, he will post it here, there and often everywhere he can.

Though never threatened legally, however, I have received death threats from Sai followers, as proved by the comment made on this blog site – see the response from a Sai defender on the blog here). The person who made the threat was reported to the Oslo Police… no doubt another Sai coward hiding behind an assumed name and using the e-mail of a large educational institution.

Sathya Sai Baba Man Gerald Moreno – Banned By Eight Wikpedia Editors

Note: Moreno defended Sathya Sai Baba for years while believing him to be a sexual abuser – see his own words and denying all negative facts about him. He is in deep denial, not least having himself been molested or ‘groomed’ through being “oiled on the lower stomach” (in private)

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PLEASE SEE THE SAI PETITION AND DECIDE WHETHER TO SIGN IT

Sathya Sai Baba – disclosure of damaging facts

An oft-repeated claim by Sathya Sai Baba, parroted by devotees, is that many kinds of unfair and undocumented accusations have been levelled against Sai Baba through the years, both by sceptics and followers who are dissatisfied or disappointed by unfulfilled expectations as to Sathya Sai Baba ‘s attention etc. This is based on Sathya Sai Baba s own pronouncements about how unfairly all good people have always been treated by their jealous contemporaries, and that he will be no exception himself.Who would be jealous of a person who is so credibly accused of serial sex abuses and who was complicit in cold-blooded murder. Dissidents are spoken of as being ‘disgruntled’ (devotees’ mindless Prashanthi-speak) because Sai Baba says they did not get what they wanted from him, but in fact they are disgusted, and rightly so!

Sai Baba’s defensiveness towards all who may leave him is seen in Sanathana Sarathi (11-92, p. 261), “The minds of the so-called devotees are turned in the wrong direction. If their desires are fulfilled, they praise Me. But, once a desire is not realised they go to the extent of even reviling me. Even while they are attempting to understand Me, they harbour doubts from head to foot. Some even leave me, when their worldly desires are not fulfilled.” He also takes the sly precaution of warning that he will have to separate “the grain from the chaff”, as if it were his own plan that devotees who cease to believe or accept him are rejected by him firstly! Why would this self-proclaimed compassionate avatar wish to do that, one asks? The answer is obvious… he is unable to control anyone who has seen through his lies, but can control only except some of those who lie at his feet in surrender.

One cannot but note that such predictions are most convenient for those who know they have something to hide that will not stand the light of day but which will probably eventually be discovered. They can then defend themselves by saying, ‘I predicted this all along’. The propensities Sathya Sai Baba has most apparently been unable to overcome, were reportedly told about to various persons by one of his earliest and closest followers who shared his bedroom for several of his post-pubescent years (the pair of them were known locally as ‘Radha and Krishna’, according to Smt. Vijaya Kumari – ‘Vijayamma‘), and it would moreover be hugely naïve to believe that he never had sexual stirrings in the normal way. He has once actually told in a discourse that the sexual instinct is the hardest of all tendencies for humans to overcome. That homosexual relations with minors are evidently quite widespread and tacitly accepted in much of India does not mean that they are openly accepted or practically legalized in the wider society, so guilt and the need to cover up must also be equally widespread.

See also:-
Sathya Sai Baba – serious child abuse

Book reveals ‘secrets’ of Sathya Sai Baba

In Smt. Vijayakumari’s book “Anyathya Saranam Nasthi” we read about Sathya Sai Baba’s literal belief in disincarnate demons, no less!

“Do  demons really exist, Swami?” he replied “Yes! Those who committed suicide,  those killed in accidents, those who met with an untimely death, all these  will be roaming around like ghosts.“

Sai Baba also promotes the belief in black magic as a reality, which is bound up with widespread beliefs in India about witchcraft, the evil eye and leads to horrendous killings of supposed ‘witches’.

See full coverage of his statements here.

See on the right scan from the book with her shocking testimony about Sathya Sai Baba as a
child abuser, which she – his own mother – accepted because she believed in the gross superstition that there must be some ‘evil power’ being driven away from him!

Also read: more on Sai Baba’s beatings of her son

and Sathya Sai Baba’s narcissism
The English title of the book (in English) is ‘Refuge other that you I have none’ Vijayamma’s e-mail was  <asn_vijayamma@hotmail.com> & address W/o K.S. HemChand, Opp. Brooke Bond, Main Road, Whitefield. B’lore. 560066.  Karnataka. The printers are Sai Shriram Printers, Ekkattuthangal, Chennai.

Sathya Sai Baba as ‘The Divine Mother’

Son of Smt. Vijaya Kumari with Sathya Sai Baba

Shocking evidence of Sathya Sai Baba’s draconian punishment for nothing: In her book, Other than You refuge there is none (Anyatha Saranam Nasthi) the elderly Indian woman devotee, Smt. Vijaya Kumari, who was with Sai Baba already in the 40s when Sai Baba was in his teens, we read:-

“Swami shows as much intense affection as anger. The slightest oversight with regard to arrangements for his meals would provoke Him into a fit of anger. Sometimes He would fling His plate at the wall opposite Him with such force that it would rebound and come back to Him. Sometimes that anger was unleashed on us. He would box our ears. Due to pinches from His nails, our ears would always be red. Boys would be pinched on their thighs, while to the girls, he gave ‘Prasadam of raps on their heads. Do you find it hard to believe? When He looked the picture of wrath, verily like Lord Parama Siva, we would hide behind doors like so many scared rabbits….” (p. 68-9)

These seem far more like classic symptoms of a developing psychopath than divine grace, the powerful urge to dominate and control others. This is backed up by the author’s account of Sai Baba’s horrific treatment of her own three year old son. The photograph of this boy shows the harsh and arrogant-looking Sai Baba…and, knowing the testimony that has flooded in about sexual abuses, one can well imagine the nature of this master-slave relationship

“Everyone used to call him ‘Chota Baba’ (little Baba). He had a full head of crinkled hair. Swami made the boy sit in His lap and asked him, “What is your name? – Have you drunk milk – Would you like to eat rice? – Do you want to be naughty?” The boy gave replies in a cute way. Everyone was laughing.
The boy was then three years old. Suddenly, Swami made him lie face down in His lap and began beating him hard on the back. None of us knew what to make of it. We were all stunned, and staring at Swami. Who among us had the courage to go near Swami and question Him? The boy’s face looked jaded. He was yelling and crying. “Go, go away from here.” Saying so, Swami pushed the boy away from Him. The poor little boy! He came running to me sobbing. The sobs did not subside even after one hour. Every week, Swami would treat the boy like this, three or four times. The minute I took him out of the cradle my son would say pathetically, “Don’t take me to Swami, mother”, and break into tears. I would feel very pained. But when Swami ordered me to bring the boy, how could I say no? Further I had full faith and confidence in Swami… On the days when Venkamma garu happened to be with us, she would take my son from Swamis lap, saying “That is enough, Swami”. My son was by no means mischievous. He was so quiet that none was aware of his presence in a room. But we do not know which Devil power Swami had to drive away from him.“

Though Vijayamma remained a blind devotee, Sathya Sai Baba is charged with being a violent physical molester of a mere baby by her own description! Not even as a mother did she dare to intervene on behalf of a helpless infant!! Is this a demonstration of Sathya Sai Baba’s all-embracing compassion and divine “mother love” of which he so often boasts? (See here) He even ridiculed the defenceless child upon which to exercise his own sick ‘humour’ for raising a laugh. He never explained his relentless beatings, and he has never been made to answer to anybody for anything – even the murders in his own bedroom! The ba-ba-ing chorus of sheepish followers will say: “He is God and can therefore do anything he wishes. Who are we to question God?” Pitiful and disgusting cowardice! He is a human being who criminally abused another human being, a tiny child. The evidence of Vijayamma – one of his greatest apologists – will remain a ‘test of faith’ and common decency for the cover-ups by the Indian judiciary and governments… and will surely go down in history as damning evidence of the bogus claims by Sai Baba of being a loving, non-violent and peaceful God.

For a further discussion of this issue see here.

NOTE THE COMMENT AND MY REPLY

1. Himanshu Misra said

   November 27, 2013 at 10:48 am ehow can you say that ‘Vijaya Amma’ remained a blind devotee ? She has had many clear experiences of Baba’s all knowing, all powerful quality. so her faith was based on experience and not mere reading of books or hearing of stories. and what is fact but an experience :)

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   Comment from Robert
   What one experiences is subjective fact, not objective fact. The perceptions of the senses are often false, and the mind’s interpretation of them – often based on superstitious ignorance – yet more so. People can live in a world of fantasy and see everything through distorting beliefs, biased emotions, and all manner of cognitive distortion. Fact is established by the comparison of many sane people’s consensus and backed up by observable concrete evidence of all kinds (including documentation of events).One could hardly find a more deluded devotee of Sai Baba than Vijayamma. She was manipulated from the start, accepting the young Sai Baba’s outrageous behaviour in Puttapathi, accepting that his lies and deceptions were ‘tests’ of faith, and knowing that he was a homosexual and not a celibate at all, as he claimed to be! Reading her book would convince anyone who was not also a blind believer that she was a religious mythoman and fantasist, describing Sai Baba in absurdly glorious language far removed from the reality (I knew him well myself and no eulogistic descriptions she or Kasturi wrote of him remotely fitted the bill at all!). Her devotion was extreme and remarkable considering the many and sometimes extreme trials through which she was put by Sai Baba, it will be regarded as very misguided by most people who do not need someone to worship. She wrote in detail about some of the most deceitful and heartless behaviour by the young Sathya Sai Baba, not least the relentless weekly thrashing of her well-behaved baby son, a boy Sai baba abused sexually when he grew up! This was her experience, and no doubt in this case, because of massive corroberating evidence of sexual abuse, it was a fact too.

   Read more about Vijayamma here: <http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/27/Vijayamma_reviewed.html