GRATITUDE FOR WHAT AND TO WHOM?
"Ever be grateful even for a small help. Do not be ungrateful. Ingratitude is utter cruelty." (ibid p. 166-7).

For the n'th time, one must ask what is wrong with Sathya Sai Baba's sense of proportion (or control of his tongue's excessive pronouncements)? "Ingratitude is utter cruelty." Grateful as I was for some things in which Sathya Sai Baba has apparently helped me, I cannot but help think that – had I his opportunities - I would help everyone with the greatest pleasure. What does it cost to do his leelas and miracles? Time, his energy… but what kind of a sacrifice does this really involve, one can but ask? It is sometimes difficult indeed – frankly quite pointless or even evil-minded – to be grateful for much of what happens to people (by Sathya Sai Baba's will?) Meanwhile, it is quite possible to have gratitude to Sathya Sai Baba for some things he did (or may have done, if we have proof of it) for some of us, and at the same time require accountability from him for other things we have discovered about him since then. To be grateful for some things does not mean that one should have to give the helper a carte blanche to neglect justice and truth. To remain grateful everlastingly for some uncertain favours does not remove the right to question the same person about his deceits and involvement in other harmful actions like executions in his own apartments.

"See how much help Swami is giving to the poor and needy. It is all for their welfare. But some people are not at all realising the value and are not grateful for it." (ibid p. 166). How can one who boasts that he owns nothing, give anything? It was given via Sathya Sai Baba by many well-meaning, good people, and not by him as such. But he has to boast and rub it in again and again. Why? Instead, he berates foreigners for giving indiscriminately, as follows (in original discourse, edited out of Sanathana).

"Today all the foreigners are distributing money, distributing money, distributing money, and they are making the country of Bharath very low." This is yet another preposterous sweeping false statement about India by Sathya Sai Baba! In the original discourse he also waffles on about someone who became the US President, but without naming him, Lincoln is evidently intended. But what he says about Lincoln's politics towards the black population demonstrates very basic ignorance of the facts.

Further, I have not seen anywhere in his thousands of discourses - or any books about him - that Sathya Sai Baba has expressed his gratitude to anyone for the help he personally receives! As usual, Sathya Sai Baba claims "I do not accept anything from anyone" (p. 168). How can he really not receive ANYTHING, just like everyone else alive does? Does he grow and harvest his own produce (ragi and watermelons, coconuts, rice and wheat for chapattis etc.)? Does he make his own robes? (Or is the Emperor without clothes?). Does he make his own furniture, build his own rooms, decorate his own showy thrones or does he receive the hundred and one things necessary even to his subsistence from the labour of others? He remarks too, while telling how he totally ignored for three days a would-be donor to him of car replacements (i.e. shining example of divine ingratitude?), that "I already have a sufficient number of cars" (p. 168). So HE does HAVE some! So how many does one man need? If everyone in the world followed his divine example with up to 5 cars per person, the atmosphere would soon kill us! Moreover, I have never heard of him saying 'thank you' to anyone for any favours received, and many he certainly does accept! In fact, he is provided with everything by others and never has had to lift a finger himself for many decades. Yet Sathya Sai Baba has the cheek to pretend he wants nothing, as follows: "Take My cars if you need them! I don’t like to travel in very big cars. However, they have sent them from foreign countries. After they send it, it is not possible to do anything else with them." How transparently deceitful can one talk ... he could donate them all to hospitals or whatever, and get one small one for himself!

Ah, some know-alls will say, 'you must understand that Swami is in everyone, in everything - he has countless hands, eyes...' and all that jazz. Don't we all, ultimately then, all of us being nothing less than Atma? Besides, is it not a weird and confused proposition... that this person Sathya Sai Baba is necessarily as much 'in' every victim and perpetrator of every evil deed as in everything else? He is physically-embodied who thus shows all the outward signs of being like many others, for better and for worse, with many self-expressed likes and dislikes, anger and sympathies. Doesn't it seem far removed from the facts and from sane considerations for him to pretend he is not personally involved in anything he does? The answer is, evidently not... not to many unworldly, life-despising, liberation-yearning, unfulfilled, suffering or dissatisfied devotees who cling to this imagined saviour who lets his closest devotees die in accidents (Mrs. Sinclair, students in car accidents) suicides (numerous), murders (not least in his bedroom), with great physical sufferings (eg., Kasturi, Narasimhan) and with the promise of liberation withdrawn (Dr. John Hislop).

His claim of omnipresence has nothing whatever to do with questions like gratitude, possessions, kindness towards critics on which Sathya Sai Baba propounded. For, if we are really to take the advaitic view at all seriously - that all are indistinguishably one with Divinity - then who is to feel grateful to whom? Why does Sathya Sai Baba need gratitude so badly himself, and accept it on as huge a scale as he can?