Initial comment: Here is the inevitable step-by-step deconstruction of a faith/belief system, once held in good faith, but subsequently learned to be a result of compounded deceits by Sathya Sai Baba and active ‘self-indoctrination’ Comments, all in blue text, originate from 2006 onwards. The facts stated are not untrue, but they tended to be weighted or colouring in my presentation of them by interpretations to supporting the agenda, on the whole I then had: to support and further the works of Sathya Sai Baba. The original text of the Samuel Weiser edition is given here in black text. All comments are in bold royal blue text.


In this book I recount experiences that eventually led me into the sphere of a very great being. They are like a lens, and at the focus of interest is Sathya Sai Baba.

Facts are, of course, ultimately only meaningful when related to personal experience. Our own experience is what each of us can know best, as we are the sole witness and final coordinator of it all. However poor my self-knowledge may happen to be, I still neces­sarily know myself more intimately than I do any other person. Though self-knowledge and knowledge of others are doubtless re­lated, it is to myself that I am closest. Short of possessing supreme intelligence, to know and understand any other person fully and truly seems to be beyond anyone, not least when I consider how dif­ficult it is to know myself in the deeper sense of understanding my whole being.

Comment: The irony here is fairly subtle. It was and is true that I know myself best of all people, but I thought I knew enough about Sai Baba to realize that he must be of very superior knowledge and intelligence, if not even the possessor of infallible omniscience. That I was being deceived by him at the most basic level, I did not know until very much later on. Part of his deception consists in making people think only of their own experience as sound, and – as the next paragraph clearly shows, not to think one can possibly understand him! Once accepted, this causes one not to question him or anything he says or does… at least not critically. However, after having penetrated his carefully-projected aura of mystique and found out central facts of his physical and social life, his intelligence shows itself as very far from being supreme! In fact, he often displays gross ignorance of known and indisputable facts, for example, about a wide range of scientific and historical facts. His ‘teachings’ are also full of self-contradictory views, mythology promoted as being real accounts and other superstitious nonsense common to many semi-educated Indian villagers.

When the atomic scientist Dr. Bhagavantam asked Sathya Sai Baba why he still could not fathom him at all, after having been many years in his presence, the reply he received was that he, Bhagavantam, had been himself from birth . . . but did he therefore know himself? Sai Baba told him, "First try to understand yourself, and leave me to myself." Sai Baba has also asserted that we can nev­er "know" him and that his nature as an avatar is far beyond the reach of human understanding.

This book deals with what have so far been unquestionably and by far the most important matters in my experience, but it is no autobiography, in that it concentrates only on what relates to my way to Sathya Sai Baba and how he features in my life.

Comment:  In the event, these matters were unfortunately then so important to the extent that they caused me to spend very large amounts of time and effort (and also far too much money) of a result of his deceits. What I achieved and learned from this is – in the main – how subtly yet massively millions of people can be manipulated through religious or ‘spiritual’ ideology, combined with the strongest charisma and personality.  I am obvi­ously restricted to writing about my relationship to him. I recount some experiences preparatory to my first encounter with Sai Baba because of the extraordinary combination of intricate means by which this was brought about.

I am very much aware that my personal experiences are of lim­ited importance to the whole scheme of things over which Sathya Sai's direct influence operates. Anyone who reads a fair selection of the many hundreds of personal stories already available from people whom Sathya Sai Baba has attracted and transformed will perceive that my "story" and person are nor exceptional. Likewise, Sathya Sai's influence has been at work in many people's lives (invariably unbeknown to them) long before they meet him in person or even become aware that he exists. Yet, like anyone else, my background and experiences are in some ways unique, and provide a personal setting for the same basic search in which I believe we are all some­how engaged.

In the interests of objectivity I try to record both the most rel­evant objective events and my subjective anticipations, interpreta­tions, and reactions to them. Many years of working in philosophy and other subjects have convinced me that nothing can be described with "sheer objectivity" independent of personal and subjective per­ception and thought. No scientist, no observer, and no writer can ever avoid selecting and interpreting his subject matter, shaping and filtering it through the aperture of the personal mind. Individual aspects of understanding lie behind even the very driest of apparent­ly-neutral facts and figures, and this is often the insidious deceptive-ness of what would claim to be nothing but "descriptive," but is actually always partly a product of subjective design.

For the above reasons, I try to give a truthful and accurate de­scription and analysis of the mental and emotional processes through which Sai Baba drew me to him. This "phenomenological method" allows the reader to judge the so-called objective facts by understanding their personal or "subjective setting" and my ap­proach to them.

I chose the outlined approach in the hope that people who may not be able to visit Sathya Sai Baba will be aided in seeing how he may communicate with anyone, even from great physical distance.

I shall consequently avoid "hearsay evidence" almost entirely, making it quite clear whenever I may report any that I regard as reliable and accurate. There are very few occasions when second­hand observations seem to be of much genuine value. Reproducing verbatim quotes of reported speech are acceptable, but indirect accounts culled from other sources, especially when re-worded, are a constant danger to the truth and may be a rich source of confusion and misunderstanding. Therefore I do not attempt to give any re­sume of the life of Sai Baba, amazing and fascinating as it most cer­tainly is.

Comment: Though I did exert myself to avoid ‘hearsay’ evidence almost entirely in the actual text, I was nevertheless definitely very much influenced by hearsay, not least after a decade of associating with Sai devotees from many countries and on numerous foreign visits as a leader in the Sathya Sai Organization (notably India, UK, Denmark and Italy)

Any fairly persistent observer knows that the achievements of Sri Sathya Sai Baba are monumental. The account I give is only one fraction to add to the hundreds of books already published around the world of people's experiences of Sai Baba. The sheer volume of these is, itself, a striking and helpful phenomenon.

I have tried to recount judiciously and descriptively rather than giving outright expression to devotion or poetic enthusiasm. Like­wise, I have avoided the use of capital letters tor nouns and pro­nouns referring to Sathya Sai Baba, which may have pleased the converted but alienated other serious seekers. Some may wish to know that Baba has nevertheless blessed these writings by touching the materials on two occasions before the final draft, which he has also since given me permission to publish.

I am fortunately placed in having been shown, through indubi­table insights into the meaning of many events that occurred in my life, how a guiding and protecting hand really has been with me, even during years when I would have rejected such an idea on sup­posedly very sound rational grounds. As will become evident from the more extraordinary happenings themselves as recounted here, they came about through Sri Sathya Sai Baba's agency—sometimes directly, sometimes less evidently.

Comment: What seems ‘indubitable’ can undergo modification when more and wider information, also indubitable, is attained.

I would also add that the facts referred to here have been con­tinuously researched, rechecked, and corrected through a period of seven years, and the text has been reworked in the interests of pre­cision, accuracy, and truth, time and again.

Comment: I would ALSO add that the facts stated in the book (as far as I can see now), though formally correct in themselves, have been further researched from a much more critical and skeptical standpoint, and I am able to rework the book in respect of its overall agenda, interpretations of the facts and eventual conclusions!

I clearly owe my deepest thanks to Sathya Sai for all the essen­tial "subject matter" of this book—the experiences that were grant­ed to me and that I record.
Comment: This I withdraw most definitively. The experience I had were my experiences, and I doubt entirely that he has to power to grant experiences in any other way than I or anyone else can ‘grant’ them to others. This should become much more evident as my comments on the text progress.