NOTE: The following page preceded the above one in my notebook -
but it is of somewhat lesser interest, so is placed below here.

Transcript: Printing
N also talked about the possibility of an offset press for P.N. and the problem of management and a competent, devoted leader, for whom Sai was waiting before setting up such an enterprise.
Comment: However, Narasimhan gave me a much longer account than I recorded. An US devotee had offered Sai Baba a used but serviceable offset printing press, which offer Sai accepted. The press eventually arrived at Brindavan from the US, but was left out in the rain, sun and wind for months and became useless. VKN said this was mainly because the current printers were jealous of their jobs printing the Sanathana journal and feared innovations with which they could not cope. So the huge expense was all wasted!

Transcript: Suicide
The case of the driver. N. had never spoken to anyone but me before. Key points: Sensitive person may have taken comments by S.B. to heart too literally - he had killed a person by careless driving - tho' warned 3 times previously about driving too fast/confidently by S.B. N. also 'compared' with other incidents: Sai's punishment of Kasturi for a fault warned about 3 times - and also (text blacked out for security reasons)
Comment: Narasimhan was answering a question I put him about Sai's personal driver for many years. N. confirmed that the man was out in the car alone and drove down a villager who died. The ashram authorities had to pay the family and hush up the affair. The poor driver was excluded from the ashram with nothing and Sai Baba did not hear his pleas (being in Brindavan and so completely deaf to the 'call for help', one assumes?). He set fire to himself under the Shiva statue in the Hillview Stadium and died. So much for Sai Baba's protection! Sai Baba also severely punished Prof. N. Kasturi (about which Kasturi himself told during a lecture in the old lecture hall in 1985 which I attended)

Transcript: The Telugu San. Sarathi once published Sai saying, during a discourse, that a son who went against his father's wishes could just as well be poisoned for it. It had been, said S.B. specially intended only for a man who had actually just poisoned his son & who was suffering terrible guilt for it. This passage was left out by Narasimhan in the English version.
Comment: This shows that Sai Baba is not aware that his words would be printed in Telugu. Why he did not convey this to the man in private is the question. That Narasimhan had to edit out (i.e. falsify) the discourse also shows how he had lost his independence as a journalist.

Transcript: 26/9/90 Morning darsan (Blacked text for sake of privacy) Afterwards N. took me off again and we had a long talk in his room and over tiffin in the canteen etc. This was the most interesting for me to date.
Comment: A long talk would often mean from 3 to 5 hours. Narasimhan recounted for me in detail many incidents Sai Baba had told him about in private. Since he had first been assistant editor on The Hindu, VKN had known Annie Besant and Jiddu Krishnamurti well over many years. The Hindu had supported a court case against the Theosophical Society on behalf of the father of Krishnamurti, who consider his son had been virtually kidnapped by them.

As my notes here recount, VKN had been influenced by Krishnamurti until he met Sai Baba, at which Krishnamurti had asked him how he could listen to such a man as that. VKN related in detail how Sai Baba had taken him to Adhyar (the Theosophical Society's centre near Madras) to see Krishnamurti. Sai Baba had confronted him severely, asking him whether he knew and understood the Vedas, Shastras, and Puranas etc. - which Krishnamurti considered on the level of fairy tales or worse, and could just as well be burned. Sai also asked whether Krishnamurti's books should also be burned, what made them so different? Clearly this was a major clash of 'spiritual selves' (or egos?). Krishnamurti could have retired that Sai Baba's books are also fit for burning, but VKN did not say how he reacted.

Transcript: Aurobindo
N. was also told by Sai that he (Sai) had told Aurobindo that, by sleeping in the same room as the Mother, he was setting a bad example!
Comment: This is doubtless sensible advice in India. Yet whether Sai Baba ever visited Sri Aurobindo in secret is highly suspect, since Aurobindo had been withdrawn from the world for many years and was inaccessible to visitors. This would seem to be a story Sai Baba used to try to impress those around him and told them not to tell, knowing well that the rumour would soon spread like wildfire.
It is 'a bit rich' for Sai Baba to make such a point, when he has made public in a discourse that he shares his bedroom with very young men... and widely reported came out of his bedroom together with was found with an underage boy (Subbappaypa) when the killings first occurred in the evening of 6-6-1993, a boy who subsequently disappeared and could not even be found by investigators for questioning!

Transcript: Ramana Maharshi
Likewise Ramana Maharshi had been reprimanded by the young Sai for not covering his body properly before all the people, including ladies, who came to see him.
Comment: Surely another empty boast by Sai Baba to try to impress insiders to believe in his own ascendancy over all supposed 'spiritual saints and masters'. If Sai Baba thought not fully covering one's body is wrong, why did he allow his head priest elected by him to administer his own mandir to walk among people with no covering from the waist up for decades until his death from diabetes?