Sai Baba lives within the charmed circle of a cult within which he can never be challenged on the simplest thing. Through his claim to be the Godhead of all Deities who is totally all-knowing and and all-powerful, Sathya Sai Baba has developed a culture around himself (or more accurately, a full-blown personality cult) where he rules the roost totally. No one who remains within its social and mental confines ever ventures to doubt anything he says, for he is to be regarded as totally infallible, even if one does not understand what he means or why he says it.

The standard fall-back position for 'explaining' every awkward and nasty fact about Sathya Sai Baba is: "We human beings cannot understand Swami's Divine actions", "The ways of God are inscrutable", and a dozen other such excuses for anything he says which is recognisably untrue, vague, ambiguous, self-contradictory, improbable, untoward, or at odds with his own teachings or other words to the same effect.

Of course, one cannot understand what he says or why if one has given up the attempt to discover the truth of it beforehand, and this 'giving up' is to 'surrender to his Divine will'. It implies that one never may question anything he says or does, without exception! Not even in the privacy of one's thoughts! Sathya Sai Baba either ignores or fobs off anything remotely like a penetrating question that may still be put to him by some daring person who has slipped through the net into an interview but who is not yet fully obedient to the Divine Will.

Sai Baba maintains his 'mystery' by avoiding giving straightforward answers: From about 10 hours altogether in the various interview rooms with Sai Baba and from hearing and reading at least 100 accounts of interviews from other devotees (often noted in papers they circulate or in articles and books) and after countless hours of private discussion with Sai Baba's translator at many interviews, V.K. Narasimhan, it is fair to say that Sai Baba seldom responds openly and frankly to what the questioner really wants to know, but turns the question back at the questioner or spins the matter around somehow. If he does reply (rather than, as often, turn to another person instead) what he says is frequently elliptical and off the point. He treats all questions or comments which he does not like in what my elderly colleague Prof. Erlendur Haraldsson characterised to me very fittingly as follows:

"I recall when Karlis Osis and I had our first encounter with Sai Baba we both felt that he, apart from his great charisma, was a great prima donna, with a tremendous ego, and also kind of a Napoleon, with a ruler's mind and tactics. Boasting, and illusions about one's true characteristics is a part of such a psychological makeup, and in Sai Baba this is to a psychopathological degree unless one assumes the split-personality model to explain him which I find tempting."

What we would not accept as a valid or relevant answer from other people, many devotees will immediately accept as profound when it comes from the one they believe to be omniscient. For example, when asked by a friend of mine from Copenhagen why it was that Jehova (i.e. God, i.e. Sai Baba) had not told the Jews about reincarnation, but asserted the contrary via the Bible. Sathya Sai Baba simply did not understand the question and asked to have it explained. (A divine joke that he can't understand? I think not!). My Jewish friend said that the question was about reincarnation and intended to specify, but - without waiting to hear the actual question again - Baba replied brusquely, and in so many words, "Oh! Reincarnation! You cannot understand it. Do not try to think about it. It is like the seed and the fruit." I saw that this answer was just a brush off, but afterwards my friend claimed that it was a perfect answer! His view was that, because the question was one that his Jewish wife considered very important, Baba was telling that they should rather concentrate on other more important things. This is not untypical of Baba's way of answering questions. He frequently replies so obliquely that no sense can be made of his words, or he changes the subject unexpectedly, or brushes it aside and the person concerned often takes whatever comes as a significant teaching or even a spiritual directive. This is also typical of evasive deceivers hoping to maintain others' false perceptions, or to avoid being unmasked or incriminating themselves.

In short, whatever Sai Baba replies, or however he avoids replying, is taken by devotees as a profoundly meaningful matter! If what he says seems plainly mistaken, based on a misunderstanding or factually wrong , the devotee will twist and turn the words in every possible way and relate them to all manner of events past present, dreams, imagined things and so on until some kind of sense can be derived from the words... however unsatisfactory. This is also the case when he does not reply or is gruff, or gives the brush off. It becomes a subject of constant meditation or worry, self-examination and self-doubt. I have witnessed this on many occasions. What hardly ever seems to occur to the poor person who is struggling with these challenges is that Sathya Sai Baba might be wrong, might not know what he is talking about, may be bluffing or may simply be inadequately equipped to deal with the question. Only after realising that Sai baba is not at all what he claims to be does all this gradually become as apparent as the sun in daylight!

Sathya Sai Baba can avoid being unaccountable to anyone for anything: Sai Baba is virtually never held to account to his face for anything he says. Most people who qualify to get near him already have too much respect, awe or out-and-our fear to question anything he says or does in any but the most positive or else superficially questioning manner. This is not to say that there have been absolutely no exceptions. There are doubtless those who only pretend subservience, while being self-willed and devious. Most officials in his various institutions who are often in his presence have the 'healthy respect' for him, his will and his word that a schoolboy has for an unpredictably punishing headmaster. Now, is this not what one would expect of God too? In all major religions, God is not accountable for any kind of error or wrong doing. As long as one really believes that Sathya Sai is God Almighty himself on two feet, or something near to that, one thereby surrenders all chance of understanding anything about him. Add to this the indisputable fact that Sai Baba does not WANT anyone to be able to understand him... almost everything he says and does demonstrates this! He also is ever telling people in private interviews to keep things secret, which is a near paranoid precaution for controlling what is generally known about him.

At the same time he is admittedly a master at seeming to tell something, but saying it so ambiguously or obliquely that it amounts to saying as good as nothing. I have to admit that I was taken in for a long time by some of his clever comments and half-spoken sentences... For now and again he suddenly breaks off mid-sentence and turns his attention to something else or another person. The disappointed person soon contrives an explanation, for this omniscient God must be telling something through this behaviour. I spent much time searching for explanations as if searching for a needle in a haystack, and they were seldom convincing when I did find them. I now conclude that, to a large extent, he thus avoids really telling anything, leaving the devotee at least an illusion of having the attention of God Himself. Those he talks to (very seldom more than one or two sentences) are expected to be overwhelmed with gratitude, to see it as a blessing for which one has striven through many previous lives packed with good actions! People want to believe such things, and they do. In the ashrams one believes in 'thinking with the heart, not the head'. No one seems to realise that the heart can deceive as much or even more than the head, and that it can be filled with feelings of inferiority, intense unfulfilled longing for love - or at least acceptance.

There is no doubt that the subjective experiences of interviews are very good for most people (though not all, for some are told off strictly too etc.). One can read hundreds of accounts that use superlatives beyond all reason. I can now see myself as misled and so 'naively guilty' of a much too one-sided and gold-tinted account of interviews in my book ('Source of the Dream'). Therefore I choose to describe my summary of Sathya Sai Baba interviewees' from the cold clarity of my eventual disillusion with them.

After attending several interviews they tend to become an anticlimax to persons who have still have a mind of their own, because so little can really be learned about anything from Sathya Sai Baba . He just reels off his usual imprecise spiritual directions. Sometimes it is like a routine he enters, regardless of who is present. But this is certainly not how one's first interviews seem! Interviewees are often so worked up after months or years of his 'Wait! Wait!' instruction - and who can count what sacrifices and efforts many have made- and are mega-relieved (as if they were pools' winners). In interviews, many behave as if in a daze, there is often a sense of staring, hypnotic happiness. Especially ladies, mostly having been constantly starved for the slightest attention at darshan, often give themselves over to an orgy of gushing words about it afterwards, like 'blissed out', 'spaced out by divine love' and 'eternal moments of realisation' and what have you. All of this remind of some psycho-social orgasmic release of pent-up doubts and worries in surrendering to the delightful conviction, 'So I am really one of God's chosen children after all'. This conviction is always insecure, however, and Sathya Sai Baba will shake it time and again with his famous hypothetical 'tests of faith', i.e. his indifference, his neglect and much more besides until death... of that one could invariably be convinced and confident, at least!

Sathya Sai Baba avoids giving any teaching on sexual issues or related problems: It is most noticeable and very revealing that this self-proclaimed omniscient world universal teacher has never discoursed on human sexuality other than in a few words to preach chastity, also praising this as best within marriage. He has nothing whatever to advise but abstention from sexual behaviour. Nor does he answer any questions which have a bearing on this, one of his taboo subjects! Since the sexual impulse is so fundamental and is the source of so many personal, social and other problems in the world, one might have expected some more enlightened talk about it than preaching monastic and repressive ideals. There is nothing whatever ‘spiritual’ about avoiding the issues connected with sexuality. Why is one of mankind's most fundamental biological drives virtually unmentionable by this 'Divine Know-all'! What a parody of spiritual guidance to mankind!

Though he avoids all subjects like birth control, condoms, AIDS and other sex-related issues as if they were a plague (except reportedly in the privacy of the interview room or with close confidantes like Col. Joga Rao with whom he reportedly laughed at sexual jokes), he simulates an attitude in public which is more Catholic than both the former and the present Pope. Yet India has a recognised population of AIDS sufferers of over 5 million persons, which independent experts consider likely to be only half the actual figure. The authorities in power, many of whom worship Sai Baba , argue that it would be offensive to speak to people about sex and AIDS, condoms etc., but experience by independent organisations show this to be wrong. Leaders are simply out of touch with the population, from whom the live as far as possible in physical and social isolation.

That Sai Baba cannot touch on sex discussion is revealing! It strongly suggests that his real views would awaken astonishment and would cause many to fall away from his movement and might also draw more attention to his own very widely testified sexual proclivities and preferences. He lists lust as one of the seven or cardinal sins, without explaining what kind of lust even, though he always claims to have no bodily desires. However, many factual and convincing accounts by a wide variety of young men indicate clearly that Sathya Sai Baba has tried to change them into homosexuals for his own gratification!

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