With
his condemnatory Christmas 2000 discourse, Sathya Sai Baba destroyed
at a stroke what remains of his previous lifelong claims to never
to condemn anyone, to love all and always to adhere to truth.
He blackens those who criticise, spread negative news or raise doubts,
even when there are valid grounds and openness is justified. He goes
to the length of branding dissenters as 'Judases' implying that their
actions can never be redeemed, and elsewhere he adds that they must
all suffer shame throughout any number of future births. The doctrine
that worldly facts are not truth is easily misused to cover up facts
in ashrams - which are all also inevitably involved in worldly dealings.
The claim is that facts have no significance beside the higher, divine
truth and so can safely be ignored. Therefore one distorts actual
matters and presents doctrinal half-truths in their place. But the
old saying that 'a half-truth is often worse than a lie' holds true!
Idealising propaganda by Sathya Sai Baba and his various officials it soon becomes
largely self-induced and self-sustained. Fed by a flow of indoctrination
and misinformation, this soon leads to a kind of brainwashing of a
physically non-violent but yet more effective kind.
(The officially edited and redacted Sanathana Sarathi version can be downloaded here. If unavailable, it is also found here.
Sathya Sai
Baba has refuted the main tenet of his own lifelong teaching that
'The Divine Spark is in everyone' Further, in a later
discourse he proclaims that there is not even a spark of divinity
in his critics! ["... a hard-hearted person
cannot be called a spark of Divinity; he is verily a demon."
{p. 323, Sanathana Sarathi, November 2002].
This is a total contradiction
to his constant previous claims that there is a spark of Divinity
in every living being (actually sometimes even in all matter, as
I quote: "All beings are sparks of the
Eternal Divinity" page 101 from his Discourses in Kodaikanal
1998). He falsely claims that ex-devotees were offered bribes to write
stories against him. There is not a jot of evidence of this, it is
obviously nothing but a lie calculated to try to calm devotees. Bribery
is a widely reported method Sai Baba himself uses to silence the victims
of his homosexual abuse of them. He did not, however, manage to silence
all of them with money, 'jewellry' or 'gold' watches, such as Alaya
Rahm
In calling his critics “demons” he made a complete break with all his previous soft talk about love and the divine spark in every living being (which he suddenly denies to his critics, the many young men who testified to being sexually abused by him). This discourse helped convince me that I had to investigate and begin to look much more carefully – even critically – at the evidence. His wild, unfounded accusations also helped me realise the sham that his teaching really is. It took me months, but once the spell was broken, I progressed further and further to discover how I had gradually become deeply affected by subtle and powerful self-programming and rejection of doubts and ‘unkind thoughts’ (especially about Sai Baba himself!) through the entire indoctrination Sai Baba promotes. He had previously stated that “none are free from the taint of evil” (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol 3., p4). At the same time, yet more confusedly, he has sometimes also denied that anyone is either good or bad… or that good and bad even exists at all. Those who have thoroughly investigated the teachings of Sathya Sai Baba realize how he has deceived his followers about his true nature and actual behaviour. His actions belie his words and so he cannot even be a reliable spiritual guide, let alone a divine, omni-benevolent and omniscient Godhead! He evidently hoped his adharmic (i.e. unrighteous) actions would be covered-up, and huge efforts were and are being made by his minions and supporters to do just that!
The accusatory discourse had an effect on me at the time since I was considering whether to look at the allegations or not. “Today many people are jealous of Sai” and “neither will the undertake any good activities themselves” he said. I never was (and am definitely not now) in the least jealous of Sai Baba or anyone else, and I worked hard doing many kinds of social service in his Organization for 18 years, also donating large sums of money… and the same applied to many I knew who soon left him. I decided to investigate the criticisms at last and soon began to draw some unexpected conclusions about him.
Sathya Sai Baba ranted on in his discourse before invited foeign visitors in the 'mandir' (Prashanthi Nilayam temple) against his accusers of sexual abuse and lied outright about them
"There are some jealous and petty minds who do false and imaginary propaganda. I take no note of this"- but he noted it right there!
He lies outright that his accusers employ 'imaginary propaganda' and so he must have been moved to notice it to respond like this, and so angrily as his beating of the lectern before him showed plainly! All can see that Sai Baba badly wanted to limit the damage to his following and most especially to foreign donations. In the decade following his attack, foreign visitors and no doubt also donations fell off increasingly. Many of his foremost, most active and professionally gifted foreign followers resigned from his organizations (see here).
Excerpts from Sathya Sai Baba's Christmas Discourse, 2000, in the Prashanthi
Nilayam temple (mandir)
Bad Publicity Is Shameless
These types of publicity are shameless. Truly they are not human beings
at all. The ones who put obstacles in the way of all sacred works are
demons, not human beings. The determined vow of Sai will never change,
even if demons like this may be all over the world. (Swami bangs his
fist decisively on the table to emphasize His point. The audience applauds
for long.)
They are trying to reduce the respect for Sai Baba with all this lowly
publicity. I do not desire respect at all. If it lessens, what is the
loss for Me? Gradually the respect will go on increasing. Even if this
publicity goes on, using all the letters of the alphabet, in this whole
world and in our country of Bharat, My glory and the respect for Me
will NOT BE reduced by even a fraction.
Even many devotees are becoming very weak. They are not true devotees.
Even when recognizing the powers of Sai, why should you be afraid of
all this crazy, useless talk? The writing that is written on the wall,
all the heap that is spoken on the stage and the heap that is written
in the paper, they are all rotten heaps. No one needs to pay attention
to them.
Bribes To Betray The Guru
Switzerland, America, Japan, Germany, China, Russia - our children
have entered in all directions. Some foreigners are trying to bribe
them. They are saying, "See, foolish ones! I will give this much
money. I will give so many dollars. I will give this many pounds. You
write and give some stories against Sathya Sai Baba."
Ones of certain religions create this bad publicity leading to conversions.
They are offering bribes like this. Even one girl staying in Switzerland
said that they told, "You write a story and give us." That
girl took the boots which she was wearing from her feet and yelled,
"Is this the Truth that your religion teaches? Is this the ideal
Truth of your religion? Chi, chi, chi, chi! ("Very, very bad!")
Go!"
Many of these Judas's get desire for money and they are entering into
things like this. Entering into such activities, at last what happened
to Judas? He said the name of Jesus, revealing him to the authorities
to be captured. After the deed happened, he sat with tears in his eyes.
"Cha! Did I do such deceit to my guru? I am Guru Drohi, betrayer
of the guru, betrayer of God." Saying this, he hit himself.
Any betrayal may be done. However, just don't anyone start to betray
God. Betrayal of God is the worst of all betrayals. It will not be atoned
for no matter how many births are experienced. Therefore, you don't
take any part in betrayal of God at all.
The above is found here [from the full unedited translations of Sai Baba's words by Sai students].
(NOTE on the above Judas reference: Sai
Baba again demonstrates that he is far from omniscient as he is quite
unaware of the modern Biblical and historical research about Judas,
Jesus' closest disciple, who it emerges did not 'betray' him at all,
but acted on his instructions. The silver payment was a standard fee
that had to be paid to anyone who did this.)
During his public discourse some weeks after
the 1993 cold-blooded murders of four devotees in his bedroom (June
6th), Sathya Sai Baba also made an aggressive attack in ridiculing
an identifiable body of journalists who visited the ashram in 1993 to
find out about the six killings that took place in the temple and Sai
Baba's own quarters. They wrote what little they were able to discover
in the face of secrecy and impediments from ashram and Central Trust
officials. Having been challenged to answer a number of perfectly reasonable
questions on his role in relation to the murders at the temple (mandir)
and where he was at the time, why no complaint was lodged with the police
from the Prashanti Nilayam organisation etc., SSB later attacked them
in a public discourse as publishing "nothing but flights of the
imagination" and for being "malicious". He thereby went
against his own strict demand and defamed others, namely the journalists
who were not present to answer for themselves. This defamation of absent
persons without recourse to and questioning or explanation amounts to
back-biting and mud-slinging. Baba has since added to the divine blacklist
a number of easily identifiable persons who have written about his molestations
of them and published this of the Internet. So he has frequently ignored
his own words like, "Never speak ill of others" in his own
actions.
Sai Baba's actions no longer fit in with all
that he says about himself as regards his total purity, human perfection,
freedom from all lust etc. Sai Baba always says 'I am not the body', which
can also be taken as a denial of any connection with what he as 'his body'
does. This is the essence of the dual personality hypothesis concerning
such psychically powerful figures. Indian students who have been abused
tell us privately that their teachers, such as Nityananda at the Sai College,
tell them that the invisible Sai Baba is pure, but the physical Sai Baba
can freely rape and kill people as he sees fit! As one commentator has
written when Sai Baba "even condemns them to eternal rebirths (in
his Christmas discourse 2000 and not exactly in the spirit of Christmas,
one might say). To me, such hypocrisy seemed to be the hallmark of organised
religion (Christianity) and the main reason I would have nothing to do
with it after the age of 11 or 12. Once, I would never have thought that
Sathya Sai Baba would turn out to join the ranks of that long line of
hypocrites."
See also the full
unedited translations of Sai Baba's words by Sai students |