Remarkably, there are very few devotees of
Sathya Sai Baba who choose to sign up with their names or contact
details when they post on bulletin boards or make comments on critics' blogs. Hundreds
of Sai Baba supporters have submitted negative, sometimes threatening and not seldom vile
comments to the Guestbook of ExBaba.com or have sent in mailforms without
daring
to reveal their names or even to use valid e-mail addresses. (At
least half of all such postings have reportedly been rejected by the webmaster).
Likewise, the great majority of devotees who have mailed to
exposé activists gave no name - or used only a first name
(possibly bogus) - and they often sent from anonymous (cloaked)
IPs. Death threats have also been made aginst some of us, including the saiguru.net webmaster, Conny Larsson and myself (see here). Most often these e-mailers use most unmannerly language
as if in defiance of their own guru Sai Baba 's repeated demand
that one should never slander, criticise or speak harshly to anyone!
Which teaching, incidentally, he is himself notorious
for NOT observing , especially in private interviews and even nowadays
in public discourses! The dossier of this hate-campaign by followers of a preacher of love is growing and will eventually be made open to public scrutiny.
Sai officials and adherents
who retire to the shades
Those leaders and devotees whose names are known mostly put
themselves forward before Sathya Sai Baba’s many alleged crimes
were commonly known and before it was realised that – once shown
the Internet – all information given can be indelibly and permanently
recorded, not least by others. Today those supporters of the insupportable
(i.e. Sai Baba’s megalomaniac claims etc.) have become very
shy of any personal publicity which can identify them! Even
many Sai-promoting website owners fail to give their correct names
or any contact details. Every one of the hundred or more Sai Baba
discussion groups is moderated rigorously to exclude any posting
which is remotely critical of Sai Baba! (This fact can be checked
by anyone who cares to view them or join up!). That no devotees
anywhere dare enter any discussion which is not entirely in praise
of Sathya Sai Baba says a great deal about the censorship and fear
of openness, and further proves that this is an authoritarian cult. The majority live within the cocoon of either the ashram, the Sathya Sai Organization and/or the catch-all belief
and indoctrination system. Only at the ashrams, at Sathya
Sai Organisation meetings and the like can members feel safety in numbers and
be shielded from awkward questions and commonsense concerns. They all
share and reinforce the same (often false) beliefs and host
the same disinformation, which they therefore can never have examined
intelligently or independently, the great majority being religious believers of a quite extreme variety... especially the Indian contingent, which generally believes in the literal truth of most of the ancient mythologies, the Mahabharata, Ramayana and Bhagavatha!
Since the exposure of Sathya Sai Baba by many critics
and alleging victims of his sexual abuses on the Internet began
around 2000, his whole movement has closed ranks and turned in
on itself ever more noticeably. Yet for many years before that,
the Sathya Sai Organisation was already secretive and legally
unaccountable, increasingly hiding the contact details of its
members and remaining legally unincorporated in most countries
(thus to stay unaccountable in any way), along with other concealment.
The stigma of public association with Sathya Sai Baba is causing
more and more of his organisation office-bearers and members to
conceal their identities and e-mail addresses on the Internet
and in the media. This mounting evidence of the clearly cultist
behaviour of Sai Baba followers is encouraging
for the future of the exposé.
Glaring
Publicity yet Silence on Critical Issues
In earlier years, many Sai Baba devotees strictly followed his advice not to engage
in publicity for him. He claimed his success was ensured without
the need for any publicity whatever, and he banned all such. All
that has now changed! Meanwhile, he continued to blare out in
discourses (relayed in print, film and other media) pronouncements
of his own marvellous deeds as exceeding anything ever done by
anyone on earth. Eventually, his leaders took his own lead and
began lavish publicity events around the world. When the scandals
broke onto the Internet in 2000, he
pronounced in 2000 that
no followers should use the Internet. Sai Baba's thus made a divine
faux pas (since he always claims omniscience and omnipotence).
A very large number of insubordinate devotees soon ignored this
edict by the infallible Creator of the Universe, and he has since
accepted and financed websites and radio stations on a large scale
as a necessary supplement to his propaganda machine.
Sai devotee websites and bulletin boards are even more censorious
and unquestioning than the Sai discussion groups, and no genuine
thinking or the mildest hint of criticism is ever voiced. This
further testifies to the fear of public scrutiny. Only after six
years of silence did the official Sai apparatus - falsely imagining
that they had won in a US court case - take the chance of dealing
with the
allegations in an article posted on the official
Radio Sai website by the second-in-command of the Prashanthi Council, Dr.
G. Venkataraman. He has since been answered
very thoroughly and fully rebutted with complete documentation.
See also the true
statement of the facts about the lawsuit of Alaya Rahm by
the International Just Group, the Rahm family and their lawyer,
which clearly shows that Dr. G. Venkataraman has made a concerted bid - in his posting
on the official Prashanthi Nilayam website - to deceive the public as to
what occurred. He claims that no students to whom he has talked have any knowledge of sexual abuses by Sai Baba, which is exactly what one would expect considering that fully-signed up blind believer Venkataraman would tell Sai Baba who alleged what... That could have drastic consequences for any student who spoke out, and even a virtual death sentence (murders of students have been weidely documented). Studebnts at Sai Baba's colleges have contacted me and told me just that... and none are unaware of the dangers involved in speaking to Venkataraman or identifying themselves in public in any way (unless they are securely and permanently outside India).
Any
candid study of Sathya Sai Baba and his environment would need to look at the serious alleged crimes and not least at the almost endless string of wholly absurd and
false claims made by this Baba about himself.
Defenders
who shrink away from any discussion
It is a notable fact that only a handful of devotees have stepped forth to defend Sathya Sai Baba against the
many and cogent criticisms on the web. The reason is evidently that
they cannot show that his critics are wrong about his absurd claims
and beliefs, impossible predictions, self-contradictions and frequent
outright lies. These are largely documented - and undisputedly so
from his own published discourse - and otherwise from reliable and
cross-checked sources.
However convinced the most gullible
believers are, all but the very rashest of them shrink back from
openly informing the public of many of the most incredible pronouncements
of their self-appointed ‘God the Father of Christ’, who also claims
to be a reincarnation of the Lord Krishna and who stated he will
in this incarnation lift “a whole mountain range” to avert a major
catastrophe for his devotees! (
See here) In discourses, Sai Baba has made numerous extremely
peculiar and fantastic claims. For example, when he could not walk
properly he spoke repeatedly of
having magnetic feet, which attract
not only the whole world but the physical earth so strongly [a howling
absurdity]; whereas the real cause was a failing hip joint! Captured
on the BBC film ‘The Secret Swami’ producing a golden lingam by
sleight-of-hand from a towel, and stating on film that it weighed
three tons this being the cause of his collapsing! The table he
put it on did not collapse! These are just a few of his many mega-maniacal
claims, accepted by virtually all of his declared followers as Divine
Truths, but which completely destroy his credibility as an“all-knowing
Divinity”!
Devotees
and politicians who are followers also try their utmost to ignore
and/or suppress the many serious allegations against Sathya Sai Baba of homosexual abuses
from around the world and the well-known facts about unsolved
cold-blooded shootings in June 1993 of four young men in his
bedroom. These extremely awkward facts obviously cramp the style
of many proselytising ventures and detract seriously from any
public acceptability among most of the world’s population, despite
his claim that the whole world will come to him soon! Such matters
have to be carefully avoided in their public meetings, where they
are bound to present Sai Baba only as a doer of good works and
an example of nothing but pure and unbounded love, or at most
as the greatest Divine Incarnation and miracle worker who has
ever lived!
However, there is a 'front man', Gerald Joe Moreno, who runs a massive defamation and arrant disinformation campaign - very prominent on the Internet. Though he claims not to be a follower of Sai Baba, he acts as the point man for defending Sathya Sai Baba, his largely clandestine and authoritarian Organization and many more or less affiliated devotees and supporters. In not denouncing his constant harassment of former respected devotees, despite challenges to them from the JuST group of former devotees, neither the Prashanthi Council nor any of all Sai Baba officials will denounce these most ‘unspiritual’ activities. Through the prominence on Google - Moreno’s innumerable blogs and web pages across countless Sai-related keywords outrank most official Sathya Sai Organization pages. These fanatical and ill-reasoned attacks have increasingly become a cultist millstone about the neck of Sathya Sai Baba, his Organization and movement. In the blazoning of total denial of every criticism of this presumed perfect God, the full-time efforts of Moreno serve to keep the fact of major dissent to the fore. He claims to be a defender of ‘free speech’ but he does all he can to deny this right to dissidents by harassment, attempts to remove their web pages etc.
The
Dilemma in Worshipping a God of Megalomaniac Claims
It has in the last decade become increasingly damaging for anyone's reputation in the world
as a person of common sense or educated
intelligence to be further associated with Sathya Sai Baba in
any way other than critically. The exception to this is those who are based within certain religious Indian communities. In India, PMs and Presidents,
Ministers, Supreme and High Court judges, magistrates plus the
armed services and even many police are followers of
this power-broking moneybags who claims to be The Deity of All Deities and
The Creator of the Universe Incarnate at whose feet all prayers
to any God eventually arrive! Believe it or not, but all devout
followers are required to believe it fully, and they do!
It
is hardly therefore at all surprising that the vast majority
of those disaffected from Sai Baba – especially those who must
live in - try to keep a low profile or stay anonymous. Most
persons who contact the exposé through its various websites
and e-mail addresses - and there are many hundreds of them -
do not wish their names to be posted. A mass of extremely revealing
materials are not publicly referenced, including accounts by
close students (known as “form boys” and “chics”) of Sai Baba’s
sexual abuses and major fraudulence. These cases are investigated
carefully for genuineness without giving away their identities,
recorded and then archived for possible future reference, within
the bounds of strict permission obtained from primary informants,
when the time is ripe. A large majority of those who have contacted
exposé workers say they want to forget and 'move on' with their
lives.
Meanwhile, many of those who have reported their shocking
experience or their parents and supporters have been ostracised
totally by devotees and Sai officials
who for years called them 'brothers and sisters' and knew
the integrity of those in many countries who have, for reasons
of moral principle, left the Sai
Organisation.
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