Though I (Robert Priddy) was quite well-known in the Sai movement as a strongly convinced devotee of Sathya Sai Baba from the early 1980s until 2000, it is evident to those who visit my website now that I am now very definitely not so. Some may think I suddenly went from one extreme to the other, but this is far from correct. Though I am presently concerned only to expose wrong-doings, misguided teachings and false promises by Sathya Sai Baba, this is simply to 'balance the account' as it were, since the positive propaganda machine around Sathya Sai Baba (to which I once contributed far too much) is so massive, so prone to use disinformation and so closed to any sincere discussion or investigation of unpleasant but crucial facts.

Three different reaction patterns to pending crises of faith
Those who have embraced a set of beliefs and have invested much personal thought and feeling in them, often involving the sacrifice of time, energy, money and even many former social contacts so as to forward them, can react in different ways to facts which, if true, will cause a major revision or complete overturn of those beliefs:

1) The emerging doubts are ignored while possible, rejected out of hand when discussed and - when this may fail - by increasingly unlikely rationalising to quell the anxiety caused by such thoughts of having made a massive mistake in one's life.

2) All one believed is put into question en bloc and the entire set of beliefs is simply negated, while all contacts which bring one into contact with them are dropped. This requires perhaps either an unthinking and non-committal kind of personality, a shallow faith… or else a strong personality and/or support system having resources to regenerate one's own well-being and redirect one's life goals.

3) One begins to confront the facts which underpinned the former belief system and begins to investigate them as fully as possible. This requires the 'tolerance of mental and emotional uncertainty' and leads one to put more and more facts, claims and sub-beliefs into mental parentheses while a reorientation is sought through open and honest communication and reflection. This process takes much longer, it would appear, and is more demanding in various ways, than the first two general alternatives.

On what happened to destroy my entire faith in Sathya Sai Baba
While still an active follower, I wrote a book (Source of the Dream) and many articles (over 25 of which were in Sathya Sai Baba's journal, Sanathana Sarathi). There were all of an exclusively positive nature about Sathya Sai Baba and his movement. Since I learned in 1996 facts from an indubitable source very close to Sathya Sai Baba about the executions which took place in his private rooms in June 1993, I found myself increasingly having to struggle with doubts and conflicting feelings concerning not only those directly involved, but with Sathya Sai Baba's acceptance of their actions and his avoidance of any public questioning etc. In 2000 these doubts received an unwanted strong boost by the emergence of many credible allegations of sexual abuse of young men and boys by Sathya Sai Baba. It took me months before I decided even to look at the allegations, then it took over a year of intensive investigation before I reached the conviction that they were substantial.

This discovery was accompanied by a gradual collapse of many accompanying beliefs, a mental domino effect which successively readjusted the whole set of interpretations of experiences and putative facts and even some of the moral principles on which my former faith was based. The result of this renovation of the entire Sathya Sai Baba phenomenon and my experiences relating to it is expressed in my writings under the title, "The Sathya Sai Baba Enigma Reevaluated".

---

Please go to the Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization
(Spanish version PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

---

Return to overview page