NOCTURNAL EVENTS IN SATHYA SAI BABA'S BEDROOM
as reported in his discourse in Sanathana Sarathi, June 1998, p. 142-3


In a discourse on May 6, 1998, at Brindavan, Sathya Sai Baba told the audience how three boys sleep in his bedroom (not simply in his apartment, but actually in his bedroom). He told how they all have visitations from Easwaramma, his long dead mother! The authenticated published text from Sanathana Sarathi, June 1998, p. 142-3 reads as follows:-

Excerpt from June 1998 Sanathana Sarathi

Comment on scan above: Some months after this discourse, I was discussing with my long-standing friend and confidante, V.K. Narasimhan, the editor of Sanathana Sarathi, who passed away in March 2000 after long sufferings. While he was alive I had to keep quite about many things he told me so as to protect him from unscrupulous elements at the ashram, he had jealous enemies there and his personal security could have been at considerable risk. I now consider it my duty in conscience and towards the public to reveal his confidences to me, which became more and more of a burden.

Narasimhan had disliked the discourse about the ghostly visitation of Easwaramma, considering it a rambling and unlikely concoction. I asked him why Sai Baba had allowed publication of such possibly compromising details, that three boys sleep in his bedroom. At that time I was still a convinced devotee - though troubled by many inconsistencies and unanswered questions about him - and I had heard reports that Sai Baba was a homosexual, but I had consistently ignored and even ridiculed them, but I knew that a former close devotee, Tal Brooke, had written a book accusing Sai Baba of pedophilia, though I had never read it.

I was still completely unable to believe that Sai Baba had any sexual relations whatever, and had some years earlier tried to convince a Belgian professor - Dr. Gabriel Spillers - that his strong opinion that Sai Baba had homosexual relations could not possible be true! I asked VKN about the boys who slept in Sai Baba's room and he was clearly uncomfortable, saying said it was a tradition (I assumed it was a boon granted by a spiritual master, to be allowed to massage his feet and legs etc. so I never thought to ask him what exactly was not abnormal as it is in the West). He did say that homosexuality was not considered as abnormal in India as it is in the West (or words to that effect). Odd that homosexuality is against the law in India, but long since legal and even protected by law in the West! VKN was elderly and his experience of the West was largely from pre-war years. Like VKN, I thought the claimed unnatural events would strongly reduce the credibility of Sathya Sai Baba to the world at large, as no doubt it does.

I asked VKN the age of the boys. I recall he gave their age as about 18 to 20 years old, and he asked me whether this fact would cause any problems in the West, was there anything wrong in it. I said that it most certainly would cause a major stir if the boys had been under age. He looked quite crestfallen and sat silent for some time, as if unable to find words, a most unusual state of affairs for him, as anyone who met him privately knows well!

The June 1998 discourse continued on the subject of Sathya Sai Baba’s grandfather, Kondama Raju, whom he claimed attained liberation from rebirth, yet like Easwaramma still visits Sai in his body even now. This story hardly fits well with other utterances of Sai Baba about 'liberation' or after-death conditions, such as “The body drops away and you are the light. That is liberation…. ‘My’ falls away. There is no longer ‘My’” (Conversations with BSSSSB by J. Hislop, p. 190 in new ed.).

But Easwaramma visits ‘her’ son saying, “I cannot live without seeing You often. The moment I see You, I feel happy”. (Is liberation as granted by the avatar to be unhappy, and ‘unable to be lived’, then?)  Kondamu Raju also visits ‘his’ grandson.

However, Sai Baba also said, “After the death of the physical body, it is impossible for the disembodied spirit to contact this material world” (authenticated Sai Baba publication Vision of the Divine, E. Fanibunda, p. 98). Make consistent sense of all this those gullible contortionists who wish to try!

The Easwaramma episode shows there is anxiety in Sai Baba's following about whether this self-proclaimed omnipotent God may be injured by enemies, or by other events. There is something absurdly comical about Sai Baba reassuring Easwaramma’s apparition, "I shall take due care. There is no need for you to tell me.” Why should a person who claims again and again that he is loved by everyone have to take due care? Why hide away in an impregnable fort in a stairless second floor apartment (in the Poornachandra, before his new abode/palace was built) with a locked elevator and with security guards everywhere, many in plain clothes.

Sai Baba claimed he nevrer slept

Interestingly, Sathya Sai Baba also exploded a myth that is firmly believed by most devotees, because he claimed this himself to Dr. John Hislop. But in the June 1998 discourse he inadvertently the truth by saying "Swami woke up", thus contradicting his earlier statement (not at all uncommon in his case):-
Sai Baba: "Swami never sleeps. At the middle of the night, he turns off the light and rest in the bed because if light is on devotees gather." (J. Hislop. Conversations with Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. SSSSB Publications Trust. ed. after 1995, ch.XIX, p.72)

Why did Sai Baba tell this weird, yet revealing, ghost story? He explained this himself: “I am conveying to you this episode as direct testimony to the greatness of mother's love."  Not exactly the most direct testimony of mother love!

Sathya Sai Baba rambles on in that discourse and virtually complains that nobody cares for him!

Concern of students for SB

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