OF SPEAKING OUT AND CASTING OUT

From my book being written - 'Amazing Disgrace'

 

Date: 06-26-04

Author: Barry Pittard

 

Email: pittard@beachaccess.com.au 

 

Only after reading the NEXUS (September-October 1999) article was I able to ask this simplest of questions - Why Sathya Sai Babs and Kutumb Rao’s haste in sending me on my way?  

 

Wishing only to serve Sathya Sai Baba as my spiritual master with the utmost love and devotion, I taught hundreds of his students at his Whitefield college, making my door ever open to them, and did social service among the blind and other afflicted, year after year, for exceptionally long and demanding hours without wishing for or taking a penny in recompense, living a very frugal, simple and quiet life, and was in good standing with both the devotee and local Indian community. Until the NEXUS article, I did not in the least connect my casting out in July 1982 with my mentioning of the allegations of homosexual activity by Sathya Sai Baba. Such, alas, was my over-weaning faith in the Three Wise Monkeys principle. Though it has its merits, it is often the worst counsel when it comes to social responsibility. Truth is also about speaking out; otherwise, all that is civil is crushed underfoot by all that is uncivil.

 

As I read the German husband and wife Jens' and Gurprit Sethi’s harrowing story, the ‘penny’ dropped. (You can read their account at:  ex-baba/engels/articles/nexuspdf/SaiBaba%20Exposed.pdf ). I now realised the obvious! That it was feared that I would spread my concerns, that I might speak to others beyond Howard Murphet and Richard Bayer, and that to prevent any chance of this I was being got rid of as fast as possible. Stories of others - which just keep on coming - attest to the reasonableness of such a surmise. For, after witnessing and speaking up about serious irregularities at Puttaparthi and Whitefield, others too have been summarily thrown out.