By: Robert Priddy
Date: 11-29-03
Email:
rpriddy@online.nl
On the
holiest day in the Sai calendar - Shivarathri- and in a symbolically
very holy place (beside the Sai shrine room), Yaani Drucker was
brutally raped. The rapist was convicted and imprisoned on her
evidence. She worships Sathya Sai Baba as the Creator of the
Universe. At the same time she lays claim to realisation of the
Advaitic reality of herself as being God, all-powerful etc. Because
she has set herself up as a spiritual teacher (along with her
husband, Alvin Drucker), it is important that her account be
examined and any bogus basis for this claim be demonstrated.
She wrote of the rape, “I would like to
share a story with you that is not real, that never happened, and
that had no effect on Truth. “ This is an extraordinary statement,
since it denies at once what it asserts. But the rape actually took
place, according to her and her husband, but she also says it ‘never
happened’. Knowing that she holds that Sai Baba is God and everyone
is God, then who does she consider was the actual rapist, ‘in
reality’? Sathya Sai Baba? Or herself? Or the man in prison? Or no
one? (Perhaps the physical rapist was therefore unfairly convicted?
I think not!). Yaani Drucker concludes that it never happened, which
implies that no one could have been responsible. It is all a great
absurdity which breaks down under examination and in the practice of
life. Can anyone take seriously such a self-contradictory form of
‘spiritual guidance’ as she supposes to advance through this… or
accept her claim to a higher wisdom as a result of this rape
experience? Her appeal to the monistic ‘advaitic philosophy’, as
occasionally preached by Sathya Sai Baba (when he is not preaching
its opposite) is highly unconvincing.
Yaani Drucker said: “But I cannot be
bound by the past. I can choose to totally let it go.
Sai Baba teaches "Past is past. Forget the past. There
is no past. All there is, is the ever-present now." But this
idea of the ‘omnipresent’ overlooks and hides something important,
as any child can see, which is that the past actually was.
Sathya Sai also said, “Man is
distinguished from other animals… by his ability to recognize the
past, the present and the future. Man alone has this capacity to
comprehend this threefold nature of time.” “However, man should not
worry about what is past. The present is a product of the past. What
has happened is beyond recall. It is futile to worry about the
future because it is uncertain. Concern yourself only with the
present. By “present” we may be thinking only of this moment. But
this is not the present as Divinity sees it. For the Divine, the
“present” is what is “omnipresent”. This means that both the past
and the future are present in what is because it is the
result of the past and the seed of the future. For the Divine these
three categories of time do not exist.” (Sanathana Sarathi
October 1988, p.255).
The above passage is a series of
ambiguities… there is no useful meaning to be had from saying of
time past or future that they exist or are, and
especially not when, in the same breath, denying that they do not
exist. Everyone knows that the consequences of what was caused or
done in the past are now present… and that present events and
actions will have (uncertain) consequences for what occurs in
future. So what is the point in telling this? Evidently, SSB wants
to impress so as to reassert that he is Divine and special because,
for him, past, future and
present “do not exist”. That the past and future do not exist as such
is experienced by and is self-evident to everyone, but to hold that
the present does not exist is just utter nonsense. (And if so, what
would become of the ‘present’ in ‘omnipresent’?) How should he
explain, it’s all the same to him!
These vague conflations of meanings by
SSB may serve to make him seem to some young or otherwise untutored
persons as being mysteriously wise and all-knowing, when he is
simply unable to explain anything really that is not evident to
anyone who spares it a proper thought. To further the belief in his
claimed superior knowledge and omniscience, SSB has also stated that
the human mind is limited and can never be omnipresent (Summer
Showers in Brindavan 1979, p255). This sounds as if it has
portent meaning, but actually explains precious little…nothing more
than that what is beyond the mind cannot be known (simply because it
is still unknown), which is self-evident.
Yaani Drucker has latched onto this as
a way of trying to rationalise to herself why she was raped (which
she either was or was not… but not both). One has to be sorry for
her both because of the awful event and for the way in which she has
been misled. That she publicises it all is the problem, for it can
mislead others further. Now she claims realisation that she is God
herself… “I am all-powerful because I am not separate or different
from God. Can we imagine God being victimised? No.
Well, then neither can I be victimised, unless I want to be, because
He created me just like Himself.” However, logically it should not
be he, but she who created herself? So what is the basis
of this confusion and the ‘very unlikely story’ she projects?
The basis is the grand eclectic mix-up
of ideas that Sathya Sai Baba propagates, a ‘hold-all’ teaching
which all at the same time includes dualistic and monistic
theologies, plus whatever is found in between. Sathya Sai
Baba, whom she recognizes as the ultimate Godhood with all that this
could imply, creates great confusion by claiming (‘dvaitically’)
that he is uniquely God and accepting constant worship as such,
while also saying (‘advaitically’) that everything and everyone
is God and not just partially but wholly so.
The way in which SSB attempts to
reconcile these opposite conceptions is by saying that he is fully
aware (‘self-realised’) while his worshippers (mere humans) are not,
and they need him as an object of worship so as to realise
themselves. At the same time, he claims that he – qua God – is only
pure and good, while all bad an impure things come entirely from us
human beings (some being designated by him as ‘demons’)… while he
turns around again and insists that he (i.e.’God Almighty’ etc.
etc.) sees neither good nor bad, for they ‘don’t really exist’ (in
short, God can recognise no values whatever!). Yet he again
contradictorily holds that human values are eternal ‘divine’
existents, and these values are necessarily centered on what is good
or bad (i.e. what is either violence or not, either right action or
wrong, either truth or untruth). SSB also ‘teaches’ the
intermediate position, ‘vishishtadvaita’ whereby humans have some
divinity in them, plus something which is not so (adharma,
worldliness, maya, desires etc.).
But this lot taken together does not
hold water. No wonder that Yaani Drucker, who tries her best to
hold onto all Sathya Sai Baba’s contradictory teachings, and to
believe that his actions follow his own words, is confused.
It is not surprising that Alvin Drucker
is equally confused, having been thrown out of the Sai Organisation
and all SSB ashrams after many years of living there for insisting
on marrying in open defiance of SSB, who dismissed him. Perhaps he
imagines he was never thrown out of the ashram, or was never there
in the first place? Since he is silent as a clam in public (though
not always privately!) about what he knows took place; that many
distraught parents of boys and young men came to him when he was
resident at Prashanthi, telling him of sexual molestations by Sathya
Sai, he presumably also imagines that ‘nothing ever happened’? Is
this the practice of advaitic wisdom? If so, it is a farcical parody
of the truth and decency! Such persons, whatever their positive
experiences, who have also been systematically duped by Sathya Sai
Baba’s promises and deceptive equivocations and who have also had
full opportunity to observe his fraudulent ‘materialisations’ for so
many years, and who do not speak up about incriminating facts they
know about SSB, should certainly not presume to set themselves up as
some kind of spiritual experts!
See also my critical discussion of
SSB’s vague teaching on the past
‘Forget
the Past?’