DEVOTEES' FEAR OF PUBLIC ASSOCIATION WITH SATHYA SAI BABA

The authoritarian cultist 'fortress mentality' and anonymous attacks on critics
 

including:

Sai officials and adherents who retire to the shades

Glaring publicity but silence on issues

Defenders who shrink away from any discussion

The Dilemma in Worshipping a God of Megalomaniac Claims

Date: 12-12-06

Remarkably, there are very few devotees of Sathya Sai Baba who choose to sign up with their full names or contact details when they post on bulletin boards. Hundreds of Sai Baba supporters have submitted negative threatening or vile comments to the Guestbook of ExBaba.com or 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. 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!

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.

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 and Silence on 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 Venkataraman has tried in his posting on the Prashanthi website roundly to deceive the public as to what occurred.

Any candour would need to look at the seriousness of the crimes being alleged, and at the almost endless string of wholly absurd and false claims made by their founder about himself. Only at Sathya Sai Organisation meetings can members feel safety in numbers and be shielded from awkward questions and commonsense concerns, all sharing and reinforcing the same (often false) beliefs and hosting the same disinformation, which they therefore can never have examined intelligently or independently.

Defenders who shrink away from any discussion

It is a notable fact that but a handful of devotees - except those who live within the cocoon of the ashram and its catchall belief system - 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 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”!