Monkey Mind as taught by Sathya Sai Baba
Date: 04-15-02
By: Robert Priddy
Website: Sathya Sai Baba - Extensive information and Viewpoints
Sathya Sai Baba is ever going on about people having ‘monkey minds’, and – if they ask questions about anything he finds unacceptable, ‘mad monkey minds’. He explains this sometimes by the well-worn Eastern analogy to the monkey trap - monkeys put a hand into a tight-necked jar and grasp a nut in their fist, but can’t get their hand out, nor can let go of the good thing. So they are caught. This is supposed to be a lesson about ‘worldly attachments’ and how one must attach only to Sai Baba’s teaching and preferably to the whole excessive personality cult around him. The compassionate SSB loves to tell people in interviews that they have ‘monkey minds’ and try to raise a laugh by saying they do not have monkey minds, but ‘mad monkey minds’. Interviewees laugh willingly with glee at others expense. How charming!
However, how does SSB himself ‘catch’ his followers? It is not as simple as catching a monkey, but they do get hold of something which they cannot release – the belief that they have found the one who has THE ANSWERS to everything, and to their own sorry lives. Part of SSB’s ‘trap’ is to tell them that they have to hold on tight, whatever the cost, to what they have found – him, the Full Avatar of the Age, perfect, able to save them from anything and everything for ever.
The other side of this monkey-mind warning is clearly designed to stop any kind of natural curiosity about anything other than what SSB teaches and tells one to do. Especially any curiosity to find out about his private affairs, and he is a very secretive person who hides away and controls his contacts through the ‘filters’ that many persons around him serve as. Any kind of interest in finding out what SSB wants kept secret may be attacked as ‘monkey-mindedness’. His followers use it regularly against anyone who raises questions as to the credibility of SSB’s claims.
With the vague proverb of the three monkeys he borrows, SSB preaches that one should "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil". Only what is said against him is ‘evil’ enough to arouse his ire enough for him to lash out. This is seen by his strict and damning warning to devotees not to go onto the Internet when it was humming with more and more new allegations of sexual abuse by SSB. Meanwhile, he gives his blessing to official Sai Baba websites to spread his ‘eternal message’, particularly how surpassing wonderful he and his works are. So he evidently prefers people who are willing to be at least half-deaf, half-blind, half-dumb and completely mindless… whenever his claims, words and acts are questioned.
As a Swedish lady pointed out to me, SSB himself continually entraps people to become his devotees by the famous monkey-catching method, which he often recounts to illustrate how desires and attachments are the bane of mankind! The monkey puts its hand into a jar with a narrow neck and grasps a nut inside. Unwilling to drop the nut, it holds on and so is caught easily. What better reminds of this than most of those who go to SSB in the hope of receiving something, be it a room at the ashram, a trinket, recognition, healing, success, money, psychic powers - including selfish desire for spiritual boons of the highest order? This is surely not so for all who go to SSB, some are genuine seekers of truth and goodness, but many who started out that way also ended up entrapped by his psychic power, his flattery... backed up by dire warnings and generalised threats. It is obviously very hard to let go off the peanut!
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