In the approach to
any charismatic figure, such as Sai Baba, a great deal of what one experiences and
perceives can be put down to the 'self-fulfilling' or 'positive thinking' thesis. By
becoming fascinated due to some circumstance, we concentrate more and more on the person,
hearing others' accounts, reading about him and what he teaches, seeing films, thinking,
praying, singing, going to meetings and talks and so on. This forms a basis for how we
perceive and how we interpret whatever we see and hear... or experience altogether. Though
even more than 90% of all this is not out own experience or ideas, we make them our own
through belief, general faith and especially hope. Much is promised by Sai Baba, he claims
to be able to give more than anyone else ever can possibly give. He even claims already to
be giving us everything we are and have, that he is the Creator of the Universe and all in
it! Once we have had some inexplicable paranormal experiences connected to him, his claim
can be a very powerful motivating factor and his teaching a tremendously difficult
doctrine to question or disprove, especially before one has plunged in, for SB holds that
the only valid test of anything is personal experience.
In my own experience,
many small events that I once was convinced were due to Baba's personal will, I now
realise could well have been self-created through the more elusive and intricate workings
of the mind, especially at the various subconscious levels. Yet the question remains; can
all my personal experiences of extraordinary coincidences, inexplicable events, inspiring
dreams, healings and observed manifestations of remarkable and large objects be put down
to a kind of self-deluding mindset, a mistaken openness lacking critical sense and
observation? My answer still cannot be other than 'No!'
This is my
conviction, even were I to discount all the many hundreds of accounts I have heard, from
first-hand eyewitnesses to writers of books about miraculous experiences with and through
Sai Baba. And I do discount a quite considerable amount of both what I have been told by
honest, open persons and a lot of what I have read, usually for specific reasons in each
case. Being scientifically and philosophically trained, I was critically-minded before I
came to Sai Baba and was thus given to examination and analysis rather than unquestioning
acceptance of testimony. Much of the testimony did influence me, and there was a great
deal of it - virtually all positive - from perons both literate and illiterate, from the
extraordinary to the fantastic (and the laughably absurd). The story of Sai Baba's
childhood and youth had been written up by N. Kasturi, a
charming persons who also seemed to me to be a creditable and reasonably well-informed,
and by other early witnesses... and there was also quite impressive film material showing
physical manifestations etc. which tended to bear out the fabulous storied of SB's early
days. Above all, as I have detailed accurately in my book ‘Source of the Dream, My
Way to Sathya Sai Baba’, I experienced otherwise totally inexplicable events
connected to the Sai Baba form, of the sort one cannot but classify as
‘miracles’, including an amazing distant removal of my mothers’ intense
chronic pains.
Despite my
questioning attitude, especially as to spiritual matters of which I had accumulated
considerable knowledge both scholarily and from personal experience, it was only when I
became disaffected about the extent of Baba's knowledge and powers due to the building up
of unavoidable doubts about some of his contrary actions and words, that I was able
properly to question certain matters that I had accepted previously. The rather
soul-shaking shift in mindset made a difference - I went from the tendency to accept in
the main what certain people whom I considered reasonable and sane said, towards a more
questioning, investigative and psychologically evaluative attitude. Though Sai Baba claims
to be the God of all Gods, he may rather be a person wielding exceptional powers (of
yogic, tantric or other superhuman agency), an exceptional
medium, a catalyst for deep psychological projection (at both conscious and unconscious
levels) and other things besides… all surrounded by a mass movement of dependent
persons who extend his influence, all too
often by exaggerating the stories about him and his nature so that eventually almost
anything that happens seems to be done by him rather than anyone else.
People who visit Sai
Baba invariably do so because of things they have heard, read or seen on film and video.
However little they may know of the massive complex of incredible accounts of miracles and
more surrounding him, there will usually have been some incident or experience that led
them to expect the inexplicable and wonderful of him. Such anticipations make it possible
to read many extraordinary things into what otherwise would be commonplace events and
ordinary behaviour. I have seen many, many examples of this - sometimes sheer
wish-fulfilling interpretation, sometimes even against one's inclinations... but always
motivated by looking up to Baba as divine and miraculous, his every word and gesture
packed with holy significance.
It is most valid to
ask whether such an approach to the phenomena as a follower invariably adopts removes
further possibility of keeping any 'objective' angle, or even thereafter to make
common-sense and cool judgements about ordinary events. This is an extremely complex and
subtle issue in theory of knowledge and the psychology of perception... where some of the
greatest human dilemmas arise. The dilemma here is how much we create our own reality
through our mental set, hopes and desires, and how much it is forced upon us by events
that arise independent of our psyches.
The key to the whole 'Sai Baba mentality' and all
that follows from adopting it, is the belief that he is not merely human, but is also
wholly Divine and can therefore do no wrong, knows all and is the prime mover in
everything. Acceptance of this, even as a possibility, conditions almost every perception,
decision, evaluation and social contact thereafter. The teaching has massive built-in
restraints on any serious examination or questioning of Sai Baba's divine nature or
anything he says or does. It blames everything bad or evil that can possibly occur on
those who choose to see anything other than the good... a psychological impossibility, but
one which the follower has to strive to maintain and who thus have to perform the most
absurd mental acrobatics to do so when events that do not fit the theory arise, as they do
constantly. The teaching is not open to any modification by future discoveries, for it is
presented as the absolute eternal truth from the mouth of God the Creator... what is known
as a 'closed total theory' in the study of ideologies.
As soon as that
belief is questioned by anyone who has come to hold it at all firmly (i.e. as soon as the
mind tentatively ‘uncreates’ Sai Baba as the single,
exclusive living God incarnate), a very basic shift in mindset necessarily follows. The
radically questioning mindset considers the possibility that Sai Baba's human aspect is
the predominant one and that the various powers he undoubtedly possesses - from wherever
they arise - are not necessarily always used in our true interests. In short, for such
people, Sai Baba can actually be guilty of impure acts, even involvement in major crime.
But one is told to wear rose-tinted glasses and that then your world will become so in
reality. The 'glasses' that Sai Baba's teaching about himself represents would also make
murder and pedophilia look rosy.
People get drawn
further and further in to Sai Baba in terms of social contacts, prestige, habituation to
lifestyle and environment, places of residence, personal economy... not to mention
emotionally and mentally, the most powerful of binding forces. The further in one is drawn
in these ways, the more impossible it seems to extricate oneself, were that even desirable
when in such a position and without too serious doubts. One's entire perception of most
matters remotely connected to this focus of one's existence is usurped by the underlying
needs so created. Going against one's basic needs for security, faith, well-being and
social contacts and activities - or accepting a radical change in them for an uncertain
alternative - is something that awakens feelings of confusion and insecurity, often
leading to anxiety and fear, even in the most normal and well-balanced of people. In this
way, a seat of power is provided for those in the top position, and all such power can by
its very nature be abused… and most often is. The power structure begins to use
illegal or immoral means to sustain itself, especially when seriously attacked from
outside… but even more so when the attack comes from within, as has occurred with the
defection of so many Western followers, including a long list of leaders in the Sai
Organisation and other long-term devotees. That invariably undermines the worldly power of
the movement more quickly and fully than any external 'enemy'.
The Sai movements’ “critical mass”:
All in all, there are very large numbers of people who have become so attached to Sai Baba
emotionally, mentally, socially and even in material terms, that
the movement has developed a strong inertial impetus. The belief system has reached
'critical mass', certainly among Indians world-wide, and so the chain reaction works to
increase numbers among millions who have no means whatever of testing anything, but only
of believing whatever they have heard or are told 'officially'. The number claimed by Sai
Baba, however, and parroted by all who reckon themselves believers, are certainly inflated
by anything up to the power of ten! (See 'exaggeration
of numbers by SB')
The prevalence and
predominance of any belief system - including the many-headed Sai Baba doctrine - is more
dependent on its having attained critical mass than on the likelihood of their being in
accordance with historical facts or other truths. As to what distinguishes the success of
one belief system from the failure of another, there are obviously numerous factors at
work. One factor that seems obvious is the achievement by a belief of a 'critical mass' of
supporters. Once critical mass is reached, chain reaction starts, sometimes fast,
sometimes slower. As soon as a belief is ramified by enough other beliefs and putative
evidence to spread to a sufficient mass of people, it tends to spread further. Some
beliefs are unable to make much ground, such as the flat-earth theory, say. Others,
apparently equally misguided, become hugely widespread, such as the belief that
extra-terrestrial beings have visited earth. One major poll in USA found up to 80% of the
population believing that UFOs are inter-planetary vehicles!
When a belief or
system of such achieves critical mass, however, it may often be unstoppable except by
major disturbances or even drastic world events, as history repeatedly demonstrate both in
the spread of religions and political ideologies. That beliefs can be shown to have real
substance, however, is not itself any guarantee that it will continue until reaching
critical mass. One factor that helps in this is what might be called 'the mushrooming
miracle effect.' This refers to that social phenomenon we observe whenever miraculous
events, such as healings, manifestations or other inexplicable and beneficial events are
believed to take place... as word spreads, more and more instances are invariably
reported. It's a case of 'nothing succeeds like success'. However, close observation and
analysis usually shows that many of the increasing claims are bogus or - in the case of
'miracle cures', they are mainly of the nature of a placebo effect or sheer imagination
interpreting a natural healing process. The problem of investigation always becomes
whether any of the original or early reports sound and based on indisputable evidence?
Even when some
reports are based on substantial testimony that can be followed up by interviews, by
analysis and cross-checking, there is a tendency for all kinds of bogus claimants and
unsubstantiated 'stories' to sneak in and become part of the main body of beliefs. There are any number of such instances in connection with Sai Baba, some of
which he himself and/or his various servitors have seen necessary to quash by public
pronouncements. The investigator is faced with a tantalising and beguiling mixture of fact
and fiction, truth, half-truth and lies. To penetrate into these and come through with a
relatively balanced overview takes deep engagement and certain qualities or abilities of
the personality that have to be developed through rigorous work and often painful
experience.
The bait and the
hooks: One of Sai Baba's most-quoted sayings is "Take one step towards me and I
will take twenty towards you". Sometimes Baba has promised a hundred steps in return
instead. This is obviously a figurative invitation and its meaning is so diffuse as to be
able to embrace almost any human action or thought. There are two general ways of
interpreting this:
The first
interpretation is that mundane activities done for the benefit of Sai Baba, his
organisation and various worldly works and projects will be rewarded by Sai Baba in
tangible ways - by attentions, interviews, success in one's undertakings, one's health and
well-being and fate in life etc. I can think of very few followers who do not subscribe to
this kind of attitude - at least in part. This approach is the least
subtle of the two, but is obviously very powerful because such a promise would - if
fulfilled - answer many a need, problem and desire.
Because Sai Baba
often insists that we are but deluded by our egos into thinking that we do things when,
really, “only He is the Doer”, people attribute to him all manner of event. Many
strange ideas about what is caused by Sai Baba are held. I know an amateur yachtsman who
believed that Baba caused him to win a yacht race against top professionals, due to a
stroke of luck he had in finding a shorter passage through some reefs. Another close
devotee told me that Baba was himself causing the national strike of Federal Government
workers in the US. The credulous leader of the Sai movement in the USA, Michael Goldstein,
stated that SB had saved the lives of all those World Trade centre workers who were NOT
killed, including all believers in himself! He alleged that SB told him so. (A pity about
all those killed, though, SB couldn’t do anything about them, it seems? Or those
Afghan civilians bombed as a consequence?) So it goes on, to be consistent, everything
that is ever done should be attributed to Sai Baba... should we then forget all science,
technology, medicine, even work and leave it all to divine providence? The absurdity of
all this is startling, but that there is confusion is hardly so surprising in view of the
many inclarities of the doctrine that Baba repeatedly
expresses in mostly ambiguous, general or veiled terms.
The second kind of
interpretation of ‘taking one step etc.’ is about intangibles... if you worship
Sai Baba and accept him to be God - or, failing this, if you are not sure whether he is
God Himself, but try to follow what he teaches - he will help you in ways that you are
most likely unable clearly to observe or prove, due to the veil of human ignorance about
things eternal. If one is unable to find any indications that this is taking place, one
projects the reward into a very uncertain and unknown future - he will look after you
after death, give you a good rebirth or - if you are ripe enough - save you from the
tiresome round of pleasure and pain, life and death altogether. In this way, the
followers’ imagination can puzzle out the most unlikely and unfounded significances
in anything whatever that happens to them. Suppose one wins a lottery… it is
SB’s grace. Suppose one breaks one’s back and is confined to a wheelchair
existence… it is all SB’s grace, teaching you a lesson, causing you to avoid
some worse fate, and so on ad infinitum. This is the dark labyrinth that those who take
his teaching seriously have all entered, despite themselves.
As to the first view
of Sai Baba's guarantee; to evaluate it in real terms is extremely difficult because of
its vagueness. What constitutes taking 'one step' on our part and what does not? For some
it would be a small Armstrong-like step, for others a giant step. Sai Baba gives an
example of this imponderable relativity in telling of a lady who sacrificed the very
little she had (money?) to give to him, which he considered greater than (the millions?)
offered by another. For some it would have to be something tangible like donating time,
energy, and (not least) money to Sai Baba's organisation or other good works, for others
only a mental change like improving how one thinks of other people, feeling gratefulness,
having a worshipful attitude primarily to Sai Baba - whose form he himself recommends
strongly and very often (even though, he also points out, other forms of God will do just
as well).
Quite another matter
is what can possibly constitute the twenty (or hundred) steps that Baba takes in return?
Most committed followers are clearly motivated to a large extent by the desire for
'grace,' or at least 'signs of grace'. There is no catalogue available recording what
these are or may be, it is a very individual matter depending on how one interprets what
Baba does or does not do towards oneself, or what one wishes to think and believe.
However, there are a number of outward signs of grace that many reckon on. One of these is
being invited to as many interviews as possible. Another is being chosen by Baba for some
office in his various organisations or institutions. Other less prominent signs are Baba's
recommendation to write a book about him, make a film or video of him, hold
a lecture for visitors to the ashram or for students at some of his colleges. Apart from
these, are the many signs that people experience in the form of healing of difficult or
sometimes apparently incurable ailments, materialisations of holy ash, nectar and the like
on pictures of Baba (or other divine images).
The psychic unavoidability of having some
belief-structure: Experience shows,
again and again, that a majority of people will believe just about anything that suits
them... if it fits in somehow with their whole world of preconceptions and desires.
Experience and knowledge can be side-lined and diminished in significance by new strong
beliefs, and especially those connected to Sai Baba. This cuts both ways, of course, both
as to believers and unbelievers. When the facts cannot be established and an issue is
still in the balance, most people far prefer a certainty to a continued state of
uncertainty... even if it is a false certainty. The desire to escape ambiguity or
incongruity in one's experience, somehow or even in any way, is a strong psychological
tendency, as shown by many controlled and laboratory experiments. The psychic need for
belief is also seen operating in how many people immediately believed in the accusations
against Sai Baba on rather insubstantial evidence at the time. Most of us are very poor at
questioning our own beliefs, especially those held dear to us. But any genuine search for
truth is most demanding and calls for a patient condition of inconclusiveness and
tolerance of the uncertainty caused by reservation of final judgement until certain
knowledge is attained. This is not a natural psychic condition and it requires repeated
effort to avoid falling into unfounded attitudes or leaping to conclusions.
There are always pros
and cons in any matter, increasingly so the larger and more important the subject. To keep
in the mind all of them from both sides, yet not to conclude in favour of one side or the
other is a feat of conscious tolerance of uncertainty that few people can sustain for
long... at least when the issue is at all crucial. Belief is endemic, but it takes many
different forms which also often shift as experience proceeds. Whether secular or
religious, personal or political, idiosyncratic or collective, some basic beliefs are held
by everyone. There are believers in atheism and scepticism, which always have to be backed
up by a large assortment of sub-beliefs. Many of these belief structures are adopted
without reflecting over them or even quite realising that one has inherited them or picked
them up in some way. Others are conscious of the basis of their belief system, but are
then often quite unaware of how it is to be on the ‘opposite side of the fence’
and see everything from a completely other and equally rational perspective.
Philosophy requires a
measure of dispute and any sane and healthy religion needs a measure of irreverence, for
these are ways provided to us for testing our society, our universe, as well as ourselves.
Human civilisations are always prone to mystiques... heroic, messianic, scientific,
supernatural and so on. The prevailing mystique at any time or place first tends to colour
the mind and, if conditions allow, often eventually becomes all things to the observer.
This is seen most clearly of all, perhaps, in the ways religions or spiritual cults take
over the personality. Whether such a mystique operates more for better or for worse, it
remains a limiting distortion of the mind and often possesses the psyche to the exclusion
of all contrary reason and experience. This kind of alienation from oneself can clearly be
seen in the movement around Sathya Sai Baba, and not least in the organisation bearing his
name, whether or not it sometimes leads to real personal transformations and improvements,
at best and most usually only in an initial phase, it appears.
It is crucial to
realise that the kinds of para-normal contacts experienced in
relation to Sai Baba's form and name are not exclusive to him… very far from it! The
slightest acquaintance with world spirituality shows that all the kinds of 'miracle'
witnessed from or in connection with Sai Baba have been described countless times. Even
specific events, such as the production of lingams from the mouth, the materialisation of
ash (vibhuti) and
other substances, the appearance of a person at great distances or in two places at once
and the manifestation of objects and events at a distance are not at all exclusive to Sai
Baba. World literature shows that all phenomena we might class as ‘miraculous’,
especially healings, appear to occur in connection with any number of quite other persons
and images, wholly independently of Sai Baba. The history of religions are packed with
such incidents, while nowadays one can observe statues that shed tears of blood, marble
and even metal Ganesh statues that drank milk in gallons and
so on. That many do not believe these are facts does not affect those who have had such
direct genuine experiences, whether they sought them or not. That mainstream 'modern
science' is wholly unable to cope with even the thought of such things - due to its
underpinning physicalistic bias and method - does nothing
whatever to explain away the incidence of these observable facts.
The “sightless faith brigade”: Those
persons relatively close to Baba who have most to lose by questioning anything Baba does
are obviously very largely those who find it most difficult to entertain the doubts that
still surely and unavoidably intrude. Some of those who are able to be closer to Baba are
doubtless also unable to rid their minds of serious doubts, for they evidently witness
more doubtful events than relative outsiders. This is my experience of a number of
long-term and close followers I have known during the past 20 years. Most of those who
live in the ashram and have given up or donated their homes and/or wealth would fear
losing faith in Baba, even partly so. It is remarkable that one never (except informally
from V.K. Narasimhan) heard a breath of critical comment about Baba himself within the
ashram, unless it was a raw newcomer or some such 'misguided seeker'. To even speak of
one's doubts, it seems, one must 'go underground' to the privacy of a room or restaurant
outside the ashram, or to any neutral place. Never have doubts been voiced in talks or
discourses, let alone in front of Sai Baba, as far as I have observed or ever heard. To
doubt is a cardinal sin, and one which Baba descries often. This proves extremely
effective in covering up almost anything… as is known from many ashrams and all kinds
of other self-contained 'total institutions' and totalitarian states.
Then those who have
the status of a veranda place, some VIP office in the Sai organisation, a private room at
one of the ashrams or the kudos of being able to tell of repeated interviews and grace
will feel they have a lot to lose, and mostly are made to know to a nicety under what
circumstances they risk losing these benefits. Add to them all those who, having found
faith after much suffering or meaninglessness, want to sustain it rather than go through a
very painful and often traumatic experience.
It is observable that
those to whom Baba grants most privileges and frequent interviews are invariably
ostentatiously humble. In his close presence they always creep about in a lowly fashion
and grovel at his feet, and some if possible lay flat on the ground to do so, kissing them
whenever given the chance. After about 60 years, these practices were at last been largely
discontinued by Sai Baba’s order on the grounds that they put his devotees lower than
himself, and this is wrong. Perhaps it took so long for him to realise this because he had
not realised that such practice will never be widely accepted in the Western world.
Another possible reason is to avoid any danger to himself by allowing people to approach
so close to him: for he related in a bizarre discourse (of May 6, 1998) about a night
visitation by the ghost of his long-dead mother to him and the boys sharing his locked
rooms. He claimed she had warned him that people might apply poison to him through
touching his feet.
Public submissive
behaviour was the rule and are were virtually unavoidable requirements for most people to
make actual contact with him, such as by being invited to an interview. Similar kinds of
subservient attitude - however agreeable or not to those who behave so – are still
practised, only the grosser outer demonstrations of kow-towing have been reduced. There
were and are exceptions, some of the most regular staff, persons upon whom Baba certainly
depends for the running of his considerable empire of institutions, dispense with any
marked formalities, though they will usually hold their hands in prayer greeting (naamaskaar) while talking to him. These people are usually the
'almost indispensable' figures that surround Baba.
It is evident that
some people who are very rich and donate enormous sums get many interviews. One case is
that of the US donors of hundreds of millions of dollars, the Sinclairs,
who had a private interview each day for about a week before darshan (most unusual) at Kodaikanal in 1994. While waiting and waiting at darshan, I watched
them come out of Baba's villa each day. There are exceptions, as in most things to do with
Sai Baba. Isaac Tigrett, for example, was not given interviews
for 14 years, whereupon he donated a massive sum for Baba to build the first Super-Speciality
Hospital. He then received copious interviews for some while. Later he was again only
given one interview over a period of quite a few years. Baba personally visited Mr. Reddy,
the liquor baron who donated a considerable sum of money and who was murdered in Madras
some weeks later. Narasimhan told me that he was taken to that interview in Baba's car.
The question arises, why would Sai Baba take so much time visiting a criminal, when he has
so many thousands of good people who do much good in the world and are his devoted
followers, but who hardly ever get any personal contact with
him? The standard devotee answer to this amounts to 'God knows what is needed better than
we do'. This is no answer, but a non sequitur to avoid the awkward observable facts, any
reasonable explanations of them and to stop further questioning.
Those who do not
conform to the many behavioural rules and the worshipful attitude towards Sai Baba are
unable to get anywhere near to him, even to observe him. Sai Baba has occasionally spoken
of 'separating the grain from the chaff', by which those who do not accept him as being
pure and divine, or who do not conform to certain of his teachings and follow the regimes
of his various institutions, are kept away at a distance and/or fall away of themselves.
Other words for this is purging or excommunicating. Office-bearers who disagree with the
Indian leaders and Indian chain of command or who want more openness, greater
accountability and frankness, and some are sacked without any recourse to further
discussion. I know some of those who were so treated and consider them to be truly honest,
actively self-sacrificing and upright people. Once they fell into disfavour, the were treated as completely non-existent! This is the rule with
all people who leave the Organisation, the leaders never thank them for anything they have
done or contact them. This has caused suffering and even prolonged mental illness where
persons have sacrificed their whole lives to the cause. The ashram staff
also pronounce lifetime bans on people, sometimes for the most absurd 'reasons'.
Some of those who dare to go against Baba's explicit wishes as regards to marriage are
literally excommunicated. One well-known case among a number of similar ones is that of
the long-standing American follower Al Drucker, whom Baba
threw out of the ashram on short notice because he would not remain unmarried, telling him
never to return.
The hub of the world? Many ashramites
have grown up never doubting that Sai Baba is everything that he says he is, and they form
the backbone of the community of believers. For them to entertain doubts would be like
submitting to a personal earthquake, a soul-shaking catastrophe that leaves the survivor
in a state of depression, sometimes suicidal. This is well known from those who have
disowned or been disowned by strong sects the world over, like Jehovas
Witnesses, Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, Moonies and any number of others. But in
Prashanthi Nilayam it becomes feasible even for outsiders to come to believe that it is
the real hub of the world - no, the Universe, where God Himself resides and from where he
steers everything, without the tiniest exception. However, to my knowledge there have been
several independent suicides in Prashanti Nilayam, including
one by a whole family (a few survived). Allt such events are hushed up immediately if
possible, such as by sending all visitors away immediately and without explanation.
It is not surprising
that intellectual thought is virtually non-existent in such a place, (Baba has no respect
or patience whatever with genuine intellectuals, which concurs with his advice to rid
oneself totally of the mind as quickly as possible). So even the many persons who sport
rows of more or less obscure letters after their names and work as professors or
scientists are actually second-rate thinkers, which usually becomes
obvious soon after they have opened their mouths. Paradoxically, very much fuss is made of
anyone who claims to be a scientist, a doctor, and educator or the like there... but those
who remain there almost always turn out to be rather naive persons who have a tendency to
publish books that fail to meet even the lowest standards of accuracy, fact and
intellectual insight of comparable kinds of Western publication. Westerners who become Sai
devotees very seldom demonstrate anything like excellence in their talks or wr itings,
rather the contrary. Baba has invited certain Westerners to hold lectures for foreign
visitors - but these are not lectures in any known sense of the word, more like
declarations of faith backed up by anecdotes and often by simple-minded theological
chestnuts or parroting of Baba's own words.
One astute observer
of this fact was V. K. Narasimhan - not himself a scientist or philosopher, as he freely
admitted - but an economy graduate and world-travelled journalist. He told me that the
students that come out of Sai Baba colleges and 'university' are not capable of a single
independent thought. Pose them a problem that they have not learned the answer to and they
are simply at sea. This is also rather the norm in Indian education, with its origins in
Macaulay's "clerk-factory" educational methods, influences which are still
potent and a dead weight on Indian life, along with the total subservience towards those
above one's station that lived on unaltered after the British left and which kind of
hierarchical nepotism marks the whole Sai Baba movement through and through, as the
liberal-minded Narasimhan was painfully aware.
Sai Baba's
teaching & 'Mission': Whatever else one may think about Sathya Sai Baba, and
however one may judge his actions to be for good or ill, there is a moral basic in his
teaching, which is as full of high ideals and good intentions as one will find in the
established religions or mass spiritual movements. This is actually where practically the
entirety of his teaching comes from in the first place. His chief aim, stated through
seven decades, and often quite poignantly, is to see the reestablishment of ancient Indian
values, which include moral conscience, unselfish service to others and the community,
non-violence in all walks of life, due respect and care for all living beings and nature,
and non-discrimination as to race, colour, and faith. No one should argue with that. But
these values have very largely been lost very long ago in most of India, as current events
keep demonstrating to the full. One can only hope that a world renaissance of values will
take place, and as soon as possible, whether or not one believes that Sathya Sai Baba is
the motivating force, or just a more or less fallible part of it.
Sai Baba's teaching
can be distinguished from Sai Baba's rationale for that teaching. The difference is the
fundamental one between morality and knowledge about what is factual and true (i.e.
between 'ought' and 'is'). SB teaches what we ought to do or not to do, how we best should
live and behave for our own good and that of all others. The teaching itself may still be
accepted as morally right by many for whom SB's account of man and nature are not even
half-believable, consistent or even understandable. Faith in the teaching is strengthened
if one can accept the explanation of its background - the order of all things including
the laws of human life (karma).There is much of value in it, vague though it often
is. But he explains and justifies his teaching as valid by giving an account of how
everything is constituted... the make-up of the human being, the nature of the cosmos and
of the Divine reality or God - as universal being of infinite love and
super-consciousness. All this, without notable exceptions, is very traditional Indian
thought and much of it is highly questionable, while much of it has been shown by science
to fall far short of the truth.
There are many
documented errors in Sai Baba's descriptions and explanations of how the world works. His
language is often vague and unspecific, and is always packed with sweeping generalisations
that are primitive from the viewpoint of balanced thinking or linguistic-philosophical
analysis. (See Brian Steel's website: http://bdsteel.tripod.com)
Sectarian
tendencies in the teaching and its practice: What is "universal religion"?
Is it possible? Sai Baba's answer to this is that the essence of all
true religions express the same basic human values and the same faith in the
existence and benevolence of divinity, in whatever form it may be represented or
worshipped... or as it is thought to be as formless.
Many would deny that
there can be any universal faith, or even core of common faith, so diverse are the
religions and the countless sects into which they always seem to splinter through time or
across differing cultures and nations. Sai Baba ignores these differences, however, by
concentrating very much on the positive and unitive aspects of
religious teachings and almost completely ignoring any examination of the differences. At
the same time, in the face of incongruous beliefs and warring sects, Sai Baba always
asserts the Vedantic view as the most inclusive and ultimate.
This is an implicit denial of universal religion, as is his insistence on being the God
Avatar, which claim is flatly rejected by Islam and mainstream Buddhism, the former
regarding the idea of God having any form whatever as sheer blasphemy. Little wonder that
only a mere handful of Muslims are ever seen near Sai Baba. In the detail of his
teachings, the difference of what he teaches from what is believed in other mainstream
religions becomes evident on many controversial points. Just compare his accounts of
Jesus' boyhood and many subsequent travels and spiritual education in India with the
official belief of about 1 billion Christians. Sai Baba also has asserted that Jesus did
not actually die on the cross, but survived to travel eastwards and live long. Whether
true or false, this just shows how non-universal any religious-historical teaching
unavoidably soon becomes.
Sai Baba is set up by
devotees in public as the supreme teacher representing the truth of all religions and the
actual full embodiment of their God, however they conceive Divinity. He refers to himself
as the God of all Gods, the only One behind all divine forms, hence implying strongly that
he is actually the one whom all should follow, even while denying that he wishes everyone
to worship him. This cannot be other than a divisive social and political idea. To hold
that Sai Baba is 'in actual fact' nothing but the only existing divinity - as so many Sai
followers do even after decades of listening to his denials of this in discourses - is
about as exclusive of other faiths and as misguided as all those Christians who wrongly
insist that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ and that all others are misguided,
even calling them 'unredeemed', 'lost souls' and so on.
The way the Sai Baba
doctrine turns out in actual practice in the various Sai organisations around the world
indicates some of the fundamental contradictions inherent in the claim of avatarhood combined with an ideal of universal spirituality. The
organisation has to be steered centrally, and in this case it is led by Indian Hindus. It
therefore invariably takes on the character of Hindu religion, however many efforts are
made to ameliorate this and incorporate other beliefs and persons of different spiritual
inclination. In all countries where I have observed attempts to 'universalise' the Sai
Baba teaching, the groups soon gravitate towards an exclusive membership, of which the
first requirement is belief in Sai Baba and at least the basics of his teaching.
Non-members are tolerated, but room is never made for them within the heavily
Hindu-oriented doctrine that prevails in both the Charter, in the nature of all central
conferences and festivities and in devotional gatherings … however much one tries to
involve other faiths. There is also an inbuilt inertia towards Indian rituals rather than
those of any other faith. This is not an inclusive practice, though it is highly natural
and probably unavoidable in any culture… one sticks mainly to one's own time-worn
symbols and behaviour. The only persons of other faiths who interact with the Sai
organisation are those who also accept or tolerate silently the claim that Sai Baba is
nothing short of the Divinity Itself. One does not have to be much of a deep thinker to
see what limitations this sets upon the spread of the doctrine preached by Sai Baba,
though faith also can have great power in clouding sensible judgements… and such
beliefs can and do often stultify human moral conscience.
(to be continued)