Letter from Barry Pittard to David and Ann Jevons

 

Topic: To David and Ann Jevons, Ramala Centre,  UK  

Posted: Barry Pittard, Australia, March 11, 2003

Email: bpittard@beachaccess.com.au

Sent to: www.exbaba.com

Dear David and Ann,

I have heard about the work of your Ramala Centre, and that it is a very important and influential place for a great many.

I think we never met when I lived in the UK for a year and a half. This was in 1976-1978, although I feel sure that your Centre was not on the map way back then. No doubt we will have had good friends in common. I say had, advisedly, because issues I speak of have driven people apart most appallingly.

At some stage, I heard that you, David, were a man of truth.

Diplomacy brushed aside, I shall be frank to say that I think I recall that Ann may, on the allegation issue, have been sharp with a very dear, courageous and immensely dharmic former devotee friend of mine. (Any way, we all have our moments!). Perhaps my recollection has got mixed up, because the issue arose over two years ago. I can't check the email I have in mind, because it was lost in a computer crash, and also my friend is getting on with other aspects of his life and I shan't bother him. 

I trust, however, that you will realise that it is a place of very great love that many former devotees come out of. These include those who have had the very greatest experiences which would seem to posit the divine at work within the Sai phenomena. 

My own position is that even if God were to come and I had utterly compelling evidence from right round the world that He had committed the most terrible crimes, whatever the immensity of other good that He had done, then I would have, in absolute conscience, and in utter compassion for the victims, to do my duty as a self-respecting, law-respecting citizen.

Therefore, I have set myself the task of presenting the facts as I see them to the wider world. Many other former devotees, from many educational and cultural backgrounds, have done the same thing. Do not think, in the least, that we are nits.

I copy below my Open Letter to A.B. Vajpayee. Although it makes some leading points, it comes nowhere near relating the sheer overwhelming evidence that I possess of a very dark side to Sathya Sai Baba - no matter the extraordinary and contradictory other side. (Indeed, in supraphenomena that manifests in both the Puttaparthi form and in what occurs far beyond his form but related to the form's presence on the planet). I trust that you will read it, and do what no person I know of who continues as a Sai devotee has yet done - this is, to fearlessly face the truthfulness of what the Open Letter says. It is no use going on about 'abhaya,' etc., when we do not practice it with every shred of our being, as indeed needs to be the case with those 'pillars' referred to on the lotus petals of Sarva Dharma chakra, and forever being uttered every Sai devotee, who is meant to uphold these precepts.

I trust that, even if we are on different sides of the devotee/former devotee 'divide,' you will be prepared to look at this issue fearlessly, and not be lost - as so many devotees are - in defensiveness and in psychological denial. Somewhere, some of you who remain devotees, will have to consult your sense of responsibility for an awesome fact: these young males and their families are not lying or hallucinating. These other shocking allegations beside the ones of homo-pedophilia are not frivolous, either. These former devotees are not slanderers.

I trust that you, David and Ann, will express the vaunted Sai qualities so absent in this matter in so many Sai devotees, who in other respects are such fine people.

In respect and love,

Barry Pittard, Australia