Sathya Sai Baba Teaches: ‘We are not this body’. Why Are His Devotees Such A Police Security Problem?

 

At 'Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba', see the article:

Sathya Sai Baba Teaches: ‘We are not this body’. Why Are His Devotees Such A Police Security Problem?

Posted by Barry Pittard on April 24, 2011

QUOTE

Cited several times in the Indian media’s sudden, unaccustomed, large coverage of Sathya Sai Baba, are accounts of “eminent” Sai devotees stating that he will not die because he has promised to remain in the physical body until he is 96 years.

Outside India, the notion of outstanding professionals giving credence to such way-out beliefs must seem strange. For the facts to sink in to a foreign brain, one has to live and work in India. One has to experience at first hand the sheer extent of superstition from top to bottom in that society of such mutual kindness and cruelty, beauty and tragedy. Valiantly, many Indians struggle on behalf of sense and reason, but what they face is formidable in the extreme.

 For decades, Sathya Sai Baba’s constant evangel has been for his followers not, except for a few concessions to practicality, to regard the body – a decaying, temporary encasement. In hundreds of his discourses, he has told them not to become attached to his, or indeed, to anyone’s bodily form. Why, then, the overwhelming scenes of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth?

 And why are so many of his followers now  – disrespectful of life and limb with all their intemperate milling and thronging at Puttaparthi – causing such trouble to the local and state police?  According to official statements, there are some 2000 police engaged in crowd control and other security duties at Puttaparthi, with another 2000 or so on standby. This is in addition to Sathya Sai Baba’s large cadres of well-drilled Seva Dal (service volunteers).

One may ask, too, why such unseemly arguments attend the deliberations among some of his closest servitors?

The Times of India reports:

Sai Baba’s devotees believe he will live for 96 years

IANS, Apr 21, 2011, 03.45pm IST

HYDERABAD: Though the condition of spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba is worsening, some of his devotees are confident he will recover and live for 96 years as he had once predicted.

A group of eminent devotees, including former judges, police officers and physicians, believe that the 85-year-old Sathya Sai Baba’s present condition is because he has taken on himself the sufferings of one of his devotees ...