Sathya Sai Baba, the guru of spiritual deceit
By: Robert Favour
Email: robertfavour@gmail.com
April 4, 2006
At the end of the last millennium I have lived about two years with the guru Sai Baba. In that time I felt strongly supported by him and in his company I went through many amazing spiritual experiences. I had the feeling as though I was on a rocket ship of spiritual expanding and progression. After a year something went wrong; I received a wrong advice from him in an issue that I had closed off, but Sai Baba thought he had to rake it up again for me. Due to the actions he wanted from me I got connected to very negative energy and my power and charisma collapsed. The wholeness that I always had experienced naturally disappeared. The blow hit so hard that part of my aura evaporated. Holes developed in the protective ethereal layers around me. The ethereal body that I had learned to built up with light power in previous years started to leak energy tremendously. Djins (non physical spirits) took position in my body. I came open for attacks from different entities. This way I developed a sort of phantom pain and due to all these influences my mental state deteriorated.I think that Sai Baba in the first year that I was with him had worked in me in a manner that I had given up a lot of my psychological character. This selflessness was filled up with a sort of pranic energy in the ethereal body; also known as upward kundalini power in the spine. Adversity with its negative downwards directed energy and attacking force was hard to bear, but helped in a strange way to strengthen this kundalini power. This process facilitated the light energy in the body reaching the head. This way one comes in contact with the soul, the higher bodies. Now spiritual experiences and a constant state of spiritual consciousness become possible. Nothing wrong so far and in fact the aim of many a spiritual seeker in the East. But whether the emptiness that Sai Baba had created in me was wrong or the spiritual energy had become too intensive, the negative connection could not be processed through my being in any normal manner. It felt as though I fell from great height. Probably the fall was much harder than if I had not been on this spiritual path. The overshadowing of Sai Baba ended up in a disaster.During the best phase in my time of following of the guru I had developed a clairaudient relation with him. After I had crashed he told me in our inner dialogue that he was not responsible for the incident. This was strange, because he had always given personal tasks and it was he who had pushed an unimportant issue constantly to my attention and had made clear I had to come into action in that field. In conformity with my own intuition that action had proven completely wrong, but at that time I still took the lessons from this master seriously. In one of his speeches he had told that the guru - by means of his contact with the higher realms – always knew what was best for the devotee; thus it was better to fulfil the master’s assignments. Unfortunately I had not forgotten that lesson then. After the fall from grace Sai Baba dropped me quickly and the marvellous exciting spiritual experiences were over. My attractiveness became repulsion (I suddenly looked years older), my light power became a searching dependency, the clairaudience developed in the hearing of desperate voices, the radiation became the attachment of negativity. The perseverance that everything always comes right became powerlessness. An entity with a lot of despair energy consumed my wellness and I could not liberate from it at first. The feelings that I then experienced I had never had before and are hardly possible to catch in words. The idea that Sai Baba would safe me from the developing horror slowly left me in time. It was clear that he had pushed me over borders where one normally better not go over.What could I do? At first I had no idea. It took time to find out what he had done exactly. Eventually I have come to the conclusion that it was more than just an accident that it had happened this way, that in fact it had been his aim and that he had tried to do nothing less than an attempt to ruin my life.
What is it worth, the truth of Sathya Sai Baba?Let’s look first at a few issues I have had about him the last few years. I remember there was an article in 2003 in one of the Dutch spiritual magazines on a book of a Dutch follower of Sai Baba, Geesje Lunshof, in which her inner dialogue with channelling this guru was described. The article made clear that the writer of the book held all the channelled messages from this guru for true divine wisdom. When I later worked with a clairvoyant when my channels for clairaudience were still disrupted from the crash, this friend detected that Sai Baba was still hanging around me. I asked her to ask Sai Baba why he had done to me what he had done. The answer that came back was that the experience gave me an opportunity to learn new healing techniques. This sounded pretty opportunistic. I then asked him via the channeller why he had abused boys for sexual pleasure. The next answer that came back now was that he was a physical being that needed to explore the physical. There had been quite a bit of rumour around him on these matters and this was a different answer from the one the author of the book on Sai Baba had received when she inquired about the allegations against him. There he had dismissed the acquisitions as untrue; according to Sai Baba it had all come from people with bad intent towards him. She should still trust God (him!).The simple conclusion about the comparison with these two channellings is that what is received from Sathya Sai Baba (Sathya means truth?!) or is passed through from him on the inner plane, is not the truth the way the author was idealising it. If he denied and further on admitted the disgusting actions to engage especially male followers in his sexual endeavours, he was simply lying to one of us. In fact he had not only cheated on his sexual abuse, there was much more.He cheated in his materialisations out of thin air: many devotees have found out later that the golden rings with special stones were only cheap Indians fabrics, the fakes that can be bought in large quantities at every third shop in Puttaparthi where his ashram is located.The holy ash he ‘materialises’ was coming from clay tablets that he was holding between his fingers and which he pulverised in his hands. The handing over of letters by his devotees was used as a guide away handling. The evidence for all that is simply too overwhelming. If one sees the short video takes and films and reads the many accounts at the website ex-baba/engels/, it becomes clear there is something systematic going on here: a pattern of magic and tricks.If I look at the horror I went through after his tricky advice these tricks in the physical third dimensional world seem only milder versions of the abuse of what is happening on the realms of the spirit where Sai Baba has many entrances to people, causing so many to feel attracted to him. There is mental manipulation; people think they receive a lot of healing from this man. A world of religious experience and miraculous spiritual discoveries is being created, but in essence a lot of it is nonsense. What is true is that he has access to many people and that he makes use of that.Maybe not everything of these statements is directly provable, but isn’t it logical to say the following: someone who has access to the (religious) world of his followers and in a systematic manner cheats so many people with miracle tricks, will probably show the same behaviour in other areas where he is working. In other words, there is a realistic chance that Sai Baba is also a man full of tricks, a cheater in the mental and spiritual realms.Sai Baba does not only play tricks with gemstones and alike, he also plays with people’s believes; a few examples:- Once in India we had two English friends visiting us, who both believed they had been Maria Magdalene in a previous incarnation. They did not know that from each other. That gave funny discussions. One woman had heard this from a spiritual counsellor who channelled the Akashic Records with the help of Sai Baba. I do not doubt the existence of past lives and the Akashic Records (the collective data bank of the earth, where the sleeping prophet Edgar Cayce also found his knowledge), but not to a sense that more souls can have lived the same life. It goes against all knowledge from Hinduism and new age thought.Later I explained the incident to a friend. He said he was not surprised; according to him there were at least ten women in the ashram who had been Maria in a previous life.- But even well developed authors like Joshua Stone did not see his tricks: Joshua wrote a whole book on him without seeing him in person. He claimed he would come to India when he was able to teleport. Maybe the phenomenon exists, but to my opinion not for this Californian PhD. He has never been seen circling above the ashram in India. He never went looking for himself and has never investigated what was really going on in India. What he did do was taking everything for true what Sai Baba told him in his inner ear; he dedicated the title of his book to Sai Baba. - In general this ‘holy man’ created little objects out of thin air, but sometimes he materialised a bigger Ganesha statue, but that only out of the sand if he put his hands in it. Many were blind for the possibility that the object had been put there before his miraculous creation.- I remember we went to a house of a devotee where the vibuthi (the ‘holy’ ash) was coming out of a picture of Sai Baba. When we arrived at the house we saw the vibuthi was adhered to the picture; there was no sandy streaming like the sandy ash out of Sai Baba’s hands. I asked the owner of the house if he could make it come out, but he said that would only happen at certain occasions (when nobody was there, maybe?).- One of the holy days in India there was such a special occasion in darshan. Baba had spread the rumour that he would materialize a lingam at the festival day. This holy lingam was growing in his stomach. If you would see the lingam coming out of his mouth, you would be freed from all karma. There was a lot of pushing among the many visitors to be with the sacred moment and so ‘stupid me’ missed the opportunity. Later I saw the film of the event: after a lot of coughing and cleaning his face with a handkerchief he spitted out a golden ball. For a moment I hoped that watching the film would help me to release some of my karma too. It took a bit more time to realise that I had lost my critical senses; I noticed myself engaging in funny reasoning; after a while I could see what it really was: crap - There are so many of these tales going on amongst his followers. A taxi driver told me Sai Baba had created a holographic scene of the street where an admirer was living. Then this devotee stepped into the picture and was teleported home again a second later. Others told me his car could fly or that he could be at two places at the same time etc. At the end when the chaff is sifted from the wheat nothing much remains but the feeling that these stories and holy events are all based on nonsense. What can be derived from the examples is the conclusion that this guru plays with people’s believes or what they are willing to believe as truth. Some devotees are willing to give a helping hand to their believes. I have been an ardent believer myself, because it all looked so special what I heard from him and what I saw. Not so many had a clairaudient relationship with him. With others he appeared in dreams or via other channels. Many saw this as a sign for his holiness.Is he holy?Let’s look first a bit closer at his religious lessons: I started to disconnect first from his speeches. His public talks left me often with an impression of a not very highly developed mind. In fact I never thought Sai Baba’s speeches were that elaborated. He never let his translator finish his sentences. Consequently many felt overwhelmed by the float of words and noise in his temple. Once on paper I never noticed that Sai Baba’s teachings contributed to my religious and spiritual understanding. After a while I stopped listening and did not read the newsletters anymore. I had made the conclusion his lessons were not for the evolving Western souls but for the local Indian people who had not received education. Sometimes I found myself wondering if this guru really understood religion. Was he maybe a bit simple? This conflicted with my idea that he was a holy person. I found a solution by telling myself that the physical person was different from the total being Sai Baba. After all, the inner messages often expressed a special insight. I decided from then only to go to darshan for the revelations and the energy gift. I read a lot on spirituality and how it was organised at that time, for example about the Masters of the Seven Rays, the Lords of Karma, the Elohim, the Archangels, the White Brotherhood, but Sai Baba seemed not to belong to or fit in any of these hierarchies, while he stated at the same time that he was God. He was not as important as he suggested. It also became clear to me that what he was teaching, was not always in conformity with longstanding religions. E.g., he showed the true Christian little bible that was found in Eastern Europe!?? Hindus expressed their concern about the nonsense he told about Krishna. Then there were the wicked stories he told his devotees about previous incarnations. It all seemed to appeal to Godly experiences, but in fact this was often only referring to a vague feeling. He stated to be of all religions, which is also expressed in the statue in his garden. With a more close examination (there are many other examples to give) one gets the impression of someone who messes around in religion and knowledge about it.I am familiar with the devotion that many feel for Sai Baba. I do not deny that there are many followers, probably millions all over the world. What characterises the spiritual processes people go through with Sai Baba it is that one never really knows what the process is about and what is at stake at a certain moment; one feels only a high energy. The devotee in process feels something painful, an air is created that something special is going on or is waiting to unfold. In fact this suggestion is enough to make a strong bond. The devoted pupils think that the mental experiences are part of a way to ascension and enlightenment. Some even write books about it. Often at the end of a process in which it looks as though one is going through something important. The devotees cherish the deep insights coming after the process and think they have great realisations, but forget the deep dungeons they went through before. Nearly none of the admirers see that these wild processes (in a newsletter of the ashram this was called ‘progressive dynamism’) they undergo lead for many not to any goodies.Basically Sai Baba saves the devotee during darshan somehow, but this does mean it will lead to any liberation. The only thing that is for sure strengthened is the co-dependency to the guru. I was also being captured in his magic. Many Westerners can be found around the ashram for years; many followers keep on coming back. This does not need to be that way: Mother Meera, also a supposed God being from India, living in the area around Frankfurt, Germany, is only available to be visited by interested people a few weekends per year. Permanently around her is only a small necessary staff. She rejects dependency and encourages taking in a position in society.In the messages of the inner dialogue with him there was always the element of surprise. It gave me the impression of a brilliant spiritual man. He wins many people for him with ’wonderful’ magic and fantastic spiritual experiences. This is probably even stronger if one has developed a clairaudient relation with him. The point is that it all looks holy, but that does not mean it is that way. Telepathy is a sign of higher development, but is it in itself holy? Miraculous experiences are also not holy as such. But what if the spiritual support is based on deceit and child’s play? Is it then still about holy? How can these experiences be true spiritual support when it is not based on sincerity, compassion, divine knowledge, liberation or other God qualities. If one is not psychic, like me after my crash, one cannot really oversee what is going on in the process with this man. What one can do then, is look from the outside and test and/or keep on reasoning logically. In the applying of these principles for myself on Sai Baba, little remained of his revelations and holiness.Is it wise to be related to him ?
If the holiness is not real, probably an other agenda is being fulfilled. From all the examples it becomes clear that he executes his work of deceit and abuse without any reservations. If he is able to do this negative behaviour without any conscience, the question arises if he does not do any more on the spiritual realms without people knowing about it. The question at stake is not what he gives, or how miraculous he is, or how he does what does. The real question is which interest is served with the creation of so much magical nonsense. Is it not logic to suppose he needs something from his devotees. The question is only what? I do not deny that he has some paranormal power. The question is if he uses it justly? If in fact all the ‘miracles’ are the beginning of a process of opening up for him of which one cannot oversee the full consequences, is it then wise to start with him it at all?In fact most psychics that had access to higher spiritual communication levels and whom I spoke with, were convinced of his negativity. A healer said he had bad intentions to me. A psychic friend told me later that he captured soul pieces of his devotees. Of course these are only stories that can hardly be tested, but they have been described by people that I regard as sincere. The other side is that I can also remember that he regularly took some negative attachments away from me in a very own manner and that his interventions led finally to more light power in the bodies and some ethereal strengthening. So, he was not only cheating, he was also helping. Was it maybe so that his healing qualities were functional in gathering crowds around him? That on a deeper level he looked for ways to capture people in his tentacles? I am trying to understand here motives for his actions. In fact it is difficult to understand someone who combines so Godly qualities and false, destructive manners of betrayal. Clear is only that his interventions are not of divine perfection. People feel a transfer of energy. The fact that he can give others his energy can even be doubted. In India I used to visit an old pranic healer/clairvoyant in Bangalore. Although he could release djins from my body ten times better than Sai Baba, he had mostly not more than ten people in the waiting room of his healing practice (quantity is not the discerning factor). He said that being with Sai Baba was a useless experience. He told me: “I have these visitors from Puttaparthi; I make their aura all right, then they go back to this man, than they come back to me, their aura is a mess again; then I make it all right again. This goes on for years. Some Westerners are doing this for more than 20 years; there is no teaching; no spiritual progress; they sit there for hours in the hall watching him; there is no serious education; there is no contribution into any spiritual teachings. It is all nothing”. This pensioned engineer explained me also that I, as many others, was actually leaking energy to him. I have often felt that he in fact can give some energy to others. I also felt at that time it was healing energy. So, this gives all together a mixed impression. Basically I have troubles with the idea that an avatar like Sai Baba is partly good and ‘Oh God, he has some vices”. It does not work that way for my logical mind. It is not clear what his final intentions are. His cheating behaviour must fulfil a need. He does is purposeful. There must be a hidden agenda, he only knows. According to some of the ex-devotees that I spoke the last few years and whose lives he had ruined, the intentions of this faker were very dark. In reality I do not know his secrets, I can only guess. But it cannot be something very positive. I know from my own experience that this man can be very dangerous, on a deeper level he might be evil. The Lords of Karma, a group of ethereal beings that guard the records of all that happens on earth, told me later on the inner plane in a channelling that all that happened to me with Sai Baba had been planned action; that I had been the victim of a set-up, identical to what had happened in a previous life. Of course one can bring in reservations towards this last example, because the interpretation comes from non-physical beings. Still, I know these ethereal beings are real and are able to help humans greatly. I have no reason to doubt their judgement.Why do the followers let themselves be seduced so easily with his tricks?
The problem is that in the lives of his followers often something has gone wrong and then these people start to look for liberation; often the beginning of a spiritual quest and a search for help and salvation. In that state one is less critical and takes what one can get, in this case the help of a love prophet; as he likes to describe himself. Nothing wrong with, until one comes in the wrong hands. The personal needs of devotees to be saved from the suffering basically dims the critical mind. The need for salvation leads to an easy believe it is all true. In the traditional religious Indian culture wonders are a more generally accepted phenomenon. This contributes to it that the fake of charlatans in spirit affairs is less easy to pinpoint. A lot want to live fairy tales and there lies the real danger. Even the higher echelons in society are not alert: Vajpayee, priminister of the nuclear power state India in the time I was there, was regularly visiting Puttaparthi to consult him. Another characteristic in a system of follower ship is how one evaluates the ex devotees. I remember of that time that a befriended admirer of Sai Baba described David Bailey as a sexual frustrated little man. The latter, a British musician who lived very close to Sai Baba for a long time, and who wrote at first a very positive book on this guru, changed quite suddenly from an ardent devotee to a man of harsh critics. He disappeared out of the ashram to never come back there. Only few wanted to see that this sincere man could much better see than others what was really going on. He watched it all from close distance with his own eyes, many Indian boys talked to him. Finally he decided he did not want to be part of that story. But within the system of follower ship a kind of blindness is cultivated.Did Sai Baba go the wrong way somewhere?
There can be many causes for why he is not of pure intent (is not that another important God quality?) and does what he does. Maybe he is a fallen angel. He could be possessed by entities and/or extraterrestrials. Who knows has he stolen the gifts and in fact he is not anything much at all. What is sure is that he wants to capture his devotee in his world. Misuse and deceit become part of the follower, normally without him or her knowing this. By then you do not get rid of him so easily. This way the help might develop in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, in a perpetuating story that never stops. All these expressions and child’s play are difficult to match with a mentally healthy grown-up human, let alone that you can rhyme it with a God being or someone pretending to be one. The closest to the truth for me is the image of a mentally ill avatar. It looks as though the God qualities are united in the wrong person. It is not so that he is the – in many religions announced and also by him proclaimed – liberator upon whom so many are waiting in these times. I am not convinced that he means well with humanity at all, otherwise he would be more sincere. I asked myself sometimes if he was the false prophet that Apostle John predicted for these times in the Revelations, the last chapter of the bible.My Conclusion
Not all that blinks is holy. The development of discriminative powers needs unfortunately time. After my stay in India I have lived for years outside Europe and searched for many ways to recover. Eventually I found spectacular healers with sincerity and true divine gifts, but that is another story. Sai Baba lacks in my view sincerity and higher moral. I see it as my task to warn for him. People with spiritual interest who are considering to visit him should think twice. At least there is a dark side in unclear avatar. Sure is that there are many alternatives available for this cheating God-man. This story is written from the intention to bring something new to the surface in the area where Sai Baba is manoeuvring. I wanted to share my experiences and pass through what I have seen and concluded about him. With some years of experience with this guru my judgement does not come from cheap observation. Fortunately a lot of his mischief and bad deeds are brought to the public on the Internet. I hope that my story will contribute to well considered choices to visit him or not. In fact it would be better when a more critical stream would come up in India, in order to expose his fake spirituality. He should be prosecuted for his appalling acts against so many of his followers.Email: robertfavour@gmail.com
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