My concerns about Sathya Sai BabaLast revised on Dec. 17, 2007. Prefatory Note: Dear Reader: internet traffic statistics indicate that this is consistently within our top 25 most-viewed pages here at our Enlightened Spirituality website, no doubt because other websites have strong recommendations to visit this page. It is one of several very "critical" pages at this Enlightened Spirituality website. I invite anyone visiting here to read also the many, many other essays at this website—much more positive in tone— pertaining to authentic spirituality. You might want to see first the basic short paper, "Our Real Nature" at the Nondual Spirituality section; the "Criteria for Authentic Spiritual Realization" page at the Healthy Spirituality section, and the profiles of illustrious sages and saints like the Buddha, Milarepa, Jnaneshvar, Meister Eckhart, Bayazid Bistami, Rumi, Bankei, the Ba'al Shem Tov, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and so many other luminaries at the Nondual Spirituality section and, especially, the Religion & Spirituality section. The eminent female Divine Incarnation or avatar of our day, Mata Amritanandamayi, or Amma / Ammachi, the "Hugging Mother," has said: "Watching an unrighteous act that you know is against dharma, while keeping your mouth shut, is the greatest form of unrighteousness. That is the conduct of a coward, not a person of courage." (Eternal Wisdom: Upadeshamritam, Vol. 2, p. 9) It is a curious paradox in authentic spirituality that we do best always to see everyone in the most sublime light as embodiments of the One Divine Light, yet we must also be savvy and sharp about injustices, abuses of sentient beings, abuses of Truth, Virtue and Propriety. Jesus taught, "Judge not, lest you be judged." And yet Jesus himself could be quite "judgmental" and "critical" (even in the most genuine earliest collection of his teachings, as carefully sifted by scholars). Hence, our mature spiritual intelligence needs to be a judge or a critic, that is, an evaluator, of proper and improper behavior occurring in ourselves (first and foremost, ourselves) and also in others, for the sake of the common good. Otherwise, "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" (a line famously attributed to Irish philosopher-statesman Edmund Burke, d.1797). We can criticize or judge our own behavior and the behavior of apparent "others" (the One Self in disguise) while fully loving them as the Beloved. Bottom line: while critiquing unseemly and/or illegal, criminal behavior, we need not throw anyone out of our hearts! Love to all beings, the One Divine. On Sri Sathya Sai Baba Some people have wondered about my views concerning the amazingly enigmatic and controversial figure Sathya Narayana Raju, better known to his tens of millions of devotees in India and abroad as Sri Sathya Sai Baba (born 1926), sometimes abbreviated here as SSB, and reverently called by these followers “Bhagavân” (“Lord, Divine One”), “Bâbâ” (“Father”), or “Swâmi” (a title for a Hindu renunciate). Sathya Sai is venerated by most of his devotees and in the huge amount of devotional literature on him not only as a God-man, but also as the Pûrna Avatâra, the fullest possible Incarnation of the Godhead, the fullest manifestation of the Divine since Lord Krishna lived in India thousands of years ago. Alas, many of his former devotees or longtime critics now view Sathya Sai as a "charlatan huckster," and/or "black magician," and/or "the very incarnation of evil." They base these charges not just on widespread revelations of faked "miraculous" materializations of artifacts and sacred ash (to go along with some evidently genuine paranormal capacities), but, more seriously, on numerous reported allegations of improper sexual contact with male youth. There are concerns over other serious matters as well, such as financial improprieties at the ashram, instances of plagiarism by Sathya Sai, and the apparent suppression of any meaningful investigation of the infamous six "bedroom murders" on the night of June 6-7, 1993 at Sathya Sai's main ashram, Prashanti Nilayam at Puttaparthi in South India. For a growing number of the rest of us who've closely studied the extraordinary phenomenon of Sathya Sai, the reality about him is somewhere in between—a very gifted yet also deeply flawed human being. Perhaps he is just a highly adept but fallen yogi or an inter-dimensionally powerful but contaminated "channel" for the former Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918). Perhaps he is some unknown other type of being altogether! Whatever the reality, Sathya Sai, it would appear, is perhaps the most enigmatic case of "Jekyll and Hyde" split-personality in the entire known history of religion. Regardless of one's feelings—pro, con, or mixed—about Sathya Sai, he is a hugely important figure on the Hindu and international religious scene these last 40 years. And, specifically for the field of "nondual spirituality," there are some challenging issues that the entire Sathya Sai controversy raises about the relationship between absolute-level "Truth" ("There's only God") and conventional-level, moral-ethical issues of "truth and justice." In other words, how do we reconcile the traditional nondual teaching that ultimately "everything is the perfect expression of God-Tao-Buddha-nature" with the ethical-moral realization that some things are right/appropriate and other things are wrong/inappropriate? A summary point on this entire matter is something I learned in the 1980s from listening to and observing three eminent sages of nondual wisdom, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj of Bombay, Annamalai Swami of Tiruvannamalai, and Mata Amritanandamayi of Kerala, along with many other true sages and saints of different traditions whom I've had the good fortune to observe: "This manifest world is all a perfect Divine dream, yet one must aspire (by Divine Grace) to act impeccably, lovingly and with integrity within the dream." I should begin this very long webpage with an extensive revelation about my own involvement with the subject, since I actually participated for many years in some local Sathya Sai Baba centers, first sporadically at the Los Angeles SSB Center in 1978-80 after experiencing in Summer 1978 some powerful dreams of Baba (along with many vivid "high dreams" before and since then of other charismatic spiritual figures). I then quite frequently associated with the Sathya Sai movement in San Francisco from Fall 1979 to Fall 1987, for, after returning from my first trip to Asia in 1980-1981, I was invited to live with friends in the household that sponsored and ran the San Francisco SSB Center while I attended graduate school nearby. I also accepted an invitation to serve as a president of the S.F. chapter (a function rotated among members) from late 1981 to 1984, and from 1984-87 I served as an appointed “liason officer” for the Sathya Sai Baba Council of America for Northern California. After moving to Santa Barbara in Fall 1987 and returning from another trip to India over several early months of 1988, I participated at the Santa Barbara Sathya Sai Baba Center until I left the SSB movement in early Feb. 2001. During my time with the SSB Center in Santa Barbara I never served as an officer, since express guidelines by the Sathya Sai org forbid anyone serving as a spiritual teacher in the public eye from also serving as an officer in the SSB movement, to avoid any perceived conflict of interest. By 1988 I was perceived by a number of people as indeed functioning publicly as a spiritual teacher. Sathya Sai was not and never was my primary spiritual connection—that honor belongs to the Divine One pure and simple, Who first awakened me to the God-Self in 1971. With respect to human Avatars/Incarnations, spiritual masters and preceptors, I felt very early, strong connections to Jesus (1971 on), Sri Ramana Maharshi and the Buddha (1972 on), Ramakrishna and the two Sai Babas (1978 on), Nisargadatta Maharaj (1979 on), Amma Amritanandamayi (1986 on), and a number of Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Sufi saints. Despite all my work in this field, and my love for so many spiritual leaders, I have never been interested to cling to the specific forms or personalities of spiritual masters, since my spirituality has always had more to do with the formless, transpersonal Divine Essence than a slavish devotion to any form. Nevertheless, I used to have framed photos of SSB around, just as I had framed photos and paintings of Jesus, Ramana Maharshi, the Buddha, Mother Mary, Anandamayi Ma, Amritanandamayi, Milarepa, Ramakrishna, Francis of Assisi, Seraphim of Sarov, and many, many others—my home-spaces have always tended to look more like religious shrines than ordinary living spaces! Whereas I still have on display some framed photos of the old, original Shirdi Sai Baba, my wife Laura threw out the Sathya Sai photos in Feb. 2001, with my assent. I very much enjoyed my involvement with the SSB movement because I loved the emphasis on open-hearted, ecstatic bhajan-singing to the Divine One and the many charitable service projects to the wider community for which the SSB movement is justly famous. Also, I had a number of inner experiences of the Divine through the Sai Baba forms—both the Sathya Sai body and the original Shirdi Sai Baba form. And whereas the pure advaita/nondual spiritual teachings were never widely emphasized in the Sathya Sai movement, they were definitely there in the literature of writings, conversations and discourses by Sathya Sai, and often declared by Sathya Sai to be his essential teaching. Moreover, for many years (until my discoveries in Feb. 2001) I felt that the SSB movement was, comparatively speaking, one of the "cleaner" spiritual groups around—all meetings were free, there was no pressure to raise funds, no pressure to gain recruits, no structured "levels of initiation," no emphasis on pushing untried or dubious meditation techniques, there was a lovely blend of nondual wisdom and nondual devotion teachings, tolerance of religious participation in other groups by members, and a mostly wonderful group of people with whom to associate. For anyone participating at the great majority of local SSB centers, there was a very low index of “dysfunction” compared to other traditional religious denominations and popular new religious movements on the scene in the 1970s and 80s (Scientology, est, TM, MSIA, Eckankar, SYDA Yoga, Free Daist Communion, ISKCON, Unification Church, Soka Gakkai, Chogyam Trungpa, Rajneesh, etc.). As for my own direct experience of Sathya Sai, I had many memorable dreams of him, along with dreams of other spiritual masters (on a few occasions two or more figures appeared in the same dream, such as Nisargadatta Maharaj and Sathya Sai). These very vivid dreams began the night after I first began to read of Baba in Sam Sandweiss' and Arnold Schulman's books on Baba in Summer of 1978, and occurred over the many years, even including a few dreams of SSB after I left his movement in early Feb. 2001. Such dreams almost always featured the personal form of Sathya Sai communicating a profound field of very loving, radiant, and blissful energy. Like it or not, this bodily form of Sathya Sai (along with the form of the old Shirdi Sai Baba) is used by the deep Self for millions of people worldwide as an archetypal image or instrument to communicate tremendous blessings, healings, and sense of well-being. (When I lived at the SSB Center household in S.F., we heard from many visitors and people calling on the phone how Sathya Sai had appeared to them in remarkable dreams and visions.) Whether this power inheres in Sathya Sai or comes from beyond him—i.e., from the old Shirdi Sai Baba or from the Godhead ItSelf—is uncertain and debatable. On three different trips to Asia, in 1980-81, 1988, and 1995-96, involving over 8 months of travel in India, I spent a total of 4 weeks at Sathya Sai's main ashram, Prashanti Nilayam (Abode of Peace) at Puttaparthi, south India (north of Bangalore). Most of the rest of the time was spent at the late Ramana Maharshi's Ramanashramam (total of 7 weeks) and Papa Ramdas' Anandashram (2 weeks) and visiting with Nisargadatta Maharaj in Bombay (2 weeks in Jan. 1981), Mata Amritanandamayi at her Kerala ashram (1988), and many other persons, ashrams and sacred places in India (Mother Teresa and Dadaji of Calcutta, the Shirdi Sai complex, the Meher Baba pilgrim center, Bodh Gaya, Varanasi, Agra, Vrindavan, Sufi shrines, the Ajanta & Ellora cave temples, and numerous other impressive persons and places far less known). During my four visits to Sathya Sai's Prashanti Nilayam ashram, my experience with him tended to be on a more transpersonal or even impersonal level. In 1980-1, I serendipitously wound up being able to sit in the "front lines" quite often during SSB's twice-daily darshans (wherein he comes out and walks past the assembled lines of visitors), but I was never called for the smaller group interview with him, let alone the private interview. I had no craving for such an interview, and figured that it was good that other people who wanted this kind of personal interaction with SSB would get it in place of myself. One day in 1980, sitting on the front line along with the vast crowd assembled for his darshan, I asked Sathya Sai the only question I ever felt moved to pose to him, a question about liberation for all beings. He responded by casting an affectionate glance my way, and then he produced some vibhuti-ash (probably not paranormally but with the pellets of ash now known to be surreptitiously kept in the fingers of his left hand), he annointed the head of the person next to me with a bit of this ash, and then he dumped the bulk of the ash into my open palm as if to nonverbally affirm that liberation comes when all selfish desire is reduced to ash. In sum, I had a most enjoyable experience with the Sathya Sai movement and with my limited exposure to the actual personality of Sathya Sai on physical and psychic levels. My only caveat to my friends during all those years was that I felt the higher levels of the organization were rather dysfunctional. A top-down, non-democratic management style, and certain less-than-sterling personnel at top levels in the American wing of the SSB movement (I'll not mention any names), were the two factors that especially gave me pause. I had a minor in Organizational Development at the California Institute of Integral Studies during my graduate studies there in the 1980s, so I was concerned about a rather unenlightened management structure and communication style and a few disagreeable personalities I observed for a short period during the mid-1980s when I had some occasional contact with this higher level of the SSB organization. But then, this critique could equally be aimed at almost every other religious organization—old or new—on the planet. The really dark shadow side of Sathya Sai and of the higher levels of the movement's hierarchy was never really exposed to my view until February 2001, by which point I had not been an officer of any kind in the organization since 1987. There had been one early clue about SSB's homosexual orientation in an old book (Avatar of Night / Lord of the Air) by Tal Brooke, which I first lightly perused in the mid-1980s and fully read in 1987. But Tal was such an obviously biased messenger by the time he wrote his book in the early 1980s (a bigoted, fundamentalist evangelical Christian, adamantly anti-Hindu), and so megalomaniacal in his own descriptions of his time with Sathya Sai in the early 1970s (and in third-person accounts of Tal by a few friends who knew him back then), that Tal's message about SSB's shadow side, while noteworthy as an interesting "footnote" for all those years in the latter 1980s and 1990s, could not be reliably trusted. Moreover, there was no indication that Baba was sexually exploiting under-aged minors at the time for selfish pleasure. It was only when material emerged on Prof. David Christopher Lane's website in the late 1990s and then Britishers David & Faye Bailey stood up with their July 2000 revelations in "The Findings" (posted in various places online), that numerous persons began to realize that something was seriously wrong, and that lads under the age of 18 were being targeted by Sathya Sai. And when we heard this information (I discovered the extent of it during one all-night research effort in February, 2001, after a three-year family health-crisis prevented my doing much research of any kind), we immediately responded by standing up for truth and justice. Not getting any mature or satisfactory response from the leadership of the national SSB organization, most of us who took this stand promptly departed the SSB movement altogether. What was especially telling and offensive was how thoroughly the leadership was ignoring and neglecting the question of the male youth's welfare and instead obsessively focusing solely on how to rationalize Sathya Sai's Divinity and "purity" in the matter.
I must pause here to acknowledge numerous persons who have done so much to bring this entire matter to the attention of SSB devotees as well as to the authorities and media contacts in many countries, including the late Glen Meloy (d.2005) of Southern California; the indefatigable Barry Pittard of Australia (see his blog at barrypittard.wordpress.com/); British author Robert Priddy, former researcher and lecturer in philosophy and sociology at Norway's University of Oslo (see his book End of the Dream and his websites on Sathya Sai at saibaba-x.org.uk/ and home.no.net/anir/Sai/); the UK's David & Faye Bailey (author/compilers of "The Findings") and journalist Mick Brown (see his article "Divine Downfall"); Al Rahm (head of the largest SSB commune in the USA, and his son Alaya), Mark Roche, Jed Geyerhahn, Afshin Khorramshagol ("Said"), Shirley Pike, Sharon Purcell (co-founder of the earliest SSB center in the USA), Lori Kaplowitz, Ella Evers, Rick Raines, Hari Sampath, Dennis Hanisch, Dave Lyons, Dave Brandt, Keenan Aletheia Cheney, and the late Elena Hartgering (d.2006) of the USA; in Sweden, Conny Larsson (former spiritual leader of Sweden's large SSB movement, author of the SSB expose book, Behind the Mask of the Clown, and website saibabaexpose.com), Britt-Marie Danielsson (former Swedish SSB organizational head), Alf Tidemann-Johannessen, and Annastina Vrethammar & husband Magnus; Holland's Alexandra Nagel, Matthijs van der Meer, Hans de Kraker (now in Australia), and Andries Krugers Dagneaux and Reinier van der Sandt (see their big www.exbaba.com website); Øjvind Kyrø (journalist and director of the documentary film, "Seduced (by Sai Baba)" for the Danish National Broadcasting network); Artur Wisniewski of Poland; Paul Holbach of Italy; Terry Gallagher (former central director of the Australian SSB Org), Stephen Carthew and researcher-author Brian Steel (see bdsteel.tripod.com/More/index.html) of Australia; Lionel Fernandez of Mexico (see his major critical site, saiguru.net); Alejandro Agostinelli of Argentina (journalist-author, and director of the documentary film, "¿Un dios pecador? [A Sinning God?]"); Jens Sethi and Ullrich Zimmermann of Germany; Marc-Andre St. Jean of Montreal, Canada; Serguei Badaev of Russia; and Dr. Naresh Bhatia, Meenakshi Srikanth, and Krishna Kumar of India—along with other former devotees unknown to me. Though I disagree strongly with his atheist philosophy and rationalist-skeptic approach, the Indian former SSB devotee (1968-74) turned India's most notorious "guru-buster," Basava Premanand, a decades-long critic of Sathya Sai in his periodical Indian Skeptic, also deserves acknowledgment here as one taking a firm and enduring stand for accountability and justice, not just in the case of SSB but with other problematic figures as well. (On the case against SSB, see Premanand's bulky books, including Murders in Sai Baba's Bed Room, 2004, and, most recently, Failed Sabotage by SSB through Gerald Moreno, 2007, etc., published by the author at 11/7, Chettipalayam Rd., Podanur 641 023, Tamil Nadu, India) Many of these individuals have worked tirelessly and/or courageously in trying to bring Sathya Sai and his accomplices to accountability and justice. In most cases they have had much to lose (their friends, social-spiritual community and spiritual identity, positions and reputations within the SSB movement, time and energy invested previously in the movement, even financial revenues from certain books and projects created for SSB) and nothing to gain except a sense of trying to enact justice by raising questions and spreading the word. In the process, they have often had to endure considerable repudiation, gossip, name-calling, threats, lies, slander and calumny aimed at them by Sathya Sai Baba himself and by some of the SSB movement's self-appointed, vitriolic "attack dogs." In turn, it needs to be said that a very small number of the above-named critics have sometimes (a few persons much more often than others!) descended to putting out distortions and even the occasional calumny. This is especially true of a few critics of SSB whose names i have not even mentioned in the above list. In short, there has been misbehavior on all sides, though clearly more of it coming from the authoritarian-style defenders of SSB. I also acknowledge here Jack Hawley, J. Jagadeesan, Ram Das Awle, G. Venkataraman, Bon Giovanni, and, more recently and most prominently, Gerald Joe Moreno for their attempts to defend Sathya Sai Baba, though, as will be obvious from the rest of this website (and my separate page on the Hislop letters), I find far too much to disagree with, in both content and style, to come over to their view of things. As representative of the "pro-Sathya Sai" side, and since his name has already been mentioned above in the case of Basava Premanand's most recent book, see Joe Moreno's relentlessly "critical of the critics" website www.saisathyasai.com—with its listing of numerous pro-SSB websites and its HUGE listing of more than 100 critical websites, and Joe's consistent attempts to refute numerous allegations (though he is silent about many other allegations). Joe Moreno is a controversial figure, and has been banned from any further contributions to Wikipedia on this topic for his one-sidedness and less than wholesome tactics, as have other persons on the side critical of SSB also been banned. Brian Steel, Alan Kazlev and Kevin Shepherd, the latter two gentlemen originally being "outsiders" on the SSB phenomenon (i.e., they were never devotees or ex-devotees) have all written relatively even-handed assessments and critiques of dear Joe Moreno's strangely vituperative pro-Sai activity, their essays available on the Internet at these sites: --See Kevin R.D. Shepherd (a very long essay, including much discussion of the politics over the Wikipedia entry on SSB; Shepherd concludes, sadly, that Joe Moreno is indeed "an obsessive internet 'hit man'"): www.citizeninitiative.com/sathya_sai_and_wikipedia.htm --See Alan Kazlev (initially a supporter of Moreno's efforts, this major Wikipedia scholar became a concerned critic of Moreno's overkill style of attacking and slandering people who disagree with him, such as ex-devotee Robert Priddy): www.kheper.net/topics/gurus/Joe_Moreno.html and www.kheper.net/topics/gurus/Moreno_slander_against_Robert_Priddy.htm --See Brian Steel (in the Endnote on Moreno toward the close of the third part of his huge online bibliography of all available print, video, and online materials about SSB, pro, con and mixed): http://bdsteel.tripod.com/More/sbresearchbib3.htm Joe Moreno, in turn, has long critical assessments of each of these individuals at his website: And so it goes. (For Joe Moreno's surprisingly much more positive, tender side, see his website on spirituality at www.geocities.com/www0db0www/index.html?20074.) It must be clearly stated and admitted here that Joe Moreno's tireless efforts have in fact yielded greater precision in this entire matter, and I value some of his colossal output that I have read when he is sticking to facts and accepted rules of argument. He has, to my mind, quite successfully challenged some incorrect charges, half-truths, unreliable sources, misleading statements, faulty logic, exaggerations, and so forth occasionally put out by certain critics of SSB.
But just because Joe Moreno and some other SSB defenders have been able to point out certain inconsistencies and mis-statements by SSB's questioners and critics does NOT mean that the allegations of sexual impropriety, fraudulent materializations, the suspicious circumstances of the 1993 ashram murders, etc., must therefore all be summarily dismissed! Sometimes it seems that the incessant "gotcha!" game played by certain SSB's defenders is a colossal instance of losing the forest for the trees. The fact that professional journalists, major news organizations, objective scholars, governments and NGOs have taken seriously the multi-faceted allegations of SSB's improprieties means that we, too, must not dismiss them without very, very good reason. None of SSB's defenders have yet been able to make anything close to a persuasive case as to why objective-minded, values-upholding persons should dismiss all of these grievous allegations. Hence, the many questioners and critics of Sathya Sai Baba are not to be slandered as "envious," "greedy," "Anti-Sai" "Judases," "cawing crows," "demons," etc., engaged in a "smear campaign" based on "lies" and "gossipy rumors," as SSB and his defenders have charged. They are, instead, persons who are trying to genuinely stand up for truth, virtue, and accountability in a case of major importance. * * * * * * * * *
For what it's worth, my preferred explanation for all that is good and not-good about Sathya Sai is this: the evidence indicates that the old Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918) of Maharashtra state, an unbelievably powerful spiritual adept, possibly an avatâra (one who freely incarnates without karmic necessity), has worked through several channels, likely one of whom is the Sathya Narayana Raju / Sathya Sai personality (there are several other notable saints and healers who claim that Shirdi Sai Baba's holy and powerful influence is behind their ministry, most recently including figures such as Sree Chakravarti of Delhi and Sainathuni Sarath Babuji of Shirdi). But it seems that Sathya Narayana Raju has his own dark shadow side of lust for sex and power, etc., and this has "contaminated" Shirdi Sai's working through him. This could easily explain how so much good has happened around Sathya Sai—including deep experiences of God-realization for many devotees, while others have had such weird or even terrible and traumatic experiences with Sathya Sai. Again, I daresay this is a "Jekyll-and-Hyde" phenomenon of amazing proportions. At this point, I would urge anyone interested in Sathya Sai Baba to make a deeper study of the old Shirdi Sai Baba and directly connect with the original purity and power itself. Yes, according to all the biographers, Shirdi Sai was himself a very strange Avadhûta-type figure (one often acting quite enigmatically beyond human conventions), but he never serially molested male youth, nor did he accuse his critics of being "demons" and "Judases," nor did he ride around in expensive vehicles, wear silks, etc., and fake materializations of objects. He was a true renunciate whose sole aim, as evidenced by countless tales of self-sacrifice, was helping, not hurting, his followers. And it is interesting to notice that over much of India, including South India (except for Sathya Sai's main bases at Puttaparthi and Bangalore) it is images of Shirdi Sai, not Sathya Sai, that one primarily sees since the SSB scandal fully emerged in 2000-1. On a recent (August 2007) journey through the several states of South India, I saw many new Shirdi Sai temples built or being built, and not one Sathya Sai temple in evidence. The people of India seem to have voted with their hearts on this matter. * * * * * * * * * Sathya Sai's alleged sexual contacts with male youth. There are some specific points to address on the particular topic of Sathya Sai Baba and sex. For one thing, many of those still faithful to Sathya Sai and who accept as factually true that Sathya Sai has indeed acted in apparently sexual ways with male youth—persons like pro-SSB author Ram Das Awle—will rationalize all such contact with the idea that this is a case of SSB "raising the kundalini energy" of the lads and young men. Sathya Sai himself has openly expressed this idea in a few situations wherein he touched the genitals or erogenous zones of the male youth (e.g., with Conny Larsson, et al.). In 2002 I was asked to specifically address this point by one of the exposé leaders, Barry Pittard. Here was my response: Dear Barry: Regarding this "kundalini raising" matter, there is NOTHING in the literature I've ever seen from the Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist tantric traditions or Hindu shaktipat guru traditions—and I have read widely and extensively in this literature—about "raising the kundalini" by sexually molesting male youth. It is a bald lie that Sri Ramakrishna initiated Narendranath (Swami Vivekananda) or anyone else in this manner. The accounts all state quite clearly that he would touch the disciples on the chest or head. He wasn't taking them off in private to massage or suck the penis or have male youth do the same to him. I have an extensive library of many rare Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu works (in addition to a huge collection of works from western mystical traditions) and I've NEVER read anything that would suggest that what SSB is doing to male youth has been done by ANY other spiritual master in any tradition. I wrote my M.A. thesis on the cross-cultural phenomenon of shaktipat or "energy empowerment" and I've never seen any document alleging that the "kundalini" or vital force or subtle energy could or should be awakened in this manner. The question exposing the faulty logic here is that, if the kundalini could be raised in this manner, why isn't SSB providing the same service for less attractive young men, or older men, or any females? Barry, please feel free to send this posting to anyone on your list who is either sympathetic or critical of SSB. It's time for the truth to be told about this matter of the kundalini and SSB. Best wishes to all, * * * * * * * * * I also take space here to further discuss the allegations of sexual contact by Sathya Sai Baba with certain named and unnamed male youth, legal issues involved in this matter, and the issue of the basic truthfulness and reliability of these accounts. Defenders of Sathya Sai Baba have adamantly and repeatedly charged that the ex-devotees and critics are being quite uncritical, careless, irresponsible and gullible in accepting as fact mere “gossipy rumors” about sexual contact between Sathya Sai and male youth. But the allegations that have been made about SSB are NOT mere “gossipy rumors.” In the ideal scenario, we would have formally sworn, notarized affidavits presented in a court of law by a plaintiffs’ attorney, with explicit written statements and extensive oral testimony by those who claim to have had these strange sexual interactions initiated by SSB. Alas, no such court case has yet come to pass. And, unlike the notorious situation in the USA with certain archdioceses within the Roman Catholic Church targeted by lawsuits and forced by court decisions to pay large financial awards for sexual molestation by certain Catholic clergymen, such decisive legal action in the matter of Sathya Sai Baba may never occur. There are several reasons for this lack of legal action (outside of the botched and self-dismissed Rahm case in the USA against a SSB organizational entity—see discussion in section VII near the end of this long webpage). One reason is certainly the great difficulty of European and American plaintiffs going after an Indian citizen either in a foreign court or even in an Indian court of law—especially a highly-acclaimed “Divine Incarnation,” a person of mega-celebrity status who has been publicly honored as the Divine Incarnation or “Purna Avatar” by large numbers of India’s leading politicians, judges, authors, film and music stars, financiers, and other VIPs. Beyond the various legal difficulties—such as extradition issues for bringing an Indian citizen to court in a foreign land, or non-Indian citizens trying to launch a lawsuit in India—and the realistic risks of reprisals for any plaintiffs living in India, a major reason why we may never see a court case is that most of those “experiencers” who have already spoken out simply want to move on with their lives and do not wish to get embroiled in a messy process consuming their time and energy. You see, they’re not nearly as “vindictive” as SSB’s defenders charge, nor, obviously, are they greedily seeking after money and financial awards (also contrary to what SSB and his defenders have charged!). In any case, as pertains to the issue of financial compensation for molested victims, a friend with legal expertise wrote to me in early 2007 stating the following about legal issues in this matter of Sathya Sai Baba, and why no lawyers working on a contingency fee basis would ever be interested to pursue a case with virtually no financial compensation for their considerable efforts: “The Sai Organization in the USA has no money. They collect money from US devotees who make their ‘donations’ to the Sai Central Trust in India. So no assets are held outside of India, hence no point in bringing a lawsuit anywhere other than in India, which is a difficult thing for any foreigner to do. It could be dismissed there for lack of jurisdiction, unless they were living in India. And they would likely get thrown out of India forthwith if they brought a lawsuit there. But those boys who were abused in India do have grounds to bring a lawsuit there against the Sai Central Trust. However, Baba removed himself as a signatory to the Trust some years ago when I was there, after the [1993] killings and the stealing of funds from the Trust, so it is questionable whether the Trust could now be held liable, and with so much of its income going to fund charitable causes, they likely would argue that they only have money to cover the operating costs of the hospitals, water project, etc. (which may be true...but since Baba brings in so much money, that is unlikely).” Perhaps paid attorneys for a governmental or NGO agency, or good-hearted lawyers willing to serve the public interest pro bono may someday become involved in a class-action lawsuit against one or more SSB organizational entities or against SSB himself, not for financial reward (as so lucratively occurred in the case of the Catholic Church and its victims), but simply for the sake of truth and justice. As for a direct lawsuit against Sathya Sai in India, Bon Giovanni in 2001 suggested that all molestees and/or critics of SSB are "hereby invited to the Court of the Judicial Magistrate, 1st Class, Penukonda, Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh, India, to lay charges against Sathya Sai Baba. This appears to be the appropriate court of Law. Laying of Charges in other countries is not likely to have any effect. The matter more rightly belongs in the Penukonda Magistrates Court." Alternatively, it has been suggested by staunch critic Basava Premanand and others that, logistically speaking, the far easier legal route in this situation would be for the tremendously wealthy Sathya Sai Baba empire to be the one to initiate a lawsuit, namely, a lawsuit against all those who have publicly engaged in “libel” or “calumny”—i.e., the male youth who have been willing to report their experiences either in print or on camera (or both) for the public, and so many journalists, reporters, writers, psychologists, schoolteachers and others who’ve alerted a wider public to the seriousness of these allegations. In such a lawsuit, the SSB Org would need to hear all the allegations from the defendants and then to prove that no sexual contacts have ever occurred and that all the allegations are specious. As it is, none of the young men who’ve spoken out have had their specific stories meaningfully addressed (point by point) or refuted by either Sathya Sai or his organization’s top officers or lawyers. So it is true that Sathya Sai Baba has never been indicted in a court of law for his crimes. But by the same token the many substantial allegations against him have likewise never been successfully refuted in a legal court. And another big question here is this: If SSB has nothing to hide and is in fact quite "pure" and "Divine," why has his prominent spiritual organization, which supposedly exists to uphold the values of Satya-Dharma-Shanti-Prema-Ahimsa (Truth-Virtue-Peace-Love-Harmlessness) never held a simple fact-finding OPEN HEARING and/or MEDIATION PROCESS on this matter for the many thousands or millions of ex-devotees and devotees who would like to know the full truth of these allegations? In other words, why does a mature approach to all of this require a major lawsuit or series of lawsuits?? Beyond the possibility of a lawsuit or mediation event, as a matter of public record, we do have first-hand, informally sworn testimonies (if not formally sworn and notarized affidavits) from numerous individuals who have openly reported that, when they were younger (ages vary from mid-teens to early twenties), Sathya Sai made ostensibly or blatantly sexual contact with them, contact that includes a range of behavior from the suggestive to the explicit: 1) A fairly typical contact, what in many cases was the “initial contact” in a series of escalating contacts—is the widespread and widely-known “oiling” by Sathya Sai of the male youth’s lower abdomen and/or pubic bone and/or perineum and/or scrotum and/or penis (with an oily substance that SSB may or may not have paranormally produced out of the air into his hand), after SSB has asked or demanded that the male youth drop his trousers (and often the underwear as well), or undone them himself; the youth’s genitals are usually partially or fully exposed when SSB touches any areas below the pubic bone. At the Puttaparthi ashram, Prashanthi Nilayam, this “oiling” procedure occurs only after the young male has been invited by SSB to depart the group interview room and has entered into the screened-off private interview room. There is also private interview space at the Whitefield ashram near Bangalore. It is estimated that many hundreds or thousands of male youth have experienced this “oiling,” and it has usually been rationalized by SSB defenders and by Sathya Sai himself as some kind of “kundalini raising” or “karma healing” procedure. Whereas international law indicates that any such contact in a non-medical or non-emergency context is illegal, most of those male youth who’ve experienced this activity have not been willing to call this “abuse,” given SSB’s worldwide reputation as “God Incarnate.” 2) Also fairly frequently it has occurred that young male Sai devotees, while fully dressed, have had their penis or groin area touched, played with, fondled, slapped, etc., by Sathya Sai Baba, not just in the "inner room" but outside this private interview room, such as entering or leaving the larger group-interview room at Puttaparthi. Notably, this behavior, often performed quickly and furtively by SSB when outside the private interview room, has in fact been witnessed on occasion by other devotees. 3) Far less frequently, within the private interview room SSB has asked a youth to drop his trousers, or undone them himself, and then proceeded to manually rub or orally suck on the penis of the male youth. 4) Also far less frequently, SSB has in the private interview room exposed his own genitals and asked the male youth to fondle or suck on his erect, partially erect, or non-erect penis. 5) In a number of cases it has been alleged that, within the private interview room, SSB kissed a young male on the mouth, sometimes for a long period of over 5 seconds, up to 30 seconds or more, and/or hugged a male youth close to him for a similar time-period. People may wonder how so much sexual activity could occur for decades in the private interview room, which is immediately adjacent to the group interview room and for many years was only screened off by a curtain (from the mid-1990s onward by a wooden door), and yet not be heard. One reason for this is that an electric ceiling fan in the group interview room was usually turned on and operating at fairly high or very high speed, creating a humming sound that could, along with the curtain (and, later, the door), easily mask most sounds coming from within the private interview room. Moreover, there are ambient background sounds coming from the ashram (which usually has several thousand or more people in residence at any given time), loudly cawing crows often audible, and general background noise audible from the adjacent town of Puttaparthi. Beyond all this, i have heard reports from specific individuals sitting in the group interview room that they did in fact hear strange noises, complaints by the young male devotee, etc., emanating from within the private interview room. And many of these male youth have been observed to emerge from that private room visibly shaken and looking confused or conflicted. Most devotees, seeing these young men emerging from their "special time" with Sathya Sai, tend to conclude that SSB "told them things they didn't want to hear." Little did these devotees know that many of these young men actually saw and experienced things (namely, SSB's sexually oriented behaviors) that they never wanted to see. The problem was not with the male youth at all, it was with Sathya Sai Baba. Some male individuals who have experienced these things, especially the more explicitly sexual behaviors (categories 3-4), have gone on record to tell their stories, either on the internet or in print (e.g., signed statements and/or newspaper and magazine stories), or on camera for documentary films, e.g., Alejandro Agostinelli’s “¿Un dios pecador?” (A Sinning God?), Azul TV (Buenos Aires, Argentina), August 5 & August 12, 2001; Øjvind Kyrø’s “Seduced (by Sai Baba),” Danish National Television, February 2002; and Eamon Hardy’s “Secret Swami,” Channel 2 series, This World, June 17, 2004, repeated later in many countries on the BBC TV World Service. By the early 2000s, the following individuals had identified themselves (and most of them have sworn to the truth of their statements) about sexual advances initiated with them by Sathya Sai Baba: The India Today Dec. 4, 2000 article, "A God Accused," reproduced the statements from Hans de Kraker and Jens Sethi as "signed affidavits" (though it is not clear whether these were officially notarized affidavits). This India Today article and other news-media (print and internet) articles from 2000 onward have also mentioned by name several other "victims" or "experiencers" and/or reproduced part or all of their testimony: Conny Larsson, Alaya Rahm, Jed Geyerhahn, Keith Ord, Krishna Kumar, Marc-Andre St. Jean, Matthijs van der Meer, and “Said” Afshin Khorramshahgol, each of whom swore near the beginning or end of their statements to be telling the truth. We also have the report to David Bailey and to Mick Brown by Dr. Naresh Bhatia of ongoing, years-long sexual relations initiated by SSB in Bhatia's youth. Neptune Chapotin has had his diary report posted to the Internet by his mother (SSB defender Joe Moreno has tried to undermine its validity because of an allegation therein that SSB paranormally changed his own sex organs from male to female). Christian author Tal Brooke went on record with his and other male youths’ strange sexual experiences initiated by SSB in the early 1970s in his book published in India, Lord of the Air, a later edition of which was entitled Avatar of Night and published in the early 1980s. (Tal mentioned by first name several other individuals who had these kinds of experiences, including a "Patrick" who reported the same kind of genital gender-switch as told by Neptune Chapotin, which may be a paranormal ability or more simply a muscular maneuver by someone with a hermaphrodite physiology, which SSB has sometimes been alleged to possess.) Notably, Tal reproduces in his book the content of a written letter from a John Worldie about his sexual molestation experiences by SSB. (Joe Moreno has challenged the actuality of John Worldie and his account, but Worldie has openly identified himself to SSB's critics as the "Big John" in Howard Murphet's first book and as the one who took the photographs for Arnold Schulman's book, Baba; Brian Steel identifies him as the pseudonymously-named "Steve" in that latter book.) Persons who've appeared on camera for the Danish and British documentary films "Seduced" and "Secret Swami," and also the Spanish language film by A. Agostinelli, "Un Dios Pecador?" include Conny Larsson, Alaya Rahm, Jed Geyerhahn, and Mark Roche. A more informal account is Alan Steinfeld’s filming in 2000 of Ullrich Zimmerman telling his story of sexual contact with SSB (though he does not himself consider it to be “abuse” but some kind of subtle-energy activity, yet an activity about which other young males should be pre-warned), in ‘Divine Sex or Earthly Abuse?’ Part 1, http://blip.tv/file/125164. Count the names—that’s 16 males (de Kraker, Sethi, Bhatia, Larsson, Rahm, Geyerhahn, Ord, Kumar, St. Jean, van der Meer, Khorramshahgol, Roche, Zimmerman, Brooke, Worldie, and Chapotin) who’ve identified themselves by name and told with sufficient description their own stories of SSB’s activities with them when they were younger, including behaviors identified above as categories 3 and 4—i.e., not just the hard-to-interpret cases of SSB “oiling” their abdomen/pubic bone/perineum areas or kissing/hugging them, but much more explicitly “sexual” behavior involving the penis of SSB or the youth’s penis, or both. Incidentally, it may not be the case that most of these sixteen individuals have signed an officially notarized sworn affidavit, which document is simply used to clearly eliminate any "hearsay evidence" or fabrications by outside persons alleging to be the person in question. But in all these sixteen cases there is perfectly good reason to believe that these persons are who they say they are, and sufficiently good reason to believe that their first-person stories or testimonies are most likely true as they have declared and often explicitly sworn them to be true. Now, the list certainly does not end here with this set of publicly identified sources. There are well over a dozen more male youth, names fully or partially known to us, who have not yet come forward publicly to tell their stories of sexual contact, though they have certainly at some length told their stories privately to trusted family members or friends, including telling the stories to ex-devotees who were longtime center officers or national officers in the SSB Organization, as well as to certain public media personnel. Again, these male experiencers’ names and identities are known to critics of SSB (and to many devotees), but, for the sake of privacy and confidentiality, we are simply NOT at liberty to divulge their full names here. Several names have actually already been leaked into print, but I am not comfortable mentioning their names here because they have not publicly come forth on their own. I can perhaps mention one young man here, since he passed away many years ago: Uli/Ulli Steckenreuter (spelling?), a German man in his early twenties, well-known to many SSB devotees in the late 1970s, who was found dead, hanging from the ceiling (a likely suicide), in Bangalore in 1981 after earlier telling Don Heath (the late founder of the San Francisco SSB Center) of at least one incident in the late 1970s in which Baba wanted Uli to perform oral sex on him. As for the many other males in this set, some of them are in the public limelight (one is a multiple-award-winning actor) or else have positions in family or community making them vulnerable to unwanted attention if their names are exposed. When we add the names of the individuals in this second set of "SSB sex experiencers" to the first set, we have over 30 individuals, approximately one-third of whom were minors (under age 18) when the alleged activities with SSB occurred. There is a third set of experiencers, at least a dozen or a few dozen further cases where we do not have any specific names, but we have verbal and/or written reports from named individuals—their relatives, friends or acquaintances—who knew the experiencers and who were told by these usually unhappy or disgruntled persons to some extent about their sexual contacts from SSB. These experiencers fall into the category of “son of…,” “stepson of…,” “father of…,” “friend of…,” “acquaintance of…,” etc. The time-period and individual nationality reported strongly suggest in most cases that these are additional, unique cases, not merely cases that can be considered as a subset of cases already identified. There is a fourth set of alleged experiencers, the signers of the JuST petition posted on the Internet. Some of these names (e.g., John Purnell, Australia; S.V.R. Ramesh, USA; David Juliano, USA; Michael Smith, USA; Iqbal Raaid, Pakistan) may be quite legitimate, others may not be (e.g., “John Bright” has been charged by Joe Moreno to be a fictitious name). It is not known to me whether one or more of the critics has been able to obtain a fuller, more descriptive story from these individuals who’ve signed the JuST petition and who have alleged to have been molested, though critic Robert Priddy, part of the JuST organizing group, claims to have indeed contacted and confirmed these person's identities and stories. There is a fifth set of experiencers, the indiscriminately-labeled “many students in the Sathya Sai Baba schools,” primarily Indian students, referred to in writing or orally by people like David Bailey, Jed Geyerhahn, Krishna Kumar, Meenakshi Srikanth, Mary Garden, Mrs. Bitten Nelson, Andy Reimer, Dr. Naresh Bhatia, Basava Premanand, and Mr. Kamadhani, who were in a position to directly hear these stories from many students. Note that ineligible persons (i.e., persons who are neither teachers nor staff) are not allowed to venture onto the grounds of the SSB schools, and the students are kept on a regimented schedule and kept quite separate from the residents and visitors at the ashrams during SSB's darshans and the bhajan-singing, so it has been impossible to conduct any interviews of these students, unless they individually take the initiative to approach foreigners (such as the aforementioned persons). In any case, it has become pretty much public knowledge in the SSB movement that SSB has one, two or more students spend the night with him almost every night for many decades in his private bedroom at Puttaparthi and at Whitefield, and when visiting his summer retreats at Kodaikanal or Ootacamund. If this is true, and there is no good reason to doubt it, this would offer an even easier opportunity for SSB to make improper sexual advances on the young males entrusted to his care. Numerous students have allegedly expressed fear to researchers about saying anything of SSB's sexual improprieties with them for reasons of shame and family situation (e.g., their parents and grandparents are devotees), and also considerable risk of reprisal or sudden termination of their subsidized educational opportunities with an ejection from school, which can direly affect their subsequent career and job prospects in an intensely competitive and harrowing economic environment in India. Compiling all of the above, I have a long list of nearly 50 named and unnamed individuals from sets 1, 2 and 3, not including the fourth and fifth sets (i.e., JuST petition signers and the “many students in SSB’s schools”). And I am not even among the leading figures or contact persons in this movement concerned about Sathya Sai’s improprieties. So I am sure that the more active critics have even much longer lists of “SSB molestee/experiencers.” Beyond my identification of five sets of male youth who were allegedly or evidently molested to some extent by Sathya Sai Baba, we also have a large sixth set or group of "suspected molestees," male youth who received notable attention from SSB in the form of one or more private interviews, but who at some point afterward (even very soon afterward) left the ashram and/or the SSB movement, never to be seen or heard again. These are the male youth about whom SSB devotees were so happy that they had obtained the highly-coveted interview with SSB, but who often emerged from such interviews with eyes downcast, looking depressed, confused, even shaken or agitated. Given all the explicit allegations and first-person testimonials of sexual impropriety, it is very probable that a sizeable fraction of these male youth who left SSB sometime after the private interview(s) were molested by him. The number of such "quite-likely-molested" male youth is hard to calculate, but likely comprises at least an additional few dozen individuals, if not many more. In this category of suspected molestees, we could include here the late M. Krishna, SSB's by-far closest companion in the early years, SSB's "Radha" who shared SSB's room at night and was paraded around sitting next to SSB in devotional processions by day, but who later left the movement, and many years later (early 1980s) told Scandinavian parapsychology-investigator Erlendur Haraldsson that he looked back on his period with SSB as being a "nightmare." This, from the one person who was allowed to become far closer to SSB than anyone in the entire history of the movement. (See E. Haraldsson, Modern Miracles, a.k.a. Miracles Are My Calling Cards, various editions, chapter 17. The author apparently never followed up on specific stories of sexual behavior by SSB that he allegedly heard while prodigiously researching this book.) Robert Priddy, the former prominent devotee of SSB turned trenchant critic, has concluded (in an email to scholar Kevin Shepherd): “The amount of evidence that has surfaced on the internet since 2000 from the sexually abused (by Sathya Sai Baba) is the tip of the iceberg. Nearly all who contact us want to remain completely anonymous... because the persons involved have to consider their family, friends, employers, etc.... I have pieced together the facts and am convinced from all my contacts (mostly confidential, many scared to be known about) that Sathya Sai Baba has molested many boys throughout many years.” The interested reader can read more about various aspects of the sexual contact and molestation issue with Sathya Sai in Chapter VII of Robert Priddy’s long book, End of the Dream: The Sathya Sai Baba Enigma, 2004, pp. 271-324, and in David Bailey’s important collection of testimonies by various persons including himself, “The Findings,” 2000, posted at various internet sites. In both these sources and in other works like the various website revelations and in books by other authors like B. Premanand and Conny Larsson, one can get the fuller story on the six bedroom murders of 1993, the faked materializations (not just vibhuti, but also the stash of rings and other cheap jewelry items hidden in the storage space under SSB's cushion in the grouup interview rooms, and the linga and other objects he hides under his handkerchief, etc.), the financial misconduct within the SSB organization relating to the SSSB Trust's non-transparent and unaccountable handling of the massive incoming donations, the various housing schemes and "time-share" apartment rentals, etc., and several other matters.
It is crucially important in the matter of SSB's sexual improprieties to note that, according to a Jan. 18, 1981 covert memo by Jack Hislop (d.1995), the lifetime head [since 1969] of the SSB Council of America, which memo I belatedly found in 2001 in my vast collection of SSB-org documents, if the allegations of sexual molestation of male youth and minors by Sathya Sai were ever to be adjudicated as true, then, suggests Hislop, people would be justified in thinking Baba "a hypocrite, a liar, and a criminal." Hislop fell ill and died in 1995, the year the internet came widely into usage. The Internet provided the open forum for more allegations to be made in the late 1990s. The buzz reached a crescendo pitch and broke open to the wider SSB community and then the public media from 2000 onward. Major print and online media outlets in India, Asia, Australia, Europe, North & South America, and then an Argentinian news team (in 2001), a Danish news team (in 2002), and Great Britain's BBC news team (in 2004), with their respective televised documentaries, all promoted these allegations against SSB as quite serious. The allegations I have read or heard about through my own network of contacts lead me to believe that the old adage, "Where there's smoke, there's fire" is, alas, only too true in the present case of Sathya Sai. There are simply far too many allegations corroborating each other on similar crucial details. One can read much more about these allegations of sexual impropriety and other matters at the websites www.exbaba.com and www.saiguru.net. At these websites, see especially the following materials:
I have posted here at the rest of this webpage: questions for Dr. Michael Goldstein (current overseer of the Sathya Sai Baba movement in the Western hemisphere) about Sathya Sai's behavior and the behavior of Goldstein and the Sathya Sai Baba organization's hierarchy in response; four of the several long letters I wrote as part of my efforts to notify the SSB membership and general public about my serious concerns about Sathya Sai’s behavior. This letter-writing activity was certainly not vindictive, but simply part of an effort to fulfill the “mandatory reporting” laws (incumbent upon all those working in the helping and teaching professions) to notify the community about SSB’s evidently serial and quite illegal sexual exploitation of male minors and harassment of slightly older male youth. I also wanted to express to the SSB community my concerns about other dysfunctional aspects of Sathya Sai and his organization, and, finally, to point out the disturbingly misleading and harmful mis-use of language by certain defenders of SSB. These letters and other materials of mine have already been in greater-or-lesser circulation for years at different websites on the Internet. I have also added three short, private letters written in Oct. 2005 and Jan. 2007, never before circulated, written to a former devotee with a legal background who has been criticized by the "true believers" for her serious doubts about Sathya Sai Baba's stature. Note that I have written two letters to the respected international organization Human Rights Watch about the SSB controversy. I have NOT uploaded these letters here because they simply duplicate content already included in the following letters. Nor have I uploaded here my initial open letter of early Feb. 2001 to the local Santa Barbara SSB Center members and wider international SSB community, which actually contained a rather more "balanced"-sounding and positive assessment of Sathya Sai, because my view of SSB's problematic complexity grew more serious and critical in the coming months, especially after reading in the Spring 2001 issue of the ashram journal, Sanathana Sarathi the venomous Christmas 2000 discourse by Sathya Sai, wherein he furiously lashed out at anyone who dared to question or criticize him and self-aggrandizingly promoted himself and his own works at some length. I and many other people found all of this quite strange and bizarre and quite unbecoming of the "Purna Avatar." At this point in time, I have no interest (nor the time, such a precious and fleeting commodity) to pull all of my thoughts about Sathya Sai into one big, long article. Perhaps one day I will, and then submit it to a major publication. If anyone wants to edit the following materials to produce and submit such an article, feel free to contact me and I’ll be quite happy to cooperate. Here below are: 1. My questions of Dr. Michael Goldstein; ================== I. Questions of Dr. Michael Goldstein (Sathya Sai's appointed overseer for the SSB movement in the Western hemisphere) (A few years ago I was asked by a colleague to submit some questions for Dr. Michael Goldstein as part of the BBC's research-preparations for doing their documentary film on Sathya Sai Baba and interviewing Goldstein. Here are three big questions I would have asked Dr. Goldstein (for starters) and any other officers still participating in the organization about the Sathya Sai controversy:) 1) It has now been established by the retrieval, after many years, of a series of typed, xeroxed memos (dated January 18, 1981, February 21, 1981, and March 25, 1981), written by Dr. John "Jack" Hislop, the late head of the Sathya Sai Baba Council in America, that he and all the other board members at the time (yourself included) knew that a male minor from Northern California had recently come forth with serious complaints that Sathya Sai Baba had repeatedly molested him sexually. In the first of these memos, Dr. Hislop suggested to the directors, in his characteristically typed memo, dated January 18, 1981, that, if the allegations were proven true, devotees would (justifiably) regard Baba (in Hislop's words) as "a hypocrite, a liar, and a criminal. Why? (1) He [Sathya Sai] would be a hypocrite because He pretends that His life is above the senses; and because He told me in an interview (which you have seen) that a homosexual is denied Membership in a Center, that this person should be questioned closely and be admitted only if the person desires to change their life away from that of a homosexual, and that people were homosexuals because of weakness of mind. (2) He would be a liar because He told me, face to face, in the most serious way that the homosexual stories about Him were totally untrue. (3) He would be a criminal because the homosexual abuse of children under His care and protection is a criminal action and such people are punished by jail sentences.” In these memos,* Hislop did not accuse the boy of lying, but he couldn't believe that the stories were true, and so he invented a theory of teen anxiety and projection to discount the stories. When more and more similar stories began to emerge later in the 1980s, and then especially from about 1997 on, with the advent of the Internet and direct first-person reports from numerous courageous former devotees, why did you, Dr. Goldstein, not call for an open hearing on the topic, instead of trying to suppress this information and maintain a policy of complicity? [* Note: there has been some question on the Internet by Gerald Joe Moreno as to the authenticity of these three memos to the Directors (and an additional letter to the family in question) all typed up and sent out by John Hislop. (Read the fuller story here at this separate webpage .) In April 2004 I supplied my copies of the Hislop memos to David Savill and the BBC documentary film team, and these memos were never returned to me by this team, after repeated requests. I had made xerox copies of these copies before I gave them away to the BBC, and it is these second-generation copies that I now have in my possession. The first-generation copies had been given to me in the mid-1980s by a close friend who preceded me as a president of the S.F. Sai Center in the early 1980s and who had received these copies of the original memos by Hislop upon asking Hislop for more information about the allegations concerning SSB. I have sworn a notarized affidavit that these Hislop memos, which have been uploaded for viewing at different Internet sites run by former devotees, are indeed genuine, i.e., they were sent out to SSB Council of America directors and perhaps certain other SSB org officers by Hislop in the early 1980s.] 2) Dr. Goldstein, why, as a medical professional, have you not obeyed the "mandated reporting" rules of your profession and U.S. law, which hold that anyone aware of evidence indicating “reasonable suspicion” of inappropriate sexual contact by an adult toward a minor must report this adult, no matter what his/her position, to the proper child protection agencies and legal authorities? 3) Why did you never respond to the plea from the Oregon Sai center in 2000 (signed by some 75 members) for an open discussion about the case of yet another boy sexually molested by Swami? Instead, you had John Evan send a most inappropriate advaita (nondual spiritual) response to the center members, including a quote from Ramesh Balsekar, an Indian proponent of the nondual “Understanding,” who would likely never have sanctioned the use of his teachings to excuse sexual molestation behavior by Sathya Sai. [NB: Ramesh himself in the Winter of 2004/5 was exposed for his own chronic manipulative soliciting of sexual favors from numerous female students, several of whom turned on him publicly at one of his retreats and vociferously demanded amends; he gave only a semi-apology and tried to deploy his pseudo-advaita teachings to absolve himself of any real accountability.] ==================== II. Open Letter to Jack Hawley and to the SSB Community about the Hawley Propaganda Letter An Open Letter Response to Sai Devotee Jack Hawley, by Timothy Conway (March 2001) Dear Friends in God’s Love, Jack Hawley, a prominent Sai devotee, acclaimed author and successful management consultant, in December 2000 drafted a cryptic essay entitled “WE DON’T KNOW!” while in Prashanti Nilayam, apparently in response to the serious allegations about Sathya Sai Baba’s sexual activities with male youth and perhaps also in response to allegations of trickery in Baba’s “materializations.” Mr. Hawley never reveals what, exactly, he is talking about, so it is hard to pin him down. His essay is being distributed among certain Sai devotees in India and the West through printed copies and the Internet – I’m not sure how many persons have seen it. For all I know it may be quite widespread by now. I recently received a xerox copy of Mr. Hawley’s essay from a visitor to Prashanti Nilayam in December 2000. On the face of it, this essay by Jack Hawley is a high-minded, tactful, and edifying call for us to see Baba’s activity in the most positive light. However, with no disrespect intended to Mr. Hawley’s person, I view his essay as being evasive, irresponsible, and laden with a certain conceit, as a close reading of his letter will clearly show. It also serves as dangerous propaganda at a time when the Sathya Sai Baba movement direly needs honesty, humility, and complete openness about empirical facts, victims’ rights and feelings, and the conventions of law and social justice. […] I feel that someone needs to critique Hawley’s essay because this piece is being read by an increasing number of Sai devotees in India and abroad, and because Hawley is a prominent, respected devotee. (He spends half of each year living near Baba “and the other half consulting with top executives in Europe and the United States,” according to the brief biographical sketch in his book on Baba and business, “Reawakening the Spirit in Work: The Power of Dharmic Management” [SF: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1993], a book that received acclaim from many “notables” in the management field). Therefore, given his prominence and the importance that many will attach to his words, I will reproduce below the entirety of Mr. Hawley’s essay, and then critique it on a point by point basis to expose its many fallacies. I heartily salute Jack Hawley for his dedication as a spiritual aspirant and his eloquent attempts (e.g., with his book, Reawakening the Spirit in Work) to bring a deep spirituality into our lives. I also have nothing against him personally. If some of my critique seems harsh, it is because there is so very much at stake here. Mr. Hawley may be an expert on business management, but with my background in transpersonal psychology and religious studies, I know something about healthy and unhealthy spiritual movements and there are deeply disturbing signs that the Sai movement has turned into a dangerously dysfunctional cult. ----------- [Jack Hawley essay:] WE DON’T KNOW! “Unless you brighten your vision with Love, you cannot see the Truth.” — Sathya Sai Baba Every decade or so negative rumors arise here in Prasanthi. It seems to be a Western thing. Indians just ignore them. Many things arise here that shake spiritual aspirants to their roots. This latest round of hearsay seems more virulent because e-mail now transmits gossipy rumors to the whole world in the blink of an eye. Hysteria rises with the rumors. People face a crisis of faith. Some of them leave, some stay. How one fares in this crisis depends on one’s “capacity” (an important spiritual term for the strength of one’s faith and love). The big question, of course, is “is it true?” And the truth is that we (all of us) don’t know! Many think they know, but they don’t really know. But I do — at least I know some things (as I’m sure many others do also). I will not talk about all I know, but I can say this: It is NOT what some minds have leaped to. It is the worldly function of the mind to reach conclusions. When the mind doesn’t know the answer to a question it becomes psychologically distressed. Then it grabs at answers and stretches for concepts that might help it feel better. It readily accepts simplistic analogies, buzz words, and labels — anything that alleviates its puzzled state. Most of the “answers” it comes up with are wrong, but the mind doesn’t care! Worse yet, once it latches onto an “answer,” the mind stops receiving new information. In effect it says, “Sorry, this issue is closed. I will no longer accept anything that could upset my tenuous equilibrium.” Regarding the recent rumors: We do have some quite clear hints about what’s happening here: • It has to do with Love so deep, so Divine that nothing can stand in its way — not even the threat of misunderstanding or calumny. Those who go into their hearts for answers during these crises of faith fare better. Those who go into their minds and seek answers outside, struggle the hardest and ache most. 12/2000, Jack Hawley, Prasanthi Nilayam ----------- To begin with, Mr. Hawley’s opening quote from Baba implies that those who are authentically living in Divine Love will see the Truth as Hawley and Baba want people to see it. It is apparently inconceivable to Mr. Hawley that mature, longtime spiritual aspirants could be living in Love, aware of the Divine Truth (e.g., God is seated in the hearts of all beings; only God ultimately, nondually exists; etc.), and yet disagree with Hawley over the meaning and lawfulness of Baba’s sexual activities and other improprieties. JH: Every decade or so negative rumors arise here in Prasanthi. TC: This is typical of the obfuscation (fog) technique that Mr. Hawley perpetrates throughout his essay. The truth is that rumors [allegations] about sexual improprieties by Baba have been circulating among residents and visitors to the ashram since at least 1980, when I first got the most remote whiff of them. They began to come into clearer focus and wider distribution with the publication of Tal Brooke’s “Avatar of Night” book in 1982, reprinted in 1984. And the stories (“rumors”) have been circulating throughout the 1980s and 1990s, especially since 1995 with the widespread advent of the Internet. The stories undoubtedly go back in oral story-telling form and certain persons’ private notes to the early 1970s, when the alleged activities in Tal Brooke’s book are declared to have taken place. JH: It seems to be a Western thing. Indians just ignore them. TC: This is patently untrue. Yes, Westerners have talked more openly about these things, because of our more psychologized culture, influenced in recent decades by “truth-telling” approach of the Recovery movement, the Oprah Winfrey show, the John Bradshaw work, and also the “tell-all” approach of the tabloid newspapers, sensationalist celebrity autobiographies, Jerry Springer show, and other brutally explicit venues. But India is now openly talking about Baba’s improprieties: just read the 3-part series published in Dec. 2000 in the widely read India Today newspaper, and read the several articles exposing Sai and the organization in other Indian newspapers and magazines. (Note: many of these articles are available at the website www.exbaba.com.) Evidently Baba’s improprieties around sexual activity and faked materializations have been an “open secret” discussed among his college boys for some time, as related in “SATHYA SAI BABA: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY,” posted to the early Internet in 1993 on the discussion site soc.culture.tamil [see www.exbaba.com] by Meenakshi Srikanth, a former student at the Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Whitefield campus. (Meenakshi’s piece only became more widely known as part of “The Findings” compilation presented in July 2000 by David and Faye Bailey, posted at www.exbaba.com.) JH: Many things arise here that shake spiritual aspirants to their roots. TC: Aspirants need to be shaken at their roots. It’s called radical (“at the root”) transformation. We need to be shaken up so much at our egoic roots that these ego tendencies fall off and we are free in God, our original Identity as Spirit. Yes, this news about Sathya Sai is shattering, but we need to be shattered to a certain extent. All sacred mystical traditions speak of this need for ego death, for undergoing what St. John of the Cross (Juan de al Cruz) called the “Dark Night of the Soul,” wherein, as Juan puts it, one is completely un-made and re-made in God. Zen and Vajrayana [Buddhist] masters speak all the time about the need for this ego-death. And for the illustrious Advaita Vedanta [Hindu] masters, this is none other than the “manonasa” or death of the egoic mind that is called for so that the Atman [God-Self] can shine clearly, without egocentric delusion. Having one’s exclusive, one-sided views about Sathya Sai exploded with revelations that his behavior is not so seemly can have a most liberating effect, if not resulting in perfect “death of the ego-mind.” Some have even thought that the revelations about Baba are specifically, divinely intended to shake people up, to wean them from their attachment to the name and form of Sathya Sai. JH: This latest round of hearsay seems more virulent because e-mail now transmits gossipy rumors to the whole world in the blink of an eye. TC: The use of the word “hearsay” is strategically used to minimize the authenticity of molested victims’ accounts of what Baba has done to them. We should realize that, strictly speaking, everything you have ever heard about Baba outside your own direct experience is also “hearsay,” that is, second-hand information. This includes the official 4-volume biography by [Prof. N.] Kasturi, everything that is published in Sanathana Sarathi [the official journal of the SSB organization], everything that your friends tell you at Sai Centers after they return from India, etc. Obviously, some forms of hearsay are more reliable, some are not. Many of Baba’s victims have been willing to sign legal affidavits about their unsavory experiences, giving their accounts much more reliability than many of the “beautiful” stories you’ve heard about Sai. [Clarification: it is uncertain just how many individuals have actually by this point created officially notarized documents; but well over a dozen have made first-person statements in print and/or on camera, swearing to the truth of the contents.] Mr. Hawley also uses the phrase “gossipy rumors” — another tactic that, deliberately or not, marginalizes and minimizes the heart-wrenching accounts of Baba’s sexual abuse and deceitful manipulation told by victims or their anguished family members. Hawley is verging on the use of an ancient, sinister debate strategy employed by those of little integrity: attack the person, not the person’s legitimate viewpoint. Hence this low-level tactic is called “argumentum ad hominem” — attack the man (e.g., as a “gossip”) rather than address his legitimate concerns and grievances. JH: Hysteria rises with the rumors. TC: Yes, there is a tiny amount of “hysteria” with a few hysteria-prone devotees. But, again, we have here a strategy by Hawley to paint with a broad brush of “hysteria” all those who are deeply concerned about the ethics of Baba’s repeated acts of child molestation, rape, deceit, payment for sexual favors, etc. [Important clarification: By "child molestation" I mean any minors under age 18 who've been molested by SSB; by "rape" I mean any case of a male youth more-or-less unwillingly initiated by SSB into sexual contact; by "payment for sexual favors" I mean the reports by certain experiencers and external witnesses of SSB giving money, jewelry, and other gifts to male youth who have been targeted for sexual contact by SSB.] This strategy [raising the issue of "hysteria"] is an affront to all decent people who want to know the truth about what is happening, and who have a compassionate empathy for those who are being traumatized by Baba’s behavior. JH: People face a crisis of faith. TC: In the present case, if people’s faith has become an idolatrous worship of the name and form of Sai (in the same manner that esteemed philosophers, theologians and religion historians like John Hick, John Cobb, Jr., and Wilfred Cantwell Smith have accused too many Christians of idolizing the historic person of Jesus of Nazareth), then this idolatrous faith needs to be smashed open in a “crisis” that will free such persons from their idolatry and liberate them into the worship of the true, transcendent, formless God. Now, I am aware that the formless, transpersonal, transcendent God can take a personal form — this is India’s doctrine of the Avatar, and Christianity’s idea of the Divine Incarnation of the Son. And faith in the Avatar or Divine Incarnation can be legitimate if it does not descend into narrow-minded sectarianism (always a danger for those religious-spiritual groups that worship a specific form of the Divine). But if Sathya Sai Baba is acting in ways that seriously violate traditionally accepted notions of Dharma, Ahimsa, Prema and Satya (Righteousness, Nonviolence, Love and Truth), then our faith in Baba as “the avatar [DIvine Incarnation] of the age” needs to go through a crisis and get undone and transformed, refocused onto the formless Divine. JH: Some of them [those following Sai] leave, some stay. TC: I would comment that there are any number of motives, some mature and some immature, why certain people leave Baba, and there are any number of motives, mature and immature, why certain people stay. We need to look at the maturity of the motive — not the bare fact that “some leave, some stay.” So, for instance, someone who has sold all her possessions and bought or rented a home outside Prashanti Nilayam and is now 80 years old might not have the financial means to re-locate somewhere else. She might continue to spend time at the ashram canteen or darshan grounds simply because so many old friends are there and also in a spirit of gratitude for the many beautiful experiences brought by her association with Baba. Yet she might also feel the need to strongly critique Baba’s behavior among her acquaintances and call for realization of the Divine Inner Guru. In that respect, she might be staying at Prashanti yet will have maturely “left Baba.” On the other hand, some persons may “stay” with Baba, either at Prashanti or at their local Sai Center, merely because they refuse to believe the accounts about Baba’s sexual improprieties or apologetically rationalize them away with high-flown mental gymnastics. These persons don’t have the requisite maturity to grow up and face the ethical implications of what Baba is doing to innocent youth. Then again, there may be people who run away from Baba and become obsessive critics of Sai, because they suffer from a reactionary, immature sense of ego-betrayal, and act in puerile fashion like a jilted teen lover—filled with vitriolic rage. JH: How one fares in this crisis depends on one’s “capacity” (an important spiritual term for the strength of one’s faith and love). TC: I agree. But beware Hawley’s unstated implication that those who stay with Baba have some greater spiritual capacity than those who move beyond the name/form of Sathya Sai. JH: The big question, of course, is “is it true?” And the truth is that we (all of us) don’t know! Many think they know, but they don’t really know. But I do — at least I know some things (as I’m sure many others do also). I will not talk about all I know, but I can say this: It is NOT what some minds have leaped to. TC: Notice that Jack Hawley, in his characteristic evasiveness in this essay, never identifies the reference for “it” in his posed question, “is it true?” This is his way of covering up and keeping the lid on the serious allegations that are being made about Baba’s sexual behavior (and perhaps Baba’s alleged trickery is also referred to here — though I think the reference is primarily to Baba’s sexual activities). Nowhere in his essay does he mention any specific behavior about which the “rumors” are arising. Next, Hawley engages us in some fancy-dancy epistemology: how do we ever know what we claim to know? Yes, epistemological concerns are valid in many areas of life, and ultimately one can make a great case for skepticism when it comes to existential truth claims. (See, for example, the ancient Buddhist master Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika Buddhist movement, basis for the Ch’an/Zen/Son Buddhist tradition of China/Japan/Korea — which urged that we refrain from fixed positions and rigid mental views, and instead abide in the “non-dwelling,” “no position,” “don’t-know” Zen mind. A similar position developed in certain Western schools of mysticism, such as advocated by the medieval British Christian author of the famous treatise “The Cloud of Unknowing.”) But within our human society’s conventions, when we have signed affidavits [as gathered by India Today, Glen Meloy and others, though it is not certain how many of these have been sworn before a notary public or other official or are just "informally sworn, first-person statements"] by individuals who are willing to go on record and say (and be willing to say in a court of law) that Baba has molested them as minors, and inappropriately touched their genitals (it is ALWAYS INAPPROPRIATE for an adult to touch the genitals of a minor EXCEPT IN A LICENSED, CONSENSUAL MEDICAL SITUATION) — then this evasive epistemological smokescreen put up by Hawley is unconscionable behavior. It serves as part of a cover-up, an unlawful, prosecutable conspiracy of silence. Jack Hawley appears to be ignorant of the fact that in most civilized countries there are “mandated reporting” rules holding that adults who know of the sexual molestation of minors MUST report these allegations to the authorities and to any persons who might become victims of this molestation behavior. Hawley’s cover-up makes him an accomplice in the sexual molestation crimes committed by Baba. Notice here, too, the presumptuous conceit displayed by Hawley in his assertion: “Many think they know, but they don’t really know. But I do — at least I know some things (as I’m sure many others do also). I will not talk about all I know, but I can say this: It is NOT what some minds have leaped to.” In making this statement, Hawley presumes to know more than those who disagree with him — that is, he tacitly claims to know the real meaning of Baba’s behavior. And this presumptuous attitude he maintains throughout the rest of his essay. On this point, we should remember that numerous longtime Sai devotees have left Sathya Sai, explicitly or ostensibly over the inappropriate sexual activity by Baba. These longtime close observers obviously perceived a different meaning for Baba’s behavior than the meaning Hawley attributes to this behavior. Hawley thinks Sai’s behavior is evidence of the Divine. Former devotees apparently think otherwise. In short, there are different interpretations for this sexual behavior, and Hawley presumes to have the only legitimate interpretation. Incidentally, I am not presuming, in my critique of Sai’s sexual activities with children and unconsenting young men as “criminal,” to have the only legitimate interpretation, either. I have sometimes mused that Sai is lustfully “taking on” (on a psychic level) the lust of humanity to clear our sexual karma. But the conventions of our society’s laws must take precedence over our metaphysical rationalizations about Sai’s molesting of children [minors and slightly older male youth]. JH: It is the worldly function of the mind to reach conclusions. TC: Notice that Baba in his many recorded and published speeches and conversations also frequently employs the mind to “reach conclusions.” So did the Buddha, Shankara, Ramana Maharshi, and other luminaries. Hawley wants to imply with his wording that only “worldly” people will come to conclusions--for instance, conclusions that Baba’s behavior is inappropriate. Hawley then follows with some standard insights about how the mind often needs to function: JH: When the mind doesn’t know the answer to a question it becomes psychologically distressed. Then it grabs at answers and stretches for concepts that might help it feel better. It readily accepts simplistic analogies, buzz words, and labels — anything that alleviates its puzzled state. Most of the “answers” it comes up with are wrong, but the mind doesn’t care! Worse yet, once it latches onto an “answer,” the mind stops receiving new information. In effect it says, “Sorry, this issue is closed. I will no longer accept anything that could upset my tenuous equilibrium.” TC: This is all quite true. But please notice that the syndrome of premature, inaccurate concluding is exactly typical of the many “true-believer” Sai devotees who, in their psychological attempt to alleviate anxiety in their “crisis of faith,” engage in pathological denial or rationalization that “Baba’s sexual activity is divine.” These devotees are engaging in the same “premature concluding” by the “worldly mind.” It is just these true-believer Sai devotees who, to use Hawley’s own terminology, are terribly “distressed” by hearing the news of Baba’s molestation of children and promiscuous homosexual activities and deceit, and who are now “grabbing at answers” from people like Hawley and others who have written apologetic materials that rationalize away the serious moral and legal implications of Baba’s acts. These devotees are accepting the “simplistic analogies” (“Baba is raising the boys’ kundalini [spiritual energy],” “purifying their karma,” etc.) and “buzz words” (“Baba is the avatar, and everything the avatar does is for a greater purpose,” etc.) so as to alleviate these devotees’ “puzzled state.” And now these devotees, having “latched onto an answer,” “stop receiving new information” and, in effect, say: “Sorry this issue is closed. I will no longer accept anything that could upset my tenuous equilibrium [as a staunch Sai devotee].” In short, Hawley’s critical analysis can be turned right back to apply to him and to other true-believer Sai devotees. JH: Regarding the recent rumors… TC: Again notice Hawley’s misuse of language here. He talks of “recent” rumors when these stories of sexual behavior (albeit nearly all of them involve young men; the stories about minors are more recent) have been around for at least 20 years in print [most prominently, Tal Brooke's book in its different editions], and at least another decade in oral story-telling form [i.e., among Brooke and his interviewees]. And his use of the term “rumors” can no longer apply when victims are swearing to signed affidavits [or else first-person statements] in print [notarized or not]. (For example, the India Today Dec. 4, 2000 article "A God Accused" has reproduced these "signed affidavits"). [NOTE: Joe Moreno has recently wondered just how many actual notarized affidavits have been made, not just "signed statements." However, the more important larger point is that these individuals have been identified as who they say they are and their stories are their own first-person accounts, and thus are not mere "hearsay." If a mediation event or a legal court case were ever instituted, most or all of these individuals would very likely sign such notarized statements.] We have reached the stage wherein the controversial Sai activity is no longer a matter of “rumors,” but differing truth-claims, and these need to be adjudicated, either by a monumental mediation session or by legal proceedings in a court of law. JH: 1. They are definitely not “the truth” as people so carelessly use the term truth (They may seem “true” to some, but they are not “The Truth.”) TC: This is more epistemological fancy-dancing. The ultimate “Truth” with a capital “T” is, of course, what the Vedanta and Buddhist traditions refer to as pertaining to the level of paramartha (“supreme Truth” or “absolute Reality”). On this “absolute” or “ultimate” or “supreme” Truth level, we have mystical declarations like “God (Brahman, Dharmakaya) alone IS.” “Phenomena and selves are not real.” And so on. In contrast, phenomena and personality-selves pertain to the conventional or relative or worldly level, called by Hindu Vedantins the vyavaharika level, what the Buddhists term the samvriti level. This is the level of conventional “truth” with a small-case “t.” As I have repeatedly pointed out in my response to the views of Sai devotee Ram Das Awle [author of a manuscript for a book which, in part, contains an apology (formal justification, defense or excuse) for Baba’s behavior], all great spiritual masters urge us not to mix up these two levels. Yes, “it’s all one!” on the absolute paramartha level, but, as the enlightened Zen masters say, enlightenment is ultimately about “chopping wood, carrying water,” and, to quote a hadith of Muhammad: “Trust in God but tie up your camel!” When Hindu masters describe the need for observing the yamas and niyamas (the moral “do’s and don’ts”), they are talking on this conventional level. Hawley apparently wants us to keep exclusively focused on the paramartha level that “God alone is” and to hold onto the lofty opinion that Sathya Sai Baba is the pure expression of God. But Mr. Hawley should be aware that we can operate from the ultimate Truth-context that God alone is while honoring the conventional ethical truth that molesting children and lying about sexual activity is completely inappropriate. [Jack Hawley’s second point about the “recent rumors”] TC: I have no clear idea of what Hawley is talking about when he speaks of “modern, quick-stick labels.” Is he implying that the term “child molestation” or “sexual predatory behavior” is inappropriate for describing the acts by Baba told in the sworn affidavits [and unnotarized but sworn first-person statements]? If so, then Hawley needs to openly argue and prove his case. These vague words of his do not suffice. JH: 3. What is (or is not) happening at Prasanthi Nilayam is unrelated to current worldly level buzz words and ideas to which the mind so quickly leaps. This is not about a “character flaw” in a mere old man, for example; it has nothing to do with analysis or the so-called “medical model,” or with “scientific” thinking. (The mind sees, or even creates, what it looks for. In this sex and violence obsessed Kali Yuga [era] of today, the mind leaps to obsessive conclusions. Unable to truly understand, yet ever ready to leap, the mind shrouds Divinity with worldly illusions and comes up with wrong conclusions.) TC: Again, Jack Hawley is so terribly vague about the behavior to which he is referring. Basically, he seems to be criticizing any and all attempts to understand more fully what Baba is doing and why. And notice his use of the phrase “obsessive conclusions” as if those mature persons who are trying to uncover Baba’s and the Sai officers’ unethical activities are pathologically “obsessive.” I would state that it is decades-long denial and rationalization about Sai that are indicative of pathological obsession on the part of senior Sai devotees, not the quest for truth concerning these inappropriate activities. The latter is commendable, the former is not. JH: 4. What is happening here in Prasanthi is beyond the meager human mind and its ability to “figure out.” It is beyond maya (mind-created illusion). Many things happen here that involve deep, mysterious energies, far beyond what our minds can grasp. TC: I am willing to grant that “what is happening here in Prasanthi,” specifically, the many beautiful deeds of Baba and the astounding synchronicities and healings that happen are, truly, “beyond the meager human mind and its ability to ‘figure out.’” I remain convinced that there are paranormal miracles (wondrous anomalies), and “deep, mysterious energies,” perhaps involving multi-dimensional physics and paranormal or supra-normal power, that are occurring around and through the personality of Sathya Sai Baba. We should also be aware that these energies and powers could be coming from Sai Baba of Shirdi and/or the Divine Absolute, while the figure of Sathya Narayana Raju (born in 1926 in Andhra Pradesh state) is merely a vehicle or instrument for these powers and energies, and that the Sathya Narayana personality has an unfinished shadow side involving an addiction to sex with young men and boys, and is willing to use trickery to fake certain “materializations.” [His longtime centimillionaire VIP devotee, Isaac Tigrett, has witnessed and verbally confirmed this fakery of “materializations”; regarding the allegations of sexual molestation of male youth, Tigrett has told an interviewer, “I believe there is truth to the rumours.”] Alternately, Sathya Sai could be an amazingly accomplished but fallen yogi (yogabhrashta) who represents a mixture of wonderful powers and altruistic intentions along with less savory aspects — such as lustful desire, fear of being exposed, etc. JH: We do have some quite clear hints about what’s happening here: It has to do with Love so deep, so Divine that nothing can stand in its way — not even the threat of misunderstanding or calumny. TC: Again, I grant that much or most of Baba’s spectacular mission has been about teaching and demonstrating Love. And I am aware that numerous great spiritual masters of different religious traditions, especially those who embody the “Divine Trickster” or “Holy Fool” archetype, have behaved in ways that are mystifying, shocking, and unconventional. Thus, such masters have been misunderstood and made the target for calumny. But calumny means “false and malicious accusation,” and in the present case, with numerous accounts of Baba molesting male youth against their will, it would seem that the charges against Baba are neither false nor malicious. These charges are simply the cry of anguished devotees attempting to protect young men and boys from behavior that can have a deeply traumatic effect upon their sensitive psyches. JH: It has to do with healing, not harming. TC: In light of my comment in the previous paragraph, this claim by Jack Hawley and by other true-believing Sai devotees needs to be proven and not just presumptuously stated. HOW, SPECIFICALLY, HAS BABA HEALED ANYONE by touching their genitals, performing oral sex upon them, requiring them to perform oral sex upon him, masturbating them, having them masturbate him, threatening them or their parents to keep quiet, and, finally, paying them for sexual favors? Pray tell, HOW, EXACTLY, IS ANY OF THIS BEHAVIOR “HEALING”? Let’s hear specific, clear-cut explanations from Baba and accomplished holistic health practitioners on the dynamics of this “healing” activity, not vague statements and excuses. But no, I submit that the deep feelings of shame, guilt, betrayal, confusion, anger, sadness, numbness, and fear reported by these young men and boys are clearcut evidence of psychological HARM, not healing. They are being abused by an elder whom they and their parents have trusted as Guru, God, and spiritual Father-Mother Sai. And this terrible abuse and breaking of a sacred trust results in pain and trauma, not “healing.” I find this particular statement by Jack Hawley to be unconscionably ill-informed, presumptuous, and just plain wrong-headed and cruel-hearted. Maybe he doesn’t intend to be cruel, but that is the psychological effect that his words will undoubtedly have upon the victims of Baba’s sexual predatory behavior. I would respectfully hypothesize that if any of Jack Hawley’s children (I do not know whether, in fact, he has children) were being sexually abused by Baba, they would not appreciate hearing these words from their father. Mr. Hawley should empathetically put himself in the shoes of those hundreds of molested youth and their family members and he will see that such statements (“It has to do with healing, not harming,” etc.) are woefully inappropriate responses to the present crisis. JH: It has to do with the Avatar’s [Divine Incarnation's] mission here on earth (which, of course, has to fit this crazy Kali age). TC: This explanation by Hawley is no explanation at all. First, it begs the question of whether Sathya Sai Baba is truly an Avatar of the purely divine kind, not just an avatar in the sense that we are all avatars (Divine manifestations). [Elena Hartgering reminds us that this method of defending SSB by appealing to the idea that "Sai Baba is God" is guilty of the fallacy of presumption.] Second, Hawley presumes to know something of what an avatar’s mission would be. Now, according Krishna’s alleged instructions in the Bhagavad Gita [an ancient, authoritative text of Hindu Vedanta], Vishnu’s avatar (God’s special Incarnation) occurs “from age to age” to “restore Dharma (righteousness or virtue) and destroy adharma (non-virtue).” It has to be demonstrated that Sathya Sai’s sexual predatory behavior -- apparently involving hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand young men and boys -- is “restoring Dharma.” Rather, it strikes an increasing number of us worldwide as indicative of nonvirtuous, adharmic behavior by someone who is either not fully Divine (e.g., someone who is a blend of Divine light and dark energies) or else is a “fallen yogi.” (Some nasty naysayers want to say that Baba is actually nothing more than an evil force on the planet, a master of occult powers who masquerades, like the legendary Lucifer, as a being of light and goodness. I don’t accept this analysis of “Baba-as-consummate-evil.” I do believe that there has been an astonishing amount of genuine goodness, compassion and spiritual upliftment in and around Baba.) Finally, I would remark that Ramakrishna, Sai Baba of Shirdi, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anandamayi Ma, Meher Baba, Anasuya Devi, Devaraha Baba, Ammachi Amritanandamayi and numerous other highly impressive Avatars/Mahatmas from India have lived out their mission in the modern “crazy Kali age” and have not needed to resort to such illegal/criminal behaviors to enlighten and edify millions of people. JH: It has to do with the purity of our own minds, not someone else’s. The impurity is not in the Avatar, who is purity itself, it’s in the world, in our minds. TC: This statement from Hawley sounds impressive, but is dangerous propaganda and heartlessly unfeeling as well. The Nazi movement arose with the conceit that it was a Divine movement to restore the “purity” of the human race and the homeland. The Nazis developed an elaborate metaphysics, theology and mythology to rationalize the decimation of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and other “undesirables” as a great good for the commonweal. Anyone who disagreed with the “purity” of Nazi intentions was considered an obstacle, someone to be re-educated with Nazi propaganda or else eliminated as another undesirable. For Jack Hawley to suggest that anyone who has simple questions, ethical reservations or moral judgments about Baba’s sexual behavior is the one who is impure, not Baba, is being terribly disrespectful. Worse, his words serve as dangerous propaganda aiming (consciously or unconsciously) to manipulate people into compliant, obedient submission and “groupthink.” This is the type of slavish thinking that goes on in dysfunctional, dangerous cults like Scientology, the tragically-defunct People’s Temple sect headed by Jim Jones, and numerous other spiritual movements gone terribly wrong. We must remember that, according to [Prof. N.] Kasturi’s biographical literature about Baba and translations of his discourses, Sathya Sai has himself long been a critic of impurity and hypocrisy and evil masquerading as good. Given that Baba has no qualms about preaching in moralist terms, we have every right to ask about his own morality when it comes to his sexual behavior with children and non-consenting young adults. Again, notice that Hawley has presumptuously “begged the question” in implicitly identifying Sathya Sai Baba as the utterly pure, Divine Avatar. At this point in time, anyone who wishes to state this claim must back it up and demonstrate HOW/WHY AN AVATAR WOULD NEED TO MOLEST CHILDREN AND YOUNG MEN AGAINST THEIR WILL. A standard feature of dangerously dysfunctional cults is to allow the leader to get away with behaviors that are not allowed for the rank and file membership—in short, a double standard. Unless the Sai movement is advocating sex with children—something that I don’t ever recall being part of the guidelines for centers or the Ninefold Daily Conduct rules given by Baba—then sexual activity by Baba with children is not allowable by him or by anyone else. We must remember, too, that, if Baba’s sexual activities with young men and boys is so “pure” and such a necessary part of his Divine mission, then WHY IN HEAVEN IS HE NOT ALSO ENGAGING IN THIS ACTIVITY WITH YOUNG WOMEN AND GIRLS? Why is the female sex being consistently deprived of his “healing Grace” in this form? Is this not misogynous prejudice against female devotees? Incidentally, though I am strictly heterosexual, I am not homophobic, and I would have no problem with Sathya Sai if he were to come out of the closet, and, in an open manner (none of this terrible secrecy), commit himself to a homosexual lover in a monogamous relationship, perhaps even getting married in a beautiful ceremony at Prashanti Nilayam. [Unfortunately, homosexuality is by law illegal in India, any homosexual behavior, even between consenting adults, being considered a punishable crime.] As it is, one day soon we are likely to see members of the international group Human Rights Watch or some other group, deeply concerned about ongoing violations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), demonstrating outside Prashanti with banners and signs saying: “STOP MOLESTING MINORS!” “WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON WITHIN THE PRIVATE INTTERVIEW ROOM?!” At this point, I think that longtime Sai devotees should demand that the entry to Sai’s private interview room be kept open and that a chaperon be present on all occasions when Sai is in the company of male youth. I also think that Sai should stop wearing the ochre robe, symbol of celibate renunciation, and drop the renunciate title “Swami.” Given the serious allegations, these steps are not too much to ask. JH: Few of us can see Divinity, and fewer yet understand it. TC: I agree. But we can certainly see, understand, and agree that molesting children is, as most cultures have understood and agreed, WRONG and, in our society, criminal. Do I need to repeat it? It is ALWAYS INAPPROPRIATE for an adult to touch the genitals of a minor EXCEPT IN A LICENSED, CONSENSUAL MEDICAL SITUATION. Yes, on some plane of existence and from a certain human spiritual viewpoint, Baba may be God. But his molesting of minors and deceitfully trying to cover it up is, within our conventions of Indian and American society, criminal activity. And cover-up behavior by longtime devotees in positions of authority within the Sai organization is also criminal activity. JH: Those who go into their hearts for answers during these crises of faith fare better. Those who go into their minds and seek answers outside, struggle the hardest and ache most. TC: Jack Hawley here shows his enslavement to “either-or” thinking conditioned by Aristotle’s ancient binary logic. He implies that genuinely mature devotees live (only) in their hearts and thereby find peace and “fare better,” while other devotees live (only) in their minds and are caught in the “seeking” syndrome, and therefore must “struggle” and ache. I would submit that what the world needs today are spiritual practitioners who live from both their deeply-feeling hearts and their clearly-thinking minds. Lord save us from the heartless or the mindless. As for Hawley’s comments about “struggle” and “ache,” I would remark that certainly a pseudo-bliss and false contentment can result from denial and rationalization about that which disturbs. And certainly many illustrious advocates of social justice, like Mohandas Gandhi and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King and Archbishop Oscar Romero and Nelson Mandela (to name just a few 20th-century heroes), have “ached” deeply and “struggled” hard--and yes, even died--in their tireless quest to remedy wrongs and enact justice. But which path would you prefer? “Ignorance is bliss” or “No pain, no gain”? In the present case, the latter path is far more indicative of a mature spirituality. In closing, I reiterate my heartfelt salutations to Mr. Hawley for his dedication as a spiritual aspirant and his eloquent attempts (e.g., with his books and talks) to bring a deep spirituality into our lives. And, again, I have nothing against him personally. But I do believe he should publicly revoke his “WE DON’T KNOW!” defense of Sai and join with those of us who ask for some kind of accountability and amends-making from Sathya Sai Baba and the Sai Organization leadership. Some straightforward explanations about Sai’s behavior and a policy of keeping the private interview room open would constitute a good start. No matter how much time and energy Jack Hawley has invested in his position as a Sai devotee, he surely has the “capacity,” like many of us longtime devotees, to move beyond a public allegiance to the name and form of Sathya Sai into a deeper spirituality not mired in idolatrous identification, denials and rationalizations. The true experience of God is so much more glorious and sublime… May all beings be authentically happy, peaceful and liberated in awakening to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of God. Timothy Conway ==================== III. Letter of Response to J. Jagadeesan's Open Letter to Devotees of SSB From: Timothy Conway, Ph.D. Dear Friends, J. Jagadeesan of Malaysia, a longtime Sai devotee and prominent Southeast Asian Sai organizational leader and author of Sai literature [and, of all things, an ongoing advocate for "virginity" among the youth-groups to whom he frequently speaks!], in October, 2000 issued a revised “Open Letter” to his Sai Brothers and Sisters. In this letter, he attacks those critics of Baba who are concerned about the extensive allegations of criminal sexual behavior. [Note that many of Jagadeesan’s same words and ideas are reiterated by Baba in his 2000 Christmas discourse.] I have already written extensive critical analysis of the written views of prominent American Sai devotee Jack Hawley and author Ram Das Awle. Because Jagadeesan, like Hawley, is such a hugely prominent figure in the Sai movement, his views deserve to be carefully examined and challenged where they err. Hence I present the following critical response to his open letter to the Sai community. --Timothy Conway ------- From the desk of J. Jagadeesan (Malaysia) Re: The Sai Movement - The Future - The External Threat Dear Brothers and Sisters, Recently, I sent an open letter to all Malaysian SAI leaders and youth coordinators on the subject of "The Internal Threat" of how behaviour among members, youth and/or leaders can undermine the work done by the organization and the good name of SAI. |