SATHYA SAI CONFUSES, DELUDES AND CONTROLS WITH THE 'MIRROR TRAP'

SATHYA SAI CONFUSES, DELUDES AND CONTROLS WITH THE 'MIRROR TRAP'

"God is like a mirror. What you see is only a reflection of your own action and posture." (Sathya Sai Speaks – Vol. 23, p.92)

by Robert Priddy

It works like this: SSB says he is God, so whatever you see, hear or feel that is not perfect and pure in him is not him, only you. Whenever he does wrong, he tells you that the fault is in your perception, your karma, your lack of faith. This he says to excuse not keeping his promises, failing to heal, not protecting his followers, exaggerating his importance, lying constantly, abusing young men, boys and worse than that, allowing devotees to be brutally murdered in his close vicinity by persons under his control! If you believe this 'teaching', your naive acceptance of this clever trick traps you into a hall of mirrors where no way out can be seen. This is the 'mirror trap', nothing more than a convenient invention for deluding people and keeping them in line. Adopting any variant of this idea from SSB or his followers is to begin on a course of self-brainwashing. This 'mirror trap' is also part and parcel of the deceptions of many Indian gurus and swamis.

The 'mirror trap' is the belief that you cannot see beyond your own reflection, and in the case of Sathya Sai it is supposed to apply only when you 'look at' him. But since no one can possibly extend this to all of what SSB says, they forget (or conveniently overlook) that they supposedly cannot 'see' him and so they determine to view him as a good, selfless, pure, truthful and compassionate person living there in India. The 'double mirror trap' comes into play when they reflect on themselves as if through his eyes... and try to see that all bad things come from them, their minds, their thoughts, words and deeds... even when these obviously come from him!

This is simply to collude with the deceiver in denigrating oneself. It is always easy to find failings in oneself, even small ones can be blown out of all proportion. SSB controls people by telling them to do this, pretending that there are rewards waiting for them... all unspecified and in the blue, of course, because even this 'omnipotent Creator' cannot possibly deliver anything NOW. Some believe he has delivered, but that is mostly only because of their forgetfulness of the mirror trap as just described.

SSB repeatedly insists that the good you do for others is not even done by you, but by him! He is the Doer, yet only of good. It is you who do anything that is bad, and you suffer from false vision as to what is ultimately good or bad. SSB will not take a jot of responsibility for what goes wrong, is bad and downright evil. YOU must shoulder that burden... even earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are the fault of people, according to this uneducated peasant! Failings can even be imagined in oneself (many people are prone to it from early induction of guilt feelings by parents and fundamentalist religious teachers)! Siddhis are doubtless extraordinary psychic powers which are not necessarily in any way divine by nature and have been practiced by innumerable individuals like yogis and shamans in many times and places. But through these, most SSB followers have been induced into belief in him as a divine, perfect and pure nature. Then self brain-washing takes over and they soon spread the infection of unhealthy self-denial to others (which is not the same as reducing the ego and unhealthy selfish desires). So the deception goes on and on... He masquerades as what he is not (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent etc.) so as to get power over others. He wants to make everyone think that they will be rewarded and protected for building him up in every way in the belief that they are serving God.

Devotees speak of SSB as being a 'cosmic mirror' because he repeatedly says things like "God (or Divinity or also Sai) only reflects, resounds, reacts". (see Sathya Sai Speaks new eds. Vol. 10, p43 and p.216 and Vol. 14 p. 270). He claims to be God the Creator and all else that God is, adding that our minds reflect the nature of what attracts us. If one is attracted to him, then he claims the mind/heart will become pure and a clear mirror. If its surface is too 'dusty' then one may not be attracted to him (a typically invalid 'argument from analogy') This is all turned into a subtle kind of flattery of his devotees, who think that 'their mirrors are clean' compared to non-believers, and this self-inflating thought further binds them to his will. Fascination with the mirror image is at the core of narcissism, one wishes to see oneself as good without bad thoughts, so one can be happy with oneself.

The mirror comparison lends itself to making all kinds of confusion. For example, SSB also claims that Nature is a mirror of divine forms (SSS Vol. 21, p. 223), but Nature is hardly the same as God in his philosophy (it is matter/prakriti and God is Purusha/Spirit). In Kodaikanal he said in 1998 that the World is a mirror reflecting the divine in all beings. To add to the grand confusion, he also says that Maya is a mirror (SSS Vol. 14, p. 159), that the human mind is a mirror and that the heart is a mirror. (SSS Vol. 14, p 159 and p. 172) Further "Time is a mirror revealing our fancies and fantasies" (SSS Vol. 15, p. 299). But SSB wants everyone to clean their mirrors (i.e. minds, hearts, perceptions, consciousness) so the mirror shows God, and he most evidently wants the image of God to be his form!

However, one might just as well say that anyone can function as a mirror for us, being a physical form onto which we can see some of our own qualities or project onto them some of our own ideas and imaginings. The President of the USA is a convenient mirror for some, clouded or clear. We can see in him more or less what we wish, or we can try to observe him quite dispassionately. The same can be applied equally well to any people we know, even our closest relations. We cannot get into another person's consciousness and look out just as they do, just as we cannot see through a mirror.

All this juggling and mirror-talk is most clearly an inducement to confusion and ideological entrapment in the Sai doctrines. It is a clever and convenient invention (of many gurus long before SSB) for deluding people and keeping them in line as subservient followers of his wishes and plans. Adopting any variant this idea from SSB or his followers is to begin on a course of self-brainwashing. There is no such thing as a 'cosmic mirror'. SSB is no cosmic mirror, but rather a kind of cosmic lie.