BELIEVERS IN SAI BABA CAN'T UNDERSTAND MANY SIMPLE THINGS
by Robert Priddy  

In the Sai movement there is a standard way of 'explaining' every awkward fact about SB, which is "We cannot understand his Divine ways", or other words to the same effect.

It is true that one cannot understand if one has given up beforehand, and this 'giving up' is a 'to surrender to his Divine will', which involves not questioning anything he says or does. Without exception, SB either ignores or fobs off anything remotely like a penetrating question that may be put to him once in a blue moon.

As long as one really believes that SB is God Almighty himself on two feet etc. etc., one surrenders all chance of understanding anything about him. Add to this the indisputable fact that SB does not WANT anyone to be able to understand him... almost everything he says and does demonstrates this! He also is ever telling people in private interviews to keep things secret, which is a near paranoid precaution for controlling what is generally known about him.

Through the years I saw on numerous occasions that SB selected for very frequent interviews certain young men from 16 to 20 years old from Scandinavia and Germany who I knew or was acquainted with. They would often be invited on their own without the group they belonged to and would get private interviews each time. All of them receive gifts like rings, bangles or watches etc. from SB. This was puzzling, but the classic explanation was that SB knows the karma of everyone and he fetches these young men to him because of their merits in past lives and also to protect them and sow the seeds of spirituality in them. However, they were all spiritually inclined already, otherwise they would doubtless not have been there. More surprising it was to note that, one after one, these young men soon fell away from the Sai movement altogether and were never seen again at the ashrams. Devotees lost touch with them altogether. Who could possibly understand this? Well, you see, we cannot understand everything, probably we cannot really understand anything... and especially where SB is involved.

I am very much inclined to doubt whether such blind belief can ever be fruitful at all! As soon as one confronts the facts from an equananimous, unbiased standpoint, the above facts take on a different aspect. In the light of the many and detailed descriptions by former male devotees of SB's various homosexual advances and behaviour towards themselves, the series of fair young European men who have gone through the SB experience (and presumably come out on the other side) are almost self-explanatory. I say only 'almost' because a number of defendants of SB in the Sai Organisations are conducting a damage-limitation misinformation campaign, because some of them have been forced to admit that they have long known that SB 'anoints' young men's genitals in  secret.

Another word for 'anoints' could well be 'interferes physically with' young men's genitals. However, one leader - Thorbjorn Meyer - has called this act an "age old Indian oiling ceremony", without being able to produce even a fragment of documentation for this from Indian scripture or reliable historical sources. Nor has Meyer deigned to explain why a number of victims of these unlawful interventions have been subjected to the ceremony several times, and have never been asked if they wish for it or what it may or may not signify. (Incidentally, nor has Meyer kept his promise made on Danish TV to investigate the claims of more than 24 self-declared victims of sexual abuse by SB).

Another one of SB's Danish VIPs, Peter Pruzan, opines that the so-called 'anointing' is intended somehow to influence the sexual energies of young men, presumably to reduce the sexual urge (?) or what not. This is sheer speculation, of course, and it is typical of people whose minds have become so thoroughly manipulated by their half-understood experiences with Sai Baba and his often half-baked and vague explanations of so many things that they cannot - as mere mortals - hope to understand. Many factual account, however, indicate clearly that SB has tried to change young men into homosexuals!

Pruzan is the same as nearly all Sai followers, they follow SB in considering sexuality as something unmentionable, as if it were necessarily dirty... not least because SB has replied to those who have asked him if the allegations of his sexual activities are true by saying "Baba is pure"! This shows SB's attitude clearly, 'sex is impure!'. V. K. Narasimhan told me that SB is "extremely traditional" in his attitude to sex, meaning sex between men and women. This is his outward stance, but he admits that he shares his bedroom with young men and even boys... a fact for which he has never offered the hint of a "spiritual" explanation. SB has almost never openly mentioned sex, he is obviously unable to raise the subject frankly and talk about it in understandable fashion. One of mankind's most basic needs and drives is unmentionable by the supposed 'world universal teacher'! When SB has a very few times mentioned sexuality, it is invariably in general and vague terms and usually also to condemn it as 'lust'. Somewhat of a parody of being a spiritual guide to mankind!

That SB cannot admit to having had the sexual urge at least since he cohabited for years in his teens with the young man, Krishna, only shows how he is typical of Indian repressive mentality with its Victorian double morality, especially about pubertal sexual urges and definitely about homosexuality. In contrast to this attitude, the great Sufi mystic and famous poet, Rumi, regarded sexual desires in youth as 'letting one's feathers grow out', without which dangerous problems can be caused later. (The Essential Rumi', p. 64). This is definitely an enlightened attitude and is favoured by an increasing majority in most modern countries nowadays. (So much for the cherished belief that SB will rule the world, or his own deranged claim that all the world will be in his organisation!)

The much-trumpeted traditional belief in India that our 'life essence' (kundalini) resides in a semi-potent or 'sleeping' mode in the lowest non-physical 'chackra'. This force can be awakened and - through esoteric yogic, tantric and other disciplines - made to 'rise up' through a channel that is believed to exist on an etheric level parallel to the spinal column. Though this was most probably first intended as a symbolic teaching (referring to different levels of personal development and inner attainments), it is taken quite literally in India as a physical reality - not least by those who wish to defend SB's physical interference with - and hard-breathing manipulations of - young men's genitals. Raising the kundalini by physical manipulation of the sex organs is a gross travesty of the best among Indian religious beliefs. The kundalini is held not to be a physically manifested energy and nor is there a shred of physical evidence for the 'existence' of it or of the energy centres, the 'chakras'.

In view of all these points, SBs activities must be regarded for what they are described to be by dozens of young men. To try to explain them away by speculation about divine energies is just to try to sustain one's own cherished illusions about SB and the spurious benefits or blessings he is supposedly to confer now or, more usually, later, later, later... (this year, next year, sometime, never... for who can know?) Closing ones eyes to facts in the real world is one way to postpone the pain of breaking all the other attachments and needs for more or less imagined spiritual blessings or rewards from another person (SB) nourished by those in the Sai movement.

Sai Baba schools and colleges, especially in India, are inevitably under the gravest suspicion of supplying a steady stream of under-age boys for sexual purposes, not only to SB but to those masters and higher students who have been themselves turned into sexual abusers by SB himself. This is an entirely believable hypothesis based on the evidence already accumulated, for many examples of such institutionalized abuse have been coming to light during recent decades, and especially this year in the Catholic Church in many countries. Even the Pope was finally forced by the huge weight of public opinion developed through decades to admit and condemn as 'evil' the massive abuse of minors that has taken place in the Roman Catholic Church, which has finally been proven in courts in many countries, especially the USA in recent times.

There is growing awareness that India is one of those countries with the equivalent of super-Victorian sexual double morals, where pedophile relations are very widely practiced both hetero- and homo-sexually. Child marriage - amounting in many instances to pedophile sex - is evidently still practiced in India and is openly accepted by many. The subject is so taboo and so inflamed there, above all in ashrams and other religious communities, that it can only be discussed privately with persons one trusts, and then at considerable risk. However, it is apparently very widely known and is taken for granted by almost everyone there out of powerlessness before the sheer magnitude and threat of the issue.