3 ARTICLES BY ROBERT PRIDDY

THE IMPOTENT AVATAR?

There are two approaches to the question 'Does SB exercise his will over all major events in the ashram, or are there persons who can do things over which he is powerless?' The first part of this alternative question seems to be answered yes by most residents, especially the less educated ones. Most ashram officials speak as if SB was in total control through his directives and interventions. Prof. Kasturi expressed this view in many of his writings. Applied to the murders scenario, SB becomes fully responsible for the events that took place within his jurisdiction as 'Divine Director' and absolute King-God ruler of the ashram.

 
V.K. Narasimhan was in no doubt, however, that SB is powerless to control events, even those within the ashram, even within his own apartments. That is part of why Narasimhan stayed with SB despite his many doubts. One example illustrates SB's 'impotence': before the 70th birthday celebrations, Narasimhan had suggested to SB that inviting the Indian President to them was unnecessary and only caused major problems with the Black Berets security arrangements that made devotees suffer huge, life-threatening crushes and endless delays. SB had replied that he could do nothing, for the President himself decided to visit. Also, SB had said to Narasimhan, that "one thing I cannot do is to make a person choose to do good." That is part of the reason why Narasimhan did not reject or leave SB when the executions of the four intruding devotees were organised by SB's younger brother! It seemed to Narasimhan that Baba could not even influence his own younger brother!

This viewpoint could absolve SB from responsibility as accomplice to the murders, being unable to control the actions of those ashram and Central Trust members, as well as his younger brother Janaki Ramiah, in blackmailing the police into shooting in cold blood, one by one, the four trapped and virtually unarmed intruders.
SB'S "CATCH 99": YOU CAN'T WIN!

The special Janus-faced nature of the SB teaching, which attributes all negative events to human activity and all positive ones to God (i.e. to SB himself!) means that every event that seems good to any devotee is seen as the result of SB's actions - on an intangible and so uncontrollable 'level'. The doctrine conveniently also provides the ultimate excuse for anything whatever that SB may do that is incomprehensible, unpleasant or wrong. Mentioning negative events or doubts about SB soon leads to one's peripheralisation and ostracism. By propagation of stories of only positive SB miracles (nothing negative can prima facie be attributed to him) - whether true, doubtful or out-and-out inventions - the movement grows among all those who are open to exciting, mysterious influences.
 
The stories accumulate like flies around a jampot. One small example: a Canadian devotee I met had fallen on hard times and prayed to SB to make it possible for him to buy a house and perhaps start some educational project. One day he happened to find out that he was the lucky winner of a hundred thousand dollars due to a petrol receipt number which had been chosen by lottery as the winning number. This he was certain was SB's miracle. Has not SB said "Consider everything as a gift from God" and 'I always look after my devotees' etc.? But someone had to win the lottery anyhow and there is no proof, only subjective conviction, that there was any specific connection of the prayer and the event. Again, it is a matter of imposing belief on events. Of the many positive things that happen on average to almost everyone now and again, all those occurring to Sai devotees will be attributed to SB! (Every lottery win, every successful deal, every recovery from every illness?). The same kind of good things that happen to the other 99.99% of people are not seen in this way by those affected. Meanwhile, the many bad things that happen to devotees are not usually put down to SB, though some regard them as 'lessons' from the master which it is exclusively their job to find out about and give some meaning (i.e. no guru guidance here)!
HOW MOST INDIAN GURUS OPERATE

My contact with an Indian swami who I knew in the 1960s and 70s before meeting SB, one whom I eventually considered to be my guru for a period, taught me much about gurus' techniques and agendas  in their relationship to devotees. I did not enter the relationship to that swami with an unduly sceptical mind, on the contrary... I believed much of what I was told about him and what he said, also about himself. He enrolled me as his follower without my comments. I did not hear him say that he was God, but heard that he had said this to others, and I did not think it feasible as such! However, there came a time after about 14 years since first I met him, when a number of the glorifying tales about him and some of his own more concrete claims began to look decidedly shaky compared with what I could observe myself or was informed about frankly by devotees. I did not set out to challenge this guru, but found that I just had to question him so as to clear up my doubts, which had become unbearable! I wrote him a letter expressing some of my worries, that I was in doubt about the validity of some things he had said and done. I was expecting some kind of helpful reply, some explanation.
 
Instead of any aid to me in regaining full faith, I received a very pointed censorious letter - like the reply to a challenge - which ran on into irrelevancies and at last petered out in half-intelligible wanderings and childish scribbles! It was written in the hand of the swami himself, instead of a dictated letter - which he often got some of his devotees to write for him instead of having to pen it himself. In hindsight I can see that he did not want his actual reply to become known to the devotees and he counted on my not showing them the letter, as I in fact never did. The reason for his reticence was most likely that he sensed that he was revealing in the letter his own lack of understanding of me, or of normal compassion and - not least - he showed how stung he was by my mild questions and the fact that I even dared to ask them! (His devotees always treated him like a regal lion among mice, hardly able even to squeak). He must have realised then the swami had to explain to them why I had left, but this he could do verbally on his own ground and in his own terms for their consumption.
 
He had at least understood that I was not so easy to beguile into the usual subservience and that I would be a potential threat to his community because of my ability (unlike any others) to stand up to him, as I had also done literally face to face (without any special ego feeling) on a previous occasion in which he tried to convince and/or bamboozle me into getting married. As it happened, I later decided that I would follow his advice (which was my own actual desire anyhow) and this convinced my present wife to agree, which she would not previously! So my ego was not the problem, for I accepted the guru's wish. Yet later I found that there were other matters, not least financial, and promises he had made to the group of followers, which were not carried out properly.
 
Only recently was I told that this Swami (since deceased), said to devotees of me that I was "very strong and also later, that I was a 'sceptic tank'. (One can take this as negative as it would have been intended, but I prefer my own interpretation - a tank which rolls over all that one must be sceptical about. (In short, a threat to untruth and deception). This came from one of whom I always spoke about to others and wrote about very respectfully (as in my published book 'Source of the Dream' - praising SB, where I describe my relationship to him and to SB at the time). I only said to some of his followers who demanded a reason for my default that the swami had told me a lie, which was a fact. (Lies are tests, you see... if you swallow them all, you are hooked nicely). I was accused by them and him of the usual sin, 'too much ego', as Sai Baba devotees and SB himself also love to say of doubters! (In short, for my human and spiritual values and convictions and a willingness to stand by them until shown better, truer ones!)
 
The whole process I have just outlined has been repeated time and again by SB towards his followers. This I recognise mostly only in retrospect, for - at the time - I was enchanted by SB's more considerable powers than my previous swami had shown, and by the whole apparently beneficial and professedly near-saintly three-ring circus that is the Sai movement. I have heard any number of accounts that are - in principle - the same. It is pertinent to remark that SB has frequently said that talking behind people's backs or back-biting is the most heinous sin, the greatest of sins! (My ex-guru supposedly sinned most vilely thus against me, but I can forgive him, poor fellow!). Everyone with eyes can see that SB uses such powerful exaggerations all the time... and in this case it seems eminently designed also to stop followers for criticising HIM to others! (This he seems to rate as THE major demonic act!). He does not list sexual abuse of minors as a sin, he never ever mentions it anywhere! He does not even list cold-blooded murder as a sin... But to doubt the guru or to criticise him, that is sufficient, he has said (in his notorious, damning discourse on Xmas day, 2000) to cause one to have to live through many successive lives of shame! Who can really believe this? I can't... it is just too transparently a case of threatening, spiteful pique at having had his bluff called and his own blatant and really serious sins revealed!