Jan. 18, 1981
Dear Directors:
By
the time you receive this memo you will already have received the letter which
Mrs. X has mailed to each of us. And we hear she is sending it to other people
in addition to ourselves.
No
doubt this is a terrible letter which carries the potential of destroying Sri
Bhagavan in the West, and destroying also the spiritual life and spiritual faith
of many devotees.
What
can be said by each of us to devotees and other who come to us to express their
distress?
Directors
Bayer, Goldstein, Krystal and myself have been going over and over the problem
as we were talking together this weekend. Let me first say what we are not able
to explain. There are two ways for us to respond to these horrible stories about
Sri Bhagavan. One is to believe Sri Bhagavan when He says the stories are
totally untrue, and the other is to believe the stories. If our decision is to
not believe the stories, then the question arises as to what moves so many
people to say these false stories. This question we are quite unable to answer.
I have written urgently to Sri Bhagavan asking Him to kindly supply us with the
correct answer. I pray that we will be able to know the correct thing to say in
response when people raise this doubt.
Now,
what are we able to explain? First of all it can be said that Hislop went to Sri
Bhagavan while in India this past December, told Him of the stories which were
circulating, in clinical detail and withholding nothing. Sri Baba listened
carefully, and without anger but in a most serious voice replied that the
stories were untrue and they were totally false.
Second,
the following can be explained. The person who believes the stories chooses to
believe also that Sri Bhagavan is a hypocrite, a liar and a criminal. Why? (1)
He 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.
Now,
is the above portrait of Sri Baba the portrait that the person really sees and
believes in? Because, that is the portrait of Sri Baba that the person who
believes the stories is actually taking into their mind. If such is really their
portrait of Sri Baba, then that person should seriously consider a clear break
away from Him. With such a portrait of Sri Baba nagging at the back of the mind,
the person will not find peace of mind, and life will be troubled and unhappy.
Most people who may tend to believe these horrible stories about Sri Bhagavan
have not, I feel sure, carefully thought through the situation. If it is
carefully explained what the person is actually saying about Sri Bhagavan when
these stories are even partially accepted, I believe it would be of genuine help
to the person. I urge that you yourself carefully think through the situation,
carefully consider all aspects of it, and come to a very serious and firm
conclusion, which will then be your strength when you have to talk about this to
a troubled devotee.
Sai Ram,
Hislop
P.S. We are also contacting people we know who
lived and worked in the situation with the boys. We have already talked to Jack
Hand, who taught Physical Ed. & Health at the College for two years. At no
time did he hear even one of these stories. As far as he is concerned, such
stories did not exist with the college students.
P.S.S. Another point: It is downright crazy to
even conceive that such a situation could exist without indictment from parents
& Government, whereas Gov. Leaders are Swami’s strong devotees.
February 21, 1981
Dear Director: Enclosed are copies of letters
written by two friends, and a copy of my letter to the X family. Do not exhibit
the letters – let us not escalate the trouble – it would please me better if
you would destroy them after reading and digesting the contents. Why do I write
to you at all about these matters? Because I conceive it my duty to do my best
to present data to you that will convince you as strongly as I am convinced that
Swami is innocent of the slanderous charges against Him. You are Swami’s
representatives to the world, and you have got to be in a position of maximum
strength when facing devotees. I hope this mailing will be sufficient to
conclude the matter, and I do not intend to write about it again unless
something very much unforseen happens.
About
X. I am not a psycholgist that I can diagnose the specific problems of the boy.
But any person who has reached our ages can see the probable outline of the
situation. At a young age, the tendencies and desires are strong, and
discrimination and discipline are weak. Note in crime reports how the young
predominate in acts of impulsive violence. The animal heritage has its remnants
in us, and the primitive heritage of cunning and violence in order to survive a
hostile environment is also there. In order to survive, mind and body must use
the most deadly weapons available. In modern society, the most deadly weapon
that anyone can use to destroy the enemy, the one who threatens security, is to
accuse that person of degenerative sexual crimes. Our direct experience is
limited, but this method of attack is often reported in the news and it can be
observed in operation at all levels of society. I am convinced that it is
probably the primitive survival reaction described that is responsible for the
accusations of X.
There
are also other people who accuse Swami, and we have heard of some of them. In
these cases the individual may feel threatened by his own homosexual tendency,
and by projecting that tendency on to another person it can be attacked. No
doubt there are many devices the psyche uses to survive stress and strain, and
if you are interested we can ask Sam Sandweiss to tell us about them. The
central point is that it is folly to accept such stories as being factually and
objectively real. Such stories about Sri Baba are fiction, novels, and the
seeming reality they project depends on the artistic talent of the story teller.
Let us be awake and very very skeptical of such stories.
You
have heard that Swami wrote to me. The significant part of the letter is this:
“Sai is millions of miles away from the devilish passion attributed to Him …
As fire consumes all materials, these false stories and false allegations are
reduced to ashes by My Divinity … Rest assures that Sai’s fame can never be
diminished by these false stories … good and pious people will never care for
them.”
As
I previously mentioned in another letter, the trouble is not with the
condemnation of the alleged acts, not in the decision that one who does such
action is a false teacher of spiritual life. The fault lies in the conclusion
that Sri Baba is guilty of such actions. This a grave error in reason and
judgement. As Directors, we must be able to correct this error whenever someone
says it to us.
Sai Ram,
Hislop
March
25, 1981
Dear Director:
Both
you and members of Sai Centers in your region have learned from trips to India,
or from other people in the U.S. that Swami is often the target of attacks which
range from physical harm to verbal abuse. For example, not only was there a
poison attempt on Him not long ago, but in earlier years He is reported to have
been a kidnap victim. That the kidnapers then became His devotees is beside the
point. Some five years ago a gang of robbers (dacoits) came to Prasanthi Nilayam
with the stated purpose of killing Swami; the police intelligence unit caught
them but Swami refused to prosecute. There have been other incidents of a
physical nature.
Verbal
abuse of Swami is more common than physical attack. The abusers live in foreign
countries as well as in India. Probably you received a leaflet from Malaysia
claiming that Swami “fakes” vibhuthi and materializations. The “fraudulent
magic tricks” allegation was in great favor a few years ago and even had some
university scientists as participants. In time these accusations subsided.
The
attacks seem to come in waves and in series of waves. A few years back Swami was
labelled “Romeo”, a great “lady’s man”. Numerous women claimed that
Swami came to their apartments at night and took them to bed. Next came the
accusations that He was a homosexual. It seems especially difficult for the
attackers to keep life in the homosexual accusation and the current attack
appears to be already falling away.
The
latest allegation to surface, and I do not know if it will become strong enough
to be a wave, is the accusation that Swami is in it for the money and is busy
misappropriating money for His personal fortune. I have been receiving some
letters asking about this. What the nature of the next attack will be, I do not
know. Because of the continuing nature of attacks upon Swami it is important
that we know something of the background of this situation in addition to having
our strong personal faith in Him.
Swami
is always surrounded by people, and everything He does is under intense
scrutiny. Many people still living have been close observers of Swami for thirty
years and more. I am fairly recent – 12 years now, but I have spent
considerable time in His company. We who are able to be inside His house and who
are vitally interested observers see that Swami’s life is exactly the same as
His teaching and that He does nothing for Himself, but spends all of His time
and energy in work for the benefit of mankind. So, how and why doe these waves
of attack arise? It is really very strange, is it not?
It is my theory that the force of creation is outward-going into
manifestation, experience and change; whereas the balancing force of
discrimination and detachment is inward-going to silence, peace and eternity.
Creation is violent; inward stability is peaceful. That which resists a violent
current can expect to be battered. He who leads His family or followers
upstream, against the tremendous power of a swift-flowing river, seeking to
guide them to the source, will seem to be under attack by the current, the wave,
the rapids and the whirlpools. Swami says something the same. He points out that
the Divine person throughout history has been abused and that enemies arise
determined to destroy Hi. In a lighter vein swami has mentioned that people do
not throw stones at a barren tree but do throw stones at trees laden with fruit.
I recently wrote some letters to Swami telling Him in detail about the
verbal attacks mounted against Him. I asked if He would graciously send His
comment. Swami did reply, and in summary said, “Sai is millions of miles away
from the devilish passion attributed to Him … As fire consumes all materials,
these false stories and false allegations are reduced to ashes by My Divinity
… In all ages Divinity was attempted to be discredited with false allegations,
but these merely give better shining to the Divinity of the Incarnation as a
Diamond gets more lustre with each cutting … Rest assures that Sai’s fame
can never be diminished by these false stories. Only birds of the same feather
will give credence to the false allegations … good and pious people will never
care for them.”
Since a few people abuse their own essential Divinity with beastly attitudes and activities, how can we expect them to refrain from also abusing the Divinity of Sri Baba? Those individuals who participate in attacks upon Swami’s person and His Name are in effect saying that they do not believe Swami is a “Divine Embodiment” of stainless love and purity. Instead, they regard Him as a person of low character and bad tendencies. These people are few in number but they certainly make some waves at least temporarily.
The Sai devotees who have direct knowledge of Him or faith equivalent to
such knowledge are not a problem. Nor are those individuals who believe the
gossip about Swami much of a problem for they quite properly run away, and it is
not often possible or practical to attempt to bridge the distance to them for
they have made their own choice and their own decision. Our problem (as office
holders in the Sai organization) is with those devotees who are not well
acquainted with Swami and who are wavering in their minds about the series of
allegations against Him. These latter devotees should have someone available
with whom they can talk out the situation and their doubts. Who can this be?
Because of time and distance factor it can only be the Officers of a Center.
Thus, dear Director, if you agree that this suggestion is correct then you must
educate and provide a good background briefing to the Officers of the Centers in
your Region. How? One way to start would be to call the President of each of
your Centers during the reduced-rate evening and week-end hours and read this
letter to him or her and answer questions that might follow. As you will know,
the reduced-rate phone charges are very reasonable and inexpensive. You could
also tell the President that the other Officers are welcome to phone you
whenever they find it convenient.
As Council President, I urge you to give strength to the Center Officers
in this matter. Should not Sai devotees have an understanding of the situation?
The possibility certainly exists that we have not seen the last attack. The only
way to estimate the future course of events, and we all do it, is to weigh the
probabilities and act in terms of that which is most probable. As Swami Becomes
more and more a world-wide personality, those people who find in themselves love
and veneration for the Person and the Divinity will multiply in numbers. At the
same time Swami will come to the notice of some minds that are
“anti-Avathar”, or that are disturbed for one reason or another. For this
reason is it not probable that attacks upon Swami are more likely to continue
than to diminish?
I believe it essential hat our Center Officers have the benefit of the
your conversation and instruction to help them maintain balance in the Center
Membership. Letters to devotees will not do, since letters are likely to
“escape” and float in every direction without control. I believe you must
establish a verbal relationship with the Center Officers in order to properly
inform them and educate them about this situation. The Indian Officers can take
care of the situation in India, but it is ourselves who must take care of the
American situation. I risk yourselves with written communications which you can
study and work over, but I dare not enlarge the circle; someplace amongst people
I do not know, there would be a weak link. If you find yourself of the opinion
that my thinking in this matter is wrong, please write to me immediately and
tell me what you believe would be correct .If you are in agreement, please tell
me the results of your conversations with Center Officers, as they are
consumated.
Sai Ram,
Hislop
24 October 2001
1)
In allowing any mention of the sexual allegations to devotees, Hislop was
more liberal and civil than present top Organisation leaders who exclude anyone
from office who perplexedly asks honest questions about these matters, (eg. the
dictatorial T. Meyer of Europe, for one, excluded the leader of EHV and deputy
centre leader in Moscow, Serguei Badaev simply for asking him two or three
questions about the matter). But unfortunately Hislop gave up any proper pursuit
of the allegations almost before he had begun. He asked Jack Hand, another
Westerner, who was kept in the dark as are all non-Telugu-speakers in the
tightly censoring Baba ashrams, is like the blind leading the blind. Can one
imagine Sai Baba’s students under his very
restrictive and moralistic discipline and ominous power freely questioning,
‘Sir, why does God abuse me sexually?’ Common sense and experience shout No!
Another teacher at Baba’s college in Whitefield in the late 70s, Mr. Barry
Pittard, was also unaware of such matters at the time, but is most certainly no
longer so, as those who follow the exposé activities will know. Hislop should
also have been aware that paedophiles are known always to deny their misdeeds
and - when confronted – often to use threatening language or vague terms (viz.
“burning to ash”, which one of the rishis was supposed to do to people with
his eyes, according to Baba’s educative retelling of puranic stories).
Hislop’s shocked withdrawal from the alleged facts and non-pursuit of other
leads (eg. the earlier Malaysian allegations, or approaching Tal Brooke for his
personal witness account etc.) is psychologically understandable, but no more
defensible for that. Why didn’t he personally
contact the boy to see for himself what kind of impression he could get from
him? A leader of a largish organisation purporting to convey moral values and
defending the truth ought to have been less partisan, much more open to
investigating properly. Instead, he managed to bury the matter very well for
decades, I never even heard of it back in the 80s, but now the corpse has
arisen! The allegations that Baba claimed he would burn to ashes have also shown
a Phoenix-like nature, arising afresh time and again from new people and
multiplying from all parts of the world!
2)
Hislop observably and understandably had strong motives – both personal
and social - for rationalising the allegations by recourse to mere speculations
about young people in general and the ‘probable outline of the situation’.
Those 100% pro-Baba biased conceptions also caused him to go well beyond the
facts when he claimed “Swami is always surrounded by people, and everything He
does is under intense scrutiny.” But Hislop conveniently overlooks the
obvious, that there is no one who can observe Baba personally all the time, eg. Baba's nightly activities are said to be completely unknown to his
closest attendants, as is what goes on in the privacy of the inner interview
room. It is no use Hislop arguing, therefore, that, “Many people still living
have been close observers of Swami for thirty years and more. I am fairly recent
– 12 years now, but I have spent considerable time in His company. We who are
able to be inside His house and who are vitally interested observers see that
Swami’s life is exactly the same as His teaching...” Not only does Baba
change the company he keeps many times a day, so that no single person has an
overview of his many activities, but he often takes long drives away from the
ashram, the destination or purpose never being made known except to those
actually with him. Further, anyone who knows anything about cases of paedophilia
and incest, will know that even wives are usually unaware of their children
being abused sexually by their husbands or other close relatives. This shows how
much it all depends on what one wishes to
believe. As to exact correspondence between teaching and action, there are many
areas where discrepancies are obvious to those who wish to look (to check simply
see my article on the 1993 murders, ‘A
Bloody Shambles’ or look into Baba’s angry Xmas discourse of 2000).
3)
Hislop refers to kidnappers who became Baba’s devotees. More likely,
they willingly accepted employment from him rather than rely on robbery. One of
these, known to all in the 60s, 70s and early 80s as the Prashanthi gatekeeper
Kumar, was brutally murdered in the ashram in early 1985 because of his really
hateful behaviour to people there (esp. the cook at the main Indian canteen),
his constant beating with his watchman’s stick of devotee Indian villagers (I
saw him use it on Indian villagers during nagarsankirtan who did no more than
walk in the wrong place), and taking money from poor Indian peasants to let them
enter the ashram (tens of thousands in small notes were found behind his picture
of Baba in his 'hut' just inside the main gate gopuram when it was cleared after
his death). In the early 80s he once even imprisoned a young US lady in his
concrete pillbox like hut for over 24 hours. So much for such ‘dacoits turned
devotees’. Various sources (incl. an ashram resident) hold that the killer
acted in self-defence and rushed to Baba’s feet for forgiveness and Baba gave
him money and sent him away somewhere until things had cooled down. It was a
hush-hush matter at the ashram and no one could find out anything as it remained
uninvestigated. As to Indian law and avoiding it… it’s the same story all
over.
4)
Hislop remarks “P.S.S.
Another point: It is downright crazy to even conceive that such a situation
could exist without indictment from parents & Government, whereas Gov.
Leaders are Swami’s strong devotees.” This shows how naive and ignorant
Hislop really was about legal justice and omnipresent corruption in India, as
will be proven by any reading of the materials about the 1993 murders at
Prashanthi Nilayam and the subsequent government cover up, the petitions that
were rejected by judges who are Sai devotees and so on. Even national Indian
television Doordarsan destroyed materials showing an alleged faked
materialisation that were considered to be injurious to Sai Baba’s image. The
fact that Gov. Leaders are strong Sai devotees should have made it obvious to
Hislop that they couldn’t possibly be impartial. If you regard someone as God,
can you find faults in that Being if you don’t have very strong reasons that
you just cannot dismiss by explaining it away somehow?
5)
Hislop's letters show his frequent inaccuracy as in the phrase, “I am
convinced that it is probably...”. He was ‘convinced of probability’! It
is well known that Hislop spent much of his life in a never-never land of gurus
that proved false or useless, successively leaving them, from a Yogananda guru,
then the tricky money-grabbing Maharishi Mahesh yogi to the unsatisfactory
‘vipasana yogi’ U Ba Thin. This makes it rather surprising that he was still
able, even after a string of disillusionments of ‘faith’, seriously to hold
that, “The Sai devotees who have direct knowledge of Him or faith equivalent
to such knowledge are not a problem”. This demonstrates how Hislop still
recognised no difference between strong faith and actual knowledge in judging
whether worldly facts are the case or not. Poor, misguided seeker... he had
swallowed a chunk too much of the vaguer, pseudo-intellectual parts of Sai
Baba’s teachings.
6)
Hislop reported an unheard-of fact, that Baba, “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.” Now
we know something never before explained in the Organisation, that Sai Baba
instructed its leader in the West to ban homosexuals from the Organisation, and
even from its centres. Well, would you believe it? One must wonder why this was
so closely guarded for so long, why it was never prescribed in the
Organisation’s directives. And which ‘secret divine teaching’ will surface
next?