AL (ALVIN) DRUCKER
ONE OF THE LONGEST-TERM DEVOTEES & FORMER SELF-APPOINTED SPOKESMAN OF SATHYA SAI BABA

There is a huge disconnect between the humble, confused, questioning, cowed Drucker in the interview (not a single note of the slightest serious criticism) and the role he played in the ashram and continues to enjoy... a kind of top-dog vip devotee who takes it upon himself to organise, speak, give advice and warnings to devotees and to missionize in the manner of other God-botherer sects and cults. The interview itself was entirely routine and standard, but is interesting in how well it shows that Sai Baba wouldn't (i.e. more likely 'couldn't) answer any spiritual questions directly and lucidly, but just went off through his well-known platitudes, round and round in devious and ever-decreasing tautological circles. He made sure always to put his questioners down as an entirely unrealised and body-entrapped persons, (his famous psychopathological technique). It also shows the pathetic attitude of Drucker, who put a number of the more articulate questions. All the questioners, including him, exhibited the intellectual equivalent of abject sheep in their self-effacement and general confusion about Sai's (ever vague) teaching, demonstrating their unquestioning indoctrination (which was always called 'faith'). In the interview for April Fools someone asks the best way to relate to the world. The answer SB gives is the usual impossible didactic indoctrination, which sounds more like persiflage to any non-affected person. The body is an impermanent bubble, all relationships are impermanent, the mind is a mad monkey, you are in 100% body consciousness… and so on. Think only about God, in yourself, all around, all is one, nothing else exists. Develop self-confidence (tough for mad impermanent monkeys to do?). Rise to the highest level only through love, then live in that Unity. Another question was 'Is everything predetermined' and the non-answer was that there is not time or form for the Atma (true self) which is everywhere. I can but comment that if it is everywhere, then it is also nowhere to be found. One does not meet up anywhere with it in any shape or form, because it has none. It is 'ever-beyond-reach' of the embodied person, so perhaps the only way to try to get to it is to get rid of the body (entirely?) as many suicide cases at the ashrams may indicate. These airy theological inventions are difficult to understand, because they contain no substantial meaning to be grasped, but they do serve to confuse, mislead and cow the individual who thinks Sai Baba is divine. They are an insult to human intelligence, but it takes a lot of experiences, knowledge and good critical thinking to get through the labyrinths of drawn-out and often sophisticated speculative nonsense to see them for what they are. (See the source transcript here)

On April 1st. 1985, Sai Baba gave an interview for 'foreigners only' (see scan of e-mail below) . Around 40 foreign 'April Fools' attended (many of them accepted this label, also surely because Sai Baba calls most people fools, especially 'learned fools' like scientists, academics and scholars). Part of the interview was taped and was later transcribed by Eileen Weed and a lady called Anna. They gave the transcript to Drucker for polishing. But Al Drucker stated that he had transcribed the interview ("compiled from notes taken by me"). This is what Sai devotees (especially his wife Jan - aka Yaani or Jaani) call 'ego', in imitation of Sai Baba who applied this to almost all and everyone except himself. When I once asked Sai Baba what he meant by 'ego', he replied "Me and mine"! The label, however, did fit Drucker in that instance, though it is better called  'selfish egotism' but Sai Baba's language abilities did not stretch that far). Self-indulgent and self-promoting is more like the ticket, both for Sai Baba and the Druckers, who continually confused what he call 'ego' with virtually anything enterprising other than devotees' service offered to Sai Baba. Since Drucker was famously thrown out of the ashram and organization, they have both presented themselves as 'self-realized'.

Mail about the Sai baba interview on April Fools' Day 1985

Here are a few more examples of this absurdity:- One person asks if there is no 'higher being judging and guiding me'. SB avoids any direct answer, as usual, and waffles on about the bliss of the true self (Atma) which has no qualities like anger, hunger, desire.  Next 'what is reborn in reincarnation?' SB: "… reincarnation relates only to the body" The Atma has no reincarnation. (All crystal clear, eh? But not to a mad monkey, of course). Next: "How can we love something we can't understand?! Excellent question but SB says develop self-confidence, get self-satisfaction, then sacrifice the self and then self-realisation comes. So that is what this devious guru gives as an 'answer'. Next: 'is self-confidence confidence in the self?' SB answered 'Yes.. unwavering love for the divinity within you. Don't do what you like, but like what you do'. He was ever drawing on his stock of these trivial and ambiguous catch phrases which are devoid of any sound advice.Another 'small example' :- Asked 'shall we tell these things to others?' he replied with "First do some sadhana. First do. Then be. Then you can talk. Do good. be good and see good. Do everything with love. After you develop your self-confidence and love for God then you can share your experiences with others" The same old manoeuvre - his endlessly repeated slogans instead of any truly intelligible answer. But Alvin Drucker evidently figured that he was well-qualified to talk as he gave lectures to visitors prior to and after that session! So it goes on... Note too that the Drucker couple were thrown out of the Brindavan ashram in 1994 and banned from the Sathya Sai Organization when I was there because Sai Baba refused to allow that Drucker could marry Jaani (aka Yaani). Various Indian devotees from UK and USA were over the moon that Drucker had been given his marching orders, which just shows the brotherliness in that snake-pit of jealousy. Later, Jaani has made much of the fact that she was brutally raped in her shrine room on Shivarthri night! Those who believe that Sai Baba bilocates (as he claimed himself on several occasions) and even in  other physical forms than his current 'incarnation' might wonder  if it was not Sai Baba himself  who assumed the body of her attacker in teaching her that wonderful divine lesson for which she praised him so much in her spoutings about the mysterious significance of the rape in leading her towards realization! Surely, it can't get much more wacky and non-realized than that, even though the airy arguments are that her diatribes are an expression of the other-worldly fantasy of  'all are one' and 'everything is love'. The process of gradual engulfment in a religious cult from which there is less and less way back as time goes on, as in the case of Al Drucker and many others of his ilk, has been explained in the anti-cult literature, such as in the excellent book The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies — How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. By Michael Shermer. (Times Books; 400 pages; $28. £19.99. Buy from Amazon.com). The book "presents the evidence for Mr Shermer’s central claim: that, instead of shaping belief around painstakingly gathered, soberly judged evidence, people most often decide upon their beliefs first, and then use an impressive range of cognitive tricks to bend whatever evidence they do discover into support for those pre-decided acts of faith." This is most evident in devotees like Drucker whose brains have been constantly programmed with Sai thought-deadening doctrine and purposely mind-killing 'mantras' over many long years, allowing little else to enter that could re-direct the ingrained neuronic gridlock. It is obvious to us, not even noticeable to them.

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