Bon Giovanni on Sai Critics

Some time after my pro-Sai book 'Source of the Dream' was first published in 1994, Bon Giovanni tried twice to recruit me to the web ring or whatever it was that he ran. I declined due to having other priorities than bulletin boards and discussions etc. But I was suspicious of him by then already - he didn't seem to have much sharpness of perception in what he wrote - too, all too vacant ‘standard Sai fare’ much of the time. Others who were members told me he censored heavily. Subsequent invitations I left unanswered.

When my web page on the Sai organization came up, Mr. Giovanni half congratulated me on it being a very good presentation, but he soon began discussing trivial side issues, nit picking his way to avoid the entire substance of it. As a devotee in denial he is mentally-challenged by its factually. His criticism was peripheral and concentrated on form, rather than content. He clearly could not document any refutation of my main assertions and conclusions. Later, one of my contacts relayed to me a posting by one of the "ladies" on his web site about my supposedly not having ever spoken to Sai Baba. This is of course complete falsification, which my contact - Alexandra Nagel refuted on my behalf.

Then another indirect message appeared on Bon Giovanni's website accusing me most scurrilously and falsely (of course) of being a pedophile who seduced Sai students here in Norway who had come to listen to my frequent talks from abroad... an anonymous poster who Bon Giovanni was pleased to allow to smear me in this devious manner. Apparently Alexandra nagel also responded against it, but the unscrupulous Bon Giovanni actually defended having posted it, appealing to ‘freedom of expression’! The same argument that the gutter press use when printing unfounded and uninvestigated libel.

I therefore sent Mr. Giovanni a mail informing him that I would trash in advance of opening any mail that came from him thereafter as his site was totally discredited in my eyes. I also made clear to him that his cowardly mailer had made the entirely false assumption that I must - as national leader and Coordinator of the Oslo Centre in Norway, prolific writer in Sanathana Sarathi etc. - have held public talks about Sathya Sai Baba. Only once did I give a brief talk outside the Oslo Centre ( which only had maximum 7 members left when I resigned). No students were present, only about 25 adult Norwegians. So the students who were supposed to have come all the way to Norway would have had to be underage! He has not had the integrity to apologize or post my explanation.

Mr. Bon Giovanni has published the most pretentious speculations purporting to explain why Sathya Sai Baba cheats people (which he has had admit does occur) by giving them what he calls 'diamonds'. All of these that have ever been assayed by professional jewellers have turned out to be cheap synthetic stones, tricked up with silver foil held in the casing around to make them shine more (a once-established practice in jewel setting Click here to see the case of my 'green diamond' from Sai Baba). Giovanni pretends to know that this is "a test of faith" designed to make the receiver carry out more self-investigation! By holding up the exposed trickster, Sathya Sai Baba, whose involvement in the police executions in his bedroom in 1993 - though he was nearby throughout - was never cleared up but actively covered-up and then quashed by an Indian government order. Giovanni still believes him to be 'omnipresent' too!). Bon Giovanni's pseudo-philosophising of the raw tripe variety is designed to defend fraudulence by Sathya Sai Baba.

Here is some of what was posted by Bon Giovanni on one of his several web sites. On the left is an event he reports as really having occurred. Then the function he supposes this calculated deception has, followed by his own 'wise comments'.

1. vibhuti pellet - mind of the witness   -   Exposes disbelief (seen reflects the seer)
2. vibhuti on Sai Baba picture overseas    -    Sathya Sai Baba Guru's shakti not limited to ashram
3. diamond ring given to devotee is shown to be fake    -   Witnesses have to assess what they have seen and take it into their self-enquiry
4. Sathya Sai Baba obviously palms a ring    -   Sathya SB is playing on devotee projections (Guru task is to expose doubt)
5. Sathya Sai Baba changes a 3 stone ring into one stone ring    -   Sathya SB creation is leela vinodi, the sport of the Lord
6. Sai Baba materialises article used by Krishna    -   Guru has mastery of time and space
7. Film evidence shows a necklace is handed to Sathya Sai Baba       Sathya SB provokes controversy about his nature and his actions

Here Bon Giovanni defends what he recognises as wilful deceit by Sathya Sai Baba, who claims that he is always truthful, and who insists that none of his materialisations are other than divine creations from nothing. So in this again he lies! Bon Giovanni thinks this guru who tries to engender doubts about himself in the mind of his followers! It is tough enough for most people to get any faith in the first place, considering his claims and the extreme difficulty of meeting him or asking him a simple question. It takes most people a long time and much energy, money and almost endless waiting before they can get close enough to receive an interview. Why then should Sathya Sai Baba try to take his faith away with purposive frauds? The pat answer is that those who keep faith with him are more 'self-realised' - and hence better people than the rest of us who will reap eternal rewards. But they are in fact more self-deluded and self-programmed... blind believing dupes who cannot even see the truth after the many revelations about Sathya Sai Baba since 1999!

Since all the rings with largish stones given by Sathya Sai Baba are enclosed with a rear 'cup' which contains the silver foil, it should be eminently clear that none of are likely to be genuine. The supposed 'green diamonds' are very alike, for I have compared the one I wore for years closely with a dozen others, and seen a score of so-called 'diamond' rings Sathya Sai Baba gave which are dull because worn down - some even scratched! Synthetic sapphires, as mine was, are very had to scratch except with a diamond. But scratching and wearing down simply cannot happen to a diamond. Either they chip or split, unless marked with another diamond. Not one Sathya Sai Baba stone of any size (or even smaller ones) has been publicly proved to be genuine yet... no authenticating papers or any sound documentation from recognised world dealers! But many more that the 6-carat 'diamond' supposedly 'materialised' and given to me in 1986 by Sathya Sai Baba have also been assayed and found to be fakes, such as by David Bailey, G. Gerson, the Rahm family etc.

I know all the symptoms and expressions of 'faith in Sathya Sai Baba as avatar etc. etc.'', not least because I was misled into adopting far too many of them once myself! However, I did not relinquish all my misgivings because it was too difficult in the face of facts... eventually they were fully justified and more when I was faced with irrefutable proofs of Sathya Sai Baba's deceit and massive break of trust with me and many others.

I observed many other symptoms of Sathya Sai Baba delusions recurring in the words and deeds of a wide variety of believers. The nature of the delusion - or developed cognitive disorder, which is certainly no small or limited one, is that those under its influence cannot know that they are deluded. They have gradually woven all their experiences into it, rejecting any threads of doubt that do not fit in. This blanket ignorance of one's own condition of mental derangement is the basic tenet of brainwashing of all kinds, however subtle and whatever emotional or psychic phenomena are involved.

Defenders of Sathya Sai Baba often demonstrate for us how true are the following words of the researcher of hypnosis and subliminal programming, Dick Sutphen: "Those who have been brainwashed will usually passionately defend their manipulators, claiming they have simply been "shown the light" ...or have been transformed in miraculous ways." (from 'The Battle for your Mind').

The carefully restricted and censored 'Sai Critics' web ring that Bon Giovanni runs for the disturbed and doubting in the Sai community - and for those whose faith is ‘being severely tested’ etc., - is called 'Sandeha Nivarini' This is most fitting, for this is the title of a book presented by Sathya Sai Baba as fact - but which is a sheer construction throughout where he presents the unasked questions of a fictive devotee, answering with his 'pre-meditated' but allegedly 'spontaneous' answers to them. That the book is a construction is not told anywhere between the two covers; it is another Sathya Sai Baba deceit, however minor it may seem. Fact and fiction - or 'the real and the unreal' - are almost inseparable in the sphere of Sathya Sai Baba, and few care that this is so whenever they stumble across glaring contradictions. Their new personas as blessed individuals is far more precious, it seems. for them to question he who blessed them.

The web site Mr. Giovanni runs entitled 'Sai Critics' suggests it may be critical of Sai Baba, but it exactly the opposite of what it ... it is designed to criticise the critics and sideline those who are in the process of doubting Sathya Sai baba's veracity and miracles into adopting his brand of pseudo-critical support rationalizing the tricks of this deceiver. It is evident that a premium is set upon faith in Sathya Sai Baba, along with faith in one's own confusion and 'humble ignorance'. When one has to rationalise too much to defend a position, the result is failure to convince anyone but those already conditioned to the same basic belief. Out in the big, real world of perspicacious intellects, these specious arguments of Bon Giovanni would not even attract serious attention, nor do they in fact.

Instead of showing a broad understanding of the many interwoven issues and reserving judgement until the overall evidence accumulates decisively, Giovanni seems driven by a kind of desperation and in twisting of facts to fit to the Procrustean bed of Sathya Sai Baba correctness and the à la carte mish-mash of Indian thought traditions he promotes. All these well-worn spiritual ideas, beliefs and superstitions - plus the monumental claims about himself that supposedly underpins Sathya Sai Baba’s teaching as a whole - are very convoluted and difficult to master, until one can distinguish the wood from the trees and see the baseless nature of the whole. To avoid this realisation, Giovanni has to exercise strict control of viewpoints on his website. Two academics who took an initial interest, Brian Steel and Alexandra Nagel, soon left due to undue censorship and dishonest manipulations. From the viewpoints both of philosophy and theology, Bon Giovanni's writings are a self-replicating defense mechanism running on massive unquestioned assumptions .