Wilma Bronkey is just one example of the kind of unpleasant and self-serving people Sathya Sai Baba blessed as VIPs and selected as leaders of his most important posts, not least at the top of the Sathya Sai Organisation. There were very few genuine, unselfish, really helpful, honest and accountable persons leading national Sai centres, and very few were selected by him, but where chosen by their compatriots. Sai Baba promoted the most outwardly devoted and subservient followers, i.e. most gullible, pushy and more unpleasant individuals. Bolstering their self-importance through privileges, he used them to enforce blind acceptance of anything he did or said. They unquestioningly spread the false propaganda he and the ashram put out about him (or themselves) and their position was dependent on not reporting anything to expose his actual behaviour behind closed doors (the world knows what the most frequent criminal activity there was).
One example: My wife and I came to know a couple who were at Prashanthi Nilayam with their son of two years of age for the first time in February 1998. They informed us that they were being harassed by one Wilma Bronkey, the leader of the group they'd joined. Bronkey from Oregon had been given one of his robes by Sai Baba and vibhuti and nectar supposedly manifested at her house in Oregon. She told group members that the two-year-old son of the couple (M and her American husband) had demonic forces around him. She did not tell them for it came to the knowledge only through others. Bronkey claimed she received "messages" from Swami about and for devotees in her Sai group. She held that she had psychic powers of "knowing" and "seeing" things about them that she held they did not know themselves.
While in Prashanthi Nilayam, she insisted that all members of her group had to stay outside the ashram in an expensive hotel that was so far away that they had to take a rickshaw to darshan. Nor were they allowed to eat anything in the ashram!
The mother brought her husband and son to visit us when they were in Norway. They came a few times to learn first hand more about our discoveries concerning Sai Baba, his organisation and secret clique. With support from other members of the Sathya Sai Organisation, they had made formal complaints about Bronkey and, as a result, she was finally excluded by the International Chairman.
Original Message -----
From: randy segal
To: rero@getmail.no
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 7:13 PM
Subject: Wilma Bronkey
I met Wilma Bronkey last night. She is 4 days out from her last heart attack. I have read some of your material and have heard of all of the good and the bad over the last many years. Besides whatever baba does... Wilma Bronkey is a saint in what she does from my brief encounter. If the good out ways the bad does that matter? No man is all good or bad. If people need to believe what baba says to accomplish their dreams then the goal is still achieved.
Did you do anything wrong to others that you regret for your time involved?
Thank you for your articles.
Regards, Randy
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From: "rero" <rero@chello.no>
Subject: Wilma Bronkey etc.
Date: August 25, 2008 3:51:14 PM GMT+02:00
To: "randy segal" <randysegal@hotmail.com>
Hi!
I am answering your e-mail since you ask me to. It seems right to give you as much truthful information as I can so you may be able to evaluate things better, if you wish.
It seems rather impulsive for you to consider Wilma Bronkey a saint after such a brief encounter. (BTW,
vibuthi and amrit, robes etc. are not proof of any saintliness, that is for sure... as the record of such things and the publicity about them shows. Look at the persons real actions towards others - not their words or possessions). I have not met her - after the reports I received about her from numerous who did know her, I avoided any such encounter, though we were at Prashanthi at the same time. An elderly Indian gentleman from the US in her group was very upset about her behaviour and I asked him if she was perhaps an imperious persons (as I had heard from others who had visited her). He said 'That sure sums it up!'
However, after I began to realise how totally we have all been deceived by Sai Baba on very crucial spiritual issues (such as his celibacy, non-truthfulness, hundreds of broken promises, false predications and also outright calculated lies which I KNOW to be lies - including the one in his Christmas Discourse of 2000 about his critics only doing it for money!!) I was visited in Oslo by a young US couple (with their 6 year old son) who had known Wilma Bronkey for a long period and had been in her group in the US and visited India with her group. They told me in detail how they were harassed by her and how she condemned their baby boy as a demon reborn! When they complained while visiting PN, she excluded them all from her interview-seeking group. But it did lead to them later, with much difficulty, getting her kicked out of the Sai org., at least. Now I think all that is the perfect disqualification for sainthood - (even if there were such beings in a religious sense, which I do not believe). They discovered that she was a very selfish person, putting herself foremost all the time and manipulating and controlling people as she saw fit (according to her evidently bogus 'inner voice' from Sai Baba - note that he repeatedly denies in discourses that ANYONE can speak on his behalf).
The good may by some reckoning outweigh the bad, but the bad remains what it is (or was) as long as no admissions, contrition and public apology - plus due compensation is made - in whatever way.
I have not done anything remotely like what Wilma Bronkey has evidently done. I was never anything like a dictatorial 'leaders' when I ran the Oslo Centre and Norwegian Sathya Sai Organization. I stuck to the values and advice gives by Sai Baba as far as at all possible. I regret some minor faults in my behaviour - as we all do (do we not?), but nothing serious. What I regret most is that I was so active in promoting Sathya Sai Baba and his rag-tag 'teachings', which is why I have put them under critical scrutiny on many webpages.
Perhaps this is not to your taste... I have learned at my age that most people believe what is convenient for them, what they want, what they thing inspires them... without regard to the facts as it suits them. This eventually leads to problems, I have observed... and chasing otherworldly miasmas without knowing what they really involve, whether they are not just means devised so as to control and manipulate people and support priesthoods and other power people etc. etc.
I append also an e-mail sent about Wilma Bronkey in 2002 by one of those who knew her - Dennis Hanisch - as it adds some more independent information.
RP
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From: marswalker108
Date: Mon Apr 8, 2002 9:00 pm
Subject: Re: to Dennis on Wilma Bronkey of Oregen marswalker108
Offline
>> The last we heard Wilma B of Oregon whom you mentioned has not yet been able to create perfect peace in her own life..as she serves the severed parts of pigs to people in her home. <<
She was the featured speaker at the Sai retreat held in Texas during Labor Day weakend 1999. At this conference attended
by many hundreds of Sai devotees, she stated that Sai Baba insisted that it was time
for her to travel and make presentations regarding him and his teachings. Don't you think this is being a little
hyprocritical?....she is to represent ssb who claims to be God Almighty Himself and the Ultimate Absolute. Remember, she
has visited SSB over one hundred times.
By the way, have you listened to the cassette tape wherein she claims that SSB told her and made the prophecy that the whole world would now at this very time would be at peace!!
Best wishes, Dennis Hanisch
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PS. My comment to the above information is: Think how much money for return air fares for well over 100 visits to Sai Baba could have been used to improve the lives of others... rather than self-indulgent 'holidays' and attempts to promote and forward herself in the movement! I have never heard anything good about her, really - only that she has a massive ego and does not follow Sai's teachings (as her non-vegetarian behaviour also exemplifies)
As to the prediction mentioned about world peace - this is yet another of the long list of failed predictions by Sai baba made to people like Kasturi, Peggy Mason, Connie Shaw, Rita and Robert Bruce etc. etc. (se one eg. here http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/russias-war-on-georgia-upsets-sathya-sai-predications/)