It is now more than a year since I took down Sathya Sai Baba from his pedestal and ceased to be his devotee.

My fears of an empty and poor life without Sai Baba have not come true. 
On the contrary, I can see that my life today has taken a change for the better.

I would like to share my experiences and infuse courage to all those devotees who are now on their way to change their life from devotee to ex devotee.
I would also like to infuse hope to all those who are still afflicted by the painful treachery, they have gone through.

I am happy that nowadays, I can trust my own discrimination without censorship.
I never wanted to make myself half blind, half dumb or half deaf, as Sai Baba wants us to be, when he says: “see no evil, hear no evil,” and so on....
I prefer to call things by their proper names. For me it´s an evil thing to molest young and innocent boys, even if I don´t want to call Sai Baba evil. But his behavior is....

Even if Sai Baba´s devotees try their best, to explain his sexual molestations, (when they can´t deny these actions any more, they try to explain them!) my heart, my “buddhi”, my education and my knowledge strongly protest against all their explanations.

Nowadays It´s a rare thing for me to be surprised, when I hear things about people, because I have already read the signs a long time before the “surprise” comes.
When I first heard about Sai Baba´s sexual molestations, I wasn´t surprised at all. Some part of me already knew. But it took some time to admit the truth to myself, because it hurts very much to lose your illusions and your hope.
I knew that the allegations were true, but I wanted desperately to find a probable explanation, that would justify his actions. But there is no truthful and probable explanation! 

God didn´t only create us with hearts. He also created us with brains. I suppose He also wants us to use them. There is a saying “Use it or lose it”.
I don´t want to lose mine..
There was an e-mail exchange between David Wolff  and Ex Baba on exbaba.com recently.
David Wolff wrote in his answer to Ex Baba: “ your messages will be permanently deleted from my database before they arrive” .....
That´s in a nutshell what the whole thing is about!
To be able to continue being a devotee to Sai Baba, you have to permanently delete extensive association areas of the cortex in your brain. And you also have to be very effective in censoring incoming stimuli... But of course this leads to fragmentation in the end!
You can´t imagine how glad I am that I escaped from that fate!

It also feels good to release my mind from the thoughts I always used to nourish, when I was still a devotee;  if I had or had not Sai Baba´s “Grace”.
Many of his devotees spoil much of their energy trying to get this “Grace”.
Exactly what this “Grace” is about, I never understood. And I wonder if anybody does.
I remember that my personal image of “Grace” from Sai Baba would be something like his patting the top of my head.
Today I am thankful that he didn´t caress my hair with his impure paedophile/pederast hands.

That it is a “Grace” just to visit Sai Baba in Puttaparthi, he has told us. He also told us that nobody can come to him without being called by him.
But that doesn´t prevents Sai Baba to repeatedly, in his discourses, blame his devotees for being evil and wicked people.
As a mother I would never dream of calling my own children evil and wicked. But Sai baba, who ought to be our father, does!
He is always blaming his devotees and he constantly says that everything was so much better before; the more before - the better... in spite of the fact that God in disguise has been on earth for more than seventy years now!
I always wondered how it is possible that his “Avatarhood” didn´t have any benign effect on peoples spiritual an moral growth!
I also wondered how these continuous complaints from Sai Baba, will affect his devotees and their self-esteem. It was not good for me. Is it good for anyone?

And even if you have the “Grace” to be among those “happy” ones whom he called to his ashram, this doesn´t protects you from getting ill or lose your life in his ashram or being lost in a car accident on your way to him, or being robbed, even if he assures you: “why fear when I am here”.
I always pondered about these contradictions of his and I was always scared when I went to Puttaparthi with car.
Furthermore, the spiritual work that has to be done for your spiritual growth, you have to do quite on your own.
The physical nearness of “God”/Sai Baba will not speed up your spiritual work. That´s my experience.
The many hours I have been waiting for Sai Baba´s darshan was just time waste and energy waste.
For what use?
It´s also my experience that his form actually prevents us from seeing God in every being. It blocks out and takes up competition with everything else.
It also prevents us from discovering God inside, to make us trust ourselves and to give us self-respect. It actually prevents our spiritual growth.
So what is this “Grace” about?

It also feels good to at last have escaped from those constant painful experiences, that “God” /on my wall, or the smiling picture of Sai Baba, was radiating much more love than the living “God” /Sai Baba.
When I came to Puttaparthi, it wasn´t possible for me to maintain the projections of a loving God any more, according to the stern reality.
Certainly there is not much love radiating from Sai Baba. Most time I have seen him, he looked very harsh and sometimes he even looked bored.
I don´t remember that I ever saw him smiling in those two and a half months in all, that I visited Puttaparthi.
I always had a bad conscience when I was with him and wondered what was wrong.
It would have been tolerable if this had resulted in my spiritual growth and if he had let me know what it was all about and why he always looked so harsh when he walked on the female side. But he never gave me any such guidance at all.
That Sai Baba wants his devotees to be a mirror for his grandiose self is quite clear.
But what did he give to me? Nothing! (if I have to answer the question honestly).
Unfortunately I didn´t dare to ask that question when I was still a devotee, because Sai Baba has learned us not to ask anything from “God”; only to give our love to him (and in a more subtle and indirect way - to give our donations).
You have to be a masochist to go on being a devotee to Sai Baba!  What´s so spiritual about that? It´s so far from love that it can be...

But there are also good things that I got from my stay in India (even if it had nothing to do with Sai Baba).
I learned a lot in India, I met wonderful people and I got the treasure of Indian religion and philosophy.
This treasure is still there and I can use it in my everyday life.

But I am also very thankful that I have escaped from my fixation that God is in Puttaparthi.
I never liked the confusing discrepancy between the very stressful, painful and upsetting images before my eyes, of all those poor and skinny people, in stark contrast to the rich ones, and Sai Baba´s assurance that India is the most spiritual developed country in the world, the engine for the rest of the world.
As a westerner I also found the Indian climate very tiring. 
Now I am convinced that God is here in Sweden as much as He is in India.
Besides I am not obliged any more to have my image of God chained to that little petty, ridiculous and loveless male chauvinist in his orange rob!
Furthermore how can an universal God be such a local patriot, totally fixed in the Indian society?
I am quite convinced that God is infinitely more; certainly He is all that love, truth and peace that I couldn´t find with Sai Baba.

It also feels good to at last have found my own truth about the “miracles” in my life, even if I never experienced any “miracles”, personally, that can´t be explained in natural ways.
But there have certainly been some strange coincidences that seem to oppose all natural laws and statistical calculus of probability.
Today I am quite aware of these coincidences as being the results of my own actions. Even as an ex devotee (but still believing in God) I recognize strange coincidences in my life now and then. There is no difference. 
I think I exercised my mind when I was a Sai Baba devotee, to recognize and ponder over these strange things, that happened to me.
Who is now creating these wonderful coincidences? It can´t be Sai Baba, because as an ex devotee, I now belong to the evil and wicked band, that is called the chaff.....
Who is it then?
Actually the whole life is a great miracle and perhaps God (the real God, who doesn´t mind which form or symbol we chose for Him) co-operates with us to create these miracles to make us happy.

The first time I really noticed a positive spiritual development in myself, was when I left Sai Baba. Now I have learned to trust myself and my own intuition and ability of discrimination.
I have also been much more inclined to listen to my own conscience - my inner voice- and not to leave the judgement to any external source.
My self-respect has increased a lot, when I dared to look through the illusion, that my longing for God created, and discover what I already knew, from the very beginning.   

Åsa Samsioe Sweden

Email: asa.samsioe@leksand.mail.telia.com
Document date: 11-28-02