----- Original Message -----
Perhaps that is why websites such as yours, are often encouraged by third-hand parties with little knowledge of the background of actual events. Such ignorant and evil people cause a lot of suffering to innocent by-standers who fall in to their influence.
No one needs to love or worship Sai Baba, but your act has killed the belief in God as a whole.
Om Sri Sai Ram,
Support Group
www.saionline.org
I donīt think that this web site is such a bad thing that you declare. And I donīt think that itīs main intention is to take your faith from you - even if that can be the result... But nobody forces you to read the web side, if you donīt want to.
For me it was a blessing to share the experiences of ex devotees on this site. (even if it hurts - yes it hurts very much - to lose oneīs faith in SB)
But gradually I observed that all this made me grow spiritually, and it also confirmed all these things that I intuitively already knew about SB. It made me more inclined to trust myself and my inner reality... and to put the truth foremost - even if I had to sacrifice my faith...
In the Complete Works Of Swami Vivekananda, volume 3, on page 452, you can read that we have to choose our Guru with utmost carefulness:"The Guru must be without a touch of taint, and he must be Akâmahata - unhurt by any desire - he should have no other motive except that of purely doing good to others..."
I am sorry to say, but that is the problem with SB in a nutshell... This high standard for a Guru doesnīt fit him and his actions.
In the same volume on pages 362-363, Vivekananda talks about different forms of religious worship:"These things show that men at the first stage of religious development have to make use of something external, and when the inner self becomes purified, they turn to more abstract conceptions".
Going through this exposure process of SB, reading about his actions and comparing everything with my own experiences in his ashrams, and at last sacrificing my faith in him, has served as some sort of purification for me.
Never again I will put my faith on a dubious Guru, who proclaims himself to be God. I will rather make efforts to escape from this "use of something external "(SB) to try to reach a little higher "stage of religious development"...
And I will do exactly as SB recommends us to: develop faith in the own inner spirit...
On the pages 426-427 Vivekananda talks about "Advaita" (the philosophy of non- dualism - that even SB supports):The secret of Advaita is: Believe in yourselves first, and then believe in anything else..... In the history of each nation, you will always find that only those individuals who have believed in themselves have become great and strong."
Perhaps the time has come now for many of SB:s devotees to believe in themselves, to use their "buddhi" and their power of discrimination and to grow in self respect and religious development - even at the expense of their faith in SB...
Perhaps it is actually those persons, who made the greatest sacrifice - their faith - who passed Godīs test?
Many of those even had to sacrifice their relations with their relatives and their best friends and everything that made their lives worthful, - just for the sake of truth and for the sake of dharma... Perhaps those persons are the real heros?What is so heroic about being half-blind, half-deaf and half-dumb and to protect yourself and your faith from the truth?
Even SB says "love My uncertainty". How can you, who are still SB devotees, be so sure that this exposure process of His isnīt another one of His leelas? The perfect leela - the perfect test to pick out those who actually are clinging to the Truth. And SB's name is Truth - isnīt it?
How can you be so sure that it is the ex devotees who are the weak, the ignorant and the bad ones - "the chaff"?