The following e-mail came 5 Aug 2006 from someone using the title 'Beast Master' with the e-mail address <gr8sink@yahoo.com>-

Hello Conny,
I am writing to verify some facts with you about the incidents presented in the article at http://saionline.org/essays/little_clown.html
1) Do you still believe that Sai Baba rescued you from the sea waters in Sri Lanka? I have questions about some parts in the abovementioned article. Could you comment on whether the following incidents are true, exaggeration, deviation/modification of true or simply false.
2) ...."Suddenly I felt someone's powerful hand grab me by the neck and the shoulders and pushed me out of the water and lift me and carry me towards a hut. Inside, the hut was empty except for a large picture of a man with a frizzy afro-hairstyle dressed in a red gown. He resembled my rescuer, who stood on one side of the picture, and I stood on the other side. He pointed at the picture and said, "Sai Baba. Go to Him." ...
3) ...He came to me, caught hold of me and said, "So, you have come at last. Where do you come from?" I replied, "Sweden." He said, "No. Sri Lanka."...
4) .... it was only years later that Baba positively identified Himself as the person on the beach who had saved me....
5) .... He said, "Get up," and repeated this a third time. Somehow I got up and as I did so I felt a surge of energy shooting through my leg from the foot right through my body to my head. I was able to walk normally and unaware, started dancing around......

Sincerely,
Beast Master

I have replied as follows:

Dear Sir.

I recognise your interest in my earlier experience of Sathya Sai Baba and think your questions deserve an answer, even though I would prefer that you were open enough to give your correct name. Or perhaps you fear that Gerald Joe Moreno will defame, persecute and stalk you as he does anyone who is in the least unbiased in this matter? Having said that, I try to answer you as best I can according to my memory, insight and conscience as of today.

1. I have today an almost wholly different opinion on the Sri Lanka incident to that which was reported in the first book written by Ann-Marie Eherenkrona, a retired Swedish New Age journalist. The name of the book was 'Gods little Clown'.

Like myself, she was also a devotee of Sai Baba and involved in the Sai organisation. The book was therefore clearly biased in favour of all stories that could in any way be recalled as fantastic or hailing Sai Baba as being the avatar of the times.

Having left my master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in 1975 and while searching for a new belief system, I was in a state of mental despair at the time of the alleged incident. I had become disillusioned as to the whole Sri Lanka project in which I was involved then and I had made myself powerful enemies in the government. When I went out into the water, a man showed up on the beach calling me in to the little hut where the picture of Sai Baba was hanging on the wall. That much is true. It is also a fact that there was a likeness to Sai Baba, but only in that the man had an afro hairstyle like Sai Baba. Otherwise there was no likeness at all. The story was gradually embellished by me when I got overwhelmed by emotion after meeting Sai Baba for the first time. This was not due to any deceit or attempt to mislead, for I was self-deceived - taken in by all the exaggerated interpretations inspired by what one reads and is told about Sai Baba in the overheated atmosphere of the ashrams. This is what I think happens to most new followers - a 'honeymoon' with what seems to be a Divine Master opening 'incredible' possibilities for the world and oneself.

I always stuck to the same interpretation or 'story' because it helped me convince myself and others to go ahead with the new belief system, which we had found and needed to share together. This story was then repeated for years over and 'the magic' got enhanced for my listeners as time went by. It was re-told by others in different books and was also eventually published in 'God's Little Clown'.

The truth of it was that I met the man, he wasn't Sai Baba, but he showed me a picture and in my mental state I was influenced to go to India.

2. Sai Baba used a trick that all the false masters do when they want to impress on a sadhaka or seeker. He talked to me personally and directly mentioned that I was expected and counted. I fell for it and was trapped. For example, when I told him I came from Sweden and he replied 'No, Sri Lanka', I though he must be at least a thought reader, or even omniscient (as almost everyone there claims he is). I did not then realise that the detailed information by the accommodation and public relations offices (registered from passports and the forms one fills in) is constantly being fed to him, and that he always has many informants among ashramites and his servitors always tell him the news about newcomers early every morning. He could easily have heard that I had come directly from Sri Lanka!

Later on all of us that have been trapped have compared our stories and they all following the same pattern.

We were just drawn into the net and trapped for years. Today I consider this my first meeting with Sai Baba in Puttaparthi as the cheapest of tricks and the biggest mistake of my life. It cost me 21 years of true seeking and I apologise to the seekers in the world for having participating in such a scandalous charade. This caused me to work with the exposé people so as to try to make up for what I have caused in pain and sorrow for many people.

2. Regarding the crutch incident. It is true that I had been operated a couple of months earlier after a serious accident with one of my horses. I had been given permission by the doctors and given crutches so as not to overload the leg and knee when I went to Puttaparthi.

Sai Baba saw my situation and consulted doctors before the so called 'healing' was taking place in the compound of the Mandir.

I was by then using one crutch, not two. And when Baba asked me to throw the crutch and walk, I dared put down my foot for the first time in a month. It reacted in the way a sleeping foot does when one stands on it. I now realise that the pressure in the foot that flowed up in my head was just blood pressure rising, by having put weight on the foot at last. But the interpretation I made in the euphoria around me had to be that it was 'a miracle'... I'd become as brain-washed as all the other devotees by all the fantastic stories and claims made by Sai Baba. There was never any miracle in this and I was also frankly told so by doctors who had been in to an interview with me and Sai Baba earlier, but I was already too keen as a believer to listen to them or even want to think properly.

Of course the reaction of all the people outside after coming back from the interview was extreme and once again this suited Baba's purpose with this delusion and he played on it for years afterwards when I was in for interviews - and especially when there were doctors or ministers present. I was trapped and deeply deceived, being in the limelight with the person I and thousands of others thought to be God Almighty Incarnate! Who was I to question that?! Nowdays it would be easier to question, because of our revealing how completely untrue it is.

Later, when things occured in Puttaparthi as they did, I had much difficulty and painful self-conflict to find my way out . As things rolled forward with the sex molestations of boys in my group, I fortunately came out of this well-arranged trap of Sai Baba and his organisation.

Incidentally many years later when I returned to Sri Lanka I became aware of how widespread followers of Sai Baba are in that island. They had been there all the time, even before the incident I experienced there, not least planted there to find tourists on the beaches outside Colombo where I was roaming about. Some of them of course earned their livelihood by coming in contact with people like us. Even today, many of the batik sellers have pictures of Sai Baba in their shops on the beaches. Well, I made a big mistake and I ask the world to forgive me for any trouble I caused as a consequence.

Yours sincerely,

Conny Larsson