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Having strong psychic faculties, accumulated charisma and over 60 years of being a guru and a centre of attention he has gathered some millions of followers who believe in him to greater or lesser degrees. His keenest followers project their prayers, longings, love, and beliefs onto him, and this concentration evidently generates many unusual ‘subjective’ phenomena (like ‘leelas’ and assumed ‘miracles’). To revere and direct intense longings to a thing or person is idol worship or idolisation, which is known to produce the most unusual subjective effects and life consequences throughout the history of human idolatry. Yet it increasingly becomes more evident that Sai Baba is far from being who and what he claims, that is God Incarnate (including the Father Who Sent Jesus) and that he practices fraud, deceits, lies, homosexual abuse and murder cover-up. Had Sathya Sai Baba responded frankly and honestly to vital questions about his activities, or had his various officials carried out any investigation, there might have been some room left for doubt about the more serious accusations against him. However, the likelihood of this happening seems infinitesimal... not least after the major cover-up from the highest levels of the Indian power structure of murders in Sathya Sai Baba's bedroom at night in 1993, and the extremely revealing BBC documentary 'The Secret Swami' in which the International Chairman of the Sathya Sai Organisation, Dr. M. Goldstein, was shown to be totally unwilling to entertain the idea of any kind of investigation of the many testimonies of sexual abuse by Sathya Sai Baba. An intensive cult of secrecy on all sensitive issues thereafter became yet more endemic to all Sai Baba's ashrams and his 'official' organizations and bodies like the Sathya Sai Central Trust and the Prashanthi Council. The opportunity of presenting the wide-ranging and detailed evidence and sworn affidavits by young men claiming sexual abuse by him never arises. Indians who were sexually abused risk their careers and even their lives (as the murders' incident proves) if they were to stand up or raise a legal case within India against Sathya Sai Baba. The likelihood of fair treatment before the law is as nil after the Supreme Court threw out a petition against Sai Baba by Hari Sampath and attorney Kamini Jaswal in 2002. With such a powerful and protected person with such enormous funds behind him and being fully backed by a series of Indian Prime Ministers and Presidents, and most of the top judiciary figures, Sai Baba is effectively above the law. He has been declared an Indian 'national treasure' and the scandal which would descend on so many prominent people in India would evidently be too much, for it goes right to the heart of the Hindu-dominated Indian State. Sathya Sai Baba cannot be sued anywhere but in India, not least since the alleged crimes took place there and, further, he never leaves the country. For anyone who is not rich and has the energy and time, a lawsuit would be extremely demanding, well beyond the financial funding and sociopolitical influence of young persons in India. With the current state of corruption constantly being uncovered in the police, the judiciary and the government, any legal outcome is also highly uncertain. Before the many allegations of sexual crimes and of involvement in the execution of four followers in his bedroom and the subsequent cover-up, Sathya Sai Baba remains guiltily silent and evasive. In this situation, the main recourse of victims and their helpers is presently the investigative international media. The first-hand directly-presented accounts of being sexually abused by Sai Baba by highly articulate young men in interview with highly-respected national broadcasters (Danish TV) were neither denied nor challenged by Sai Baba (or his chief minions). But the first-hand testimonies are also backed up by an ever-accumulating mass of circumstantial evidence, some of which is to be presented in concise form in the forthcoming texts. While the accused may escape justice in Indian courts, the moral court of humanity at large can at least examine the direct and corroborative evidence. The fact that UNESCO withdrew from a planned educational conference when they had investigated the matter and contacted some of the testifiers of sexual abuse speaks clearly. Likewise, the US State Department's long-standing warning about visiting Sathya Sai Baba because of the allegations, and the reports in several major world newspapers and two national TV companies were based on deep investigation and not taken without examining their legal positions. Devotees
who cannot face the truth will doubtless continue to follow Sai Baba's edicts
like"See only the good" and "Hear no evil" - and
other such clever self-defences he has long inculcated, which we now see functions well to protect himself from their scrutiny. Sathya
Sai Baba has claimed to be divinity and purity itself claiming that
the only way to judge people's words is by their actions, and that the
validity of his entire teaching rests on his Divine Nature... but in
view of the indubitable allegations, his greatest abuse becomes the
abuse of people's faith, not only in him but in what he teaches under
his slogan "My Life is My Message" (which slogan he even plagiarized
from Mahatma Gandhi).
Here is the main text of my letter of resignation from leadership in the Norwegian Sathya Sai Organization and the entire organization, as sent to the European Central Coordinator in 2000:-
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