>
>
>>From : UNITED KINGDOM
>
>Source: David Bailey
>
>Subject : PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
>
>I have written this because so many rumours (often completely untrue) have
>spread about Faye and myself, as to why we moved away from Sai Baba. I know
>that what you are going to read here may cause you deep distress. The
>situation I am about to reveal, is certainly not something we could ever
>have imagined possible.
>
>I only ask you to read it all, while accepting that these are my personal
>experiences. I share with you my truth. No more, no less.
>
>There have been many sleepless nights as I grappled with the task of what
>to do and how to cope with this indisputable factual information, in the
>light of my responsibility to the many, many people who read my books and
>heard me speak.
>
>The following findings are a result of my heart-aching research, over a
>period of three years’
>
>Vibhuti
>
>During darshan, Sai Baba carries vibhuti in tablet form between the third
>and fourth fingers of his right hand, with spare tablets in the hand
>holding up his robe. He crushes a tablet when required, and transfers
>tablets during the taking of letters. I have watched this happen
>innumerable times. Once on the mandir porch he dropped a tablet in front of
>me, and told a member of the Trust to “Eat it Quickly!”
>
>Tablet-palming can be clearly seen on many videos, if slowed down to
>frame-by-frame viewing, including in our wedding day interview video, used
>at the beginning of “God lives in India” This video has been removed from
>sale by the Trust.
>
>Australian television, in it’s programme ’60 MINUTES’ (their equivalent of
>‘PANORAMA’) showed how these ‘B grade’ conjuring tricks are done.
>
>Vibhuti tablets explain why vibhuti distribution runs out in the interview
>room before everyone has had some.
>
>All powder vibhuti is produced by roasting cow dung with sandal wood,
>andmanufactured vibhuti bought elsewhere, is then double sieved by ladies
>of the ashram seva dal, before being packaged for interview room
>distribution.Use of vibhuti on open wounds consistently causes infection in
>them; a fact commented by Faye to me when she was called to deal with
>people having theseinfections in the ashram.
>
>Jewellry etc
>
>All are worthless trinkets. Some are bought in Puttaparthi village, but
>mainly they come from Bangalore and Hyderabad. I made it my business to
>meet one of the jewellers concerned and have this information verified.
>
>I was told by Sai Baba and also by members of his inner circle, that my
>‘materialised’ ring with it’s huge stone was a sixty-four faceted diamond
>of great commercial value. After leaving the ashram in December 1998, I
>damaged one of the clasps on the ring and took it to a jeweller in southern
>India,many hundreds of kilometers away. This stranger immediately
>recognised it as a ‘Sai Baba’ ring. He told me that the metal it was made
>of was not gold,also that the stone was a valueless zircon, and under it
>there was a pieceof silver paper to make the zircon glitter, which was why
>the back of the ring was solid. He informed me that these hard backed rings
>are especially
>made for Sai Baba. As he took the stone out to repair the damaged
>clasp,sure enough, a piece of silver paper fell out, and the stone thus
>revealed was seen to be a zircon.
>
>The then Sai organisation co-ordinator of Ireland was with Faye and me
>atthe time, and another lady who had a Baba ring in which a face
>(attributed to Baba because of the black head of hair round a small
>‘face’), could be seen. The jeweller showed us how these are made. A piece
>of coloured glass has a small piece of silver paper behind it so that at
>certain angles it reflects the colour of one’s own face. This is surrounded
>by a circular ring of black enamel to give the impression of hair. He
>lifted the stone out of the ring and proved this also, was so. The Irish
>co-ordinator took photos of
>the rings. On his return to Ireland, he resigned and left the organisation.
>
>When Sai Baba decides to give someone a robe in the interview room, he does
>so as a cover to get further trinkets from his store in the back room. More
>than a few times Faye and I have heard the sound of a drawer being opened
>and the tinkle of metallic things being moved. He returns with them hidden
>under the robe (and we have watched him transferring trinkets from under
>the robe on his lap to his right hand - it’s just so obvious when you look)
>before waving his hand while faking a materialisation. His velvet chair
>contains objects hidden in the sides. We have seen them there and then
>observed his sleight of hand as he brings them out of hiding.
>
>But, well before I was aware of these things, I began to have some doubts
>about the authenticity of Sai Baba’s claims of divine manifestation. During
>my second interview, one of the first things I noticed which bothered me
>was that someone asked him to repair a broken chain on a japamala, and
>anotherhad lost a stone from a ring. He did nothing at the time, but said
>“No, no,I will change for new one tomorrow”. I found this very perplexing.
>Why, if he could create anything at will, which is what I had been told,
>did he not
>blow on these things and repair them then? I now know why. He cannot.
>
>Healing
>
>I have not seen him do a genuine healing on anybody in all my time of being
>close to him, and having had innumerable interviews. I have seen him tell
>people to stand up, and get out of wheel chairs, but the effect is not
>lasting. He generally ignores the sick and frail ones, giving out as
>reason,their karma.
>
>The Australian ‘pink twins’ continue to use wheel chairs, in spite of
>SaiBaba’s claims of healing them and their claims of being healed. A sad
>case for me is Maynard Ferguson. Over three years of deterioration in his
>hearing; during several interviews with him and his wife, he, his wife and
>myself asked - pleaded with Swami, to heal him. Every time, he promised to
>do so, but now Maynard is very deaf and has to rely on two powerful hearing
>aids to help him. As a fellow musician I know what this must mean to him in
>his heart.
>
>Once Faye and I had an interview in the company of an elderly, rather frail
>Indian gentleman who used to sit on the verandah near me. He asked Sai Baba
>for help for his failing health. Swami, behind his back shrugged his
>shoulders at us, saying in what we both thought was a rather an unfeeling
>aside ‘And what can I do? Cancer. Too far gone, too far gone.’
>
>Faye has had her own experience of him giving health advice she trustingly
>followed, which nearly caused permanent damage to her, before she at last
>resorted to western medical treatment for her complaint.
>
>The German co-ordinator whom I visited in the super speciality hospital
>after he’d had a stroke, was eventually taken back to the verandah,
>butSwami did not heal him. The elderly man has gone back to Germany, and
>some two years later is little improved.
>
>I believe any healing claimed by Sai Baba is in fact, a personal inner
>healing activated by the person himself or herself.
>
>Miscellaneous musings
>
>The mandir ceiling is now covered in gold leaf. I was shown a piece of this
>gold leaf which had fallen from the ceiling. I ask myself, ‘Why, in a
>country of such appalling poverty, does he allow this escalating show of
>opulence to occur? The mandir at my last count had one hundred and
>sixty-seven chandeliers instead of the original thirty-six. What on earth
>for? Sai Baba now has several luxury cars supposedly ‘gifted’ by rich
>devotees. Why is more than one necessary? This is reminiscent of other cult
>leaders such as Rajneesh.
>
>I know Sai Baba doesn’t live only on rice and chappattis as he claims. His
>evening meal consists of six to eight different dishes prepared for him
>every night, and Faye and I have shared the ‘left overs’ several
>times,having gone with someone to collect the remains of the meal from his
>rooms.He claimed to Faye that he ‘Drinks no tea, no coffee. Only hot water’
>- yet has drunk coffee with me.
>
>During the preparation of the 1997 Christmas Day students’ programme, I was
>in interview with the students, and we were discussing with Swami, the
>music and story of Jesus’ birth which the boys were going to present. When
>‘We Three Kings from Orient are...’ was mentioned, Sai Baba directed that
>this song not be sung, saying ‘No, no, no! There were no kings. They did
>not exist.’ Yet in his January 1996 discourse he said ‘When Christ was
>born,three kings came to see the infant.’
>
>It is claimed by a few people that different lights can be seen around
>SaiBaba.Everybody has an aura, which one can learn to see. There is a book
>by MarkSmith for example, called ‘Auras - See them in 60 Seconds’. The
>existence of this light does not confirm divinity. There’s only been a
>handful of people around the world who claim to have seen Sai Baba’s aura.
>Anyone who has made this claim to me, has been an ardent devotee.
>
>I have been shown photographs with unrecognisable light shapes on them, and
>been told by the presenter that these represent Sai Baba, Krisha, Gopis and
>others. What would be the point of divinity appearing in this
>indistinguishable way? And what proof can it be of the said
>divinity?According to Kodak laboratories, light emissions on photographs
>are caused by intermittent camera malfunction and/or film idiosyncrasy, and
>the most common emission colours are orange and white.
>
>The Super Speciality Hospital
>
>I know that one wing has never been opened, supposedly through lack of
>funds.Yet, we are told that just one of the many donations given for the
>building was
>US$ 49,000,000.00 (forty-nine million US dollars!).
>
>This converts to approximately ST£ 30,000,000.00 (thirty million pounds
>sterling!)
>
>Names of many other large benefactors are listed in the hospital reception
>area, making the funds donated for this complex absolutely mind boggling.In
>relative terms money can buy five times in India what it can here.
>
>I question what happens to these huge amounts of donated money.
>A doctor I sat near on the mandir porch, who works in this hospital, told
>me never to let anyone I cared about go there as the sanitation is
>disgusting and the lack of aseptic technique, appalling. This allegation
>has been repeated numerous times in correspondence we have received, by
>people who have seen through the hospital.
>
>The Renal department is now also closed.
>
>There is bad publicity regarding allegations of theft of a kidney and
>subsequent current legal action being taken in India. (see page 28).
>
>In 1997 Australian national television ‘60 Minutes’ critically investigated
>the super speciality hospital, and Sai Baba’s claims of divinity.Details
>for obtaining this video are as follows :
>
> ‘God Botherers Segment’ - Ex: 60 Minutes Tx: 24/8/97
>
> 9 Network Australia
>
> Archives Division
>
> 4 Cleg street
>
> Artarmon NSW 2064 Tel: + 9439 4500
>Fax: + 9906 4415
>
> AUSTRALIA
>The Water Project
>
>It has been claimed that all seven hundred and fifty villages in the Sai
>Baba Water Project are now receiving water. This I believed until I was
>shown a Telegu newspaper with a front page feature article showing photos
>of villages with no water, broken pipes, no pipes, pipes and no tanks, and
>many with nothing at all. The headlines translated, read ‘SAI BABA WHERE’S
>OUR WATER? YOU’VE CHEATED US AGAIN!’.I went to some of these villages
>within the project radius and found for myself that the report was correct.
>My questioning local businessmen in the area revealed some interesting
>information. General opinion concurred that the project had been set up
>because the ashram had many problems with it’s own insufficient well
>supply; one of which was constantly recurring gastric disturbances,
>particularly with foreign devotees.Request for permission to lay a water
>pipeline to the ashram fell on govt.’s deaf ears, the response being that
>unless villages along the proposed line could also be supplied, permission
>would be withheld. Hence the huge global fund raising, which also perplexed
>me - having been indoctrinated with the‘no fund raising’ policies given out
>by Sai Baba. Within twelve months an effective pipeline to the ashram and
>a selection of villages was established, and then the work stopped. At my
>consternation at being of told
>this scandalous situation, the village elders simply shrugged their
>shoulders saying “What can we do?”
>
>Financial Problems
>
>As Faye and I travelled around the world, speaking to Sai Baba groups,
>after almost every meeting people would come to us asking for help because
>of the financial trickery they had experienced at the ashram. In
>particular, over giving many thousands of pounds, dollars, marks or
>whatever for a unit there, and never getting one, let alone being given a
>receipt for the money.
>Then, when eventually disheartened, they attempted to retrieve their
>money,they were told there were no records of the transaction. We heard
>this story many times.
>
>It is a common practice at retreats and meetings, for new devotees to be
>told that Sai Baba does not need donations.This happened at Downe House
>Public School (nr. Newbury), where a series of weekend retreats were held
>during school holidays. However, when the new
>devotees had been to more than one weekend, they were taken aside
>individually and given a bank account number at the Bank of India in Andhra
>Pradesh, to which donations can be sent.
>
>On some occasions, with particularly gullible targets, a printed paragraph
>was given - to be inserted into a will for donations to be made. Such
>people were also told that sending money to the Sathya Sai Medical Trust in
>India was inheritance tax effective, as the Indian Trust is a registered
>charity in the United Kingdom. This of course is untrue. Such donations do
>not attract inheritance tax relief. The above allegation of fraud is
>supported by a statement from a lawyer and others who were personally
>involved.Not surprisingly, Downe House has since banned any further Sai
>Organisation meetings on it’s premises.
>
>Personal problems
>
>We spoke to people who had written dozens of letters over serious
>personalsituations and had had no response, and no change in the
>situation.Desperate and despondent, these people turned to us as their last
>hope,asking us to intercede for them with Sai Baba, whom they believed was
>omnipotent (but not, seemingly omniscient).
>
>Sexual problems
>
>Concerned mothers, and young men of various ages would ask to speak to me
>in confidence about intimate incidents they had had with Swami. They told
>me about alleged sexual activity, each story replicating the previous
>one.Swami would take these young men and boys into the private interview
>room alone with him, then insist that they take their trousers down and he
>would massage them, often masturbating them, and/or insisting on oral sex
>and sometimes collecting their semen in his handkerchief.
>
>This left me speechless! I knew of the book written by Tal Brook in the
>70’s called ‘Lord of the Air’ where he detailed the sexual harassment he
>had undergone with Sai Baba, but this book had always been dismissed by
>long established devotees as a collection of mischief making lies told by
>an angry young man. And yet Faye’s own son had been kissed repeatedly on
>his cheeks and the corners of his mouth when alone in the inner room with
>SaiBaba, and also sexually touched. And when it was obvious to Sai Baba
>that this behaviour was unwelcome, he began berating the young man in
>subsequent interviews with Faye, calling him ‘Mad dog! Hard hearted!’ and
>so on. At the
>time this seemed incongruous; it was only after we began travelling the
>world that the inconceivable and incomprehensible began to make itself
>clear.
>
>When I asked various co-ordinators about these many disturbing incidents
>reported to me in our travels, I was told that Swami was ‘raising
>kundalini’. I questioned this in my mind. If he was capable of doing
>anything, why did he have to physically touch the boys, especially when
>they were unwilling? And what about when he had them actively engage in sex
>to him? It seems that an ongoing, serious and untenable infringement of
>basic human rights is being scurrilously perpetrated, in the name of
>‘divinity’.
>
>I didn’t ever hear any stories about girls having their kundalini raised
>in this way.
>
>On my last visit to Puttaparthi, a male student came and asked me for
>help,on behalf of some of his fellow students, because they were
>desperately in need of someone to stop Swami sexually abusing them. I was
>told how Sai Baba had for years been demanding that these particular boys
>have oral sex, and group sex for his pleasure. Their details matched what I
>had already been told so many times round the world. I asked him if this
>was an acceptable practice in India, and his look of horror as he denied
>it, spoke volumes.
>
>Then he asked me a question I couldn’t answer.
>
> ‘Sir, why do you think ex-students tried to kill him in ’93
>...?’ (!!!)I turned to several long time devotees on the verandah for
>explanation of these nefarious activities, and worried them with questions
>and suppositions until in the end they realised that I had found the truth,
>and then admitted that these things do happen; and then - agreed with each
>other that it was for his pleasure and nothing to do with kundalini
>raising.
>
>Different national co-ordinators I spoke to, both in India and after we
>returned home, continued for a time, to deny that it happens. But when it
>became obvious that I was not going to leave this issue alone, a couple of
>them telephoned me to say that yes I was correct and they had known of this
>for years. ‘But he is God,and God can do anything he likes.’ (!!!)
>
>Early in 1999 a young Swedish man returned from a visit to the ashram and
>made a full statement to his co-ordinating committee about his sexual
>experiences with Swami during six interviews. Within hours of this
>revelation, one of the top officials of Sweden’s Sai organisation was on
>our doorstep, asking why we had left Sai Baba. He and his wife, both really
>lovely people, were absolutely devastated to hear the young man’s story
>confirmed. After saying brokenly ‘I cannot be part of this’ he went outside
>and sat on the steps in our front garden and sobbed his heart out. He had
>been a devotee for more than twenty years, and his wife had written two
>books on Sai Baba and another was already at the point of being printed.
>He went home to resign his position from something he had given years of
>his life and his love to, and she cancelled her book and withdrew the
>others from the market. Within days there was public confirmation - that
>these
>things I had spoken about through the year to a small number of serious
>seekers of truth - were indeed happening to others as well.
>
>Soon after, the Sai school in Sweden closed.
>Due to this courageous young man’s statement, the unmentionable began being
>mentioned, then mentioned increasingly loudly, by increasing numbers of
>young men. The Swedish publicity began a flurry of exposures. Swedish film
>star Conny Larsson revealed his own experiences, which are included in this
>fact file. Our phone ran hot with young men from all over Europe sharing
>their pain.
>
>One teenager rang from France and confided that he had wanted to commit
>suicide ever since his own experience of sexual harassment, as he couldn’t
>live with the thought that he must be gay. He said he was very relieved to
>hear that there were other victims.
>
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