Colonel Joga Rao - closest Sathya Sai Baba servitor for decades - did not believe in his miracles!

Ex-Indian Army Colonel Joga Rao (deceased in 2002) was one of the closest helpers of Sathya Sai Baba for decades, so much so that he often lived in Sathya Sai Baba's various apartments and could always come and go as he wished in Sathya Sai Baba's rooms. He also very often presided over the conditions of the interview room before and after interviews. He was masterful at planning and getting engineering projects done, managing the work-force (and arranging the kickbacks from contractors!). No doubt, Sathya Sai Baba made great use of Colonel Joga Rao, whom he honoured by giving an address about him. In his own birthday discourse in 1990, he made a great fuss of him as working for Swami "tirelessly night and day" and thus being "a karma yogi" (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 23, p. 293). Sathya Sai Baba said the Sathya Sai Central Trust wanted to honour him, and presented him with golden kadiyams which he tied round the wrists. (This was circa five years before he finally sacked Joga Rao from the Central Trust for corruption after a severe prior warning to him and others made in public on the temple veranda!). Above all, the most astonishing thing is that Colonel Joga Rao was from the start a non-believer in Sathya Sai Baba's 'miracles'. To my great surprise, I was told so by V.K. Narasimhan one day during one of our many private conversations through the years!

Sathya Sai Baba 's closest servitor a magician's backstage man!This seemed most incredible to me. VKN thought that many people knew that and said it was no secret among his ashram associates! It most certainly was a secret as far as I and anyone I knew in the Organisation were concerned, and would also be so were it not for my having made this known on the Internet. I have been apprised that many read my pages to get some proper information, as the spiritual propaganda is so boringly repetitive and everyone who knows what goes on behind the scenes is so tight-lipped and treading with extreme caution lest they be apprehended. The truth about Joga Rao's standpoint is not even hinted at in a single book where he is mentioned. One can understand why, if one considers the cultist nature of the movement and the sheer crisis this would cause if published. It means that he considered all the miracles to be fake, and he was in a prime position to know this. He must also have been entirely complicit in this fraud. Well, that news simply stunned me, for I was still a follower, even though I had reservations about more and more of the events I observed and the statements Sathya Sai Baba made as time went on.

My mind could just not take it in, the rationalizing side of my brain rose its heckles and sought for ways out of the paradox. It was in the mid-90s one day that Narasimhan asked me "What do you think of Joga Rao?" I replied that I had not met him so could not form an opinion. He said that he meant what did I think of his not believing in the Sai Baba miracles.He then explained that Joga Rao had told Sathya Sai Baba from the very start that he refused to believe in the miracles or other big claims like omniscience, but would willingly serve Sathya Sai Baba because of the good he was doing. I later received some wholly independent confirmation of Joga Rao's skepticism too: a Norwegian expert on eco-sewerage systems who I knew very well, Mr. Terje Nedland, was in an international group formed at the ashram which set about planning a new waste disposal system for Prashanthi Nilayam. They were shown around the possible ashram sites by Col. Joga Rao. I cannot doubt Nedland's word on this incident: there was some question about what was the right solution to something and one of the group said, "We should ask Swami" to which Joga Rao told the group, "And what does Baba know about engineering?' Evidently he had a very low opinion of Baba's supposed knowledge of everything! Should Joga Rao not know, the man who designed and built most of both ashrams and was daily with Sathya Sai Baba in various capacities (including as his letter bearer and/or handkerchief carrier)? (Apropos, the eco-friendly system was never built as the donations made for that purpose only were appropriated without comment by the Central Trust for other purposes, according to the then-Central Coordinator of UK, Aimé Levy, who himself solicited the money and worked to aid the world-wide planning group and whose word I cannot doubt either. After masses of voluntary planning work, the whole task was instead given to a cheap Bangalore contractor who simply dug an open cesspit that literally stinks out most of the 'Abode of Supreme Peace' on hot days with a most ghastly stench! See the documentation and report here)