Note how Haraldsson only "glanced through" the material ('stuff') I sent him, which included considerable documentation and testimony from known persons who had been abused sexually.

I removed some irrelevant personal details from the following mail.

Haraldsson was antagonistic towards the famous Indian skeptic Basava Premanand because he had been questioned him in e-mails he posted about certain failures in his investigation technique. H. eventually ceased to reply to his pertinent questions. However, Premanand's massive tome on the Murders in Sai Baba's Bedroom contains very extensive documentation of many aspects of the murders, the corrupt investigation process by police, CBI and nearly one hundred press reports. There can be no doubt whatever that Premanand was correct in most of his central contentions, if misled on less central issues now and again. That Sathya Sai Baba gave the order to shoot the four bound assailants can hardly be doubted any longer, especially since eye-witness accounts support this most strongly... one of which was a US devotee living in the apartment of Sai Baba's sister Venkamma at the time. This person, since disaffected, described the situation and especially how Sai Baba sent wads of money Rs. 60,000.- to Venkamma and to every relative of Sai Baba there and other insider residents the morning after the murders!

No doubt Haraldsson should rather have pity for Conny Larsson who I know rather well, but he was not in the least willing to hear Larsson's history when I would tell him about it, which is written up in two best- selling books in Sweden. Larsson describes with searing honestly the processes he went through to free himself from the major traumas of horrific childhood sex abuse, the attraction of the doctrines of love and peace of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (and when Conny learned how fraudulent and self-seeking Maharishi really was) his change over to Sathya Sai Baba. Yet Haraldsson expresses much friendship verging on admiration for Hislop, who was fully deluded by Sai Baba and had jumped from a whole string of guru cults and movements previously). In all of this Conny Larsson's progress closely parallels that of Dr. John Hislop - out of the Maharishi frying pan into the Sai Baba fire! Yet Conny freed himself of these illusions through a most painful process, which Hislop never did.

This illustrates that Haraldsson - being trained in experimental and more clinical-type psychology is a scholarly academic, but is certainly lacking in broad psychological understanding, insight and empathy as regards the victims of cults and gurus, as I have had plenty of opportunity to realize in many different discussions with him. He takes an amoral stance (hardly distinguishable from immorality in that he will take no steps to defend the many weak and vulnerable people around the world in respect of Sathya Sai Baba.

(I once made my choice against clinical psychology when I began studying it as it had so little to do with understanding most human beings or living problems. In a research study in the sociology of social knowledge I carried out for the Norwegian Research Foundation, I interviewed many psychologists and sociologists of various schools and found a hiatus between those from the over-scientistic and the overly-humanistic trends.

The question remains, why couldn't Haraldsson speak out at least moderately about the various failings he saw in Sai Baba, why the great secrecy and protection of Sai Baba from all public moral criticism?

After our discussion I always had the sense that he was trying to cut short the issue because he felt it would damage the image and positive publicity he had achieved from many quarters as a serious investigator of Sathya Sai Baba. At the same time, he would be enthusiastic about Sai Baba's charm and effect on people, and saw the whole project in India as unreservedly positive, and this made him wish to protect the 'enigmatic' and somewhat divinely mysterious image of Sai Baba he had developed. In the early days I was myself hoping he would become yet more involved in the Sai Baba 'dispensation'. This was my great error, though it was of course almost entirely due to Sai Baba's many deceptions and the whole Potchemkin scenario he and his proponents had built up around him. After I became more and more disillusioned, Haraldsson still went enthusiastically to try to see the lingam emerge and follow events at Sai centres he visited, such as he did in Denmark, regularly in Washington D.C. and so on. He still seemed to me rather too fascinated by the charm, charisma and chutzpa he found in Sathya Sai Baba, while I had seen through most or all of it and had drained the cup right to the bottom of its bitter content.