Sai Baba and Sexual ‘Grooming’ by Barry Pittard

"Shortly before Christmas 1997, a highly capable and lovely person, with whom I worked among orphans at Puttaparthi, Maria Quoos, a Polish film and stage actress and businesswoman, came anxiously to me.  She is now leader of the Polish Sathya Sai Organization, and a friend I most regret losing as a result of the stance I have taken in exposing Sai Baba.
Maria brought a married Polish man in his mid twenties to meet me in my old friend Walia’s restaurant (the owner was Sai Baba’s former head gardener). The man, a member of the group of which she led, was distressed and confused and Maria wanted me to help. He told us that in their recent interview with him, Sai Baba had covertly grasped his penis. I fortified him with stories intended to convince him that there must be a spiritual reason for this act.  One of these concerned an Indian Malaysian who, in about 1980, had asked me to wait until he emerged from the interview to which he alone, in a rare example of a solitary interview, had just been called by Sathya Sai Baba and at an hour well past the morning darshan time when people are normally called for interview.  He had already told me of his concern that he was irresistible to many women, and that he certainly did not resist them.  On his exit, some three quarters of an hour later, he told me that Sai Baba took him, alone, into the inner interview room, made him drop his pants, materialised sacred ash (vibhuthi) and applied it to his penis.  As many Sai devotees have done, I took this to be a healing - ‘calming the raging hormones’, as it were. It is a very typical response by Sai devotees when the are convinced of the truthfulness of accounts of Sai Baba’s genital handling by their friends or well known and trusted acquaintances. However, overwhelming numbers of accounts from many countries suggest that Sai Baba has, down many decades, practised ‘grooming’, which has been defined (although the practice extends far beyond the child example referred to in this quote) as: “The process of manipulation often utilized by child molesters, intended to reduce a victim’s or potential victim’s resistance to sexual abuse.  Typical grooming activities include gaining the child victim’s trust or gradually escalating boundary violations of the child’s body in order to desensitize the victim to further abuse.” (Center for Sex Offender Management, A project of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, June 1999)."

I have not experienced any hints of homosexuality in any of the several hundred dreams I have recorded in which Sathya Sai Baba has figured prominently. Such dreams may or may not involve psychic intervention by the guru (and do reportedly occur very widely in many guru traditions right back to scriptures of antiquity). However, a young man who came to the Sai centre in Oslo (whose name I protect) and who became very concentrated on Baba and did a great deal of very strict sadhana and had other experiences became a very good friend. He eventually visited the ashram twice and also experienced some so-called leelas connected with Sai Baba through several years, and married soon after his return from his last visit. When I told him that I - then still the responsible national leader in the Norwegian Sai Org. - had finally decided to investigate the sexual allegations against Sathya Sai Baba, he was at first much against my doing so. A few months later, he told me that he too had investigated things through the Internet. After considerable soul-searchings, he told me that he had been troubled throughout the years of his followership by Sathya Sai Baba appearing in his dreams making sexual advances to him... homosexual relations being something for which he had never had any inclination or slightest wish. This had literally been a psychic invasion of a person's private sphere by Sathya Sai Baba.

  Tantric practices and 'kundalini' yoga: The much-trumpeted traditional belief in India that our 'life essence' (kundalini) resides in a semi-potent or 'sleeping' mode in the lowest non-physical centre or 'chackra'. This latent force can be awakened and - through esoteric yogic, tantric and other disciplines - made to 'rise up' through a channel that is believed to exist on an etheric level parallel to the spinal column. Though this was most probably a symbolic teaching (referring to different levels of personal development and inner attainment), it is taken quite literally in India as a physical reality - not least by those who wish to defend the widely-admitted physical interferences with - and hard-breathing manipulations of - young men's genitals by Sathya Sai Baba.

The handling of male genitals is a way of testing the vulnerability of a young man to sexual arousement (this is simply common sense) and eventually also the acceptance of further homo-erotic activity. Due to strong testosterone, erection can occur simply through touching without there being any sexual desire involved. It is clear that this is what is called 'homosexual grooming', that is - a preparation for more explicit sexual intimacy. The aromatic oil Sai Baba allegedly 'manifests' for rubbing on the loins etc., has been explained to exposé workers by a former close ex-Sai student. Inside the private interview room, Sai Baba has a sponge hidden by his chair which he only needs to grasp once to get oil on his hand.

Several alleged victims report that Sai Baba actually collected their sperm in a handkerchief. Sperm has long been stated as being used in certain tantric rituals. One of Sathya Sai Baba's Danish VIPs, Peter Pruzan, opined on Danish TV that the so-called 'anointing' is intended somehow to influence the sexual energies of young men, presumably to reduce the sexual urge (?) or what not. This is sheer speculation, of course, and it is typical of people whose minds have become so thoroughly manipulated by their half-understood experiences with Sai Baba and his often half-baked and vague explanations of so many things that they cannot - as mere mortals - hope to understand. Many factual accounts, however, indicate clearly that SB has tried to change young men into homosexuals! No less a long-term devotee than Dr. Sara Pavan, who gave up his practice in Australia on Sathya Sai Baba's demand to work at the Sathya Sai Baba hospital in Puttaparthi, admitted that Sathya Sai Baba had long been known to be involved in peculiar acts with young men and boy devotees.

Raising the kundalini by physical manipulation of the sex organs is at any rate a gross travesty of the best among Indian religious beliefs. No Indian scripture even suggests such a thing. The kundalini is held not to be a physically manifested energy, therefore there can be no shred of physical evidence for its existence, or of the energy centres, the 'chakras'. It's nature - if there is such an 'energy' - is spiritual and not physical. (Comically enough, Sai Baba has very clearly denied that it existed in his conversations with Dr. John Hislop, despite Hislop's view, telling him that it is all mere imagination which is the result of 'ego'). Otherwise it would be measurable and not merely a matter of belief or practicing auto-suggestive disciplines. Those who have experienced transcendental beyond-body infinite consciousness, including myself, do not observe any such energy per se, though some try to explain their

In view of all these points, Sathya Sai Baba's activities must rather be regarded for what they are described to be by dozens of young men, for his own sexual gratification. To try to explain them away by speculation about divine energies is just another self-deception to try to sustain one's own cherished illusions about Sathya Sai Baba and the spurious benefits or blessings he is supposedly to confer now or, more usually, later, later, later... (this year, next year, sometime, never... for who can know?). A very impressionable devotee, who got inspired by some dreams and ideas, believes that Sathya Sai Baba blessed the article he wrote (simply by giving him attention when he walked past him with the manuscript), is Ram Das Awle.

The posting by Ram Das Awle has become a 'last ditch defense' much circulated within the Sai movement among those devotees who have found out enough to come to believe that Sathya Sai Baba does have full homosexual relations with young males. It is a ludicrous travesty of spirituality and breaks not only with human rights, but with the moral codes of all religions concerning sexuality.

Isaac Tigrett, a follower of many decades who donated the entire so-called "super-speciality" Hospital in Puttaparthi is on record as asserting that he believes the sexual allegations to be true, but it makes no difference to his faith in the Divinity of Sathya Sai Baba. He even opines (on the BBC documentary, 'Secret Swami') that, were Sai Baba to murder a person, it could not alter his opinion. This is a truly remarkable kind of derangement that affects such long-term devotees and makes them seem entirely unbalanced in mind to decent law-abiding citizens. To understand this one has to study the peculiar and extremely subtle cultish teaching of Sai Baba and how it ensures that people actually gradually 'brainwash' themselves. However, they are mostly outwardly more sane in behaviour than those fanatical believers who believe they are Jesus or other such figures with divine knowledge. Nonetheless, no other term than 'brainwash' is more fitting for them, a condition which sufferers of it, by the very definition, do not recognise. I have analysed this self-programming process most thoroughly elsewhere, see the menu of relevant articles on my research into psychological, social and psycho-spiritual entrapment here

The threat Sai Baba poses for students: Sixty years of homosexual relations can't be kept secret without accomplices, that is certain, even in India where the public debate has hardly even begun to face frank and serious discussion of homosexuality and sex abuse! There have doubtless been many who have kept quiet about what they learned about Sathya Sai Baba besides many others who were apparently involved and who could not speak out. Some victims also become abusers... inevitably, according to what has now become widely known about so-called 'pedophile rings' around the world. This has been claimed by some students of the Sai Colleges who posted ca. 150 names of student 'molestees' on the Internet on the Quick Topic website. Credible accounts by ex-Sai students have been posted on bulletin boards, explaining that they cannot reveal their true names etc. due to the danger of being killed while still living in India . Only one student has openly signed the Public Petition with full name and years of study at Sathya Sai Baba's college. This has an all too factual background, including the indisputable execution in Sathya Sai Baba's bedroom of the four young male intruders in 1993, which matter remained unsolved as the investigations were quashed from the highest levels in India .

Many factual accounts indicate clearly that Sathya Sai Baba has tried to change heterosexual young men into homosexuals. Moreover, in 1990 at Prashanthi Nilayam, I heard from two informed sources among Sathya Sai Baba's staff (including a prominent Seva Dal resident) that he threatened two (male) students in 1990 to turn them into girls! What could this possibly mean? We pondered but remained bemused at that time (in our unknowing misplaced trust in him)! The boys had been sitting at the back of a class and laughed when he made an absurd prediction that his ashram would be of a size larger than any city in the world within 10 years (extending 'as far as Dharmavaram. They had evidently pricked his considerable pride, and the only rational interpretations of his response is that he was reminding them that he could seduce or rape them. In addition to all this comes the well-known and (strangely oft-cited) statement Sathya Sai Baba made in a discourse that he is the only male in the world, for all the rest are female before him. It was then taken to be symbolical (i.e. Purusha vs. Prakriti), but - in the light of the increasing exposé of his allegedly voracious homosexual appetites - it instead now sounds almost diabolically commonplace.

That Sai Baba favours the male sex far above the female is glaringly obvious both from his actions at darshan, his comments in interviews and not least in his organisation, where women are treated with few exceptions as second-class, even though they bear the brunt of the actual service work everywhere. They are relegated to sit at the rear or, at best, on the periphery at Sai conferences and meetings in the ashrams. That no woman has reported genital oiling speaks for itself. One would expect that, if sexual abuse charges were trumped up against Sathya Sai Baba, that at least a proportion of them would come from women. If there are any such, they are so few and far between that I have not been able to register them, despite my wide-ranging critical investigations for over four years of the sexual and other behaviour of Sathya Sai Baba. When he once boasted in a public discourse that everyone is as a female in relation to him, he makes his desire for sexual predominance in the old-fashioned manner quite clear. He has his 'male hareem' in the colleges over which he rules like a despot, a reserve of thousands of boys to draw upon who cannot stand up against him since they are in nothing short of a life-dependent situation. Their families cannot even be told, except in exceptional cases, because they are often lifelong devotees who simply cannot any longer be expected ever to perceive that they have been so fundamentally mistaken about Sathya Sai Baba. It is perfectly clear to anyone who is not looking through rose-coloured glasses - and wearing the regulation 'mental blinkers' - that Sai Baba gives away how he truly regards young boy and men students when he says time and again, "they are my only property". (In another connection, he has also sometimes said "Properties are not proper-ties").

There have been numerous suicides among devotees and unexplained and uninvestigated deaths of students at the Sai college. One such death of a Puttaparthi student under very suspicious circumstances was covered-up by the Sathya Sai Central Trust and caused a demonstration by villagers in revolt in Puttaparthi. Other young people have died in accidents which seem very like suicides (one student killed in a car accident when leaving the ashram was found with a suicide note in his pocket) and some young devotees (even relatives of very prominent devotees) have taken their own lives, such as by jumping off high buildings. The Times reported the suspicious deaths of three young male Sai devotees, which reportedly has led to the UK Home Minister Blunkett having put the Sai Baba movement under investigation.

Barry Pittard's testimony shows the dangers of speaking out in India concerning alleged sexual abuse by Sai Baba, a situation in which all students find themselves, from 'The 'Sai-lencing' of conscience-raised voices':

Four reports from 1979-1982" Between 1979 and 1982 I heard four stories, described below, relating Sathya Sai Baba to homosexuality: from Joseph (U.S.A.) in 1979; Donna (U.S.A.), perhaps in the same year; Connie Raadsma, a close neighbour of mine in Australia, in 1981; and an Australian woman who spoke to me at Puttaparthi in 1982. Like me, Joseph and Donna were of the tiny handful of long-stay Westerners he permitted to live around him, mostly in Whitefield I taught for two years at his college there), about 20 km from Bangalore, India's fifth largest city. Donna was now one of a few Sathya Sai Baba forbade from entering his ashrams but who, ever faithful, would stand outside the gate straining to glimpse him. She claimed that she had spoken to various older Puttaparthi residents who said that Sai Baba had been homosexual even as a boy. (Note: expert evidence attests that most homosexuals do not practice child molestation). Perhaps Donna was expelled from the ashram for opening her mouth a bit too widely! Let us see in a moment what happened to Joseph when he opened his. And what happened to me, too.

In July 1982, acting only out of care for her (and indeed for all who may hear such stories), the moment I passed on the Australian woman's concerns - who in great anxiety had sought me out for advice as having lived at the Sathya Sai Baba ashrams extensively - to two of Sathya Sai Baba's top leaders Howard Murphet (Australia) and Richard Bayer (USA) about allegations of his homosexuality, I was called up to the office day after day by the Puttaparthi ashram manager, Kutumb Rao, a retired High Court Judge, confronted with patently ridiculous accusations, and on the forth day told "Swami has asked that you be sent out, and never return." (One of the accusations was: You were seen in the ashram talking to a woman." It can only have been the Australian woman who came up to me in distress).

Severe beating of devotee in public for warning of Sai sex In 1979, in the crowd awaiting Sai Baba's public appearance (darshan), sat Joseph. Called a hippy by the village children (who may have been right), he appeared to be in his psychedelic thirties, and was one of three or so Westerners remaining after the hippies and others had departed from Sai Baba in the late sixties. Joseph began to discourse, for all of us to hear - and I sat just behind him. With rising stress levels and moral outrage, he said more than once that some college boys had told him that Sai Baba had asked a number of them (in Joseph's words) to "line up and masturbate." On the third or so day of Joseph's dark rumblings, six hefty Indian male service volunteers (seva dals) came and carried him out, ordering him not to return. The immensely powerful Joseph fought them, roaring out the accusations for all to hear. A very distressed Indian man said to me, "If Sai Baba is God, why do they need to use all this violence against this man?" An hour afterwards, one of the volunteers told me that ejecting Joseph was 'like wrestling a tiger.' He told me that his task saddened him, as he had known Joseph for so many years.

For the next days, while people awaited darshan (Sanskrit: viewing of a holy person), Joseph climbed a tree outside the ashram wall, and cried out the allegations for us all to hear. Then, he was gone. I heard from my close friend and local resident, Siva Subramanian, a Tamil who knew some of the Tamil police constables, that the Kadugodi police had badly thrashed Joseph and sent him on his way. So much, then, for the cardinal doctrine of ahimsa or non-violence in Sathya Sai Baba's ashrams and in the land that still daily venerates Mahatma Gandhi along with the Dalai Lama, the towering apostles of non-violence."
from http://www.exbaba.com/articles/barrysailencing.html

Homosexual-cum-hermaphrodite evidence: When Mary Garden, whose testimony was noted earlier, was at the Brindavan ashram in the mid-70s, she was awakened to the allegations about Sai Baba's sexuality by a lady called Joanna serving at a restaurant (Jo-Jo's in Bangalore), where she had already seen thousands of Westerners come to Sai Baba. She told Mary "Wake up! He's just a hypnotist. Can't you see. He cons Americans for their money... not only that, he is a homosexual. And a hermaphrodite." (The Serpent Rising, p.45). Many months later, Mary Garden chanced on a couple, two Australian seekers on a train in North India and, when chatting she told of her experiences with Sai Baba. The man, "Joe roared with laughter, Oh, the Baba Bugger." (ibid, p. 152) So these views were also circulating in the mid-1970s there.

Alexandra Nagel of Holland has followed up in her article Sai Baba as Shiva-Shakti: a Created Myth? Or certain accounts which are intriguing and perplexing of Sai Baba having dual sex organs. Alexandra Nagel wrote: "At a certain moment during the last private interview, Sai Baba had seized my friend’s hand and made him touch Baba’s groin. The first time this was done a penis was felt through the thin fabric of his robe. (It was not a skin to skin contact.) The second time he was invited to touch, he hadn’t felt a penis – there was something there that felt like a vagina. “This is divinity,” Sai Baba had said, which was supposed to be the explanation for this experience, and he warned him not to talk about it."

"In September 1999, a boy aged 15, who was visiting Sai Baba with his parents, got invited for a private interview on two occasions. In April-May 2000, the notes he took down in his diary were rewritten by hand by the boy himself on four sheets of paper. These were xeroxed and mailed with an explanatory letter from the mother to many devotees in the USA, because the mother had become upset with what the diary revealed: Sai Baba had forced himself upon the boy. From his notes of September 23, 1999, after the boy also had received money from Sai Baba"

Shortly thereafter, when I had begun to investigate this subject, another young man from UK told me about an exactly similar experience during his private interview with Sai Baba.[2] Neither one of them had understood what the genital switch signified, nor why it had happened.

" thank you, Swami! “Don’t thank me. I am everything. See? (he pointed to his palm) everything is here!” “I am Shivashakthi.” what? “Shivashakthi. I am Shakthi.” (He took my hand and pressed it to his crotch. he moved it up and down, side to side, there was absolutely nothing there.) “See? Nothing! Nothing!” (He let go of my hand and snapped his fingers, then again took my hand.) “See? Now I am Shiva!” (this time, my fingers touched a penis.)" See document here, where this above excerpt is found.

Dramatic sex testimony from ex-student at Prashanthi Nilayam (Posted by robertpriddy on August 5, 2011 at robertpriddy.wordpress.com)

There have, through the years, been a number of quite independent reports of Sathya Sai Baba having dual sexuality, and dual sexual organs too (physical hermaphroditism). Today I am posting information delivered to me by a person whose identity has been checked and found to be valid, but which will not be made known at this stage for our own reasons. There are evidently others who know of the incident and any confirmation from those who were present when the form boy spoke out in public at Prashanthi Nilayam about Sai Baba’s dual sexual exhibition and are willing to contact me can be confident I shall act in complete confidentiality as they may require. Our informant was a student and 'form boy', Rahul Sharma from Canada, himself once a 'form boy', who tells of two boys at Sathya Sai Baba's Ootacamund school, Arun and Kartun which they subsequently left.. Their common surname is not given for obvious reasons:-

"Arun was a smart looking boy who got close to SB through the help of the teachers, like the Principal Mr. Habbu, who were looking for smart boys to speak in public and to go closer to SB. Arun was abused in the very first interview. He used to cry a lot. Even when he disclosed it to his father, this stupid man beat his son with chappals in plain view in front of the school. Later on Arun did a very brave thing which surprised everyone and that is why we think he was thrown out. While Speaking before Sai Baba in public in the Poornachandra Hall, he very clearly stated that swami had shown him in private in the interview room his SHIVA SWAROOP FOLLOWED BY ARDHANARISHWAR ROOP (that means, God Shiva as half man and half woman). For one moment even Sai Baba looked stunned. Later on the boy was given a terrible thrashing for this glaring mistake.

Today, I cannot but respect the bravery of that boy. I think this shows the terrible nature of working at the Sai-schools. I still fail to understand what made” People like Principal Habbu or Munni Kaul partners in crime at Puttaparthi.”

If indeed Sathya Sai Baba was a physical hermaphrodite, the consequences would be enormous for our understanding of his rise to fame. He would have been worshipped by the ignorant villagers as the incarnation of Shiva-Shakti, Shiva-Parvathi and so on, as is still done today in Indian villages to persons with unusual abnormalities. He would have had a free run to dictate to everyone who knew or believed in him as such from his earliest years. I have explored this with reference to early sources etc. in my article Sathya Sai Baba – an enigma or a myth?

As mentioned, this testimony supports a series of similar testimonies through the years. Tal Brooke was told by a close friend how Sai Baba had a vagina, about which he wrote in his first book exposing SB, ‘Avatar of the Night’ (see Tal Brooke – Avatar of Night excerpts).

The same or similar claims are reported in the overview paper ‘A Guru Accused’ by Alexandra Nagel

Further, in and impressive long video interview, Ullrich Zimmerman gives a very credible account of his visit to Puttaparthi and the ensuing private interview with sexual molestation (oral sex) and reports on the apparent Sai Baba’s dual sexuality?

Yet others have reported their experience or perception of Sai Baba as having both sexual organs. Some consider the perception to be a result of hypnosis, which is very easy to achieve when the subject is already a full believer in the omnipotence etc. of Sai Baba. However, the extreme secrecy about Sathya Sai Baba’s condition during his fatal illness and the apparently complete restrictions placed on his doctors’ access to him, reportedly by Sathyajit, his main much younger boyfriend to the last, raise the suspicion that doctors were – at least as far as possible – kept in the dark about Sai Baba’s genitalia. That there was no certified death document nor post mortem also makes it impossible definitively to confirm his having been born with both organs. Had the doctors noticed this, it would have been virtually impossible for them to have said so, as the pressure to cover-up everything about the guru and his misdeeds is so enormous on those within the movement.

Other allegations report on Sai Baba as showing he has the sex organs of both sexes, as it has long been medically established some hermaphrodites do in fact have. As long ago as the very early 1970s, a person called Patrick actually had sex with a vagina in Sai Baba! (as reported in detail by Surya Das to Tal Brooke, (Avatar of Night. The Hidden Side of Sai Baba, New Delhi: Tarang Paperbacks, 1984:328-329 1st.ed. 1972) As Alexandra Nagel points out, Sai Baba claims to be 'Shiva-Shakthi', that is - both male and female. He also claims 'Sai' means 'mother' - while 'Baba' is the common term for 'father' - he may originally have been referring to this physical abnormality, which might also explain much more about the awe in which he was held since babyhood, how he perceived himself and how he became so predominant in his environment.

CONTINUE TO PART SIX OF THIS SEX ABUSE TESTIMONY SERIES

Return to index menu