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with my objects of study than I might otherwise be, I ought to be more “objective”.
There are also a number of features of Sathya Sai Baba’s philosophy, to which I
am committed, that can only contribute to my objectivity as a scholar. The Sathya
Sai Service Organization is a non-proselytizing sect—formal publicity (excepting of
special events) is banned, and Sathya Sai Baba has even said that he has ‘not come
to found a new creed, to breed a new faction, to install a new God’
23
. I ought thus
to have no motive to attempt to convert my readers. Nor ought I to have any mo-
tive to portray Sathya Sai Baba in an unrealistically positive light, for he says: ‘I do
not appreciate your extolling Me, describing My glory. State the facts. That pro-
duces joy. It is sacrilege to state more or less’
24
. Moreover, as a Sai devotee, I am
supposed to be committed to the ideal of truth—‘voicing the seen exactly as seen,
the thought exactly as it formed, the deed exactly as done’
25
—and to not being
guided in my actions by predilections
26
, likes or dislikes
27
, desire for success, or
fear of failure
28
. I am supposed to be detached, adopting the attitude of a witness
to my internal and external world
29
and am urged not to identify with any of the
transient phenomena that I encounter therein
30
. At the same time, I am supposed
to see myself in all
31
, to ‘understand others and sympathise with them’
32
, and to
thoroughly consider ‘all points of view’ before drawing conclusions
33
.
But perhaps my very choice of topic, my decision to focus upon Sathya Sai
Baba, in itself constitutes a major compromise to my objectivity? Here I would
draw upon an observation by another scholar and (one time) Sathya Sai Baba
devotee, Greg Gerson (1998:2,31), who cites a recent work on what has been
called “heuristic methodology” to the effect that ‘a research problem or issue
which matters deeply to the investigator will undoubtedly also have significance
on a societal and perhaps even universal level’. Certainly, due to the sheer size
and diversity of Sathya Sai Baba’s following (highlighted by Figures 4 & 5 below),
23
Sathya Sai Baba (21-6-1979) S11 45:290-291
24
Sathya Sai Baba (10-1961) S2 22:115
25
(5-12-1985) http://www.sssbpt.info/ssspeaks/volume18/sss18-26.pdf [7-3-2007]
26
Sathya Sai Baba (19-8-1965) S5 36:203
27
Sathya Sai Baba (23-11-1962) S2 49:274
28
Sathya Sai Baba (6-3-1977) S13 29:189
29
Sathya Sai Baba (8-12-1964) S4 52:298,299
30
See, e.g., Sathya Sai Baba (22-5-1992) S25 20:222,223
31
See, e.g., Sathya Sai Baba (7-7-1963) S3 16:97
32
Sathya Sai Baba DV 75
33
Sathya Sai Baba C XLVI 125-126
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my general topic is of significance at a societal level, and, as I will go on to show,
the magnitude and complexity of his religious persona, upon which I will more
specifically focus, is commensurate with this following.
The majority of Sathya Sai Baba’s followers are Hindu and of Indian ethnicity,
and seem to regard him as an “avatar” (a “descent” of a deity) akin to the most re-
Fig.4 The author carries the New Zealand flag in a parade of delegates representing more than a
hundred countries in front of a crowd of at least quarter of a million Sai devotees assembled in the
Hillview Stadium (see Fig.2b above) to celebrate Sathya Sai Baba’s 75
th
birthday in November 2000.
Fig.5 An aerial photo of the crowd in the Hillview Stadium on Sathya Sai Baba’s 70
th
Birthday.
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vered figures of this type in traditional Indian scriptural works. But his appeal is
by no means exclusive to Indians, and indeed the sight of large groups of pilgrims
from such unlikely quarters as China, Spain, South America, and Eastern Europe is
not an uncommon one at his ashram. Followers from a Christian background tend
to identify him with the “rider on the white horse” from the Biblical book of Reve-
lation or the “Cosmic Christ” of more recent Christian theology
34
. Some Muslims
claim him to be the long-awaited Mahdī, the Messiah of Islam
35
, and in Sri Lanka
he has a Buddhist following who view him as the next Buddha
36
. Sathya Sai Baba
certainly encourages the former of these identifications, perhaps due to its parallel
with prophetic descriptions of the expected final avatar of Hindu lore
37
, but he has,
as far as I am aware, made no reference to the latter two claims. Indeed, he does
not always jump at the opportunity to portray himself as the fulfilment of foreign
religious traditions. Some Jewish devotees are reported to have once asked him:
Q:
Is Sai the Messiah of the Jews?
Sai:
That is not for Swami to say. That must be determined by you. The real Messiah
is the totality of good. Sai is not any particular thing. He is everything [MBI 192].
Here, alongside issues of his religious identity, he brings his particular theological
convictions to the fore. Whatever the first part of his answer may mean (‘the to-
tality of good’), the last part seems clear as another disavowal of a dualistic reli-
gious construct (Sai as Messiah), similar to his dismissal of my above-mentioned
attempted definitions of ‘Religion’ and ‘sādhana’. The theology at work here is
elucidated by another passage from his speeches:
God is all. He is all forms, His is all names. There is no place where He is not; no
moment when He is not! Even the devil has the syllable ‘dev’ to indicate his affinity
[‘dev’ (Sanskrit deva) meaning ‘god’ in many Indian languages].
38
This is an obverse case of the theology of transcendence identified previously—the
immanence of God is emphasized here, but to the same non-dualistic effect.
Clearly, some of Sathya Sai Baba’s statements bear more than a superficial reading.
This can, however, be overdone. Morton Klass (1991:94-95) picks up on a
milder form of the reasoning in evidence above, quoting Sathya Sai Baba as giving
an example of the common Hindu ‘equation of “guru”—in principle, any teacher—
34
See, e.g., Peter Phipps (1996), p.161.
35
Sanjay Kant, God Descends on Earth, (Bangalore, Sai Towers Publishing, 1995), p. 17-18.
36
C. J. Fuller, The Camphor Flame (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992), p.179
37
See Section 5.3, p.338 below.
38
(23–7–1971) http://www.sssbpt.info/ssspeaks/volume11/sss11-29.pdf [9-7-2007]