A Swiss lady devotee of Sathya Sai Baba , Priya C. Baetscher, wrote a usual kind of down-putting comment against my views on my wordpress blog (robertriddy.wordpress.com) tow which I replied. See as follows:-

'priyadevi' comment to robert priddy

My reply provoked two responses from her - one to my wordpress blog and another to my mailbox:-

Priyadevi comment to robert priddy 2
The mail sent me was a hodge-podge of Sai Baba quotations and questions to me, which I can't be bothered to answer here as they were mostly 'answered in advance' most thoroughly on this website and elsewhere. (See for example: The 'Labyrinth fallacy' in complex belief systems and Faith and belief vs. doubt and many other related articles). As to non-dualism (qualified or not) I have deconstructed the entire philosophy in various articles, such as The spiritual search for the 'Self', and God is Everything and Richard Dawkins: the Inner God Illusion

As to the old spiritual saw that ego means identification with the body, it is a primitive idea indeed. The ego has been defined in countless ways apart from that and has been studied in psychology since Freud at least. (See The Confused and Systematically Ambiguous Doctrine of Ego vs. Egolessness and also here) The ego most deeply understood is the psychic adjustment proceeses made by every person to the demands of the total environment enabling the individualvariously to cope with the challenges of living, engaging in society and its many pressures. If it were merely identification with the body - as Sathya Sai Baba propounded, then he must have had a huge ego since - after months of severe weight loss and illness - he reportedly cried out for help when he was being hospitalized. He then submitted to many weeks of tortuous and intensive modern medical treatment to revive his body when, if he were anything of what he claimed to be, he could have simply "left the body" and ascended to the realms he preached about without further ado!

The sheer naiveity and presumption of the advice "Find out reality, objectively" is a sufficient comment on the current mentality of Priya Baetscher.

Mail scanned from