Date: 12-09-02

Document date: 12-10-02

By: Robert Priddy

Website: Sathya Sai Baba - Extensive Information and Articles

SB always claims to be reviving the Indian nation to its former alleged greatness. However, the BBC World Service interviewed Bianca Jagger at length (4-12-’02) when she returned from a tour of India to study the problems of AIDS there on behalf of Christian Aid. We were informed that India has the most rapid rate of AIDS infections of all countries in the world bar South Africa. The situation is worsening as the superstition that sex with children and even babies can cure AIDS has also developed in India. There are currently 400,000 children in forced prostitution in India. Most Indians never use condoms. Half of all AIDS sufferers are now women, but the vast majority of Indian women cannot even raise the question of this with their husbands. The tiniest percentage of Indians with AIDS can afford any retroviral medicines at all. There is boundless ignorance of the dangers in India, where the open and informed discussion of sexual problems is limited to the small English-speaking minority.

Yet one of mankind's most basic needs and drives is virtually unmentioned by the supposed 'world universal teacher'! Though he avoids all subjects like birth control, condoms, AIDS and other sex-related issues like the plague (except in the privacy of the interview room or with close confidantes), he has once shown in public that he is more Catholic than the present Pope. He has nothing whatever to advise but abstention from sexual behaviour. That SB steers clear of the sex discussion strongly suggests that his real views would awaken astonishment and would cause many to fall away from his movement and might also draw more attention to his own sexual proclivities and preferences. He lists lust as one of the seven or cardinal sins, without explaining what kind of lust even, though he always claims to have no bodily desires. However, many factual and convincing accounts from a wide variety of young men indicate clearly that SB has tried to change them into homosexuals and for his own gratification! 

Since the sexual impulse is so fundamental and is the source of so many personal, social and other problems in the world, one might have expected some more enlightened talk about it than preaching monastic and repressive ideals. What a parody of spiritual guidance to mankind! There is nothing whatever ‘spiritual’ about avoiding the issues connected with sexuality. In contrast to SB’s secrecy and attitude that strongly suggests guilt and shame feelings about sexuality, the great Sufi mystic and famous  poet, Rumi, regarded sexual desires in youth as 'letting one's feathers grow out', without which dangerous problems can be caused later. (The Essential Rumi, p. 64). This is definitely an enlightened attitude and is favoured by an increasing majority in most modern countries nowadays. (So much for the cherished belief that SB will rule the world, or his own deranged and megalomaniacal claim that the whole world will be in his organisation!).