satya sai baba--pseudo magician

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joe sz
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satya sai baba--pseudo magician

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Montreal Gazette

By JOE SCHWARCZ,

Freelance

April 16, 2011



He vanished the Taj Mahal. He made a train full of people disappear. He can turn a baby elephant into a horse. He performs to full houses more than 400 times a year, travels with a crew of 75, carries 48 tons of equipment, an elaborate laser lighting system and costumes galore. He has performed in front of royalty, presidents and prime ministers. No, he's not David Copperfield. He is P.C. Sorcar Jr., billed as the living legend of Indian magic. Even though he has garnered fame and fortune, Sorcar is not the best known magician in India. That distinction goes to Swami Sai Baba. But the Swami is not regarded as a magician. Far from it. He is revered as a miracle worker, a healer, an embodiment of divinity who has come down to Earth. To his followers, he is a "godman."

Baba has millions of followers in more than 100 countries who regularly gather at Sai Baba centres to pray, sing, meditate and work toward improving the human condition. And let's give credit where credit is due. Numerous schools, hospitals and safe drinking water systems have been built under the Swami's guidance to benefit the poor.

But don't count P.C. Sorcar among the guru's fans. He calls Baba a charlatan whose miracles amount to no more than common conjuring tricks, readily duplicated by any amateur magician. He's right. The production of "holy ash" from an apparently empty hand, the sudden appearance of a watch or necklace and the coughing up of a golden egg are all standard conjuring tricks, readily learned by any youngster attracted to magic as a hobby.

There is no doubt the miracles the Swami performs are magic tricks. Back in the 1940s, when he burst upon the scene, there were no video recorders, so all he had to do was fool a live audience. But now, his public appearances are videoed by amateurs and professionals, and you can't fool the camera. Stop action shots clearly show the guru palming compressed ash pellets before sprinkling holy ash on his admirers and "stealing" the necklaces and watches from various hiding places before they make their miraculous appearance. The rich, capable of giving donations, get the jewelry, the poor get the ashes.

Magicians get really irritated when their art is misused. Sorcar is no exception and has repeatedly challenged Sai Baba to produce his miracles under controlled conditions. Not only has that challenge not been met, the guru has even refused to meet with the magician. Sorcar finally resorted to attending one of the Swami's "performances" incognito and when Baba produced a sweet known as a sandesh, he stood up and oneupped him by materializing a rasgulla, an Indian cheese ball. At this point the Swami began to shout and had the magician forcefully removed.

Why should anyone object to the Swami's use of magic tricks in support of his roleplaying as a god? After all, he and his devotees have done a lot of good.

But what about the unfortunate people who have been disappointed when the godman was unable to heal them? Even worse, how many young men have been victimized because the guru's magic tricks convinced them that he is a god, and that therefore they should unquestioningly do his bidding?

Allegations of homosexual abuse are way too numerous to dispute, with many accounts of the holy man performing unholy feats such as rubbing followers' genitalia with oil under the guise of a "spiritual experience." Former worshippers have also come forth to describe the decidedly ungodly acts they were asked to perform during "private interviews" with the deity.

While Sai Baba is the most famous godman, there is no shortage of self-proclaimed divine beings prowling the Indian countryside, performing miracles in return for donations. Godliness is a growing, lucrative business. Aspiring gods can head to the southern Indian state of Kerala where they can enrol in schools that specialize in teaching the tricks of the trade. Here they learn how to produce holy ash, how to materialize sweets from thin air (apparently an absolute requirement for gods), how to make jewelry magically appear and how to perform the "Indian water trick," a particular favourite.

A "lota bowl" is a traditional Asian container used to dispense water in ritual purification ceremonies. But a guru who has graduated from god school can turn the bowl upside down, empty it, and within seconds show it to be full of water again. Once more it is emptied, only to be magically filled again. Surely anyone who can produce such holy water out of nowhere can also heal the sick, and is well-deserving of donations! Needless to say, the only miracle here is in the form of some clever engineering that allows the jug to be refilled with water from a hidden compartment.

An even more impressive effect is to have a coconut erupt in flames after pouring "holy" water on it. The message is that an ailing person's illness has been transferred to the coconut for destruction.

Actually, hidden in the coconut fibres is a small piece of potassium that reacts with water to form hydrogen gas, along with enough heat to ignite the hydrogen and the coconut. Impressive!

Chemically astute gurus can even start fires by telepathy! All they need do is pour some ghee (clarified butter) on sawdust and glare at it from a distance until it bursts into flames. A neat demo to be sure, one I do in the lecture room without any need for divine intervention. But I do need some potassium permanganate hidden in the sawdust to react with the glycerol masquerading as ghee.

I doubt, however, that the minions who worship at the feet of Sai Baba (now in very poor health, apparently unable to heal himself) will ever believe that their godman is but a simple conjuror. And not a very good one at that. His best trick actually is to make rational thinking vanish.

Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society (www.OSS.McGill.ca). He can be heard every Sunday from 3-4 p.m. on CJAD radio.

joe.schwarcz@mcgill.ca

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Mir ... story.html . (DEAD LINK)
joe sz
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Re: satya sai baba--pseudo magician

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Sai Baba, spiritual guru to millions, dies at 85
New-age icon dies of heart and breathing problems
Reputation marred by sexual abuse allegations

Jason Burke in Delhi

guardian.co.uk,

Sunday 24 April 2011

The death of Sri Sathya Sai Baba at the age of 85 from heart and breathing problems has prompted scenes of mass grief across India – where his distinctive frizzy hair, trademark saffron robes, controversial miracles and simple message of ecumenical spiritualism had made him a new-age icon.

But though revered by millions around the world as a living god, he was a controversial figure, criticised by some as a fraud protected by political influence. His later years were dogged by allegations of sexual abuse.

The government of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where Sai Baba was born, declared four days of mourning. Hundreds of police were deployed in his hometown of Puttaparthi, to maintain order among the thousands of devotees who had gathered over recent days.

In the city of Bangalore, followers walked through the streets carrying portraits of the dead spiritual leader and chanting "Baba is not with us physically. But he remains with us forever."

In Delhi, worshippers gathered to pray at temples across the city. Many refused to accept that the guru was dead.

"Sai has not gone anywhere. Wait 48 hours. He will be back," Vandana Bhalla, a 38-year-old housewife in the Indian capital's middle-class Ashok Vihar neighbourhood told the Guardian.

Among Sai Baba's estimated six million followers are hundreds of top Indian politicians, industrialists, tycoons, Bollywood stars and sportsmen such as cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. Overseas, they include Goldie Hawn and Isaac Tigrett, the founder of Hard Rock café. Sarah Ferguson has visited one of his ashrams.

Since Sai Baba founded his first permanent meditation centre more than 60 years ago, a vast construction programme funded by donations has converted the remote village where he was born into a thriving small city with dozens of temples, its own 220-bed specialised hospital offering free treatment, a university and an airport where charter planes bringing devotees from around the world arrive every day.

Volunteers working with Sai Baba's NGOs have effectively delivered disaster relief and undertaken large-scale developmental works that have brought water or sanitation to hundreds of thousands of people.

There are thought to be more than 1,200 centres of his Sathya Sai organisation in over a hundred countries around the world.

Sai Baba did not appoint any successor to run his sprawling spiritual and temporal empire, currently run by a trust, after his death. The local Economic Times newspaper estimated its worth at up to £5bn though admitted no accurate valuation was possible. There are now fears of a clash between Sai Baba's family and the trust, which could also provide an excuse for the local state government to step in.

"If the government has to take over the affairs of Sai Baba's mission that could spell its end," devotee Shivanand Shetty told the Sunday Guardian newspaper in Puttaparthi.

In Delhi, devotees said the spirit of the dead guru would maintain peace.

"His trust is run very professionally and … it will be Sai who will be guiding them," said Dr Amala Venugopal, a general medical practitioner.

Born without wealth or advantage as Sathyanarayana Raju, Sai Baba declared himself the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi, a 19th century guru, when he was 14. Followers claim that, after being stung by a scorpion, the teenager began singing devotional chants in the ancient language of Sanskrit, which he neither spoke nor read.

The young religious leader, who accepted devotees from all faiths, quickly won fame for supposed mystical powers including the ability to conjure objects including gold watches out of thin air and to heal. Critics said his miracles were simple magic tricks.

Sai Baba was also the subject of a series of allegations of sexual abuse of young male followers. Participants in a 2004 BBC documentary, The Secret Swami, accused him of massaging their testicles with oil and coercing them into oral sex.

Former devotee Barry Pittard told the Guardian Sai Baba was a dangerous confidence trickster who should not have been allowed to have anything to do with children. "For the worst victims of his depredations … their sufferings have been very great," he said.

Sai Baba was never been charged with any offence over the sex abuse allegations and had denied all the charges against him, claiming they were part of a campaign to defame him.

"Some people out of their mean-mindedness are trying to tarnish the image of Sai Baba. I am not after name and fame. So, I do not lose anything by their false allegations. My glory will go on increasing day by day," the guru told followers in 2000.

In 1993, six people died violently in the spiritual leader's private rooms. The incident has never been fully explained. One possibility is a dispute between followers over money.

India's prime minister Manmohan Singh said Sai Baba's death was "an irreparable loss" to all: "He was a spiritual leader who inspired millions to lead a moral and meaningful life even as they followed the religion of their choice."

Sai Baba had predicted his own death in 2019 but said that, having been reborn as the second reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi, he would be reborn as the holy man's third and final reincarnation in 2023 in a small village in the state of Karnataka. His followers claim that, as he has died earlier than foreseen, he could return as early as next year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ap ... -baba-dies
graham77
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Re: satya sai baba--pseudo magician

Unread post by graham77 »

How a person can have a high spiritual character, if he was facing allegation? Watch BBC documentary related to it. It is weird millions followed him.
RoyGBiv
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Re: satya sai baba--pseudo magician

Unread post by RoyGBiv »

Pete Townshend of the Who wrote "Baba O'Reilly" while he was a Sai Baba follower, if I remember correctly.
ex
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Re: satya sai baba--pseudo magician

Unread post by ex »

dr greg was send to india to check out sai baba. he came back wearing a shiva shakti mala. and made a few remarks about indian gurus. spiritual cooperation spying at its best.
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