To Sri Pranananda and senior followers

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Barry Pittard

To: Miriana and senior members

Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 6:44 AM

Subject: To Sri Pranananda and senior followers

 

Dear Miriana and senior members of your Ashrams,

Please convey the following note to Bhagavan Sri Pranananda and senior executives of your association.   I am continuing to send a similar letter to many spiritual leaders in India and beyond.  

I wish you all well in your work among orphans.  Perhaps you will feel that they are the aspect of God, who comes like that to challenge the cold rock of human hearts, and to vastly improve any compassion already possessed.

I am well-acquainted with Sri Halagappa, and also the apparent miraculous grace that attends his orphanage and temple.  

Many others and I have experienced in our own homes and elsewhere a great many divine miracles and leelas, many of them connected with the presence in the world of sathya sai baba.   I was his deeply committed devotee for twenty-five years.

As well as many other service activities, I worked at the orphanage near Samadhi Lane at Puttaparthi, and lectured for two years at the Sathya Sai College at Whitefield, via Bangalore, as well as serving tribal and other disposed people for a number of years beyond Mysore and elsewhere in India.

One of the great tests of the Lord's play, and of my own spiritual sadhana, has been the discovery (whatever may be said about the Light aspect of sathya sai baba) of another side to him altogether.  Since 1999, as I continue my researches, I have had increasing contact with many boys and young men and their families and supporters around the world who have been devastated by the experiences these children have had, often in sathya sai baba's second, interior interview room at Puttaparthi.

As well as the inspiration of the Vedic tradition, reading the lives of great saints, and time spent with some very wonderful saints such as Swami Chidananda (successor to Sivananda of Rishikesh), Ananda Mai Ma, Amritananda, Mast Ram Baba, Ram Surat Kumar, Swami Chinmayananda, Ramswarupanda, Prabhuji, and others, there abides in my heart the earliest teachings of my wonderful mother and father - to fearlessly follow truth, even if the whole world should go opposite, or even if I myself should fail always to uphold it.

Therefore, as my intensive investigations into the allegations against sathya sai baba proceeded, the months since October 1993 turning into three years, I am forced to conclude that there is mountainous evidence that sathya sai baba is a serial sexual molester of boys and young men on a vast scale, not to mention his culpability for some other most terrible crimes, including calculatedly standing by to allow police slaying in his quarters in 1993. 

Many of the allegations against him are extensively affidavited and in the hands of Interpol, FBI, and other national police forces, including CBI in New Delhi, and documented at the most senior levels of Foreign Ministries around the world.  Because of an incredibly corrupt protection of sathya sai baba by India's political leaders across the board, and obstructive police and judiciary, our enormous and prolonged efforts to bring cases in the Indian courts have singularly failed in many respects.

Sometimes, indeed, I have discovered that sai baba's victims and/or their families have sought the guidance of prominent gurus and spiritual organisations.  At some stage, it is my profound goal to ensure that many, beyond the sai baba fold and his dissenting former devotees shall be required by the courts to testify that they, indeed, also have had over the years first hand, deeply convincing, reports of sathya sai baba devastating misconduct.

So - for the sake of the Dharma, which alone can protect those who protect the Dharma - ever increasing numbers of former sai baba devotees, from many social, cultural and educational backgrounds continue to work to inform all capable of listening to the often suppressed cries of anguish of the countless victims, boys and young men and those close to them, and being open and honest enough to hear of the other crimes and cruelties sai baba and his close accomplices have for so long inflicted. 

I trust that your spiritual preceptor, Sri Pranananda, and his followers will appreciate being informed of these matters, if they were not before, and let me know that they have taken them seriously.

I shall separately send some URLs so that you have them on hand for any enquiries you may have

Yours in Divine Service,

Barry Pittard, Australia