For thirteen years I was a devoted follower of the Indian
self-proclaimed “Avatar” (Divine Incarnation, God in human form) Sri Sathya Sai
Baba, living in an Ashram, Prasanthi Nilayam in the village Puttaparthi in
Andra Pradesh district in South India.
In July 1999 a Swedish young man in a state of shock and despair
confided to me very detailed about how Sai Baba had sexually molested him. When
investigating this situation further I found out that not only young men but also
boys, from India as well as other countries around the world, were victims of a
shocking sexual molesting scenario of Sai Baba. Also that this has regularly,
and for most followers secretly, been going on for 30 years or more. Even more
shocking was the discovery that many officers within the Sai organisation as
well as elderly devotees, who had and have close association with Sai Baba,
knew about this scenario. They kept the secret and proclaim it to be an act of
blessing to the “victims”, because considering that Sai Baba is the pure Divine
Incarnation who cannot do anything wrong and thus is doing well whatever he is
doing. In this case obviously even what for ordinary men illegal.
There is a very nice booklet from a Conference,
in Geneva, Switzerland, on 9 June 1995 for international civil servants,
diplomats and others, where also speakers from the United Nation
participated, with excellent inspiring speeches. The booklet, published by the
Sathya Sai Association Switzerland, is titled:
UNIVERSAL PEACE THROUGH HUMAN
VALUES
Expert Views inspired by Sri
Sathya Sai.
Mr Indulal Shah, the international chairman of the Sri Sathya Sai
Organisation, in his welcome speech at this conference said about UNESCO and
the Educational in Human Values program:
Last months the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr
Federico Mayor, met Sathya Sai Baba. Commenting on Sri Sathya Sai’s educational
programmes, he said: “I wish the Sri Sathya Sai Institute every success in
implementing its noble programme on human values, and look forward to
establishing close links between the Institute and UNESCO with a view to
furthering the cause of peace through education."
UNESCO is a very dignified
authority to most people. The Sathya Sai organisation and the EHV-program gain
a lot of altitude if connected to UNESCO.
Amongst the speakers at the Geneva conference was also Mr Art-Ong
Jumsai, Member of Parliament in Thailand, scientist, university lecturer and
specialist in Education in Human Values in Thailand. He also in his country is
the initiator of, and as far as I know also the chairman of, a Sathya Sai
boarding school based on the EHV-program in Thailand. Mr Jumsai is the President
of ISSE (an International Sathya Sai
Education institute), mentioned in the following pre-release about “UNESCO
withdraws from conference” in September 2000.
Media
Advisory
UNESCO WITHDRAWS FROM CONFERENCE
Paris, September 15 - UNESCO has decided it will no longer sponsor nor
take part in a conference it had been due to co-organize with the Institute of
Sathya Sai Education (ISSE, Thailand) and The Flinders University Institute of
International Education (Australia), in Puttaparthi, India, from September 25
to 29. The decision means UNESCO is no longer associated in any way – through
sponsorship, organization or participation of any kind – with the conference on
Strengthening Values Education:
Innovative Approaches to Teacher Education for Peace and International
Understanding.
UNESCO’s withdrawal was prompted by several factors. Certain decisions
were taken by the ISSE without consultation, such as plans to hold some of the
sessions at the Ashram of the Sathya Sai movement in Puttaparthi, and the
inclusion of some speakers in the conference programme without their previous
consent. Furthermore, the Organization is deeply concerned about
widely-reported allegations of sexual abuse involving youths and children that
have been levelled at the leader of the movement in question, Sathya Sai Baba.
Whilst it is not for UNESCO to pronounce itself in this regard, the
Organization restates its firm moral and practical commitment to combating the
sexual exploitation of children, in application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,
which requires States to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation
and violence.
****
It was a very important and respectful step taken by UNESCO; to withdraw
from its agreed co-arrangement as well as participation in “the conference on
Strengthening Values Education” in Puttaparthi September 25-29 2000, and to
officially state: “Furthermore, the
Organization is deeply concerned about widely-reported allegations of sexual
abuse involving youths and children that have been levelled at the leader of
the movement in question, Sathya Sai Baba”.
There is an indescribable situation for unbelievable many boys and young
men. But also for their parents who, in their deep concern of bringing their
young ones to the “Heart” of Human Values, innocently brought them into a not
imaginable danger of being sexually molested.
Gimle
School (often referred to by others as
the Swedish Sathya Sai school)
In Sweden 1994, out from my initiative, a foundation was established,
Gimle Stiftelsen (Gimle Trust). This was done in co-operation with a man, in
the Swedish society very well respected, who also was a dedicated follower of
Sai Baba since about 20 years back. The aim of this foundation was to
contribute to a “non-violent-society”; by the means of; into the Swedish
legislated school-curriculum within a “Free School”, as well as into other
social projects, integrate and further develop the program; Education in Human
Values (EHV), founded by Sri Sathya Sai Baba in India.
A “Free School” in Sweden is a public school ran by a private legal
body, in this case the Gimle Trust, with the legal permission from government.
A Free School is financed by, and on the probation of, the governmental
school-authorities.
In August 1995, Gimle Trust, with me as the “prime motor”, with the
legal permission from the Swedish governmental school-authorities, manifested
in Lödöse (a small village in Lilla Edet community 40 km north from Gothenburg)
a Free School, Gimle skolan (Gimle School), with pupils from class 1-7, to
expand to class 1-9 within the two next coming years, which also happened. We
started with 20 pupils and after three years there were around 60.
Mr Jumsai from Thailand, was one of the inspiring supporters of the
Gimle School. In late 1995, a few months after the school-start, on his way to
Stockholm, where he was invited to a conference for giving lectures about the
EHV program, he visited the Gimle School and gave talks to the teachers and
children as well as parents. I had listened to his lectures since many years,
and met him personally. I found in him an exceptional inspiring exemplary
friend of humanity, worthy of imitation.
Gimle Trust in 1998 was by the Governmental school-authorities granted
the legal permission to extend also with a “gymnasium” (the Swedish term of the
upper secondary school), which meant the three more years before University
level. Gimle School was meant to serve as a model-school, combined with a
national EHV training-centre for teachers. The “gymnasium” never came into
manifestation.
Gimle School closed down in August 1999 as a result of the molesting
situation, as the EHV program was officially associated with Sai Baba as the
founder. Teachers and parents after being informed about the allegations of
sexual abuse wanted of course not in any way to be associated with Sai Baba. It
was a shocking tragedy to all involved, school-personnel, parents and children
and also of course the supportive politicians and other respected people in the
local community where the school was located.
One parent told me that one of the teachers in Gimle School (still a
devotee to Sai Baba) tried to explain to her that Sai Baba was the Avatar (God
in human form) and therefor it was not a sexual molesting but a divine action
to help the “kundalini” (inner spiritual energy very much described in Indian
spiritual scriptures) that was being done, which we “normal people” could not
understand. The parent (who was not a Sai Baba devotee, just a mother of two
children in Gimle School and furthermore not familiar with kundalini) was very
confused and shocked.
Teachers and parents, when heard about the molesting cases, withdrew
directly from the school with the result that it suddenly financially
collapsed. One week before the school should start after the summer-holidays
1999 it was officially declared that the school had come to an end.
Later a journalist at the local newspaper, who is German, told me that
he knew of that Sai Baba had sexual intimacy with boys. He had contacts with
journalists as well as lawyers in many countries, he said, who had informed
him. He told for ex. about two French boys who had been murdered on their way
from Puttaparthi, who had came to know about the sexual abuse, and that it was
a court-case in France and that some boys from Holland having been victims and
thereafter committed suicide. He seemed to be more informed than I was at that
time.
As I was for many years a lecturer about Sai Baba and about the
Education in Human Values program I know I have inspired many many people, who
I do not know personally, to visit Sai Baba’s ashrams in India. I brought
myself my own two sons and as well other boys from the Gimle School to this
“holy place”. Fortunately only one of my sons, out of the boys I brought there,
became a victim. Compared to many other victims, we now know about, very little
though happened as he was “only” kissed on his mouth, which he direct without
compromising protested and shocked was by Sai Baba sent out from the
interview-room, where he had been invited to meet alone with his so “beloved
Divine Master and guru”. (See further in this scripture for more details).
As a result of my deep concern about the younger generation, and the
need of giving attention to the human urge of morality and dignity, I found
myself being in a situation to have been the initiator of a public school in
Sweden that was using an international Human Values program; which had as it’s
first priority the good examples of the adults - leaders and personnel - a
program that was also recognised by UNESCO, but which had a founder that
sexually molested little boys and young men.
I am a Swedish woman born 1946. I am a teacher in music, philosophy and meditation.
I am also a mother of one daughter, born 1970, and two sons, born 1974 and
1982. They all have been in alternative schools or profile-classes in Sweden
within the concepts of Montessori- and Waldorf-pedagogic and in music-class. I
was always very active as a parent during my own children’s years at schools.
Some years before the Gimle School, another dedicated mother and I were behind
the manifestation of a Waldorf profile-class at a community-school in a
neighbour community to where I was living.
I have always been interested and engaged in philosophies and tools of
alternative pedagogic. Already in my own years as a child and as a teenager, in
school and in society, I felt the lack of inspiring teachers and adults, both
for individual and social development, and lack of tools for the protection of
the alcoholic and drug influence. As a young adult and a mother in the 70th
I became very aware of that the modern, western “drug-culture-influence” was an
extreme growing danger to the younger generation.
It is a deep routed concern
in me, as an adult, to offer the younger generation alternatives. Alternatives
that are exciting enough, at the same time as giving tools and social space for
a meaningful life-development-process. This means to me a life spontaneously
connected to the inner creative and intuitive ethical urge, within a social
co-operational social situation that inspires, welcomes and seriously supports
such urges.
I found that the most
important way, to be able to offer such alternatives and influences, is to make
sure that my own life serves as a living example. But also by introducing to
the young ones many different living examples worthy of imitation, from history
as well as today alive. Important also are communication, exchange and
co-operation within generations and between generations, within concepts that
do not fade away as ideas only. Concepts having the power of reaching and
inspiring the human “spirit of empathy” besides the “spirit of intellect”. And
not, as so easily happens to children in the material-oriented western society
life-stile, that the naturally by human birth inborn “creative living spirit”
is being overpowered by intellectual control.
I have also been a serious
devoted seeker of the meaning with human life and how to develop and manifest
spirituality in daily life. Already as four years old I had my first profound
mystical experience. Later as eight another and again when about twelve. These
experiences held me in a way always outside “ordinary” life. Even though I
tried to live an ordinary life, and also to some extend managed in the outer,
and being always a very active person full of initiative, my inner urges for
living another kind of life than was offered in the society where I was born
and lived “haunted” me all the time. I found the spirit of society very dead.
Here and there I met people similar to myself, but never in a way that made me
feel at home. In books though I found “soul-sisters and brothers.
When I was “happily married”
to a very good man and our little daughter was two years old and we had a
little house and…..my inner “exploded” in an urge to really find out what life
is for….and pay serious attention to my own inner, no matter what seemed to be
expected from my society.
This was in 1972. I was 26
years old. My “inner woke up” to my inner truth. The truth of the potential of
human life became so clear that I could never more otherwise than follow my
inner guiding and confront and go through any obstacle.
As it is know to many people,
when we listen to our inner seriously enough, life offers us situations that
takes us further and further on the route where our inner is the guide, not the
outer. Not necessarily without hardships, rather the opposite, but one’s life
becomes a real life instead of a mere living.
So it was in my life. I could
write a lot about all experiences and consequences of being true to my inner
(and I have a lot in my drawers!), but here I just want to give some background
of my spiritual urge and journey. Through books I was inspired by so many
different souls from different cultures, religions and philosophies. I did a
lot of meditation and deep inner research of my own awareness and potential. I
had since long engaged myself very devoted in projects, besides my involvement
with schools, that were aimed at contributing to a spiritual life quality in
society, when Sai Baba entered my life.
Miraculously shortly after a
deep inner prayer of really finding someone “now living” to share my inner
“seeing” and deep concern about a more spiritualised society, I was from a
friend given a book “The Supremacy of God”, written by a devotee to Sai Baba. I
felt my “inner received an “answer ” from Heaven! After that I borrowed some
more books with Sai Baba’s lectures. Everything responded to my prayer and my
inner. This was in August 1986.
In January 1987 I together with my old mother (at that time 72 years
old) travelled, for the first time in our lives to India, and visited Sai
Baba’s ashrams in Whitefield and in Puttaparthi. It was a tremendous positive
and miraculous experience for both of us. I bought and read lots of books about
Sai Baba’s teaching and was completely positive. It was as a dream coming true
to find a “Teacher of wisdom”, besides being an inspiring teacher of love to
anyone from any culture or religion. He also in his teaching was giving the
outmost attention to children, youth and schools in a way that was in harmony
with my own inner.
We were granted an “interview” (when a group or individuals are invited
to a personal meeting with Sai Baba) where we saw the “materialisations” of
“holy ash” as well as rings and other jewellery. These materialisations did not
actually interest me, but of course it did contribute to Sai Baba’s own claim
that he is a Divine Incarnation. I however was very inspired by all the
different people from all-different religions and cultures that came together
in Sai Baba’s Ashram, thanks to the inspiration from him and his message.
In the ashram there was a drug-free environment attracting people, of
matured age and of all professions, from the highest academically level to
every kind of occupation in society, and from all different religions and
cultures, from all different countries all over the world. There were schools
and Universities recognised by the Indian government.
I had never urged for a guru. But the atmosphere in the ashram, and Sai
Baba personally and through his teachings, validated the to me most important
qualities in myself and my life - my deep interest in philosophy, spirituality
and in the human qualities that unites human beings from different religions
and cultures and my concern about the younger generation - in a way that no one
had done before. This resulted in that I myself gave my own inner life and
visions full validation and acceptance. Sai Baba and his teaching did fill a
vacuum that had been, as a result of being brought up in a so extremely
materialistic society as Sweden, and in the superficial western culture. For
the first time in my life I felt that I was not too much spiritually
orientated to fit in. I felt at home with Sai Baba.
I had many inner really “miraculous” experiences while staying in the
ashram, as well as before and after, which I related to Sai Baba. I got the
feeling that he was my very best friend on earth. I decided that he would be my
guru, as he seemed to be an Incarnation of a life-quality that corresponded to
my heart and urge in life. All my positive experiences made me surrender to the
acceptance that he was really the Divine Incarnation, as he said himself to be,
which millions of devotees from all over the planet came to experience and many
many books were written about.
I was though uncomfortable in my inner with the situation that he highlighted
himself so extremely. But I definitely saw him as “an incarnation of pure
unselfish divine love”. If he was the one he said himself to be, who was I to
know what to say or how to expose his nature and mission on earth? I was
thankful for the grace of being one of the ones on this planet that found him,
and even got personal assess to him - the interview - a privilege that so many
people were waiting in years to get.
Back in Sweden in February 1997, after one-month stay in India I engaged
myself in the Sai organisation and was introduced to the EHV- training-program
to become an EHV teacher. There was already in August the same year a European
EHV-seminar for some days, arranged in Denmark. The lecturers where some of the
most dedicated EHV-instructors within the international Sathya Sai
organisation, as for ex. Mr Art-Ong Jumsai from Thailand and the international
chairman Mr. Indulal Shah.
In Dec 1988 I was back in India to spend the Christmas and new-year in
Sai Baba’s ashram, Prasanthi Nilayam in Puttaparthi. This time again with my
old mother, but also with my three children (at those time 17, 14 and 6 years).
We all had a fantastic one-month retreat together in the ashram and again an
interview with Sai Baba. During this one-month stay all the family felt that we
in this ashram found a second home. What we were missing in our own culture and
society full of materialistic focus, stress and competition, we found here. We
got nutrition for the souls, a Christmas focused on the message of Christ and not
all the gifts, with lots of singing of Christmas songs from different
countries, choir and instrumental ensembles and as well a children’s
Christmas-play. All this offered all of us something to participate in that we
loved; a place where all generations in our family were united, together with
families and individuals of all ages from all over the world, in an atmosphere
we as human beings were deeply urging for. It was a dream above dreams.
Back in Sweden I became even more engaged in the Sai-organisation. The
Scandinavian co-ordinator Thorbjörn Meyer (now the co-ordinator of the Northern
Europe) was the initiator and as well the chairman of a training institute
within the Sathya Sai organisation; European Sathya Sai Education (ESSE)
institute (located in Copenhagen in Denmark). In the years to come I was in the
ESSE institute trained as an EHV-teacher as well as a teacher-trainer. Together
with another Swedish female dedicated EHV-teacher I started in 1990 a pilot-
project of giving EHV-lessons on Saturdays to a group of public children and
parents. This project went on successfully for about two years. During that
time I was elected the co-ordinator of the West-coast Sai Centre where I
initiated activities for families. The EHV-piloting group was incorporated in
these activities of the Sai-organisation, where we had EHV-lessons for children
of “Sai-devoted” parents and we also had young adults and parent’s groups. The
West-coast Sai Centre became a light and inspiration to the rest of the Swedish
Sai organisation.
In 1991 I was elected the national president/co-ordinator. I attended
the same year an international conference in Prasanthi Nilayam for “office
bearers” from overseas countries. I became familiar with the international leaders
as well as co-ordinators of regions and countries worldwide. I learned to know
many engaged “office bearers” from all over the world. And again I with my
family and a Swedish group had a wonderful Christmas in the ashram.
As the national co-ordinator within the Sai-organisation I initiated a
one-week family retreat during summer, where we had EHV-classes from children
in different ages and teenagers to adults. I was also one of the lecturers that
held introduction for newcomers, as well as in EHV-lectures in
training-courses. I became a popular lecturer about Sai Baba and his teachings
and a meditation-supervisor, within the Sai organisation as well as being
invited to other groups in society interested in Sai Baba.
My whole engagement within the
Sai organisation was of course because I honestly felt deeply inspired by Sai
Baba and his teachings. The EHV-program was to me an ingenious way to a better
school and a better society, everywhere.
During all these years I was
engaged in my two son’s school situations. My daughter was now old enough to
take care of herself (when young she was in a private Montessori school). My
eldest son was in a music school (where I for some time activated a parents
group to come together and play instruments and sing to get closer to our young
ones, and participate with our music at meetings with them when they shared
theirs, which was very fruitful for the contact amongst the parents and very
appreciated by the children). My younger son was in the Waldorf class, where I
was very engaged, and later on one at another school. I was though not
satisfied with their school-situations even if better than “ordinary”.
All this about my own engagement to make clear that there is in my life
a profound “grass-root” background to what later happened.
1993 I had come to a point in my life where I felt I should initiate a
public school in Sweden, where meditation and philosophy were part of the
curriculum and where the human creative abilities were nurtured in every day
schoolwork. There had come a new Swedish curriculum, and new laws about
free-schools that made me see an opening to put all my experience into a
Swedish public school- project that could serve as one alternative model.
I had a group of enthusiastic people around me, having the same vision,
who did want to participate and co-operate in the manifestation of a school. I
also had the support from community leaders where I was living. I was actually
already asked by some politicians to start a school in my own community, as
they knew about the Waldorf-school-project, I had been one of those behinds, in
a nearby community.
I had also had mediation classes for about 15 young people from a
musical-project, which my daughter had carried through for unemployed youth, as
well as for other groups and individuals, in the community where I lived,
during a six months period which had been very successful. This contributed to
that mediation had become a quite familiar subject in this community, which
otherwise could be a “suspicious” subject in a Swedish school!
In Nov.Dec. 93 – Jan.94 I was again visiting Sai Baba’s ashram Prasanthi
Nilayam and participated in an international EHV-conference. Even this time my
old mother and three children followed and we spent another incredibly
wonderful Christmas celebration and new-year celebration in the ashram.
During the EHV conference I told Thorbjörn Meyer from the ESSE institute
about my school idea. We discussed the possibility of, from the very start
integrate the full EHV program, as it would fit perfectly into the new Swedish
curriculum, and to my vision of a school, as this program was a potential key
to everything that I wanted in a school. Mr Meyer discussed it with the
International Chairman, Mr Indulal Shah.
I was given the permission from the International Chairman, as well as
offered the support by the ESSE institute, to become a so-called “adopted
school”. This meant that the school would be legally independent, but regarding
training of teachers in EHV we would get the needed training support from the
ESSE-institute, free of charge. It also meant that there were no financial
responsibilities of any kind towards the school project, from either the ESSE institute
or any other part of the Sai organisation. (We could though receive donations
from private individuals if voluntarily offered). As I was myself a trained EHV
“teacher-trainer” from the ESSE institute, and knew the teacher-trainers in
this institute since many years, this seemed a very good offer.
I though decided that only if I could have a personal talk with Sai
Baba, and he himself agreed, I would go into such a project, as to use the EHV
program would always be connected with the name of Sai Baba, the founder of the
program. I understood that public fear, out of prejudices and suspiciousness of
“dangerous gurus” and “sects” etc., could be part of the establishment-process.
I also knew that Sai Baba very often said “no” to people’s ideas to start
schools or other projects related to the EHV- program, as to do it needed not
only a vision and enthusiasm, but also capacity and experience, and of course a
functioning environment. Very often Sai Baba used to say “wait wait” to such
ideas.
I knew about the Sathya Say school-project in South Africa, where the
married couple who had started and were running it, had to wait for nine years
(the lady told me) before they received a “yes, go ahead” from Sai Baba. When
they finally did, it became a fantastic successful school-project. I came to
know very much about the development and results in this school, as the Swedish
female EHV teacher with whom I had started the children’s and parent’s EHV
lessons in 1990, became a teacher in the African Sathya Sai School, where she
stayed for some years. She later became a teacher in the Gimle School in
Sweden.
Our Swedish group was called for an interview with Sai Baba. I asked if
I should start a school in Sweden with the EHV-program integrated into the
Swedish curriculum. Sai Baba said: “yes yes, start the school! He repeated it
many times. He also said that he would talk to me separately and that he would
give all details. My understanding was that I could talk to him if I needed
about the integration of the EHV-program. I was some days later called for a
private interview with my family-members, where he confirmed his “yes”.
I now was in direct contact with the founder of the EHV-program, who was
positively supporting this idea, and I had the established international Sathya
Sai-organisation as well as the ESSE institute behind me. During this stay Sai
Baba gave a lot of attention to my sons, especially the elder one, and to me
both during darshans and during the interviews. (Darshan is a tradition when
all people coming to see Sai Baba are sitting in the compound of the temple,
and he is walking around so that everyone can see and sometimes talk to him,
and when groups of people or individuals can by Sai Baba be invited for
personal interviews) I seemed to be very fortunate.
Back in Sweden, Gimle Trust became established and the school-project
just step by step progressed. To all so far involved I introduced the ides of
implementing/integrating the EHV-program into the Swedish curriculum in this
free-school project. I was very open about that Sai Baba was the founder of the
EHV-program, to all instances, in all written information as well as verbally
at introduction meetings. Not at all as a missionary of Sai Baba as the school
as such had not the focus on Sai Baba. The focus was on universal Human Values
and the EHV program that gave tools to implement them into daily life, within
our own culture as well as being inspired from human values from other
cultures.
It was a precondition from the Sathya Sai organisation, and also Sai
Baba himself said so in a lecture I heard, to always use the name of Sai Baba,
or Sathya Sai, in dealing with the EHV-program. To me this was as natural as to
use the names Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner in using their pedagogic programs.
I also wanted to be sure that no one later should say that we had been hiding
the source of the EHV program in a purpose of “secretly draw people to Sai
Baba”, or that we were a secret sect etc.
In ”adopted” public schools, integrating the EHV-program, there was no
special focus at Sai Baba as a person more than that he was the founder and a
good example in living human values, as Jesus and as Mother Theresa and as
Martin Luther King etc. But in schools within the legal body of the Sai organisation
(as in India) there was a focus on Sai Baba as God incarnated. But Gimle Trust
was its own legal body.
I was fully convinced that the EHV program and thus also Sai Baba would
be more and more recognised all over the world in the years to come. This I
also told to some local politicians and assured them that they would one day be
vary proud of having in their community the first school in Sweden and one of
the first in the western countries integrating the EHV program.
Many supporters of this school-project joined. We went though through a
lot of intensive hardships by being controversial in using a program initiated
by an Indian “holy man”. But we also got fantastic support, both financially
and morally from many individuals in Sweden and other countries around the
world. Gimle School did start in August 1995.
During the years of preparation, establishment and development of this
school (1994-99) I visited Sai Baba many times. My family-members also did, and
so did many others who were “devoted” to Sai Baba and who supported the
school-project. Even some parents and their children did. Most of the children
and their families in the Gimle School had no relation to or special interest
in Sai Baba, but there were those that came to the school just because they
were “devotees” to or interested, and some became interested in Sai Baba.
We received financial donations from devotees from Sweden and also other
countries, as the financial support from government was too limited in the
beginning when there were few pupils, to also finance the establishment costs.
Without these donations we would not have survived.
There came visitors to Gimle School from all Sweden and from countries
around the world. We became one model of a school that integrated, so deep
wanted and so much needed, Human Values by the means of an international
program. Teachers, children as well as parents were taught meditation.
Creativity was a core in the education. Singing and music-theatre engaged all
the children both as storywriters, composers, actors and setting up plays with
messages that awakened the Human Values, in themselves and also the audience.
They even visited other schools in Sweden and performed their ”musicals”.
There were other schools and classes in other countries in other
cultures working with the same EHV-program, but each school was it’s own unique
model, due to the local culture and teacher’s capacity etc.
We, the committed enthusiasts within the Gimle Trust, also developed a
scenario based on the EHV-program, called “Values in the World” (“Värden i
Världen” in Swedish), for adults; teachers, parents or other interested, to be
used for seminars, and other projects. We had some very successful
pilot-seminars. While the school expanded, also more and more people came that
did want to participate to piloting and further establish the Values in the
World- scenario.
One collective-living/community of the “voluntary enthusiasts”, that
came to support the school-project, naturally came into existence. The members
paid rent to live there, which contributed to the school budget. Many also gave
private donations, and worked as volunteers. This community(around 30 people
from age 0-80) became a kind of “research-place” for how to “live the human
values” in daily life all the time and developing the EHV-program into the
Values in the World scenario. This community became a kind of retreat-place for
many sai-devotees, and even others. Another community was later also being
established by people coming from other places out of interest in the school
and in the Values in the World scenario.
Gimle School became more and more recognised by the local Community as
we did offer an alternative school of a very creative and non-violent spirit.
We developed the program for “gymnasium” (class 10,11,12) and obtained 1998 the
legal permission to start, as before described.
It might sound as everything was just flying in happiness, but of course
there was a tremendous engagement and work, both from paid teachers and
volunteers. Of course we also ran into problems, sometimes extremely tough. But
our endeavours inspired and benefited a lot of children, their parents as well
as others. More and more school-personnel from other places cam were e for
study-visits. For myself and the other visionaries and EHV-enthusiasts, the
Gimle School project (including the Values in the World project) was a gift to
our society that we wanted to nurture as a beautiful garden with flowers of all
kinds, and with a potential to bridge through human values between generations
as well as cultures, religions and countries. Gimle School also received
financial support from the Swedish school-authorities for four teachers to
visit the Sathya Sai schools in Africa and Thailand, which also happened in
late 1997.
In summer1998 a new legal body, by the hired teachers and the
headmistress in Gimle School, was established. The legal responsibility for the
school was turned over to this new legal body for the Gimle Trust to
concentrate on the development of the Values in the World scenario, including
EHV-seminars, outside the Sai organisation, also on a national level, for
public teachers and others non sai-devotees in society. An activity that with
successful results started during the autumn 98 and spring 99.
There was one situation regarding Sai Baba that was not easy to deal
with. A young man who was part of the inner team to develop the EHV-profile in
Gimle School and who was one of the co-creators of the Values in the World
scenario, in a private interview with Sai Baba had experienced something that
he after a long time told. What had happened was that Sai Baba had “kissed him
on his mouth”, and asked him to take his pants off and “oiled him with some oil
close to or on his genitals”. A thought of “ugly old man” (there is a special
wording in Swedish “ful gubbe” that translated can be described so) came to the
young man’s mind, but as it “couldn’t possibly be so” he surrendered as he
already had accepted Sai Baba as a “Divine incarnation” and his Master and
spiritual teacher (guru). Sai Baba told him not to tell to anyone what
happened. (After a year or so he did anyway).
The Young man had prior to this incident prayed for help to control his
passionate sexuality, which he felt, trapped him in an impossible relationship.
He felt that he got that help out of this “ceremony” from Sai Baba. But he
expressed, when he told the story, confusion about that Sai Baba had kissed him
on his mouth. None of us who later listened to his story, could out from our
experiences with Sai Baba, even get an idea that it was anything else but some
healing or sexual or kundalini transformation behind this happening.
This young man is not living in Sweden since summer 1997 when after,
with his wife and child, having attended the Youth conference in Prasanthi
Nilayam they did not come back to Sweden. He is still a devotee of Sai Baba as
far as I know, and does not want to have any contact with his former friends
from the team around the school-project in Sweden.
Our local priest from the Christian Protestant church, a very
fundamentalistic priest attacked very heavily our school-project during the
preparation period in 1994, because of Sai Baba and of being a potential
dangerous Hindu sect. He showed me a document he had received from Germany,
telling that Sai Baba was a homosexual and having sex with boys, which I saw as
black mailing from the Christian Church. But I directly could understand that
if such a situation, as described above, was told about, it of course could be
taken for a homosexual approach done by Sai Baba from people not knowing or
having met him. (This I of course never talked about with the priest). Sai Baba
never talked about himself being either heterosexual or homosexual but as I had
understood being in a state above any
sexual desires.
I talked about this to the co-ordinator for the Northern Europe region
within the Sai-organisation, an elderly German man (over 70) with the name
Bernhard Gruber. He told me that he had heard about this with young men before
and that some of the officers within the Sai-organisation had many years ago
asked an American devotee (for all Sai Baba devotees very well known, but since
some years not more in life), Dr. Hislop to ask Sai Baba about this activity.
So he did and Sai Baba had answered “it is only for healing”.
When I heard this I found it very difficult that “healing” in such a way
needed to happen. And I understood it as even Mr Gruber felt so. Today I have
come to believe that he might have been familiar with and referred to such
serious molesting cases as I today have come to know, rather than the case with
the Swedish young man that I referred to.
Mr Gruber was always very loving to me and supportive in a trusting way,
not controlling. I could always talk to him regarding difficulties while having
the responsibility as the national chairman; he would always listen with an
open heart. I was a guest in his and his wife’s home when I brought up the
above described subject. I became surprised that he knew anything about it at
all, and that it had been talked about amongst the officers of the
organisation. But I had no slightest doubts whatsoever that it was otherwise
than that Sai Baba had a spiritual motive of healing/transformation. I also
thought it was a support for men to control their sexuality to align it with
their inner moral and spiritual lives, especially as it was my observation that
“obsessed” sexual processes often happens and creates enormous sufferings and
disturbs a righteous living these days. I was not even taking into
consideration that Sai Baba could have anything but a healing motive.
I would never in my life have been able to imagine that a man like
Berhard Gruber and also his wife would accept, ignore or justify such sexual
abuse that is known to me today if they had known. I hope for their sake they
did not know.
Another Swedish man, to me very trustworthy and very devoted to Sai Baba
since about 20 years back, who was involved in the school-project, at this time
close to 50 years old, told me when I talked to him about this situation, that
it happened to him when he was young (around 30) that Sai Baba oiled his
genitals as well. The man told it to be some help for the Kundalini.
Next time I heard a similar story was later, in 1996 with my eldest son,
at that time 22 (shortly explained in the beginning of this letter). He got a
private interview with Sai Baba. He thought that he should now get the grace of
really asking serious spiritual enlightening questions. But Sai Baba started to
kiss him on his mouth. My son immediately reacted negatively and asked what he
was doing. Sai Baba ended the interview very fast without any spiritual
dialogue.
My son was very confused and shocked about this happening, but he had
had so much of enlightened feelings and experiences since many years up to this
moment, so he had no idea that Sai Baba did so out of any sexual desire. But he
wanted to understand what had happened and why and therefor tried to talk about
it to many elder experienced men in the ashram, but no one answered him.
He even told the incident to Mr. Jumsai in Thailand, whom he to the
outmost respected and trusted, when shortly after having had the experience,
visited Mr Jumsai as well as the Sathya Sai School in Thailand, together with
his wife, who was born in Thailand, and their little daughter. Mr. Jumsai did
not pay any notice to my son’s communication. He just ignored it. Mr. Jumsai
was their host for one months stay in Thailand where he cared for them
extraordinary, far beyond their expectations, in every other aspect, so it was
not that he ignored their presence.
When back home a couple of
months after the incident my son told me and also others in our community about
it. My son also had an instant feeling of “ugly old man”. And he felt an inner
protest, and got the feeling of losing his divine inner contact at the moment
Sai Baba approached him as described. We were all absolutely sure that Sai Baba
meant something spiritually positive which we could not understand, as we all
out from other experiences accepted him as a “divine incarnation and our pure
guru”.
In the summer 1997 at the a youth-conference in Puttaparthi where some
of the youth living in our Sai community attended, amongst them my son in law
as well as my eldest son. My son told me afterwards that one young man, the son
of a very devoted family (since 20 to 30 years I think) from the US, was lucky
to get ten private interviews. My son mentioned that he noticed that this young
man did not look happy when he came out from the interviews, and was wondering
why. We never talked about this anymore besides that I heard him mention this
at some other times when talking about Sai Baba and interviews.
In the end of 1999 it was discovered that this young man had been
seriously molested since he was 15 until now, 21, without his parents getting
to know as Sai Baba threatened the boy not to tell. But suddenly it became too
much and the young man told his parents and the shocking situation was exposed.
The family of course immediately left their “guru” and their posts and
engagements in the Sai organisation and the EHV program. I have had personal
contact with this family, before as well as after this situation was unveiled.
My son also told me that something intimate had occurred to another
young man from Sweden whom we knew well, but I never talked to him about this
until I had understood the molesting situation. This young man was puzzled as
my son, and also had the immediate thought of “ugly old man”, but opposite to
my son has accepted this intimacy as a special blessing. He is still very
engaged in the Sai organisation, as Sai Baba for him and his parents is God
incarnated. He is still very young but is a Centre co-ordinator/leader in the
only Sai Centre that still exists in Sweden.
I myself find is irresponsible of his seniors to let him hold such a
post. Especially now when the situation about the sexual abuse allegations are
being known. During my time as a national co-ordinator I learned from my
seniors that very young members should not be given such responsibilities. Also
I have a feeling that as he, because he is accepting the intimacy with Sai
Baba, is given such a post to cover up some negativity. But this is just my own
reflections in my concern about the young men. I know this young man as he was
sometimes a guest in our community and I have visited his family, as well as
been to Sai Baba together with them. He is a wonderful young man, very devoted
to live a righteous life and so are his parents.
Now to the story of the Swedish young man mentioned in the beginning of
this letter, which became to be a crucial point in my own life and many other
Swedish followers of Sai Baba. This story he himself, at that time 21, told me
in July 99. (Let us call him X, as he wants to be anonymous):
X was in Sai Baba’s ashram in Puttaparthi during Christmas 98 and
January 99. (I was myself present in the ashram in January where I for the
first time met X). He had as I remember eight interviews, some before I arrived
and some while I was present in the ashram. All the Swedish talked about “the
golden boy” who had so many interviews. As I remember, four of his interviews were
together with a Swedish group. As there were many Swedish people present, they
were in two groups. (When I came with Conny Larsson and a group we became a
third group). In the same group as X was also, at that time (and still I
think), the national co-ordinator/Chairman of the Swedish Sathya Sai
organisation (Jörgen Mölgaard), who is a middle-age medical doctor and
researcher. He was in the ashram for some months at that time. Also there for a
long stay was a former national Chairman (Ulf Sviberg), he too in the middle
age. (I was myself the national Chairman for four years in between these two
men).
X told me that in all the interviews in Dec.-Jan. X was called into the inner room with Sai
Baba alone. EVERY time Sai Baba was doing something with X’s penis; touching,
oiling, rubbing etc and telling X it was for his sexual transformation. Sai
Baba told X not to tell anyone. Sai Baba also told him that no one in the group
“out there” (in the other room) deserved an interview but got it only because
of X, and at some interviews also X’s brother, who was in the ashram for a
short time. Only X was alone with Sai Baba in the inner room though.
X felt very uncomfortable with the situation, but also filled up with
all energy of getting so much attention and being chosen out of the many. He
received a lot of materialised objects, watch, rings, nucleus, japamalas etc.
He also was enriched by the atmosphere and the talks and jokes from Sai Baba in
the outer interview room. X told me that when all the other Swedish people were
telling him how lucky he was to get all these private interviews and obviously
thought that X had private spiritual talks with Sai Baba, he couldn’t tell them
that these private interviews were nothing to aim for, as it for him created only
confusion about what it was for and when it should end. Every time X felt
protests from within, and asked Sai Baba what this was for, but Sai Baba told
him to surrender as it was for his sexual transformation and that X was very
blessed, chosen out of so many who would want to be the ones.
As X at that time could not in any way even think that Sai Baba had a
personal interest in a sexual activity, even though X felt inside a protest, he
did trust Sai Baba and just wanted to understand the situation.
Sai Baba invited X to come to Kodaikanal in summer for to stay in his
private house and also told X to bring his mother. Sai Baba gave X money in
rupees and dollars to the amount of about 10.000 Swedish crones (about 1000
Dollars) to finance the ticket to come back to India.
Even though Sai Baba told X not to tell anyone about what happened in
the interviews, but as X felt more and more confused about what the “Avatar”
was doing in privacy with him, he decided to go and talk to the two elder,
since long time devoted and experienced Swedish men, the present national
Chairman as well as the former, mentioned above. He felt the inner need to understand what was happening and why.
The two Swedish men said they had never heard anything like this, but told the
young X that he was very blessed and that it all was a tremendous grace. X told
me he that he after this talk was crying.
All this happened in Dec.-Jan- 98,99. I never talked to X personally at
that time and I did not in any way imagine what was going on. I was only a
Swedish lady out of the many to X, and I respected him to keep his experiences
for himself or share with close associated, as I when I myself got much
attention from Sai Baba felt I wanted to keep it in silence and digest. Later X
told me that he had felt he wanted to talk to me in January, but he never did
until July 99.
My friend Conny Larsson though started to talk to X in January. Conny
told me that Sai Baba did the same procedure to X as was done to himself many
years ago, some kind of oiling of the genitals. This was the first time that
Conny told me that this had happened to him. He had told me many years ago,
when I first got to know him (1989 I think), that some “secret ceremony” had
happened between him and Sai Baba many years ago, which Conny explained was
some kind of very special initiation that somehow sealed Conny to Sai Baba and
not to have a woman throughout his life, but stay as a monk. I remember that I
told Conny that I thought that Sai Baba will change and in future tell him
something else, as it to me did not make sense that Sai Baba would seal men to
him in this way. Conny never talked to me about this again until now in the
ashram in January 1999.
This was similar to the other now around 50, Swedish man that I mentioned
earlier in this report. The “oiling procedure”, was done to him 15-20years ago
as was the case with Conny This man was still an office bearer in the Sai
organisation as well as his wife. As I
understood they were sure that what Sai Baba had done had with the
kundalini-processes to do. Either he or Conny had ever talked to me any
negativity about their intimate meetings with Sai Baba. They are all now
ex-followers
In June 1999 X was back in the ashram in Puttaparthi. It was summer (in
Sweden). Sai Baba had told X to come in summer to Kodaikanal, but Sai Baba was
in Brindhavan, Whitefield, in June. X travelled this time with his elder
brother, Conny and a group around them. X’s mother had been invited by X to
come and had agreed to do so but a couple of weeks later, and for one week stay
only. I myself came to the ashram some
days after X and Conny and their group, to join some other close friends of
mine who also were there, and we created a Swedish group all together. After
just a couple of days we had an interview. Sai Baba talked very much, in front
of the whole group, about that the mother of X and his brother should come, and
that he, Sai Baba, should take very well care of her. X was called in alone to
the inner room, so was also another young man, and so was I. X did not tell the
group about what happened in this private interview.
X and his brother were quite nervous about their mother arriving, as she
was not at all interested in Sai Baba, rather very sceptic. But as X so much
wanted her to come, she had decided to do so. X and his brother asked me to
support them in making her stay nice for her, as she and I were at the same
age. I also was a mother of children in the same age as her sons who had been
to Sai Baba. They wanted her to have the most possible good time in the ashram,
and they trusted my maturity not to enforce “devotion” on her. I told them it
would be vary natural even if they would not have talked to me, to respect her
integrity and private process regarding Sai Baba. I used to spontaneously do my
best to make it a good experience to be a newcomer in the ashram. I had myself
brought many during my years with Sai Baba.
I was away from the ashram for some days visiting a Swedish friend
living further south in India. When back I heard that X and his brother had
“been granted” another interview, without the group. (Their mother had not yet
arrived but would come within some days). Conny told me that in this last
interview of the two brothers, Sai Baba had forced himself sexually on X, so
that X had had to stop him. Now Conny started to say that Sai Baba had own
sexual interest and that he (Conny) himself had experienced this in the early
80th, therefore he knew that X told the truth, he said. I listened, but I could
not believe him, as he had never before told this.
Another Swedish man around 50 (let us call him W), became involved in
this communication with Conny. W did definitely not believe that it could be
so. Conny told him to talk to X, even though X had told Conny in privacy only,
as Sai Baba had told X not to tell anyone. So W did, and even if X was confused
by Conny having spoken without first asking him, he told his story and W was
shocked and in despair by what he got to hear. He shared his despair with me.
He had been with Sai Baba for many many years. He had this time his teenage
daughter with him in the ashram for the first time.
The mother of X was about to come the same day as W and his daughter was
supposed to leave. That day X and his
brother went to Bangalore to meet their mother and were not present at morning
darshan. Conny had said to W that we could not expect any interview when X and
his brother were not present, as Sai Baba was only interested in the “boys”. W
was in deep despair, very unhappy and confused about what he had heard from
Conny and X and wanted to talk to Sai Baba. He wanted an explanation. This was
the last darshan for W and his daughter before going back to Sweden.
Surprisingly Sai Baba called the group for interview this morning. We
all sat waiting on the veranda of the mandir (the temple) as is normal when
being called for an interview. When Sai Baba came to the veranda to take us
into the interview-room, he asked Conny: “Where are the two boys”? (I saw and heard this as I was sitting on
the veranda in the first row of the group of women opposite within just a few
meters distance to Conny). “In Bangalore to pick up their mother”, Conny
answered. Sai Baba looked very surprised and asked again and got the same
answer. As I remember Sai Baba asked when they would come back and was told
“tonight”. Sai Baba told all of us to go back from the veranda and said, “I
will see you tomorrow”, which meant no interview now but the next day.
W went back to Sweden, very confused.
The “boys”, X 21, and his some years elder brother, arrived in the
evening with their mother. She told very kindly but very clearly to the whole
group that she came because her son X so wanted and that she had no personal
interest in Sai Baba. Next day the brother of X had to go back to Sweden
because of studies. We got no interview that day.
Next day, two days after our “visit” at the veranda, we were again
called for an interview. “The mother” was sitting next to me just in front of
the feet of Sai Baba in the interview room. Sai Baba asked her what she wanted.
She said that she did not want anything, and that she had come only because of
her son X. Sai Baba asked if she did want Sai Baba. She said no; I do not want
Sai Baba. He materialised her a
necklace. She refused to take it. Sai Baba forced it into her hand. She tried
to refuse to take it, but he managed to get it to stay in her hand. Sai Baba
tried to talk her into an interest in him, but she was very clear about that
she had no personal interest. I was in my inner, astonishing to myself,
reflecting about that Sai Baba seemed to be out of control regarding the
situation. He looked powerless and in a way uncertain. I never told these my
feelings to anyone at that time as I did not know how to deal with them.
Sai Baba talked to the others in the group, and called also to separate
interviews in the inner room. X and his mother were called alone. The mother
told me afterwards that this talk with Sai Baba meant nothing. “I know my son
better than he does”, she said. Sai Baba had told her what a good person her
son is. She had told Sai Baba that of course she knew, as X had always been a
light in their family. She had also given back the necklace Sai Baba had forced
into her hand. He not at all impressed her. She also said to me that she
noticed that he likes young boys. He is clutching young boys on their bottoms,
she said, and added that of course he likes her son X, as he was a very good
looking and bright young man. She also said to me that her son X looked like a
homosexual with all the “tingle tangle” he had received from Sai Baba that was
hanging everywhere on him! (All the “materialised” objects he had been given).
“The mother“ stayed for a week. She had a very good time as all the
women in the group engaged with her and she also had a good time with her son.
She was definitely a very lovely woman. She said she was very happy about her
stay. She even mentioned to me that it could be interesting with another
interview now when she got accustomed to the ashram. She never though told any
direct interest regarding Sai Baba. I never heard her talking about the
genuineness or not of the by Sai Baba materialised objects (as was mentioned in
an article in a Swedish magazine).
A talk amongst us who had been with Sai Baba since long though started.
We found out that many of us had at some situations seen that he took things
from the chair or had it in his hand before he “materialised” it. All of us had
had the thought that he did so sometimes only to test our faith. We all started
to confront that the materialisations were not always genuine. I started to
feel that if he faked only some of them, or even one, they all became useless,
and I wandered why he did so at all. I before had been thinking that even if he
is faking sometimes to test our faith, it was not honest by him to say that it
was a materialisation the times it was not. I never though doubted him to have
the power of materialising, but I did not like him to not tell the truth, and
did not know how to deal with these untruths in my own inner. They disturbed
me.
In darshan Sai Baba told X: “Mother doesn’t like, what can I do?” There
were no more interviews. The mother went back home. Most of the members of our
group, including Conny, also left the ashram after some days for going back
home. I together with X was booked at the same flight home a week later. I
noticed that X looked more and more “down” every day. Sai Baba gave almost no
more attention to him, just some short remarks during darshans. I had still not
talked to X about his interviews.
A female friend of mine that since long time lived in Puttaparthi, also
noticed that X became more and more unhappy and we talked about it. She was an
old friend of Conny and they also talked a lot about the situation before Conny
left. From her I now got to know that she did know that Sai Baba had some
sexual intimacy with school ”boys” and other young men. She got me to observe
that some young man (or elder boy) almost every darshan was invited for an
interview. Very often the same one many days in a row. She even told me that
some young men or elder boys are with him during nights, sleeping in his bed.
She also told that she once in an interview had looked in behind the curtain
into the inner interview-room, when Sai Baba was alone with a young man, or
student, and she saw them lying on the floor together. And she told me that she
had heard that Sai Baba used to pay boys money for being sexually intimate with
him. She had even herself talked to some young Indian boy who was a “lover” to
Sai Baba. .
Now also I got to hear from someone, I don’t remember who, I think it
was the same friend mentioned above, that David Bailey and his wife Faye, both
whom I had met many times and talked to and knew their devotion and loyalty to
Sai Baba, had left because they had got to know about these sexual activity of
Sai Baba. I had earlier during this visit in the ashram heard that they had
left Sai Baba, which I couldn’t understand, as I knew their many years of
complete devotion and engagement in the ashram and about David as a
music-teacher for Sai Baba’s students. I also got to hear that two French young
men had been murdered on their way from Puttaparthi to Bangalore and that they
had experienced or understood about this hidden sexual abuse and were on their
way to report home in France.
Still I could not get into my understanding that Sai Baba had some own
physical sexual uncontrolled inclination. So many times I had listened to him
in interviews telling “Before marriage only friends, after marriage husband and
wife”, to my own daughter an her “husband to become” as well as others. So much
he had talked about discipline of senses and actually inspired me and my whole
family, as well as all the people in the community that we lived in for many
years, where we all accepted Sai Baba as the outmost good example, absolutely
free from any sense or body desires of the kind, a Divine Incarnation, as he
told himself to be. I had so deeply accepted that the “intimate touches”, I had
before heard he did to young men, was to help them not to fall into sexual
bindings that would take their attention from their spiritual life and their
studies and get lost in a sexuality before being matured for a partner.
As there are no monastery-customs, or deep spiritual teachings in
schools or in the homes nowadays where young men and women can get grounded in
their inner Divinity before getting into the household-life, I had accepted
that Sai Baba did touch some young men’s genitals to get their sexuality calmed
down or balanced into a creative life. Especially as young men very often have
big problems when their sexual urge takes control over their bodies and minds.
Even though my own son after being kissed on his mouth by Sai Baba in a
private interview, never had come to a peaceful understanding about this
moment, and could not see or feel anything Divine in this confrontation with
Sai Baba, I and even my son himself, had surrendered to that it must be of a
Divine purpose that we could not yet understand.
As this document has the
focus the sexual abuse situation, I have very little told about my divine
adventure during my years with Sai Baba. From the very first book in 1986
through all the years to now, July 1999 my life was full of mystical miraculous
incidents, dreams and coincidences that I related to Sai Baba. I always though
listened to my inner and asked him after, not the opposite, and always felt
supported by him to follow my inner. Very often I never asked but in different
miraculous ways was supported anyway. I always felt he knew what was going on
in my inner and strengthened it. It is an enormous privilege in life to have
someone supporting ones inner guiding, and when it was the Avatar it was an
outstanding privilege. My inner was never but happy in my contact with Sai
Baba. Even in very difficult hardships in life he came in dreams that solved my
situations. More than being able to pray for, I lived an adventurous meaningful
life full of “heart engaging” co-operational projects with the potential of
being part of a change from an “inhuman society to a human society and further
to an awakened divine society, where Sai Baba seemed to be the central
dominator. I would never dream of turning away from him as the inspiration,
guide and absolutely best friend in my life. These experiences I shared
mutually with my family-members and with many fellow sisters and brothers who
came into my life during all these years.
But, I could now feel that a new process had started within me. The 3rd
of July, in the afternoon, X and I took a taxi from Puttaparthi to Bangalore to
take our flight back home to Sweden. Already in the taxi X started to tell me.
We talked the whole way to Sweden, just slept some short moments.
X told that Sai Baba had lost himself in sexual feelings and with loud
passionate breathings mumbling “I’m coming I’m coming. And when Sai Baba after
having “ordered” X to do padanamaskar (a tradition of kissing the feet of the
master), he took X’s head on his way to rise up from the feet, and pressed his
head towards his own genitals holding up his robe (dress) and obviously wanted
and tried to force X to take his own (Sai Baba’s) penis into his mouth.
There in the very moment X woke up to the absolutely conviction that this was
not for X but for Sai Baba himself. X refused completely. Sai Baba got angry
and the interview ended.
Even though X was in a state of shock after this interview, he as I
understood it somehow wanted an explanation from Sai Baba about what had
happened. But there ended the “romance “between Sai Baba and X. He had only the
interview together with his mother after this event. Even if X wanted to talk
to Sai Baba about this before he left for Sweden and asked for it in many
darshans, he never got to. The honesty from this young man was not even for a
second doubted in me. I knew immediately that my life with Sai Baba from now on
should be very different. I decided to listen to this young man as much as he needed
and to take my own shock-reaction later.
After having listened to X for hours during our journey home to Sweden,
I invited him to come and stay with me and my son and his family if he felt he
needed. So he did for the first week back in Sweden. I invited the other young
men I did know in Sweden who had been involved in intimacy with Sai Baba and as
well my son in law and my daughter and got them to talk together. And I
listened for many hours to X alone as well. These young men had all noticed that
Sai Baba in every interview “accidentally happened to” with his hand come near
their genitals so that he “happened “ to touch.
Here is what I got to hear more than what already is told above. Of
course it is how I heard it and understood it.
X had no at all attention from Sai Baba, when he was alone with him in
the private interviews, other than towards his genitals. Sai Baba touched,
looked, rubbed, oiled and “played”. He tried to stimulate X’s penis to erect,
but it was not so easy as X felt no natural sexual stimulants or desire
regarding Sai Baba who said it was for X’s sexual transformation and urged him
to just let go resistance as he, Sai Baba, was God. Even though X felt a
resistance all the time he thought he had to overcome it for the sexual transformation
to happen. Sometimes X got the thought that Sai Baba looked like a mad person
when he laughed when “playing” with X’s penis. But he suppressed such thoughts.
X told that in Dec.-Jan. when he had the many interviews he felt very
“Divine empowered” by the first part of the interviews, in the outer room,
where he also got a lot of attention. And even though he disliked the private
part of the interviews he still felt empowered after the interviews to begin
with. But he also got more and more confused about this sexual transformation
part.
But the whole situation was so much more than just what actually
happened in the outer. X told me during many hours again and again and deeper
and deeper, his feelings. Not only the feelings he had in the interviews and in
between, but also now when he understood that his feelings of resistance were
right and not to overcome to get transformed.
He felt he had the duty to inform about the true story to all he knew
that were connected to Sai Baba and to the world. At the same time as he knew
he should break the light and hope for so many people by telling his
experiences. He felt it was a far too big responsibility for a young man
seeking God and having trusted in the Divinity of Sai Baba.
At one moment X laughed and compared his experience with a Monte Pyton
movie. Next moment he became deeply serious expressing his feelings about the
absolute worst thing that can ever happen to a human being; that the one, to
whom a young innocent faithful devotee surrender as God, a Divine Incarnation
or Divine Teacher, commits a sexual outrage towards the innocently trusting
young one.
What touched my heart most when listening was when I
saw how X worked with his own inner to overcome his kind of “shame or
embarrassment” towards himself of having been so deeply lurked and overpowered
that it could happen even though he felt resistance from his own inner truth. I
became more than ever aware of how dependent the young ones are on the elder
ones. Now X also had found on the Internet similar stories as his own, and even
worse. It became so obvious to X that his own inner rejections had been correct
from the very beginning and that many young men before him had been victims and
exposed their stories. It was obvious to me that it was very painful for X to
find out of having been so ignorant about his own inner truth and so much in
trust towards someone who was a profound betrayer of chastity.
How should a boy or a young man, or their parents, be able to imagine
that Sai Baba, the recognised Founder of the, in schools and Universities, even
outside India, so well established and by governments accepted, Education in
Human Values program, even recognised by the President of India and UNESCO, a
program that proclaims as the foremost duty of any teacher or adult is to be a
good example to the young ones, that this founder would sexually molest young
men and even boys as young as seven years old. In a lecture Sai Baba held many
years ago regarding EHV and youth, which I found in a small booklet, he is
quoting somebody’s statement saying that what is most difficult for the
teenagers of today is to become good examples when they have none. To teach by
being a good example to the young ones was the key-point in this speech, aimed
at adults, especially parents and absolutely especially teachers.
Nor X, nor myself and many decent people around the world, could ever
imagine that such a situation as now begun to expose it existed. And I am sure
even X, could not a slightest fraction of a second at that time imagine that
many many of the ones so called experienced “devotees” around Sai Baba, to whom
X thought he had the responsibility to inform about what he had come to know,
already knew, many since 20-30 years, that so happened to many young men and
boys, but accepted it as divine grace!?!? And by that let it happen!?!?
I was myself one of the adults that inspired people to go to Sai Baba
and who promoted him as a universal teacher, as I had started the school in
Sweden with the EHV-program integrated in the Swedish Curriculum. I had used,
in my promotion of the EHV-program, the booklet from the conference in Geneva
1995, where there is the statement about the link to UNESCO and speakers from
the United Nations.
I cannot see anyone that has more power than the United Nations and
UNESCO to protect and re-establish the dignity of the boys and young men that
are or ever were victims, and make sure that this never happens to anyone more,
now when it, thanks to the young ones that dared to speak out has started to be
spread all over the world.
UNESCO has started by the “withdrawal-message”. But the activity of Sai
Baba is still going on, supported by thousands of officials within the Sai
organisation and other “devotees” by either not knowing or denying it as
rumours or accepting it as blessing and grace, or just awaiting an acceptable
explanation. Many young ones are surely suffering in their silence, not feeling
or knowing that they can speak up and be trusted and supported by elders..
X had been very actively coming to the Sai organisation’s activities in
Sweden and was supposed to become a youth co-ordinator for the west-coast area.
Most of the members in Sweden knew him, especially as he was the one in Sweden
that got most attention from Sai Baba and most private interviews since many
many years. X felt now a duty to inform the co-ordinating committee and all
members in Sweden about his situation. A meeting with the co-ordinating
committee and members was arranged, by the national chairman, Jörgen Mölgaard.
X was present and so were Conny Larsson and my son, telling their experiences.
I was no longer a member of the Sai organisation since a couple of years
because of other reasons, so I was not allowed to come to this meeting even
though X had asked the leaders to let me. After the meeting X and my son told
me that the national chairman was smiling scornfully when they told their
stories. They said that if only met with such an attitude when approaching an
elder person about an experience as this, could bring a young man to suicide.
Other members met them seriously and many left immediately the Sai organisation
and their faith in and association with Sai Baba. Some had already, after being
in contact with X and David Bailey officially cancelled their memberships. Most
of the long-time devoted in Sweden have since then given up Sai Baba. The
national chairman is though still (in October 2000) the same person, still
accepting the young men to have been blessed, not molested.
As dedicated as Conny Larsson all the years had secretly “glorified”
this private “holy intimacy” that happened between him and Sai Baba in the
early 80th, as dedicated he now became in the awakening process.
This was a shocking change both to himself as well as to all the ones around
the world that were inspired by the enormous devotion to Sai Baba that Conny
use to spread through his lectures about his life and Sai Baba’s influence to
it
Here something of what I later came to know from and understand about
Conny: By listening to X Conny for the first time started to confront his own
situation. Even though he also had had an inner resistance when Sai Baba long
time ago was intimate with him, he had made it an absolute “holy act” within
himself. It was his way to survive the conflict of “God” going sexual with him.
Until now, no one would ever believe him if he told that Sai Baba had an
inclination for own sexual affection. Conny also thought it had been a special
intimacy between Sai Baba and himself. But now when he got in contact with more
young men (Conny had started to talk to other young men as well in the ashram,
during his last stay in July 99, who he saw got many interviews) who were into
this confusing situation, also Conny began to re-examine his past. This became
a traumatic, shaking and shocking process.
While still in Puttaparthi summer 99, Conny decided to ask Sai Baba
about “his situation with the boys” if he got another interview. (As Sai Baba
mostly says “boys”, even about the young men, Conny does the same when talking
or writing about this situation). Conny also had talked to the other Swedish
young man, who besides x and me, also had a private interview at our first
group-interview. Sai Baba had touched his genitals, but not more. (He later
confirmed this to me). Our next group-interview, when the X’s mother was
present, Conny and this young man got a private interview together. Conny and
Sai Baba talked about Conny’s project, “House of Mercy” and at the end Sai Baba
offered Conny to do padanamaskar (touch or kiss the feet of the master). When
Conny raised after the padanamaskar he surprisingly noticed that Sai Baba was
holding his hand on the genitals of the “boy”. Conny stood up and asked “What about this with the boys”. Sai Baba answered
“it is only for healing”.
Conny woke up more and more to that what he himself had accepted as
“healing” many years ago was something totally different. For the first time
Conny felt that he himself would be trusted if telling that Sai Baba had a sexual
desire. Conny also he felt his duty to support X and other young men to be
trusted. He started to ask and research about this sexual activity of Sai Baba,
that he had ignored all these years.
He exposed that he himself had had a mutual sexual history with Sai Baba
for a period of four years in the early 80th, where Sai Baba
involved with his own sexuality. Sai Baba wanted and got sexual satisfaction
for himself to be done by Conny at that time. Conny thus knew that Sai Baba
himself had a sexual desire and need, but thought up to now that he was the
only one who knew and that no one ever would believe him if he told.
Recently before all this also a book about Conny’s life, including his
life with Sai Baba was published and very well sold. In this book there was
nothing at all mentioned about his sexual affair with Sai Baba. The book was
written by a devoted elderly female journalist, who had known Conny for many
years and who wanted to let people know about the miracle of the Divine
incarnation - Sai Baba. The book was translated to many languages. Conny
travelled around in Sweden and in many other countries and gave speeches about
his life, about Sai Baba and taught meditation.
He was in Sweden (and still is) running a successful rehabilitation-home
for drug-addicts and criminals since many years where meditation is
fundamental. (I am myself working partly with a special project at this place).
Many people who knew Conny Larsson since many years back and have been
inspired by his deep and enthusiastic devotion to Sai Baba, contacted me and
asked how he could hide this story in 15 years and more, and tell so many
miraculous stories about Sai Baba and now turn completely around and even tell
a story never told and never heard of before.
I could not myself understand the situation with Conny, and I could not
grasp the whole situation even though I now had understood that Sai Baba was
sexually molesting young men, and even boys from the age of 7,8 years old. Back
home from India I contacted David and Fay Bailey and got to hear their stories,
later compiled into “the Findings”. I learned about more and more similar and
worse stories from other young men and their parents from other countries. I
talked personally with parents who had a son seriously molested as already
mentioned.
I knew personally a retired professional psychiatrist, who had a deep
understanding and interest in spiritual matters since he was young. Both he and
his wife were familiar with Sai Baba and knew my involvement with the school
and Values in the World scenario. They had even attended one of our seminars. I
talked a lot with them about what now had been revealed about Sai Baba. It was
of very much help to me to meet them about this extreme change of reality
within myself, that became the inevitable result by this new knowledge.
Together with this psychiatrist I met Conny about his story with Sai Baba.
During two days we were listening to Conny and asked a lot of questions.
Again I became a very “intimate” witness of an indescribable process of
a man when still young having been overpowered sexually by “God in human form”
and just couldn’t, even though the inner was protesting, believe that this was
anything but for a good spiritual purpose. Sai Baba told Conny that it was for
his sexual transformation and healing. Conny was sexually abused as a child. He
was in deep depression and despair when coming to Sai Baba the first time. Sai
Baba saved Conny from this depression and got a complete open-hearted devotee
in Conny. But Sai Baba also took advantage of this situation for his own sexual
gratification.
I again noticed the same with Conny as I had with X,
that it was terribly painful to find out of having been so ignorant about his
own inner truth and been so much in trust towards someone who was a profound
betrayer of chastity.
I will say it is very heartbreaking to meet these
processes in the victims. It is also impossible not to act for their sake after
having been initiated into their inner waking up processes. As great the faith
and surrender, as painful the betrayal. Where can it be more faith and
surrender, than towards the One, from ones own inner depth is accepted to be
God incarnated in human form? What is more vulnerable to a young man than his
sexuality? Only, I think, the fear of displeasing God! Thus it is presumably
the deepest of processes to have been the victim of letting God go sexual and
then go through the process of “maybe”
not God and when coming to the realisation of having been betrayed, come back to
oneself and regain all given up power and dignity.
How can it be that one can feel “enlightened” by a person who can handle
his innocent devotees in this way???
It was Christmas Eve, in the afternoon. I was sitting amongst thousands
of people from different countries in the compound in Sai Baba’s ashram
Prasanthi Nilayam in Puttaparthi in India. I was in the first row, close to the
middle so that I saw all the men in white opposite me. I was dressed in a white
sari and had jasmine-flowers in my hair. My guitar was placed besides me, while
I together with other people with guitars, drums, violin and other instruments,
was awaiting Sai Baba to come out and the Christmas-choir to start the singing
and us to play.
It was sunshine and an atmosphere of outmost peace. Some of my
family-members were in the choir, some were sitting somewhere else amongst all
the people assembled. We were all here, far away from the Swedish Christmas-stress,
to spend our Christmas days with the Avatar on planet Earth, together with
friends from all over the planet.
Music from a record or tape came streaming out of the loudspeakers. It
was Silent night, the famous Christian Christmas song in a most beautiful
instrumental version. I closed my eyes and experienced my deep inner peace, and
the most deep happiness about to be where I was, both in my inner and outer. A
perfect moment. The music became more and more beautiful, it was as I did not want
it to stop ever, and when it seemed to stop it started again a key higher only,
and became even more beautiful…
I sat there just sinking into my own inner, still with my eyes closed,
awaiting Sai Baba to come and give darshan. I felt my inner only being divine
love. I felt deeply blissful that Sai Baba had given special attention to my
eldest son twice earlier today. I opened my eyes and there just in front of me
Sai Baba, was standing, looking into my eyes and smiling his most sweet loving
smile. I was in heaven on earth. So often he had given me the little extra
attention, almost as a little too much to really seem reality, but which gave
me the feeling of being very blessed. I was more than I ever had asked for,
given the feeling that I was loved and protected and united with my family in
divine love inspired by him.
While me being there in “heaven” on Earth, as far away from even my
imagination that anything could be, there were boys and young men being in a
cruel chaos in their inner, as a consequence of coming to the one whose feet I
kissed this very moment
Many of these boys and young men might be amongst the ones around me
just there this Christmas Eve, together with their parents who were in “heaven”
with me, a heaven these young ones knew for them was a door to hell. They “saw”
our happy faces in heaven and couldn’t share as our adored “Heavenly Father” in
Prasanthi Nilayam (The Highest Abode of
Peace) had sexually molested them in secrecy. He who said in a lecture “I do
not need any secretaries because I do not have any secrets”. He who repeatedly
says, “My life is my message”. He who says that if one student is bad there is
one student spoiled, but if one teacher is bad thousands of students are
spoiled. He who says himself to be the Avatar of the age, the Avatar of Avatars
and the Teacher of Teachers; the Sadguru - the absolute true teacher with no
blemishes of selfishness, and so looked upon and worshipped by millions of
people all around the world. The one who is respected and officially bowed
before by the Indian President and other official authorities. The one that I
and many other parents and adults “knew” to be the best friend of humankind.
The one that had the first place in our hearts and who we “gave” our children
to for guidance and protection.
They, the boys and young men, also most likely wanted to be in “heaven”
with their parents, and were maybe also to an extant there, by the influence of
them. But deep deep inside there was
the opposite that tried hard, sometimes for many many years to align with the
parent’s “heaven”. Maybe in fear of displeasing the parents about their Avatar.
Maybe in fear of losing their social affiliation and trust if true to
themselves. Maybe in fear of displeasing Sai Baba.
When the young X, with his innocent eyes looking into
mine, expressed that this is the worst that can happen, I somehow understood
something about coming into such a “heavenly” community, which the inner so
deeply had urged for, and to let the heart, the deep inner, surrender in Faith
to the “Father” of this “heavenly” community and to be sexually molested by
this same “Father”. In that very moment my inner turned away from Sai Baba,
never more to seek heaven in or through him. He died in my heart.
My youngest son had been with Sai Baba since he was six. Sai Baba had
all the years given him lots of attention and he had been “in heaven” with his
heart full of devotion and faith and more than willing to come to interviews.
When I told him about the sexual abuses he was between sixteen and seventeen.
He first became very embarrassed and couldn’t believe it, and I noticed he
worked intense with his inner.
After some time he reminded me about an incident when he was eleven
(1993). In one of our interviews he had looked behind the curtain into the
inner interview-room when Sai Baba went in alone with one of his student boys.
My young son told me afterwards that he saw Sai Baba and the boy kissing each
other mouth to mouth and he asked me why. He remembered that he became very puzzled.
I had completely forgotten this incident but when he reminded me I remembered,
and as well even my reactions and thoughts. My first reaction was to tell him
that one should not be naughty and look into the private interviews of others.
I remember that he was eager to know why they kissed each other and I said
something like “it just looked so but has another meaning”. This incident was
then completely out of my memory until this reminding moment.
Later when I looked at a photo where my little son was stretching his
hands towards Sai Baba I realised how the trust from him to Sai Baba was built
up during many years, with full support from me and the whole family. So many
years of his life I was sure I could give him nothing better in life than association
with Sai Baba. He was a pupil in Gimle School for three years, class 7 to 9.
How easily he next time visiting Sai Baba (he and a classmate had the plan to
go alone) could have become one of the molested young men.
I was contacted by a Danish young adult, who had been with Sai Baba
since many years and also was very involved in the Sai organisation. He had
heard about X and wanted to check with me. After I had told he said, “I know it
is the truth” and told me the following story. In Puttaparthi in 1991 he was
approached by a very confused Italian young man who had many interviews, who
told that Sai Baba had him to suck Sai Baba’s penis and told him this was for
the young man’s own sexual transformation or kundalini. The Italian young man
was told not to tell anyone, but needed to solve his confusion. The Danish
young man became so utterly confused and couldn’t at all deal with it within
his own sense as Sai Baba was the Divine pure Incarnation to him, and he
completely suppressed it until he heard about X.
The Sathya Sai organisation is a very male-dominated organisation. Sai
Baba himself though in speeches very openly prises the women as naturally
loving and righteous inclined beings that are full of forbearance and patience
and in general better teachers than men.
Taking into consideration all the Sathya Sai schools based on the
Education in Human Values program; all Sai Baba’s speeches about the enormous
responsibility of the teachers and adults to teach by themselves being example;
all the speeches where Sai Baba prises the women. How he by this seems to be a
“protector” of the younger generation and women. And also since the Sai
organisation is about reawakening, living and teaching, in a spirit of
unselfish service, eternal, universal Human Values (Sathya, Dharma Shanti,
Prema Ahimsa ; Truth, Righteous conduct, Peace, Love, Non-violence), in our
lives and in society, through ourselves as living and inspiring examples, Sai Baba seems to be a potential
protector of all humanity. He tells about himself to have incarnated for the
sake of the Sanathana Dharma, described by him as; “The ancient wisdom, the
eternal path. When we are able to bring and put together the ideas of everyone,
the moral laws supported by all religions and the truth that is in all
religions, we will have a picture of sanathana dharma”.
My elder son who “only” was kissed became more and more aware of that
the one he from his heart depth loved and trusted as a genuine guru and Divine
master, was going sexual so that he over-stepped the integrity and even
seriously molested young men as himself and even boys. I listened to him
answering an international well-known healer who asked about his feelings about
being betrayed by a master.
I never until that moment understood how deeply Sai Baba is penetrating
himself into these young ones, to their natural need of experienced guiding in
life and longing for nutrition to their spiritual development, to come to a
point where he can use them sexually. Even after my son was kissed and
protested from his inner, he continued to have the faith in Sai Baba as the
Divine incarnation and persuaded himself that Sai Baba could not have done
anything that was not for healing purposes. What a painful awakening process
that starts in their inner when they understand that their own inner voice
protesting what Sai Baba was doing, was the truth far beyond the “master’s”
self proclaimed “unselfishness and pure divine healing”.
My youngest son when only twelve, at a visit to Sai Baba had two
interviews, one with me and the group and another with the group including his
elder sister after I left. At both those interviews there was an American young
man also present. He got very much attention from Sai Baba, and many many other
interviews. Conny mentioned to me that he was a homosexual and that he had
sexually molested boys in the ashram so that he was not allowed to stay in the
hostels inside the ashram.
Some years later this young man wrote to Conny and wanted my youngest
son’s address. He wrote that they had done some “Shiva lingam ceremony”
together. I couldn’t believe that they had met, as my son never had spoken
about this. When I asked my son he first did not remember at all. Even when I told
about the letter to Conny he first did not, but when I continued to ask he
remembered little by little. Nothing serious seemed to have happened though.
The same day as the last interview my son had been in the market outside
the ashram just shortly buying something and met this young man and they talked
as they had been to the same interview. The young man wanted to see the
lingamstone that Sai Baba had blessed for my son in the interview. He asked my
son to come to his room where he wanted to show him something. There the young
man told my son about that the lingamstone
(a stone in the form of an egg) was a symbol of the sexual organ of
Shiva and explained so by pointing to his own sexual organ. Nothing more seemed
to have happened. I met this young man in 1996, and asked him to tell me
exactly what happened, without telling what my son had told, to see if their
stories were the same. He told the same as my son had remembered
When I first heard about that this young homosexual man, who got many
interviews, was also a paedophile, I thought Sai Baba was helping him out of
his “ paedophile sickness”. Now I do understand there was a complete other
reason for all those interviews. Sai Baba instead of helping him most likely
nurtured his paedophile tendencies.
I have since then heard about and read affidavits about so many cases of
sexual molesting from Sai Baba and about Sai Baba’s active enforced homosexual
practices with his young students. Young boys and young men are not coming to a
safe place going either to the ashram or to study at Sai Baba’s colleges or
universities. Mostly their parents, I am sure, cannot imagine this situation to
exist.
The Education in Human values program seemed to me to be the most
perfect now existing tool to manifest what is said in the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child. And it attracted UNESCO until the sexual
abuse reports reached them.
Sai Baba is maybe the greatest and most far-reaching pleader of human
values in the world today. And a pleader of himself as the Hero of heroes and
seems to at the same time be the most subtle and extensive sexual-molesting
male adult towards young men and boys. Those (including him) who can align this
activity to a human values mission are not living in the same realm of human
values as I am. When I scrutinise within my own realm of human values, no
matter “who” is living a sexual life that is causing to others experiences of
having been sexually molested, may it be because of karma or not, it comes
under the heading of “inhuman values”.
Within the realms of
Mythology, the realms of Gods and Goddesses, we often are confronted with, to
our human references, inhuman living even if accepted in the realms of Divine
drama. Many might look at the realm of Sai Baba as a for all humanity
beneficial “Divine drama on Earth”, which I myself did, though out of complete
other reasons, up to the moment where I was awakened about the sexually
molested victims. There is no place in “my divine mission on earth” for any
sexual abuse to anyone. To me the potential heart to heart mutually voluntarily
agreed upon sexuality between human beings is divine, a gift of Grace. And as
Grace itself is not forcing itself upon us but is there when we open our
hearts, so is divine sexuality there when we open our hearts. Ii is never ever
enforced.
I can understand how young men or boys out of their own control suddenly
can find themselves in the painful situation of being sexually overpowered by
their “master”, by themselves, their parents or others by the young ones
revered elders, paying unlimited reverence to this “master”, who obviously is
not in control of his own sexual inclination in a way that is possible to align
with a living of human values that is acceptable in our civilised society. Even
though he is gaining acceptance in society through “his” Education in Human
Values program in his by Indian government recognised educational institutions,
including an accredited University, where he actually has (or had) the role of
the Principal. And even though he advocates himself to be a “sad guru” (the
true teacher that removes ignorance and leads the seeker towards liberation)
and to be the very best example of dharma (truth and unselfish love in action)
on planet Earth today.
When inner divine bliss followed by experiences of miracles is born in
the life of a human being, by someone or something (may it be Sai Baba or
anyone or anything else) activating the latent “inner impulse of no reservations that such a life is possible,
the power of being the cause of such an “awakened ” life is often (maybe
mostly) given to the outer activator of the impulse rather than to our inner impulse that had the power of
uniting with the realm of divine bliss and a miraculous life. Of course it
is humble and worthy of imitation to pay reverence towards any source that was
a “reminder” of our inner power of opening for the Grace of Divinity to operate
in our lives, but that does not mean that we have to revere any action
whatsoever that is coming from such a source, or any action not in tune with
hour hearts. Sai Baba has himself said that there is a sign of peacefulness in
our hearts when we are following our inner truth and thus doing the right
things.
I cannot understand that Sai Baba is ever officially offering the image
of himself to be looked upon as a perfect living example of human values in
society, in any school or university in any country, well knowing that he is
“privately” approaching young males sexually so that they experience being
sexually abused or molested. May he himself call it “healing, sexual
transformation, divine touches, awakening of the kundalini” or whatever. As
this privacy is also being held in secret as much as possible, by him never
officially talking about that part of his life, by telling the young males not
to tell anyone and by having “loyal” people around him, it is deemed to explode
as a mine at any moment within any official project or program wearing his
name. Not being correctly informed about this situation creates a lot of
paradoxical situations and problems for the ones seriously going into society
with projects based on the EHV program involving children, youth, parents,
teachers, community- and state-officials, politicians as well as own
responsibility for a chosen program.
And what about those adults who knew about this for up to 30 years. Why
did not anyone inform me before I initiated a public school, that such a “mine”
of paradoxical nature existed within the overall concepts related to Sri Sathya
Sai Baba?
What about them who get to know it today?
All organisations that have extensive responsibilities for social
protection and survival circumstances, physical and psychical, of human
individuals on national levels, as well as internationally for humankind, all
over the world, are principally male-dominated, often totally.
Who can I as a woman and a mother, and as well my female sisters all
over the world, appeal to for getting support and protection in our urges to
offer genuine loving upbringing and protection to all our children. We do need
genuine good males worthy of imitation to our sons?
Human beings in thousand and thousands and thousands, probably millions,
go on pilgrimages to Sai Baba from all different countries around the world
because he is promising what every human being in their depths are longing for
The need of coming together around qualities as is the aim of UNESCO and
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which are the qualities
Sai Baba is promising is his mission, and even more, is so strong that there
are adults and elderly people around Sai Baba that offers the natural chastity
of boys and young men to get the possibility to continue to “feel” that they
are the chosen to be together with God in human form on Earth. There are most
likely also those who consent out of fear for their lives or fear of losing
their general respect in society.
Besides saving and rehabilitating victims, there is a need to influence
adults not to accept Sai Baba to sexually molest or abuse any child or young
man ever more. The young males need internationally oriented “heroes” in
dealing with this matter.
Therefore I cannot see any organisation having more power to be the
active fundamental basic force in protecting and healing this outstanding
unbelievable situation than the Unite Nations Organisation. The first very
important “heroic” step is already taken by the resignation of UNESCO from the
conference in Puttaparthi.
There are those who wrote the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child, and a lot of people whom officially are behind this convention. As a
woman and a mother and today even a grandmother I appeal to all these people to
clearly get the Sai Baba situation into the open so that no more young boys and
men need to become victims, and so that the ones that already were can regain a
trust that there are adults not closing their ears and eyes when something
seems too unbelievable to their reality. They could become respectfully
recovered by seeing serious action being taken. I think there is a choice for
every matured man if to be looked upon as rather “zeroes” or rather “heroes” in
the eyes of the younger generation. “Heroes” are these days to be found in
movies, but they are potentially living in every human being. For the young man
there is something very important to find them in matured men as inspiring
examples worthy of imitations in their own lives.
All written here is part of my contribution to achieve what I believe is
naturally fundamental in every heart of every soul living in a human body on
planet Earth, i.e. what is written in United Nations Convention on the Rights
of the Child. I have wondered why this Convention ever needed to be written. It
tells clearly that there are elders who know about their responsibilities for
the young ones, and that there is a lot lot to do that must be done just now in
this very moment, to protect our young ones - our next generation.
Thanks to all my brothers and sisters, who became ex-followers to Sai
Baba when confronted with the stories of the molested young ones, for all the
courage and energy put into action for the exposé of this molesting situation
and for the protection of the young ones. Thanks to all the young men and boys
that have spoken and written their affidavits, and thanks to all parents that
do the same, and thanks to all everywhere that listen and act. Thanks to UNESCO
for the withdrawal. Thanks for all exposé and healing of this
“nature-catastrophe”-like situation.
For me personally it has always been a “paradise” of retreat and
development of my inner to stay as a guest in Sai Baba’s ashram. My personal
contact with Sai Baba, inner as well as outer, has been soothing, inspiring and
developing to my deepest soul-level. I always felt I was blessed by outmost
grace to be given the opportunity to be a guest in his ashram and having him as
my dearest friend. And my experience of the Education in Human Values (EHV)
program has been more than fantastic.
I withdraw my membership in the Sai organisation already in autumn 1997
because of a situation of too much involvement and enforced control, from Sai
organisation officers, into the Gimle trust and the Gimle School as well as my private
life.
The rule within the Sai organisation to have “adopted schools”, as I
have described was the situation with Gimle School, was changed. There was done
an, non-agreed upon from our side, action plan from the ESSE institute (being a
part of the Sai organisation) to take over the full control. I never managed to
make understood to the ESSE chairman and his seniors, that it was the
autonomous legal body of the Gimle Trust having the legal permission from the
Swedish school-authorities and by that responsible of not having any
non-democratic control from another organisation. Also the idea of changing the
name to, or adding the name Swedish Sathya Sai School was part of that action
plan. We came to experience a situation of an “angry” officer from another
country, supported by a huge international organisation, having no sensitive
reality about Swedish school customs and direct contact with groups of
children, enforcing himself into our Swedish school which became too turbulent
and time-consuming for us.
In January 1998 at a visit to Sai Baba, I was in two interviews. In the
first Sai Baba out of himself told me and in the next confirmed to stay out of
the Sai organisation. I asked about the name of the Gimle School and he clearly
said “no change of the name”.
Privately I was accused, by the same officer from ESSE institute as well
as other officers from the international Sai organisation, that I as a
representative of the Sai organisation and thus Sai Baba was not demonstrating
a good example to the youth. I had in a lecture I held at a youth conference
about the “dharma of women” (righteous conduct of women) out from the teachings
of Sai Baba, mentioned that I in the past was twice divorced, in stressing my
message that one needs not to have been living a “perfect” life in the past to
get the grace of coming to a complete new start in life.
One should not talk about oneself in lectures about Human Values within
the EHV-program and divorces were no good example to the young ones, I was
told. Interesting is that the person most critical was divorced, but remarried.
Sai Baba in an interview when I asked him about this critic said;
“people don’t understand, little by little they will understand”. He also twice
said to me “No mistakes from your side”. Again he gave that little extra that
made me feel protected and cared for by him.
Interesting also is that many of these criticising officers were
obviously the ones already at that time secretly since long knowing about the
molesting activity by Sai Baba.
My deep interest in Philosophy, my university studies in this subject
combined with my experience of having studied and actively used the EHV program
on levels from children and youth to adults of all ages, have given me an
enormous understanding of the needs and deep urges in human beings and the
capacity to associate with my fellow brothers and sisters in a way that
contribute to the genuine qualities of their lives and gives my own life a deep
meaning. The engaged involvement with the Gimle School project, that in the
middle of a lot of turbulence planted lots of beautiful seeds that still are
blossoming, could be an outmost merit to refer to in my and others further
involvement in society. In the inner so it is of course, but how to explain why
the Gimle School and our so engaged involvement with the EHV program and its
founder Sai Baba suddenly is a dismerit of an unbelievable magnitude.
A little girl 9 years old, who was a pupil in the Gimle School, was with
her family in the group visiting Sai Baba in summer 99. Her family was
sai-devotees since many years and had several times visited Sai Baba. Her
mother was an EHV teacher and for a period she also had been the headmistress
of the Gimle School. The little girl had heard about that something had
happened to the young man X, whom she liked very much. Her mother had to
explain to her in the best way she could.
One day shortly thereafter the little girl was playing with a friend who
knew about her visit to India and Sai Baba. The little girl’s mother told me
that she happened to hear them talking about if there really existed some real
good people that never did something bad. Suddenly the little friend says “but
Sai Baba he is good he is never doing anything bad”. The little girl after a pause
of silence said slowly, “yes, he is doing something which is bad which I cannot
tell you”. The friend very surprised said “Oh” and after a new pause of silence
said “Please tell me, I will not tell it to anyone”. The little girl said in a
somewhat mood of resignation “OK”, and told that Sai Baba had done something to
the genitals of X and tried to force X to do something with his own genitals.
There was again a period of silence. Then the friend said “how lucky that Sai
Baba did not do so to you”, where after the little “girl” very alert and
clearly told, “no, he is only doing it with boys”. Their playing
continued as nothing had happened.
The little girl’s mother told me that she did not know if she should
interrupt, but it was over before she got the time to decide. The “sai-family”
immediately when understanding the situation became “ex-sai-family”, but how to
deal with such sudden changes towards someone that the children have been
taught for years being a foremost outstanding good example of “divine unselfish
love in human form”, a very best friend of children and mankind. We became very
aware of the difficult situation we were in regarding not only our own children
but also all the pupils and parents in the Gimle School.
Today it is internationally widespread, through newspapers, internet and
by passing from mouth to mouth, about that cases of Sai Baba’s sexual abuse of
young men and boys have happened and are most likely continuously happening as
many “responsible” elder people are neglecting, denying, hiding, and by that
supporting this activity.
It is also widespread that Sai Baba is cheating miracles to be genuine.
I have seen with my own eyes. The same is for many visitors I personally know.
I have also seen videos in slow motion where it is clearly seen how miracles
are not genuine, but faked.
But even so, there are many people from all over the world that benefit
in their lives by their contact with Sai Baba and his teachings, mostly not
knowing about his “secret” life and the false materialisations.
I am deeply grateful to have been informed about the “secret” side of
Sai Baba so that I am not anymore unwillingly supporting that “secret” side. As
Sai Baba himself always advocate that his life is his message, it is important
that his full life is exposed to all visitors or potential visitors so that
they can chose before standing before a shocking fact.
There are many of the still devoted that deem the ones of leaving Sai
Baba as being betrayers. When I understood that I had no choice but to leave my
co-operation with him, if I should follow the same inner that took me to him, I
asked my self in my depth if I betrayed him. Instantly from my inner I got the
very clear message that Sai Baba had left the co-operation by involving in a
sexual activity that was not possible to unite with my own endeavours in life
and society and never was. Thus it so was before I involved in projects within
the EHV-mission wearing his name. This name which I saw as the security of
survival of the Gimle School, I now saw made the school predestined doomed to
dye already from the very start.
Is it though possible to get
through and enjoy life after a shocking awakening as here is described? Yes
indeed. I am deeply grateful and happy to experience that there is a divine
life even after Sai Baba. Grace is always our “friend” and does not need Sai
Baba to reach us. I do not think I have ever been happier with my life than I
am today. The miraculous life, the divine adventure is just continuing. And so
it is for my close sisters and brothers who “gave their lives” for the Human
Values to be the fundament of the Gimle school, and who gave up all association
with Sai Baba immediately when the molesting situation became obvious. We are
all as much as before, in different ways in our lives involved for the good
qualities to grow within our fellow-beings society and ourselves. I indeed hope
and pray that all the victims of Sai Baba can also get through to a life they,
and many of their families, came to Sai Baba to find and live.
Grace Grace Grace Grace
Wants us coming home
To where we belong
Whispering within
Our true cosmic song
Sweden
October 2000
Sincerely