Rationalising Away Everything Doubtful by 'Spiritual Doublethink'
MORE ON SATHYA SAI BABA TEACHING AS INDOCTRINATION
The form of indoctrination I call 'spiritual doublethink' requires that what the senses perceive and we normally interpret on the basis of our accumulated experience and common sense is pre-judged by the indoctrinated mind.
It is a fact that no one can ever wholly avoid interpreting what the senses tell us, according to each our experience and knowledge. Even the most neutral seeming facts, like population statistics or meanings of common words, are free of subjective aspects and 'contextual colouring'. It is well-known that a theory can transform perceived reality, cahnging our overall conception of everything it touches. The history of religions, culture and science illustrate time and again. Perception and ideas are so intertwined that they are difficult to separate and often one cannot say which comes first, 'chicken or egg'. Alter the one set and it can contribute to transforming the other... while both can affect change in persons, society and the world (though this takes longer and is usually only very incomplete). Those theories that would claim to explain virtually everything (egs: Thomism, Marxism, Freudianism, Theosophy, etc.) are called 'total theories'. In contradistinction to these are those which make no such absolute claim - even though they appear to be universally true and even in some sense all-encompassing (egs: Relativity, Darwinism, Quantum theory, etc.) Most religions present total theories (whileat best allowing only for the unknown and unpredictable in terms of God's inscrutable will).
The interpretation of perceptions is done mostly subconsciously done - a kind of pre-interpreting of experiences on the basis of acquired habitual views and/or trained responses. It is of the kind 'I have the answers before questions are put'. Even the best-trained minds do this to events before they are actually observed or investigated.
Spiritual doublethink involves interpreting everything in terms of a supposed sphere of non-tangible reality - according to some 'spiritual' doctrine that is set up to explain the true meaning and relationships of all that is. The SSB teaching is one such doctrine, others are scientology, Mormonism, Shiite Islamic fundamentalism and so on. When a person is not fully indoctrinated, or has unavoidably reached an impasse in trying to make the particular doctrine fit certain unavoidable facts, the mind conceives ways of re-interpreting them with some kind of positive 'spin', putting them in a different and rosier light - or as a last resort by simply ignoring them - so that the main body of doctrine still seems firm.
Some would see this as creative spiritual seeking, others regard it as systematic self-deception. Looking at this more from the viewpoint of those beguiled by the doctrine, one has to have some sympathy for them. They are usually people who have sacrificed a great deal of their time and money, believing that their efforts are part of a divine plan that can only serve the good. Once they, and invariably their entire families, have made SSB the No.1 priority in their lives for many years, they find themselves mostly isolated from other people who do not share the same faith and have little by little become more and more encapsulated in the entire mental and emotional behavioural scheme for a devoted believer, unable to think beyond the doctrine they hear from all sides all the time, and themselves have usually preached for years. They spend much money and time commuting to their small apartments in one or another SSB ashram and can soon by no means envisage a life without SSB and the abstract promises he has made to them. It must certainly seem to them, whenever they might contemplate leaving, that they have nowhere else to go, no other life to live. This is the extent to which SSB has dominated many followers.
Such was the position of all of the four families of the young men murdered in SSB's apartment in 1993. The shock can only be imagined when they had to realise that SSB was not looking after them at all, and they were excluded from all ashram activities and all hope of any recourse to justice! Giving any kind of airing to negative allegations that may cause doubt and distress is NOT recommended by SSB, though he does on occasion refute imputations against himself and his various institutions. Even reporting or discussing anything negative about SSB is taboo within his ashrams, colleges and various organisations. While it does reduce tensions and disharmony within the fold, it also makes for a kind of 'double-accounting' and Janus-faced behaviour by followers. It becomes repressive and unjust when conspiracies of silence and secrecy arise to cover up major injustices. For example, it has lead to wholly baseless attacks on victims ofSSB's sexual molestations by Sai Organisation leaders - such as those in Denmark - who evidently cannot stand the pressure against their pet beliefs without hitting back at victims of sexual abuse, and below the belt too! The untruth now defended by the Sathya Sai Organisation should not have been allowed to fester so much for so long. I am convinced that any kind of supposed 'spiritual truth' that implies denial of well-investigated facts - or which flies away in the face of them - is strongly counter-productive to any genuine seekers.
When a conflict between facts we perceive and ideas we hold arises, doublethink often comes into play. Spiritual teachings often require a lot of such double-thinking, for they deal with an alleged reality that is not perceived and which often seem to contradict worldly conditions and possibilities. They have mind-disciplining features very similar to those of Soviet communism - as Arthur Koestler brilliantly analysed and described after he had finally broken the chains of Soviet ideology. "I had eyes to see and a mind conditioned to explain away what they saw. This 'inner censor' is more reliable and effective than any official censorship." (The Invisible Writing, p. 64)
Many examples of such doublethink are seen in the Sai movement. The way SSB identifies with some project and lends his name to it yet the next moment denies that it is his or that he is actually connected with it. This is so of the Sathya Sai Central Trust, where he signs every cheque personally yet claims not to have anything whatever to do with money. He is praised, even by his own officials for donating a hospital, a college, cottages, tools and so on... but at the same time he claims to have no properties whatever (except - he repeatedly comments - for his students, his 'only property'). This is indeed confusing, and it also opens a way for people to go on believing things which any person who relies on observations, common sense or reason would soon see through.
His organisation, which he himself calls 'our organisation', and giving his name to it, while at once claiming that he really has nothing to do with it. On 24/10/1987, SSB announced that the World Council of the Sathya Sai organisation would cease from that day. He also said of the organisations "Truly speaking I have nothing to do with the organisation. There is a close relationship between you and me. No one can posit any distance between us. This is not created by someone in the organisation." and "The direct individual relationship between each of you and myself will remain always. If our relations can be strengthened through the organisations, I shall feel happier." (Jan 88 Sanathana Sarathi p. 15). Meanwhile, being in a group belonging to the organisation is in actual practice one of the chief channels for getting an interview with SSB. The interview is a worldly meeting, the 'innerview', however, is held to be the real encounter at a supra-mundane level.
The Divine and the Profane:
If one sees anything in SSB that is not good, or obviously wrong, deceitful or criminal, it is treated as 'a mote in the eye that sees', because he has defined himself as divine, besides whom all other are as profane. Openly to question or criticise him is in fact dealt with as a 'profanity'. So the famous dualism between the profane and the divine crops up constantly, where the profane has to be reinterpreted in terms of the divine. Such a dualism exists in the avatar concept and reality itself - SSB is divine but also human. If he shows any human traits that we would normally regard as failings, limitations, mistaken ideas and predictions, it all has to be 'explained away' in terms of an inscrutable and mysterious divinity that we have no hope in hell of ever understanding.
Likewise, Sathya Sai often makes definitive and contradictory statements about the same thing. One can quote him warning against blind faith, but equally so supporting it as superior to the foolishness of learned people. He has frequently supported the idea of human free will (though limited in scope, of course) and just as often denied that there can be any free will at all. In the same discourse even he both praised and berated the value of doing service for achieving self-realisation! It is just the same with devotion, repeating a holy name or singing praise of the divine... they are essential, the only way etc., but then he will point out that the goal can never be achieved by such 'spiritual kindergarden' efforts. All this is a recipe for doublethink and the resultant confusion of most devotees is quite evident in much of what they discuss and write.
More on 'Spiritual doublethink':
This form of indoctrination requres that what the senses perceive and we normally interpret on the basis of our accumulated experience and common sense is pre-judged by the indoctrinated mind. Now, no one can wholly avoid interpreting what the senses tell us, according to each our experience and knowledge, however, spiritual doublethink involves pre-interpreting everything in terms of a supposed sphere of non-tangible reality. (For a fuller explanation, see under ‘Spiritual Doublethink’ at my website http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/saiorg) The well-trained mind does this to events before they are actually observed or investigated – according to some ‘spiritual’ doctrine that is set up to explain the true meaning and relationships of all that is. The SSB teaching is one such doctrine, others are scientology, Mormonism, Shiite Islamic fundamentalism and so on.
When a person is not fully indoctrinated, or has unavoidably reached an impasse in trying to make the particular doctrine fit certain unavoidable facts, the mind conceives ways of re-interpreting them with some kind of positive ‘spin’, putting them in a different and rosier light – or as a last resort by simply ignoring them - so that the main body of doctrine still seems firm. Some would see this as creative spiritual seeking, others regard it as systematic self-deception.
Looking at this more from the viewpoint of those beguiled by the doctrine, one has to have some sympathy for them. They are usually people who have sacrificed a great deal of their time and money, believing that their efforts are part of a divine plan that can only serve the good. Once they, and invariably their entire families, have made SSB the No. 1 priority in their lives for many years, they find themselves mostly isolated from other people who do not share the same faith and have little by little become more and more encapsulated in the entire mental and emotional behavioural scheme for a devoted believer, unable to think beyond the doctrine they hear from all sides all the time, and themselves have usually preached for years. They spend much money and time commuting to their small apartments in one or another SB ashram and can soon by no means envisage a life without SSB and the abstract promises he has made to them. It must certainly seem to them, whenever they might contemplate leaving, that they have nowhere else to go, no other life to live. This is the extent to which SB has dominated many followers. Such was the position of all of the four families of the young men murdered in SSB’s apartment in 1993. The shock can only be imagined when they had to realise that SB was not looking after them at all, and they were excluded from all ashram activities and all hope of any recourse to justice!
Giving any kind of airing to negative allegations that may cause doubt and distress is NOT recommended by SSB, though he does on occasion refute imputations against himself and his various institutions. Even reporting or discussing anything negative about SSB is taboo within his ashrams, colleges and various organisations. While it does reduce tensions and disharmony within the fold, it also makes for a kind of 'double-accounting' and Janus-faced behaviour by followers. It becomes repressive and unjust when conspiracies of silence and secrecy arise to cover up major injustices. For example, it has lead to wholly baseless attacks on victims of SSB’s sexual molestations by Sai Organisation leaders in Denmark who evidently cannot stand the pressure against their pet beliefs without hitting back, and below the belt too!
The untruth now defended by the Sathya Sai Organisation should not have been allowed to fester so much for so long. I am convinced that any kind of supposed ‘spiritual truth’ that implies denial of well-investigated facts – or which flies away in the face of them - is strongly counter-productive to any genuine seekers.