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)
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 out of hand 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. 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 teaching of Sathya Sai
Baba is one such doctrine, others are scientology, Mormonism, Shiite Islamic
fundamentalism and so on. Many examples of such doublethink are seen in
the Sathya Sai movement. The way Sathya Sai Baba 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.
Sathya Sai Baba speaks of
'His organisation', sometimes 'our organisation', and gives his name to
it while also claiming that he really has nothing to do with it! On 24/10/1987, Sathya Sai Baba 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 Sathya Sai Baba. The interview is a worldly
meeting, the 'innerview', however, is held to be the real encounter at a
supra-mundane level.
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 - Sathya Sai Baba 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, Baba 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.
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 Sathya Sai Baba 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 Sathya Sai Baba
ashram and can soon by no means envisage a life without Sathya Sai Baba
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 Sathya Sai Baba
has dominated many followers. Such was the position of all of the four families
of the young men murdered in Sathya Sai Baba’s apartment in 1993. The shock
can only be imagined when they had to realise that Sathya Sai Baba 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 Sathya Sai Baba, though he does on occasion refute imputations against
himself and his various institutions. Even reporting or discussing anything
negative about Sathya Sai Baba 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 Sathya Sai Baba’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!