THE TSUNAMI DISASTER & THE "OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, DIVINE" GEO-THEOLOGIST?

One would expect Sai devotees to turn to their know-all guru and God for illumination as to the causes of the undersea earthquake and consequent tsunami calamities. What would they find?

So it is all the fault of 'man'. However, since such major earthquake calamities took place for millions of years before and during humanity's emergence and are known to be caused by the regular releases through aeons of vast pressures built up in the gradually-moving continental tectonic plates, Sai Baba's connection to "man's conduct" it is really a tough conundrum to solve! This kind of talk may satisfy (and misinform) poor peasants or cringing servitors, but no one with a smattering of education can rationalise this away. Click here to see 'Stark Effects of a Seismic Shift' by Ian Sample, 'The Guardian's science correspondent.

But wait, could it have been a wrong translation or misquote by Sai Baba's translator/editor at the time, V.K. Narasimhan? Definitely not, for I often saw Narasimhan working on translations of Baba's Telugu and Sanskrit and he explained his process in detail. He was very thorough and generally very accurate. However, he also told me of numerous things he he omitted and modified to suppress the worst of Sai Baba's mistakes, confusions of facts and theoretical absurdities when translating. He was worried about his reputation if he were found out. This can now be told since poor old Narasimhan died in 2000.
Just to show that Sai Baba really meant what he said, consider his following statement about one year later:

The kind of conduct, to which Sai Baba attributes all the ills of the world, is "spiritual lapses", don't you know. How spiritual lapses cause Nature to cause calamities is what Sai Baba cannot explain. He can tell of no observable or other precise connecting links which anyone can believe in (except perhaps Indra worshippers and the like). It is all postulation and arises from the primitive pre-scientific misunderstanding of causes of man's afflictions, whether it be illnesses like leprosy, or otherwise avoidable accidents, or anything the empirical causes of which were unknown to our relatively very ignorant and superstitious forefathers and the many and various faulty 'religious tenets' they have handed down to us.

Still uncertain whether Sai Baba can be so ignorant, vague and pompously absurd? Try the following for size then:-

 

Such a brilliant account of how droughts and floods occur, isn't it? This distorted and super-simplistic view of ecological balance would not even be worthy of an elementary school student nowadays. One could forgive Sathya Sai Baba his profound ignorance of undisputable facts were it not for the arrogant and all-knowing manner with which he uses these falsehoods to try to impress his listeners and even to cow people into submission to his 'spiritual teaching'.

Of course, we must expect all manner of imaginitive 'Sai miracle stories' after this - too good a chance for the 'spiritual self'-promoters, fantasists and Sai apologists to miss! How long before someone claims that Sai Baba protected all his devotees and none lost their lives or families? Perhaps it will take a while, as definitive contrary evidence will surely be available if and when the names of most Sri Lankan and Tamil victims are known... including Sai devotee families etc.

One of the commonest types of dream is of the sea rising threateningly, of floodings and oceanic storm surges etc. It is widely agreed among dream researchers since Freud and Jung that water very often symbolises the so-called 'unconscious mind' or some aspect of it. It can also symbolise life essence (water being the main constituent of the body and necessary to all living beings). In persons who have vulnerable psyches, underdeveloped consciousness, poor touch with reality and in 'borderline' cases, flooding and tsunamis etc. can represent the potential overwhelming of the ego or closed-off emotions and awareness by what it is blocking off. Reports from devotees of 'dream warnings from Svami' are always based on subjective interpretations of dream materials on the expectation that they are prescient warnings from Sai Baba. A number of catastrophes predicted from 'Sai dream warnings' have been announced in Sai books, but none have been borne out by events (see eg. Rita Bruce's "Vision of Sai - 1 " for example). However, Sai Baba's recent definitive denial in his Birthday discourse (after decades of affirming it) that he ever comes in anyone's dreams, which makes some sense at last! Consider also his recent fantasised and totally incorrect report on what happened at the hi-jack in which the Goldsteins were involved! Devotees are still presumably also waiting for Sai Baba's own predictions to come about, such as those below:-

"Let me tell you one more thing: Nothing can impede or halt the work of this Avathaara... Formerly when the Govardhanagiri (mountain) was raised aloft by a little boy, the gopis and gopalas realised that Krishna was the Lord. Now, it is not one Govardhanagiri, a whole range will be lifted, you will see!" Sathya Sai Speaks Vol.3 new ed. p. 92 "I will have to forego the car and even the aeroplane when I move from place to place, for the crowds pressing around them will be too huge; I will have to move across the sky; yes, that too will happen, believe Me." Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. II, p. 92

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