Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 17:00:34 -0000
   From: "Sanjay Dadlani" <saiexposed420@yahoo.com>
Subject: Guru Glamour Uncovered

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1140661.htm

 ABC Online

The World Today - Guru glamour uncovered

[This is the print version of story
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1140661.htm]


The World Today - Friday, 25 June , 2004  12:42:00
Reporter: Rachel Kohn

ELEANOR HALL: India's most famous guru, Sai Baba, who reportedly has up to 30 million followers around the world, is under renewed scrutiny after a sensational BBC documentary. The documentary Secret Swami investigates allegations that Sai Baba sexually abused minors.

But the mix of sex and gurus is not new. After all, it was an important means of enlightenment taught by another guru, Baghwan Rajneesh, who continues to be popular even after his death.

Rachel Kohn from Radio National's Spirit of Things has this report.

RACHEL KOHN: The rush to India by westerners seeking spiritual enlightenment was bound to be a disappointment for some. They were vulnerable, needy and really didn't know what to expect. Who wouldn't say yes to sex with a god man?

For Mary Garden it was a welcome invitation after being ignored by Sai Baba.

MARY GARDEN: He said he was raising our kundalini and erasing all the samskaras of sleeping with dreadful western worldly men.

So he saw the sexual act as purifying us and I had no reason not to believe him because the very first time it happened, I went out of the room feeling like I was in some kind of trance state, just feeling ecstasy even thought it was not very pleasurable on a sexual level, he was like the Adonis that I had been searching for all my
life.

RACHEL KOHN: Mary Garden went on to join up with Rajneesh, but later swore off Gurus altogether.

As for the reputation of Sai Baba, journalist Mick Brown is ambivalent. He does believe, for instance, that the miraculous ash appearing on a devotee's photo of Sai Baba, isn't a hoax.

MICK BROWN: The only plausible explanation I could think of for how that happened was that this very sweet man, this very sweet taxi driver and his family, were spending their evenings systematically unscrewing picture frames, coating them with vibuthi, coating pictures with vibuthi, screwing the picture frames back up again and basically, you know, creating this extraordinary hoax which is what perhaps a more reductionist view of this matter would lead us to conclude it was.

I didn't believe that was the case. Now, I don't offer any applications of what is happening there. Obviously the taxi driver and Sai Baba devotees would have an explanation that this is Baba's miraculous power working across time and space. I don't have an opinion about that, but what I do believe is that it wasn't a hoax.

So I do believe that that is the case, and I think in a way this goes to the heart of the ambivalence of Sai Baba, because he is a very perplexing and very confusing character to me and of course now he's a character that's engulfed in these extraordinary allegations of sexual abuse and of other abuses, and of all sorts of charlatanry.

RACHEL KOHN: Well, they've certainly been around.

MICK BROWN: And I also happen to believe that some of those are true.

ELEANOR HALL: You can hear the full story on Sai Baba on the Spirit of Things this Sunday on Radio National after the six o'clock news.


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