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Note: A long letter from an SSB devotee named Seema is the basis for this series, in which the one devotee's letter is readily seen to reflect many points scattered throughout many devotee letters received by SSB Exposé activists.
After my final reflections over the next fortnight or so, I shall post Seema's letter, and include some of the responses that I have had from highly qualified therapists from different countries, including an Indian, who have read her letter. They have a keen interest in the psychological in-denial response of those blind to their religious teacher's failings.
At the end of Part Four, I raised the issue of the known dangers of so-called lie detector tests, stating that far supassing most other types of testimony is the good standing, in their professions, trades and wider communities, of former devotees.
Seema's remarks are in red.
Did all of the little homos who went to the Ashram and claimed that Sai Baba buggered them take proper lie detector tests? Tell me which one did so and where and who did it? And send me a copy of the questions that were asked to them.
Were you to take genuine steps towards investigation, it would then be possible to assist you. One sign of good faith that you may like to offer is to nominate some properly qualified and experienced sexual abuse professionals, who can better judge the validity of how we are proceeding with testimonies, so that your professionals could have contact with our professionals. They may also be able to help you see that you are getting lost in abstractions, irrelevancy, demonising, and homophobic muck racking.
Did the nice little young boy whose mother was a true Sai devotee ever tell mommy that he had homosexual tendencies all along and that he was having an affair with someone in the Ashram, and that when Sai Baba told him that he will inform his mother he was so ashamed that he made up some stories to save himself from humiliation. Is he a nice, good boy now or has his experience with Sai Baba left him so confused that he is single or worse yet gay. What became of this boy? I can tell you that his mother is a Gem. So does that make his story credible? His mother?
The very large numbers of young males I have in mind do not in the least deserve the sarcastic tone you adopt in these words. If you pre-judge the issue, starting from a standpoint of sarcasm, I doubt whether Sathya Sai Baba's primary accusers will want to speak with you. In this case, their natural resistance will have been created by you alone. It is because so many Sai devotees have proved so hostile that so many victims have stopped trying to share their molestation stories with their former Sai brothers and sisters. Where is the Sai devotees’ Prema (spiritual love)?
However, with very large numbers of affidavits lodged with governments, the FBI and other police authorities, Sathya Sai Baba's accusers prepare to testify at strategic intervals. Fast increasing numbers of former devotees are resolved to make him and the top leaders of his world organisation publicly accountable.
I sat down and read Robert Priddy's book "the source of dreams.'
I trust that you read the rest of the book better than you did the book's title, which is:
'Source of the Dream: My Way to Sathya Sai Baba.' (Paperback, Barnes and Noble, December 1997).
In your earlier letter to me you said that you are "very educated." I wonder if you practise the same careful, rigorous mind that you seem to expect of others. You mix up one of history's most famous events, saying that Jesus was hanged. You mix up the title of a book you claim to have got to the essence of. You say how much love you feel for everyone yet speak derisively and sarcastically of former devotees, who you do not even know. As though to illustrate your tendency to abstractify and depersonalise, you twice refer to me as Robert, after first calling me Barry.  How important - when you so vehemently demand it of the rest of us - IS the handling of facts to you?
The man himself said that Sai Baba told him he thinks too much.
The ‘man himself’ is a person, Seema, a human being. He is Robert - not but another one of your down-putting abstractions.