Robert Priddy

I am Robert Priddy, the author of this book. Since it was published, I became totally disaffected of Sathya Sai Baba and published another book in India entitled 'End of the Dream - The Fall of Sathya Sai Baba' (published by SCIOP (Indian Sceptics) November 2004. This book contains a large part of the materials on my web site saibaba-x.org.uk, which site is much more extensive and up-to-date.

I was born in England in 1936, was engaged in several professions. including researcher and lecturer in phiIosophy and sociology at the University of Oslo 1968-85, now retired. A founder member in 1983 of the Sathya Sai Organisation in Norway and its national leader until I resigned in 2000. I learned from once-famous Indian journalist V.K. Narasimhan - a very close associate of this self-proclaimed ‘avatar', of most damaging secret facts about the police murders in Sai Baba's bedroom in 1993, where four intruders were executed by the police acting on orders from top Sai officials (according to VKN) and with the full support of Sai Baba himself.

Sathya Sai Baba said in my last private interview with him (in 1994 at Trayee Brindavan), "Write, write!" and "What you are doing is right!". Ironically enough, he did not specify what to write! Since truth is my guiding star, I subsequently wrote to expose his many deceptions and crimes. I had carefully recorded daily events, discussions and lectures while I was at the ashrams (altogether about 13 full months of diary entries). Scans of these are available on this website, as well as contents of some of the numerous letters I received from V.K. Narasimhan between my visits.

I drew a definitive end of the dream Sai Baba stood for, based firmly on my own experiences and backed by independent evidence and testimony, especially massive sexual abuse of minors and young men which came to light from 1999 onwards. He had apparently 'materialised' for me a green stone ring which he called a diamond in 1986. It was assessed in 2002 by the jeweller to Queen Margrethe of Denmark and was found to be an 18 carat gold ring with a cheap synthetic sapphire with tinfoil behind it to make it shine, the gemstone worth about $10. My wife and I had donated large sums to Sai Baba for what we believed were exclusively good works, but which we later found not to be what they seem.

Not least due to my own many written contributions praising Sai Baba, my conscience insisted that I must perform the heavy but important public duty of correcting the overblown, propagandistic image of Sai Baba that had taken me in and which is still sustained by his many followers. These are invariably based on his own exaggerations and untruthful claims. Many devotees actually regard everything that happens as being 'all a part of the avatar's plan', and some claim that his critics are 'his instruments' for weeding out the unworthy who do not have enough faith! That is how far faith can create self-deception and distort all sense and reason and underpins monolithic churches, guru cults and other authoritarian or totalitarian institutions. Sai Baba says everything that happens is a gift from God, so followers must make of that any sense they can! This means that any such god must all too often be totally merciless, for a start.