Seeker: Dear Ramji, I’m afraid I was not straightforward with you in my email. It took a lot of years, but I’m totally convinced the Sai Baba is a full poorna avatar. During the Mandukya satsang, at your residence in Bend [Oregon], I found that your opinion of him was decidedly different. I believe your life work of bringing Vedanta to the West is most important. I found Sai Baba’s book on the Gita I sent you was very informative in this area. My thinking was simply that you could benefit in bringing the accent texts in to the modern world with additional text of equivalent content written in today’s English by a full avatar.
Ramji: Thanks for the book. It makes my point. Because the problem of freedom is only solved by Self-knowledge, Sai Baba needs to teach Vedanta, i.e. the Gita, which is the essence of the Upanishads for those who want moksa. Veda Vyasa, not Sai Baba, wrote it, long before Sai Baba appeared on earth in any capacity. So he is actually endorsing the guru/shisha parampara, the teaching tradition of Advaita Vedanta, which comes from Isvara to Veda Vyasa and on down through a long succession of enlightened people to Sai Baba, assuming Sai Baba is a either a brahmanistha or a srotriya. A brahmanistha is someone is a Self-actualized person, and a srotriya can be a samsari who knows how to wield the teaching methodology, or a Self-realized person.
Another point that you should consider: in the Gita an avatar is given a specific definition, which is to establish dharma and destroy adharma. In Krishna’s case he was a brahmanistha who taught Vedanta (the Gita is the essence of Vedanta) and he corrected dharma by helping Arjuna kill Duryodhana. So far in 50 years in the Vedic world I have yet to meet one Sai Baba devotee who claims to have attained moksafrom Sai Baba. This is not to say that he was not an object of worship for people, who, as Krishna, speaking as Isvara, says is meant to develop devotion for Isvara. It’s also clear that Sai Baba was not Isvara insofar as Isvara with the help of Maya created the world long before Sai Baba appeared on it in any form.
My criticism of Sai Baba is related to the testimony of Sai Baba devotees who were abused by him and the fact that when he died they found a large hoard of gold in his apartment.
Sex and Money
There was enough evidence that India Today, India’s equivalent of Time magazine, felt comfortable publishing credible allegations of abuse. I was also told of it by various honest people whose children were abused by Sai Baba. Of course most of his devotees couldn’t accept it, because the nature of their belief keep them from being objective. Someone who is supposed to uphold dharma and teach moksa is meant to be a dharmi himself.
I have very little faith that you will consider what I have to say. People who have blind faith are not generally reasonable people. Even some otherwise reasonable people are sometimes prone to irrationality, which I think applies to you. You’re a good, honest person. Osho, for instance, is much loved today in spite of a long life of well-documented deceit, abuse, criminality, etc. They protect their belief by claiming that documented evidence is purely a projection by non-believers, i.e. fake news.
If Sai Baba was a jnani, it doesn’t imply that you missed the boat if you didn’t get moksa from Sai Baba while he was alive. If that was true, then there would be no moksa today or henceforth. So on the topic of moksa Sai Baba may have been useful when he was here, but he was obviously not the only teacher. My view is that he was a spiritual person who didn’t do proper sadhana. He had a few epiphanies when he was young and no guru to keep him humble, cleverly declared himself an avatar, performed a few miracles in front of gullible people who told other gullible people looking for a savior. From that point on the faith of the devotees manufactured miracles for them that they attributed to Sai Baba. On the topic of moksa it seems he taught indirect knowledge, i.e. that he was God in human form, which it so happens is true of everyone and everything.
Moksa is the knowledge that reality is non-dual existence/consciousness/bliss (satchitananda), which means that the disciple attains the same status as the teacher. If there is any difference, then the teacher, avatar or not, hasn’t done his job. If avatar is a special spiritual status, then it is only an apparent phenomenon, not an actual phenomenon. This is not to say that it isn’t an inspirational belief for certain people, as I mentioned.
Furthermore, how do you explain the fact that many dharmic spiritual people who gain moksa from a brahmanistha or a srotriya don’t see Sai Baba as an avatar? Even if they did, which is possible, I suppose, the moksa they got from a jnani who was a srotriya or a brahmanistha would be identical with the moksa that another person attained who had an avatar as a teacher and indeed the avatar’s moksaitself. Freedom is freedom. It has nothing to do with people. In fact Krishna, who the Gita presents in one chapter as an avatar, says that there are no differences in reality, i.e. that reality is non-dual. So the teacher and the teaching are only means to an end. The very fact that he presents himself as an avatarimplies that he sees himself as the knower of the avatar concept.
At another place, Krishna, without mentioning avatars specifically, says, “In whatever way you worship me, I will come to you to make your faith strong.” The word “whatever” means that anything that inspires one to seek to know God is good. So if you worship Sai Baba, it is good, irrespective of his actions. This does not imply that if you don’t you cannot attain moksa.
In fact the Gita says that avatars come to establish dharma when adharma is dominant, not teach Vedanta, although one way to establish dharma is to teach Vedanta. So let’s say that you are a person who follows dharma. If so, you don’t need a lesson in dharma, only adharmis like Duryodhana need it. So what good is an avatar to a good person? If a good person wants moksa, and moksa is possible through the teaching tradition (sampradaya), what advantage would he or she gain from being taught by an avatar?
Finally, this whole conversation assumes that moksa is an event which happens when ignorance of one’s nature is removed. But moksa is the nature of the Self, which is everything that is. So is this kind of moksa real? In fact Shankara, speaking for/as the Self, says, “I’m not guru or shisya or moksa. I am limitless exitence/consciousness/bliss. [Chid anananda rupa. Shivoham. Shivoham.]”
In any case, I’d be curious to know what function your belief that Sai Baba is an avatar does for you. And it would be interesting to know why a devotee of “a full poorna avatar” is so interested in Vedanta. Incidentally, poorna means “full.” So in this context your statement implies that there is a partial poorna avatar. So poorna avatar is enough. What it actually means is that an avatar is full, which means he or she is the Self, which is the only thing that is full. We are all partial avatars, meaning incarnated, until we discover that we are whole and complete, which is to say full. And how do you become a full avatar? By contemplating the words of the Gita, which will erase your ignorance of the fact that you are fullness itself.
Finally, which specific idea in Sai Baba’s book do you think would improve the way I teach Vedanta?
~ Love, Ramji