Theos-Talk Archives (January 1998 Message tt00401)

>> In case one tends to beleive the account that Sathya Sai Baba's
>> miracles are simple conjuring tricks well within the scope of any
>> magician and in fact have been video taped and shown as such after
>> browsing through that gossiping website maintained by Huber, please
>> take a look at:
>
>    Or, one can actually view the videotape, and see for themselves. I
>saw a copy at a meeting of a skeptical group in New York (I remain
>active in the skeptics movement, my main goal there to  get THEM to
>learn to discriminate between pseudo-science, which has been disproven,
>and proto-science, which merely has not yet been proven).
>
>    Bart Lidofsky
>

Bart,

It's likely that the videotape you saw is GURU BUSTERS, made by one
Robert Eagle for Channel Four in the UK, based in large part on the
testimony of the Indian Rationalist Society and contains the much
debated footage which allegedly shows Sai Baba "materialising"
jewellery by sleight of hand, or the tape of that footage, the
original of both was made by the Indian NEWS service, Doordarshan,
but was not released and the Master has been destroyed.

The pertinent part of the tape shows Sai fumbling with his right
hand under a trophy, then waving that hand, and a necklace appearing.
That is all it shows. It can be interpreted as his Leela before or
after the real materialization or he was clumsily searching for
previously concealed necklace, these depend on the preconceived mind
of the onlooker.

The only reasonable deduction from that videotape is that it doesn't
prove that Sai Baba materialized the necklace at that particular
demonstration. Even if the videotape shows otherwise, considering
the technics of digital editing of video clip pixel by pixel and
frame by frame, the image material in any format cannot be solely
relied upon either for or against paranormal happening.

There are three possibilities concerning Sai Baba's paranormal powers.

1 He doesn't posses any psychic power. The physicists, physicians,
psychiatrists, theosophists and millions of devotees who claim to
constantly witness his display of materialization and clairvoyant
either are deluded or are his accomplished, then it is a grand comedy
that dwarf even the SPR's verdict of HPB as "one of the most
accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history".

2 Sometimes he performs true phenomenon and other times fakes
them from exhaustion or for other reasons.

3 All his phenomenon are genuine. The powers belong to him or he may
be assisted by higher entities.

How could you and your skeptical group in New York see him in his
true light without neither coming to him nor taking seriously the
*positive* accounts of numerous sincere reliable seekers who has
been privileged to live close around him? How can you as a researcher
refuse to enter into the situation to really understand your subject?
And what constitute *proof* of genuineness of his phenomenon for you?
Unlikely to be the number of witnesses because millions are not enough.
If it is quality of witnesses then what are the qualifications? But if
*control condition* is a major prerequisite then you may have to
wait forever since he, like any true adept, will never permit it.

Visanu