Timothy Conway - Email Correspondence

Namaskaram, dear Joe

Are you the author of this piece? I.e., are you Bon Giovanni himself, my erstwhile interlocutor, master of innuendo, character assassination, avoiding-the-argument, misdirection, etc. etc.? I suspect so….

And if so, I am grateful to you for shedding more light on Jody’s activities at the Guruphiliac blog. In fact, i had been quite hesitant to even list his name at our website a couple of months ago, for i was aware of some of his critique of Amma, or, more accurately, his critique of some of the more “commercial” activities going on with some her devotees. Seeing that image of bin Laden morphed with Amma, though, i’m forthwith taking his name off my website.

As for “basking in self-promotion,” i never call myself “enlightened” or “fully-enlightened,” i’ve charged no money at all for talks, satsangs, or classes over the last nearly 20 years (unlike so many others out there), and, as you can see, there is a ton of free material up there at my website. Yes, a total of “only” 86 overall “webpages,” but have you not noticed that most of those “single webpages” are long, thoroughly-researched documents on the different major religious traditions, sages and saints, science and consciousness, etc., which, if printed up in normal page format, would be 20, 30, 40 or even 50 pages long (such as the long, informative page on Islam and Sufism)? Hence, there’s somewhere around 1200 pages total at my website. Yes, i call that one of the most extensive and comprehensive websites on spirituality on the Internet. And with an absolute minimum of commerciality: no Google ads or any other kinds of advertisements, and just one page listing our forthcoming titles and the Women of Power & Grace book.

And for the record, i don’t promote nor have i ever used the I-ching nor any other oracle. i’ve never even paid for any astrological reading, either! The author of the rant thereby radically and dishonestly misrepresents me there, but if this is good old Bon Giovanni, i’ve come to expect this sort of routinely “hitting-below-the-belt” behavior. Isn’t it funny that countless thousands or even millions of people in the Sathya Sai movement regularly use the method of consulting the “chits” as an oracle. I’ve never done that–but Bon Giovanni tries to “tar and feather” me with this stuff.

Wake up from your dream, dear brother, dear Atmaswarupalara!

Love to you and to all beings

–timothy

Timothy Conway
Santa Barbara, CA USA
t.conway1@cox.net
www.enlightened-spirituality.org

Namaskaram, Joe,

Thank you for coming out in the open to talk with me (your email only said “Joe”–no last name or anything).
When i wrote my hasty reply to you yesterday, I was in a huge rush –my mother just recently came through a surgery to remove a lung cancer tumor and my already hugely busy schedule (usually working some 80-90 hours a weeks) has as a result been burdened even further with caregiving, appointments with doctors, etc. I saw in your email some of the exact same verbiage used by Bon Giovanni several years ago and i made the hasty surmise that it might be Bon writing me again.

Nice to make your acquaintance directly through email.

You have the cryptic note “(bcc attached)” after your name and web URL, so i assume this means that you are sending out our correspondence to others without having asked for permission. That’s fine with me, i don’t mind the heat– but i trust you have the decency to also send out to your bcc list my full response to you here. I’ll get to the matter of the Hislop memos and Sathya Sai Baba, but first to clear up a few other things from our correspondence:

You went on and on about my “self-promotion,” but as is obvious from so much at our http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/ website, i don’t ultimately think there’s any such real entity as the individual, separate “self”, and so there’s only here and there the description of certain behaviors and research and views of this “jiva.” All of us involved in deep spirituality know that, truly, there’s only Siva, only God, only Awareness.

And so this correspondence between “Joe” and “Timothy” is simply (and most amusingly and enigmatically) Consciousness talking to Itself about its own different energy states.

Okay, about Jody Radzik and Guruphiliac: though i’ve perused only a very small fraction of what’s up there at his blogsite, specifically what he’s written in the past about Ammachi, he’s actually very positive about her in many contexts, and has defended her to many of his readers.

I always try to keep an open mind, and so i don’t mind it if he reports some factual materials about her followers or about anyone. Yes, his style of presentation is often far too vitriolic for my taste, but there is some useful critique up there by him and by certain other people he cites about a number of different religious or spiritual figures and movements. Lord knows there are too many slavish cults around, and we need more critical thinking to keep from being exploited by the hucksters and charlatans. So, in this easily exploited field of religion and spirituality, i’m happy to make use of appropriate critical thinking wherever i can find it, even if sometimes it’s a case of only the occasional “diamond in the rough.”

As for Sarlo, there’s enough good material up there by him at his Guru Ratings site–especially in the essay sections– on the dangers of neo-advaita and dysfunctional cultism that i don’t mind if people get the idea to peruse his site after seeing his name at my website. Those with discernment can make up their own minds about everything that’s up there. And surely he is aware of the long webpage of critique of Rajneesh that i have at my website (see http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/rajneesh.html).

Thank you, Joe, for reminding me of the brief little essay i uploaded to my website about guidance on making choices. That was actually just a slightly re-worked email i wrote to someone that i hastily put onto my website. I consider it one of the least “profound” things at the website, but thought that some people might be helped by it. I’ve reworded that section on people’s use of “oracles” to more accurately express where i’m coming from… http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/Guidance_on_choices.html. Again i find it hugely ironic that so many people in the Sathya Sai movement throw the “chits” as an oracle (something i never did), yet you found it important to try to critique me for making mention of it as one of the possible ways (way down the list, mind you) of asking for guidance in situations of unclarity as to life’s forward movement.

Now, regarding my long page of critique of Sathya Sai Baba….

>It is apparent that your information about Sathya Sai Baba has come from highly questionable sources and you have not looked outside your box to other points of view.

This is simply and patently untrue. Those “highly questionable sources” include many longtime former Sathya Sai devotees, regional officers, center presidents, teachers in his school system etc. who have experienced or have heard direct testimony from experiencers and eye-witnesses. These former devotees have everything to lose and almost nothing to gain (except the sense of trying to enact justice where there was/is injustice), and these people have predictably incurred a lot of flak, name-calling, ad hominem attacks on character (from people like Joe Moreno, Bon Giovanni, Jagadeesan, et al., including Sathya Sai himself in his Christmas 2000 discourse) for simply (and courageously) stepping forth to ask questions and ask for some kind of accountability from persons of even “higher rank” in the movement. Yes, i hear from the late Glen Meloy that there were a few folks who became vitriolic ex-devotees and who might not have enacted their program of critique in the most appropriate manner. Of the many dozens who came forward, perhaps a very few persons made some money out of this (usually by writing a book). But then, the very same thing could be said of many of the “true believers” who are still defending SSB in ways that clearly manifest the old Freudian defense mechanisms of pathological identification, denial, rationalization, etc.–yes, many of these people have found ways to financially profit, through books, tapes, etc., from their association with Sathya Sai.

>You provide only Anti-Sai information with no pro/con links. This speaks in favor of your bias, deception and hypocrisy.

Dear Joe, please provide me with even one pro Sathya Sai website that looks at all the evidence of what people have written, also including awareness of international laws concerning child abuse, and the UN Rights of the Child, and then still comes to a “pro-Sathya Sai” conclusion, and i will be happy to include such a website link.As you will notice, my own website actually tries to stake out just such a “pro and con” position, a middle-ground between the “true believers” and the people who actually now hate and demonize Sathya Sai. I am NOT one of those former devotees who have lashed out at Sathya Sai as some kind of demon or sorceror. I see much good in him and in the SSB movement, but, as is obvious, i also see a tremendous amount of “shadow” material in him–obvious not just from so much witnessed or experienced Sathya Sai behavior but also from Sathya Sai’s own Christmas 2000 discourse (where he had no qualms in deploying Jagadeesan’s already-rehearsed language of calling critics “demons,” “Judases,” etc.).

And Joe, I simply don’t have the time to rehash all of this here–a huge amount is, as you and your readers know, already at my website and at the much larger websites devoted to these matters–not just the sexual molestation of male youth by Sathya Sai, but various other highly questionable and suspicious activities.

However, regarding just this single issue of molestation of male youth (especially legal minors), anyone viewing this situation with Sathya Sai will clearly see the parallels with the huge scandal in the RC Church over the molestation of male youth by certain members of the Catholic clergy. How much more serious and “complicated” is the situation with Sathya Sai, where so many millions of people were thinking that he is “God incarnate.” In the case of the RC Church here in the USA, the courts have clearly decided in favor of the plaintiffs. That American and European ex-devotees cannot likewise bring the foreign citizen Sathya Sai to trial in their own countries is certainly no fault of their own. As for situation in India, by all accounts the judicial system in that country is woefully inept and in many kinds of situation it is been shown to be impossible to actually bring criminals to stand for trial, let alone get them convicted. This sorry situation is routinely reported by international human rights groups and in the foreign press and, of course, in the Indian press as well. SSB has so many politicians, retired politicians and other powerful “VIPs” who have in the past spoken favorably of him that it will take superhuman resources (and courage!) and a veritable miracle in the Indian criminal justice system to bring Sathya Sai and his accomplices to trial in that country.

Joe, some time back I heard from Barry Pittard and others (with whom i am hardly ever in contact anymore, since i have largely put this matter of SSB and his movement behind me), that you have spent a lot of words and energy on trying to debunk the famous Hislop memos.

In that long webpage of yours that you sent me the other day, you again raised the Q of the veracity of the Hislop memos of Jan.-March 1981 about a possible scandal involving Sathya Sai over molestation of a male minor from the USA, and you also expressly wonder why i waited so long to bring these memos to light. That’s a rather long story: i had largely forgotten these memos when i first began to seriously read the internet reports in Feb. 2001 about SSB’s behavior (e.g., Bailey’s document “The Findings,” along with the many letters of concern from ex-devotees, etc.). When it dawned on my overburdened memory that Hislop had written something back in the early 1980s, i looked for the memos but initially could not find them. Finally i did find them in some old files in an out-of-the-way place in my garage. And there in those memos was Jack Hislop himself clearly stating that, if any reports of Sathya Sai molesting male minors were factually true, then people would feel justified in calling SSB “a hypocrite, a liar, and a criminal,” and Hislop went on to explain why SSB would be a hypocrite, liar, and criminal if these charges were true. It was at this point in time that i shared copies of the Hislop memos with the late Glen Meloy, who had my permission to share them with others.

Please be aware that when i first read these memos way back in 1983 or 1984, i was not aware of any larger context, i.e., any other allegations, for evaluating Sathya Sai in this light. When i did read Tal Brooke’s book (variously named) about SSB, Tal’s own megalomania and newly-converted “fundamentalist Christian” identification made him a highly “suspicious source”, and so the entire matter of Sathya Sai’s sexual behavior toward male youth could only be put into my mental category of “Sathya Sai’s enigmatic, not-well-understood behavior.”

Now, I have sworn in a notarized document (written on August 18, 2005, notarized on Aug. 19, 2005) that these Hislop memos are exactly as they were given to me by the previous president of the SSB Center of San Francisco circa 1983-4. Both Robert Priddy (a longtime “pro” SSB author and academic) and Barry Pittard have copies of this notarized document. Upon request from David Savill of the BBC, I furnished my original copies of the Hislop memos to the BBC (i still have the Fedex “International Air Waybill,” dated 4-19-2004, with my note that the mailing contains a 3-page document [the Hislop memos]), for the research phase of their BBC television documentary, “Secret Swami.” The BBC has unfortunately never returned these originals, finally claiming to have lost them after a few repeated requests from Glen, Barry, and myself. Thank God i made xerox copies of what i sent to the BBC.

Joe, i swear to you now, on everything sacred, that these Hislop memos have not in any way been created, concocted or altered by myself. Note that my “original copies” from 1983-4 were at some point much later in time (circa 2001-2) underlined by me in pen, along with a few margin marks/notes. These marked copies of the Hislop memos that were then put up onto the internet a few years ago by critics of Sathya Sai were first “cleaned up” by someone (i don’t know who) to remove my underlinings and other pen-marks, but in terms of the content, these memos have not been altered. I also affirm and believe as utterly true the report by the prior president of the San Francisco SSB Center that these Hislop memos were in fact sent directly by Jack Hislop to this center president in question, who specifically had asked Hislop about circulating “rumors” concerning SSB’s sexual activities with a certain male youth. From the salutation line (”Dear Directors:”), it is to be simply assumed that these Hislop memos were also sent, as per his usual policy, by Hislop to all the Directors of the SSB movement in the USA and perhaps abroad, as well.Joe, i hope what i have directly written to you this morning addresses your concerns about these memos and certain other matters.

Timothy Conway
Santa Barbara, CA USA
t.conway1@cox.net
www.enlightened-spirituality.org

Hi Joe

I just took a moment out of this ridiculously busy schedule to look up your long webpage analysis of the authenticity of the Hislop memos at http://www.saisathyasai.com/baba/Ex-Baba.com/News/march-2005-hislop-comparison.html.

Gosh, Joe, i wish you had contacted me directly a few years ago, we could have saved you and other people a lot of time, energy and “concern” about the truth of these things. Please be aware that back in Spring 2002 my father was diagnosed with lung cancer (yes, it runs in the family from all those old smokers) and he passed on in 2003. So by 2002 my life had grown even more busy and complicated, and, except for that brief time of interacting with the Glen, David Savill and the BBC in 2004, i was largely out of any further involvement with Glen and the others in the movement to “expose Sathya Sai.”

Again, i sure don’t have any time these days to be involved, but i did wish to pass along to you, Joe, a few clarifications to help you out and everyone else on this matter of the Hislop memos:

1) The copy of the Hislop memos that i faxed to Alexandra Nagel (and, for further clarification, there’s the date of the faxing: Oct. 20, 2001) is more accurate in each of the three points of divergence from the ExBaba.com copies that you found on the Internet. And know that, at this point in time (Oct. 2001), these Hislop memos i faxed to A. Nagel are my “original copies”, for i had not yet sent them off to the BBC in 2004 (never to see them again, due to the BBC’s misplacing or losing them, leaving me with my additional xerox copies of these “original copies”).

That is to say, my copies of the Hislop memos clearly show that the “Jan. 18″ date is in fact followed by a comma, not a period. Concerning the second point in question, the sentence in that same Hislop memo reading “As far as he is concerned, such stories did not exist with the college students.“ is in fact followed by a period in my copy, as per the Nagel fax-copy. And third, the sentence reading “then the question arises as to what moves so many people to say these false stories.” does in fact contain in my copy contain the very important word “so.”

Please be aware, Joe, that scanning technology often makes these kinds of mistakes, mis-recognizing punctuation, garbling or knocking out entire words when there is penned-in underlining or “bracketing” marks around these words–since i bought a scanner a year ago and started scanning things, i find this happening quite frequently! You made reference somewhere that the scanned copies of the Hislop memos show no signs of age, folds, creases, etc. Again, the xerox machines will often, as we all know, sometimes recognize and sometimes not recognize or at least not reproduce these folds, creases, etc., and the same is certainly with modern scanners, all depending on the original settings. In fact, i can set my low-end scanner to recognize or not recognize these kinds of superfluous, non-textual marks on a page.

Thus, when you wrote: “it is to be concluded that one (or both) of the letters was forged.” I can only reply that neither is the case. The Nagel faxcopy that you show is the more accurate copy from my original copy of the Hislop memos, but the second one at ExBaba.com is certainly not “forged”–it simply contains a few digital scanning errors.

I would also mention that the underlinings, bracket marks and all other inserted pen marks are by myself, made sometime in 2001. I might have even made a few marks back in the 1980s when i first received these letters from the prior S.F. SSB Center president.

Hi Joe,

That last “P.S.” email accidentally got sent by a mistaken key-entry before i could finish drafting it.

I also wanted to clarify that my original copy of the Hislop memos does contain, on the memo dated 2-21-81 and addressed to Terry and Mrs. Payne (this is not the separate memo by Hislop to “Dear Director,” also bearing the same date), an inexplicably faint Hislop signature. It could simply be that Jack, in contrast to his two memos dated Jan. 18 and 3.25.81 used a pen of a certain color ink that did not reproduce well on the xerox machine (or was that a mimeograph!) that he used to make copies of his memos to people. Or perhaps (less likely) he used the same pen he was using in those early months of 1981, but on the day he xeroxed the 2-21-81 memo, he used a different xerox machine than he customarily used, and it didn’t recognize nearly as well the ink from his penned signature.

Here’s a further clarification: all those quirky, differently formatted dates (e.g., hyphens, periods) are exactly as they appear on my original copies of the Hislop memos:
Jan. 18, 1981
2-21-81 (this same 2-21-81 format is used for both memos, the one to Terry and Mrs. Payne, the other addressed “Dear Director”)
3.25.81

Go figure! I wish i still had my big file of Hislop memos from the 1980s when i was a center president at the San Francisco SSB Center and then a “Northern California regional liason” for the SSB Council of America. I was obliged to give that file to the incoming SSB Center president who succeeded me. (I saved only a very few things, including those “confidential” Hislop memos from early 1981 that the previous president had given me. I was willing to give those to anyone who had asked me about the Sathya Sai “rumors,” but no one ever did until the time of Glen Meloy discussing the Scott/Payne case with me in 2001 and i mentioned that i vaguely recalled Hislop sending out some memos about that).

My point here, Joe, is that there were all sorts of quirky changes of format by Hislop in the many, many things he sent out to us. It’s a big mistake to think that Hislop had some rigid, slavish formatting system for what he typed up and sent out to those of us who were the recipients of his many memos and directives.

Joe, you have jumped on these idiosyncrasies to charge that these Hislop memos must be forgeries. But you are simply mistaken. We all make mistakes.

By the Grace of God may we all be awake to Divine Truth, beyond all delusion, idolatry and insanity.

Best wishes to you, Joe

Timothy

Timothy Conway
Santa Barbara, CA USA
t.conway1@cox.net
www.enlightened-spirituality.org

Hi Joe,

As i look further, i see the need to make yet more clarifications on this matter of the Hislop memos and your various comments posted at your relevant webpages.

I do hope, Joe, that you will have the decency and integrity to publicly, on the Internet, in a prominent “Update” notice or something equivalent, openly abandon or correct or recant (pick your preferred vocabulary term) your various mistaken conclusions heretofore stated about the Hislop memos. I am happy to put all three of my emails to you of today, and the relevant part about the Hislop memos i sent in an email to you yesterday, into one easily uploadable document for you to share with your readers (i include it with this email as an attachment file). I will also be sending just such a composite document to Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard and anyone else who requests it. (In fact, when i get the time [ha!] i will create at my own website page on Sathya Sai a separate “appendix page” on the authenticity of these Hislop memos.)

So, here are the further clarifications supplemental to what i’ve already sent you today:

1) The Alexandra Nagel version of the Jan. 18, 1981 Hislop memo has the top line missing. The ExBaba version supplies the missing line, but omits the one word “also” that is clearly displayed in my original copy: “P.S. We are also contacting people we know who lived and worked in the” (end of topmost line written by Hislop). This word “also” does correctly appear in some internet versions of these memos, such as in the “sunrise/HislopLetters.htm” URL below.

2) You have wondered about the fact that at link only 3 memos, and not 4 memos or letters are displayed. The missing memo or letter (what you call Letter 4) is one of two written items dated “2-21-81″ by Hislop, yet this particular item is addressed by him, not to the Directors, but to “Dear Terry and Mrs. Payne,” and it was probably deleted for reasons that it was not addressed openly to the Directors (of the SSB Council of America) but privately to the Payne family. So when you write at your website

>”Letter 4 surfaced only recently (April 24th 2005) when there was no mention made to it prior to February 2005, is very suspicious in itself. One can only assume that the letter was forged or purposely suppressed.”

–here, Joe, you overstep yourself with more misleading assumptions and conclusions. This missing Letter 4 from 2-21-81, the only item not addressed to the Directors, was no doubt the last one to come into more public exposure because of this privacy issue AND ALSO because it was not addressed to those RELEVANT persons (i.e., the Directors) who bore the legal responsibility and power of access to further investigate and expose these matters of sexual impropriety by Sathya Sai Baba of male youth toward the male youth looking up to him.

3) You have also raised the question, Joe, of just who sent the faxed copy of the Hislop memo to Alexandra. In my first email to you this morning, i stated: “The copy of the Hislop memos that i faxed [emphasis here added] to Alexandra Nagel (and, for further clarification, there’s the date of the faxing: Oct. 20, 2001) […]”

Now, upon reflection, i’m not sure whether, in fact, it was i or Glen Meloy who actually faxed the Hislop memos to her. I was assuming today, because i saw the name of our small family press, The Wake Up Press, atop the copy that it came directly from me. But at this later point in time six years later, i cannot be so sure. Perhaps i faxed it to Glen Meloy and he faxed it to Alexandra, and her copy displays that fax registry line at the top which might have shown up on the fax printout off Glen’s fax machine. It’s a trivial point (or maybe you’ve found some angle to make it sound more profound than it is!).

The larger point is that Hislop wrote these memos and sent them to the Directors, and sent one additional copy to the prior S.F. SSB Center president upon hearing the latter express concerns about Sathya Sai and sexual activity with male youth, and this former center president then passed along copies of the Hislop memos at some point in time to me. How Alexandra got her faxed copy, whether directly from me or from me via Glen, is irrelevant.

4) A very relevant point in all of this matter of the Hislop memos/letters is that, by the point in time when i received these Hislop documents from this former Sai center president, i.e., in 1983 or 1984 (and that is a “guestimate”; it might even be a few years later, say 1985 or 1986), this former Sai center president was still quite fond of Sathya Sai, and, being a very close friend of mine, i was in a position to see whether he held any animosity or heavy suspicion toward Sathya Sai. Back in the 1980s, both of us were staunchly into Advaita Vedanta, and this former president was deeply studying, as i had been doing since the 1970s, the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, et al. Both of us appreciated the nondual advaita teachings of Sathya Sai at that time and for many years afterwards, even when my friend had largely stopped attending SSB Center functions (my friend had begun to spend more of his free time with a particular Advaita sage living in California).

The closely-related point here is that the former S.F. SSB Center president in question (he has always asked that his name be kept out of this matter and i do hope, Joe, that you will do the ethical thing and RESPECT HIS REQUEST FOR PRIVACY) was known to me to be eminently trustworthy, reliable, professional, ethically impeccable, and a very beautiful, loving human being. I just saw him recently again and i hold this exact same regard for his utmost integrity. I have never in the least suspected him of being a “concocter” or “forger” of these Hislop memos. Frankly, back then the digital technology was not easily or inexpensively available for folks like us to forge anything like this. And neither he nor i certainly ever had the motive to come up with the contents of these memos that Hislop wrote and sent out.

5) You have written,

>”Timothy Conway admitted that the scans were “cleaned up”. Not even one Anti-Sai Activist had the honesty or decency to come forward and admit to “cleaning up” (i.e., tampering with) the scans.”

As per one of my earlier emails to you this morning, the only “cleaning up” that was done by someone (i know not who) was to remove all my penned in underlinings, bracket or parentheses marks, margin notes (including rhetorical question marks, etc.). In no way was the meaning or wording changed or altered –except for those two cases of the words “so” and “also”, already clarified by me, and these two word-deletions most likely occurred due to digital scanning errors, not deliberate human “tampering.”

6) You also write:

>The general public is perfectly entitled to view the original xeroxed copies along with the information that was erased from them.

The Alexandra Nagel copies are certainly “nearly perfect” enough (except for that disappeared top line in the Jan. 18 memo) to serve us all. If we add the words “also” and “so” as previously indicated to the ExBaba.com copies, we have, word for word, everything in my xeroxes of my original copies (again, the BBC lost my “original copies” of the Hislop memos). Please don’t make me take even further time out of my ridiculously busy and burdened schedule to scan all 5 pages of the 4 memos and send them to you as very large jpg files.

7) You wrote toward the end of your webpage:

>Timothy Conway does not posses the original hard-copies to the alleged Hislop letters. He only has xeroxed copies.

Since the BBC lost my “original copies” sent by me to them in 2004, these xerox copies, after the original copies as scanned to Alexandra Nagel (already viewable at your website), are the very best copies of the Hislop memos that we have. One day other Directors (or their more honest descendants) may come forth with other copies of these memos.

8) Along this line, Joe, why don’t you put just a fraction of the energy you’ve already put in on this matter and go after all those Directors (people like Richard Bayer, Bob Bozzani, Michael Goldstein and others) and make them find and publicly reveal their copies of the Hislop memos, if they haven’t already surreptitiously destroyed them??

9) You reach this erroneous conclusion at your webpage:
>these letters have the critical problems of tampering, forgery and/or suppression that undermine their basic premise.

Everything i have written you thus far Joe makes it quite clear that there are no “critical problems” whatsoever with the Hislop memos in terms of forgery, suppression or tampering (whatever “tampering” was done was simply to take out my pen-written underlinings and margin marks).

10) You wrote on your webpage:
>Terry [full name omitted for privacy purposes] made his allegation against Sathya Sai Baba after being expelled “in disgrace” from the hostel.

You then go on to talk about this “disgraceful” explusion as if it invalidates the larger point that Sathya Sai Baba may have been sexually molesting Terry in ways identical or quite similar to those molestations which so many other male youth have had the courage to openly discuss with parents, friends, center members, and, via the internet, the wider public. And this larger point is NOT in any way invalidated by your misdirection. After all, one of the ways to engage in character-assassination of a conscientious whisteblower is to charge that they were expelled from their job, their membership, or whatever “in disgrace.” We know of many military cases and cases from the corporate world of business where this was unjustly done to innocent persons trying to expose corruption, wrong-doing, etc.

11) You write on your webpage about the first letter that was sent (perhaps in December 1980 or before January 18, 1981?) by Hislop to Mrs. Payne, and you wonder:

> where is this first letter that was allegedly sent to Diana Payne? Is it being suppressed as well? Considering that Hislop does not go into details about Terry Jr.’s disgraceful dismissal from the Hostel, chances are the details of his expulsion were given in the first letter sent to Diana Payne. That letter is noticeably absent. Why? Isn’t it strange that no mention was made to Letter 4 in all these years and now it is being made public?

Again, Joe, you can simply refer to my earlier point #2 herein for the story on that “Letter 4,” addressed to the Paynes, not to the Directors.

12) You also write:
>[Terry] has never spoken out about any alleged abuse.

Joe, as i heard it directly from Glen Meloy, this “silence” is because he serves in a sensitive and vulnerable public position and does not want this fact in his history to be widely known. The overly ardent “defenders” of Sathya Sai Baba have (as i understand it from Glen) had no qualms about running roughshod over people’s privacy issues in this matter, and the fact that Terry’s fully name has gone public is an invasion of his privacy. So your point here is entirely irrelevant. Terry at some point in the future may in fact publicly speak out his allegations of abuse by Sathya Sai Baba, but we should NOT pressure him to do so until he is ready. Shame on anyone who continues to drag his name out in the open and upbraid him for not speaking out. I STRONGLY REQUEST THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY REMOVE HIS FULL NAME FROM YOUR WEBSITE.

13) Joe, you have much further debased yourself and all of us by writing:

>Therefore, this entire debate about Hislop’s alleged letters is based on xeroxed copies and not original ones (as claimed by Anti-Sai Activists). More lies from Anti-Sai’s.

Joe, you can thank the BBC for the fact that we no longer have my “original copies” of the Hislop memos. As for your last line, “more lies from Anti-Sai’s,” this is simply wrong, a false conclusion, expressed in really adversarial, insulting language, for there are no “lies” about these Hislop documents. Your extensively erroneous “jumped conclusions” and adversarial attacks on the character and actions of those laboring to various extents of activity in the movement to bring truth to light (many of these persons, like myself, are clearly NOT “anti-Sai” but PRO-TRUTH, PRO-JUSTICE, PRO-DECENCY, PRO-DHARMA) are clearly indicative of your own lack of character and honest, fair-minded investigative spirit.

I will simply reiterate: the Hislop memos stand as factual documents indicating that John (Jack) Hislop and all those persons to whom he sent out these three memos addressed to Directors (dated Jan. 25, 1981, 2-21-81, and 3.25.81) all clearly knew of at least one case (Terry Scott Payne), with additional mention of “so many people [who] say these false stories,” involving Sathya Sai Baba and some kind of strange sexual activity with male youth.

To deny this is to unjustly deny the truth of the situation, an instance of telling lies about and obfuscating crucially important evidence in the ongoing movement to expose certain behaviors of Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

Again, i wish you all the very best, dear Joe.

By Divine Grace, may we all behave ourselves in the spirit of Satya-Dharma-Shanti-Prema-Ahimsa!
–Timothy

Hi Joe,

As i look further, i see the need to make yet more clarifications on this matter of the Hislop memos and your various comments posted at your relevant webpages.

I do hope, Joe, that you will have the decency and integrity to publicly, on the Internet, in a prominent “Update” notice or something equivalent, openly abandon or correct or recant (pick your preferred vocabulary term) your various mistaken conclusions heretofore stated about the Hislop memos. I am happy to put all three of my emails to you of today, and the relevant part about the Hislop memos i sent in an email to you yesterday, into one easily uploadable document for you to share with your readers (i include it with this email as an attachment file). I will also be sending just such a composite document to Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard and anyone else who requests it. (In fact, when i get the time [ha!] i will create at my own website page on Sathya Sai a separate “appendix page” on the authenticity of these Hislop memos.)

So, here are the further clarifications supplemental to what i’ve already sent you today:

1) The Alexandra Nagel version of the Jan. 18, 1981 Hislop memo has the top line missing. The ExBaba version supplies the missing line, but omits the one word “also” that is clearly displayed in my original copy: “P.S. We are also contacting people we know who lived and worked in the” (end of topmost line written by Hislop). This word “also” does correctly appear in some internet versions of these memos, such as in the “sunrise/HislopLetters.htm” URL below.

2) You have wondered about the fact that at link only 3 memos, and not 4 memos or letters are displayed. The missing memo or letter (what you call Letter 4) is one of two written items dated “2-21-81″ by Hislop, yet this particular item is addressed by him, not to the Directors, but to “Dear Terry and Mrs. Payne,” and it was probably deleted for reasons that it was not addressed openly to the Directors (of the SSB Council of America) but privately to the Payne family. So when you write at your website

>”Letter 4 surfaced only recently (April 24th 2005) when there was no mention made to it prior to February 2005, is very suspicious in itself. One can only assume that the letter was forged or purposely suppressed.”

–here, Joe, you overstep yourself with more misleading assumptions and conclusions. This missing Letter 4 from 2-21-81, the only item not addressed to the Directors, was no doubt the last one to come into more public exposure because of this privacy issue AND ALSO because it was not addressed to those RELEVANT persons (i.e., the Directors) who bore the legal responsibility and power of access to further investigate and expose these matters of sexual impropriety by Sathya Sai Baba of male youth toward the male youth looking up to him.

3) You have also raised the question, Joe, of just who sent the faxed copy of the Hislop memo to Alexandra. In my first email to you this morning, i stated: “The copy of the Hislop memos that i faxed [emphasis here added] to Alexandra Nagel (and, for further clarification, there’s the date of the faxing: Oct. 20, 2001) […]”

Now, upon reflection, i’m not sure whether, in fact, it was i or Glen Meloy who actually faxed the Hislop memos to her. I was assuming today, because i saw the name of our small family press, The Wake Up Press, atop the copy that it came directly from me. But at this later point in time six years later, i cannot be so sure. Perhaps i faxed it to Glen Meloy and he faxed it to Alexandra, and her copy displays that fax registry line at the top which might have shown up on the fax printout off Glen’s fax machine. It’s a trivial point (or maybe you’ve found some angle to make it sound more profound than it is!).

The larger point is that Hislop wrote these memos and sent them to the Directors, and sent one additional copy to the prior S.F. SSB Center president upon hearing the latter express concerns about Sathya Sai and sexual activity with male youth, and this former center president then passed along copies of the Hislop memos at some point in time to me. How Alexandra got her faxed copy, whether directly from me or from me via Glen, is irrelevant.

4) A very relevant point in all of this matter of the Hislop memos/letters is that, by the point in time when i received these Hislop documents from this former Sai center president, i.e., in 1983 or 1984 (and that is a “guestimate”; it might even be a few years later, say 1985 or 1986), this former Sai center president was still quite fond of Sathya Sai, and, being a very close friend of mine, i was in a position to see whether he held any animosity or heavy suspicion toward Sathya Sai. Back in the 1980s, both of us were staunchly into Advaita Vedanta, and this former president was deeply studying, as i had been doing since the 1970s, the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, et al. Both of us appreciated the nondual advaita teachings of Sathya Sai at that time and for many years afterwards, even when my friend had largely stopped attending SSB Center functions (my friend had begun to spend more of his free time with a particular Advaita sage living in California).

The closely-related point here is that the former S.F. SSB Center president in question (he has always asked that his name be kept out of this matter and i do hope, Joe, that you will do the ethical thing and RESPECT HIS REQUEST FOR PRIVACY) was known to me to be eminently trustworthy, reliable, professional, ethically impeccable, and a very beautiful, loving human being. I just saw him recently again and i hold this exact same regard for his utmost integrity. I have never in the least suspected him of being a “concocter” or “forger” of these Hislop memos. Frankly, back then the digital technology was not easily or inexpensively available for folks like us to forge anything like this. And neither he nor i certainly ever had the motive to come up with the contents of these memos that Hislop wrote and sent out.

5) You have written,

>”Timothy Conway admitted that the scans were “cleaned up”. Not even one Anti-Sai Activist had the honesty or decency to come forward and admit to “cleaning up” (i.e., tampering with) the scans.”

As per one of my earlier emails to you this morning, the only “cleaning up” that was done by someone (i know not who) was to remove all my penned in underlinings, bracket or parentheses marks, margin notes (including rhetorical question marks, etc.). In no way was the meaning or wording changed or altered –except for those two cases of the words “so” and “also”, already clarified by me, and these two word-deletions most likely occurred due to digital scanning errors, not deliberate human “tampering.”

6) You also write:

>The general public is perfectly entitled to view the original xeroxed copies along with the information that was erased from them.

The Alexandra Nagel copies are certainly “nearly perfect” enough (except for that disappeared top line in the Jan. 18 memo) to serve us all. If we add the words “also” and “so” as previously indicated to the ExBaba.com copies, we have, word for word, everything in my xeroxes of my original copies (again, the BBC lost my “original copies” of the Hislop memos). Please don’t make me take even further time out of my ridiculously busy and burdened schedule to scan all 5 pages of the 4 memos and send them to you as very large jpg files.

7) You wrote toward the end of your webpage:

>Timothy Conway does not posses the original hard-copies to the alleged Hislop letters. He only has xeroxed copies.

Since the BBC lost my “original copies” sent by me to them in 2004, these xerox copies, after the original copies as scanned to Alexandra Nagel (already viewable at your website), are the very best copies of the Hislop memos that we have. One day other Directors (or their more honest descendants) may come forth with other copies of these memos.

8) Along this line, Joe, why don’t you put just a fraction of the energy you’ve already put in on this matter and go after all those Directors (people like Richard Bayer, Bob Bozzani, Michael Goldstein and others) and make them find and publicly reveal their copies of the Hislop memos, if they haven’t already surreptitiously destroyed them??

9) You reach this erroneous conclusion at your webpage:
>these letters have the critical problems of tampering, forgery and/or suppression that undermine their basic premise.

Everything i have written you thus far Joe makes it quite clear that there are no “critical problems” whatsoever with the Hislop memos in terms of forgery, suppression or tampering (whatever “tampering” was done was simply to take out my pen-written underlinings and margin marks).

10) You wrote on your webpage:
>Terry [full name omitted for privacy purposes] made his allegation against Sathya Sai Baba after being expelled “in disgrace” from the hostel.

You then go on to talk about this “disgraceful” explusion as if it invalidates the larger point that Sathya Sai Baba may have been sexually molesting Terry in ways identical or quite similar to those molestations which so many other male youth have had the courage to openly discuss with parents, friends, center members, and, via the internet, the wider public. And this larger point is NOT in any way invalidated by your misdirection. After all, one of the ways to engage in character-assassination of a conscientious whisteblower is to charge that they were expelled from their job, their membership, or whatever “in disgrace.” We know of many military cases and cases from the corporate world of business where this was unjustly done to innocent persons trying to expose corruption, wrong-doing, etc.

11) You write on your webpage about the first letter that was sent (perhaps in December 1980 or before January 18, 1981?) by Hislop to Mrs. Payne, and you wonder:

> where is this first letter that was allegedly sent to Diana Payne? Is it being suppressed as well? Considering that Hislop does not go into details about Terry Jr.’s disgraceful dismissal from the Hostel, chances are the details of his expulsion were given in the first letter sent to Diana Payne. That letter is noticeably absent. Why? Isn’t it strange that no mention was made to Letter 4 in all these years and now it is being made public?

Again, Joe, you can simply refer to my earlier point #2 herein for the story on that “Letter 4,” addressed to the Paynes, not to the Directors.

12) You also write:
>[Terry] has never spoken out about any alleged abuse.

Joe, as i heard it directly from Glen Meloy, this “silence” is because he serves in a sensitive and vulnerable public position and does not want this fact in his history to be widely known. The overly ardent “defenders” of Sathya Sai Baba have (as i understand it from Glen) had no qualms about running roughshod over people’s privacy issues in this matter, and the fact that Terry’s fully name has gone public is an invasion of his privacy. So your point here is entirely irrelevant. Terry at some point in the future may in fact publicly speak out his allegations of abuse by Sathya Sai Baba, but we should NOT pressure him to do so until he is ready. Shame on anyone who continues to drag his name out in the open and upbraid him for not speaking out. I STRONGLY REQUEST THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY REMOVE HIS FULL NAME FROM YOUR WEBSITE.

13) Joe, you have much further debased yourself and all of us by writing:

>Therefore, this entire debate about Hislop’s alleged letters is based on xeroxed copies and not original ones (as claimed by Anti-Sai Activists). More lies from Anti-Sai’s.

Joe, you can thank the BBC for the fact that we no longer have my “original copies” of the Hislop memos. As for your last line, “more lies from Anti-Sai’s,” this is simply wrong, a false conclusion, expressed in really adversarial, insulting language, for there are no “lies” about these Hislop documents. Your extensively erroneous “jumped conclusions” and adversarial attacks on the character and actions of those laboring to various extents of activity in the movement to bring truth to light (many of these persons, like myself, are clearly NOT “anti-Sai” but PRO-TRUTH, PRO-JUSTICE, PRO-DECENCY, PRO-DHARMA) are clearly indicative of your own lack of character and honest, fair-minded investigative spirit.

I will simply reiterate: the Hislop memos stand as factual documents indicating that John (Jack) Hislop and all those persons to whom he sent out these three memos addressed to Directors (dated Jan. 25, 1981, 2-21-81, and 3.25.81) all clearly knew of at least one case (Terry Scott Payne), with additional mention of “so many people [who] say these false stories,” involving Sathya Sai Baba and some kind of strange sexual activity with male youth.

To deny this is to unjustly deny the truth of the situation, an instance of telling lies about and obfuscating crucially important evidence in the ongoing movement to expose certain behaviors of Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

Again, i wish you all the very best, dear Joe.

By Divine Grace, may we all behave ourselves in the spirit of Satya-Dharma-Shanti-Prema-Ahimsa!
–Timothy
(Attachment: sai_baba___Timothy_s_emails_to_Joe_Moreno_re_Hislop_letters.doc)

Hi Joe

Thank you for your kind and loving wishes for my mother.

I’m in a huge hurry today (i’ve got to go be my mom’s sole caregiver this weekend and will be away from my computer)–but i wanted to say, in brief, just HOW VERY SORRY I AM that you’ve had to put up with so much venom and name-calling and “below the belt” punches and jabs from people who have become–at least some of the time–very disturbed individuals in this entire controversial matter of Sathya Sai.

This is, in fact, one of the reasons why i’ve not wanted to spend much time in this entire affair. There is rank misbehavior on both sides of the issues. Many people are “having their buttons pushed,” and most of them are then reacting very emotionally, hastily, and with much anger, sadness, exasperation, insecurity, vengeance. Some of the involved people chronically act like this, and some people act like this only occasionally. In either case, there’s a lot of hurt on all sides. I think many people are suffering to some extent from PTSD (post-traumatic-stress-disorder) in all of this controversy and contentiousness.

Anyway, Joe, i’m really sorry you’ve had to experience the toxicity of certain people’s unenlightend behavior.

I may have more to say in another email to you in a few days in response to some of the points you raised (such as the inclusive nonduality that can include the relative level of apparently dualistic opposites–you might enjoy briefly reading an interview-excerpt specifically on this at link, which, among other things, has a lot of fun scientific facts to back up some of the points made).

But before running off today, i did want to send you, Joe, the jpg files of the SCANS i just did this morning on the three Hislop memos to Directors (including the third, 2-page one), and the single letter we have that he sent to the Paynes (Terry and his mother). I never saw any “first letter” to the Paynes that Hislop alludes to and that you have asked about at your website. Maybe the Directors had/have a copy of that very first letter, but it was evidently never sent by Hislop to the former S.F. SSB Center president nor given to myself.

I have also included a copy of the FedEx waybill addressed to David Savill and the BBC from April 2004 when, upon their request, i sent to them my “original copies” of the Hislop letters to Savill, et al.

Incidentally, i always refer to these Hislop documents as my “original copies” because obviously it was Hislop who had typed up the “originals” and then he made xerox copies that he sent out to various recipients. So i distinguish between the “original copies” that were turned over to me, and then the subsequent “xerox copies of the original copies” that i made on a local xerox machine before i sent off the “original copies” to the BBC.

David Savill, speaking on behalf of the BBC, promised that my original copies would be returned, but they never were returned, and a few repeated requests by myself, Glen Meloy and Barry Pittard proved unsuccessful in getting these original copies back. The BBC finally reported to each of us that they has been “misplaced” and/or “lost.”

Thus, the scans that Alexandra Nagel posted to the web are scans of my “original copies” (though she’s missing the line on the top of the page of the first Hislop memo), while the scans i provide you here today as jpgs are scans of my “xerox copies of my original copies” of the Hislop memos.

And i do hope, Joe, that you get the larger point about these Hislop memos: Jack Hislop himself believed that if any allegations of Sathya Sai molesting or sexually harassing male youth were ever to be substantiated, then, according to Hislop’s own judgment (and he was, after all, the acting head of the entire SSB movement in north America), Sathya Sai would be “a hypocrite, a liar, and a criminal.” This is a strong and clearcut assessment or judgment. The fact that so many allegations have been made of molestation/harassment of male youth– and such allegations have NOT been made by the “crazies” in other large spiritual movements around charismatic figures (for instance, around Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Swami Shivananda or Sw. Chidananda, Anandamayi Ma, Mata Amritanandamayi, Bhagavan Nityananda, and many other figures) –all suggest that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” I’ve talked to some psychological and social welfare personnel in the field sexual molestation, and, just as with the ongoing scandal in the RC Church, these professional personnel find many of the allegations of sexual impropriety by “victims” (”experiencers”) of Sathya Sai Baba’s lust (yes, lust; why is he so often reported to make “moaning” sounds and to essentially “beg” and “bribe” for sexual activity with these male youth?) indicative of the actions of a serial sexual predator. (And, incidentally, Joe, i’m in complete agreement with you that the term “pedophile” is the wrong term. I think i mis-used that term once or twice in a sloppy way years ago with correspondents, but i’ve always told Glen Meloy and Barry Pittard since 2001 that the word “pedophile” should be abandoned in favor of a more accurate term like “serial sexual predator,” or “sexual offender,” as authorities in this field use when speaking of this kind of situation.)

Well, that’s it for now, Joe.

Wishing you everything wonderful, especially deep peace, joy and love.

And, by the way, if you read that piece i linked you to above (on the “3 levels of nondual reality”–an elaboration of the old two-fold distinction between the Absolute-truth level and the “conventional-truth” level articulated by sages like the Buddha, Nagarjuna, Sankara, et al.), you’ll see why i’m completely sincere about our relationship. And yes, i don’t really mind whatever you say about me in public. By the grace of the Guru in the form of Nisargadatta and Annamalai Swami, et al., i know i’m not limited to being the personality, but am, like you, the infinite, open Awareness. (BTW, have you ever checked out the wonderful and really delightful “experiments” devised by that late genius, Douglas Harding, at the “experiments section” of David Lang’s website on Harding at www.headless.org ? –guaranteed to introduce you or anyone to their own open, empty-full, vast, “No-thing-like” transpersonal Awareness.)

Joe, I do wish we had met under different circumstances. I sense you are a tremendously passionate and bright guy, concerned in your own unique way about matters of justice and fairness. I confess to having felt “blindsided” the other day when you popped into my email life out of the blue, with no introduction of yourself, but only the message “Happy reading” and just your nickname (I had heard a few years back from Barry of a “Gerald Moreno,” but was far less familiar with your preferred name “Joe”). When, in my rushed and limited time, i opened up the initial webpage you sent me, it was a busy day and i did not have the time to fully read it or sleuth it out. When i saw a lot of the same verbiage and same slashing style that Bon Giovanni deployed against me back in 2001-2002, i assumed “Joe” was simply one of Bon’s monickers and thus i made the explicit surmise that it was Bon writing me. I apologize for my ignorance but, again, i only wish you had introduced yourself properly from the start. :-)

So, Joe, let’s see if our relationship can be fruitful in resolving at least some of the problems in this entire matter of Sathya and the conventional and Absolute “truth/Truth,” though, alas, as you’ve already heard from me, i have so VERY little time these days to spend on these matters due to work load and family health issues. I hope that the several hours i’ve spent on these Hislop memos/letters helps….

Again, all best wishes to you!

Timothy
(Fed Ex Scan and Five Scans Attached)

Hi Joe

You raised a couple of other points deserving a reply:

>Alaya Rahm’s Court Case: I would like to know if you were called as a witness on behalf of Alaya Rahm when he filed his lawsuit against the Sathya Sai Baba Society? If you were called as a witness on his behalf, why weren’t you identified to the court on his behalf? Were you asked to submit a deposition on his behalf? If you were, why didn’t you submit one?

NO, i was never called as a witness, and was never asked to submit a deposition on his behalf. I recall at some point emailing Alaya’s father Al Rahm (it’s hard to document, because my computer’s hard-drive utterly and irretrievably crashed in Aug. 2003, and i completely lost all my email correspondences before that point), but I can’t remember when he and i had brief email contact. In any case, Al never asked me for any help in this matter.

Again, it’s relevant to state here that, outside of meeting with David Savill and the BBC in early 2004, and mailing him my copies of the Hislop letters, I had little to do with this entire matter of “exposing SSB” from 2002 onward because of major family health-crises (not just my dad’s cancer and passing, but also–did i mention it?– my mom’s severe neck fracture 2 months after he passed, and her ongoing disability since then; not to mention my wife’s disability all this time with fibromyalgia and major clinical depression, conditions that peaked in severity from 1998-2001, which is why i was a bit late to the table with those Hislop memos when other people were starting to bring out their allegations and criticisms in the late 1990s).

Joe, you also wrote:

>several alleged victims claimed that Sai Baba possesses the paranormal power to literally transform his penis into a vagina, and vice versa. I have written about this issue as well: Ref. If we are to believe alleged victim’s abuse allegations, we must similarly believe their claims about Sai Baba’s paranormal powers. The obvious implication is that if Sai Baba does possess this type of paranormal power, he is beyond gender, and thus beyond sexual desire. If one accepts that Sai Baba does possess this paranormal power, his actions, no matter how seemingly “sexual”, cannot be equated with those of an ordinary human being

Yes, Joe, as you may have read in my early letters on all this, in early 2001, i, too, think that Sathya Sai has or at least had some powers. The source of these powers is quite debatable–the powers of God? the channeled powers from the postmortem influence of Shirdi Sai? the powers of a fallen yogi? the powers of someone who has some “elemental spirits” or other entities helping him from interdimensional planes? (–no joke: it’s a very old, worldwide knowledge that one can derive certain powers by contacting such entities).

So, yes, this “binary-sex-organed” side of SSB (or whatever we want to call it, i’ve always thought it was a special type hermaphroditism, either paranormal or not) is indeed a fascinating aspect of SSB.

But, you see, Joe, such speculation and all other “rationalization” about SSB’s “exceptionalism” or “purity” does not at all address the issue of the male youth who feel invaded, upset, and/or traumatized by this being. This is a point that many folks in 2000 and 2001 were trying to make, especially former Sai-devotees in the mental health professions. But the leaders of the SSB Org here and abroad (it’s documentable right there in the Hislop letters) have always ignored this human impact on the male youth, and instead have gone into gymnastics over how to rationalize SSB’s behavior and nature and thereby dismiss the serious issues of accountability, making amends, etc.. Thus we have all these forms of “spin” wherein SSB’s defenders speak of “sexual healing,” “karmic cleansing,” “raising the kundalini of the boys,” “testing the devotees,” etc. ad nauseam.

And, again, if SSB is so benevolent in using these “healing powers,” how come we’ve no allegations by many other male youth or any young females or all older men of SSB performing these special services for them? Why are these other males and females all denied any sexual healing, karmic cleansing or having their kundalini raised?

And the even larger question: Why did not Ramana Maharshi, Swami Shivananda, Bhagavan Nityananda, Swami Gnanananda of Tirukoillur, Anandamayi Ma, Anasuya Devi, Mata Amritanandamayi, nor several other great siddhas of modern-era India (nor great siddhas of other spiritual traditions like Hsu Yun, Hsuan Hua, Padre Pio) not do this same kind of thing?

Joe, you state of SSB that

>”he is beyond gender, and thus beyond sexual desire.”

Joe, your second point here certainly does not necesssarily follow from your first point.
You’ve read the accounts by the young male “experiencers.” They are chock-full of remembered descriptions of Sathya Sai displaying physical arousal (an erect or half-erect male organ), making moaning and gurgling sounds, thrusting his pelvis, verbally begging male youth for contact, making promises and bribes, repeatedly calling the same boy to him for interviews, etc.– all of which are indicative or at least highly suggestive of a being who is not beyond sexual desire.

Well, at this point, Joe, i’ve simply got to move on with many other important projects in my life.

Best wishes to you!

I do hope and pray that you find real peace, joy and fulfillment in the One Divine Spirit.

–timothy

Joe, that paragraph toward the end of the email i just sent you contains a grammar typo mistake (a double negative):

“And the even larger question: Why did not Ramana Maharshi, Swami Shivananda, Bhagavan Nityananda, Swami Gnanananda of Tirukoillur, Anandamayi Ma, Anasuya Devi, Mata Amritanandamayi, nor several other great siddhas of modern-era India (nor great siddhas of other spiritual traditions like Hsu Yun, Hsuan Hua, Padre Pio) not do this same kind of thing?”

That last clause should read “ever do this same kind of thing?”

–t

Hi Joe

I hope you are happy… Your tenacity about all these points feels like both a blessing and a curse. I appreciate how you’ve brought out greater clarity and precision on certain issues, but i think you’ve resorted to “overkill” in so many ways and lost sight of the big picture. That’s just my opinion.

>Some of the people who have defamed me are Barry Pittard and Robert Priddy, both of whom you immediately and rashly sent our e-mail correspondence to. Your close association with these negatively obsessed individuals thoroughly invalidates your compassionate sentiments to me about their vicious accusations against me.

Joe, those men have been far, far more involved in this matter than I, and i thought they would want to see my re-affirmation of what i knew to be true about these important Hislop memos. Please be aware that i am not at all a “close associate” of Barry or Robert, mainly because i just don’t humanly have the time or, for the last several years, the inclination to make this SSB controversy one of my “specialty” areas of research and writing. I do get CC copies of some of Barry’s correspondences he has with others on these matters relating to SSB and the SSB Org., but only very rarely (once or twice a year, if that much) do i write anything to him about these things, and usually only at his request for a comment or something. I have even less correspondence with Robert Priddy.

You must know, Joe, that, because both Barry and Robert have invested so much time and energy on this SSB affair, both of them are going to be a bit “touchier” and more sensitive, perhaps overly sensitive, to having people disagree with them. In my own communications with them, I have never sensed anything amiss with their characters, though i clearly see that they have gone fully into the Anti-Sai camp, not a middle ground that still sees some good in SSB and his movement.

I have never associated or communicated at all with people like Hari Sampath, Sanjay Dadlani, Tony O’Clery and others whom you find to be really objectionable people who lie, exaggerate, etc. I recall Glen Meloy warning me about Hari Sampath and certain other folks.

Obviously, some people on both sides of this issue are going to be more volatile, disrespectful, unloving, untruthful in certain situations, and so forth because of their level of character development. Even people with some very highly developed characters may have a “shadow” side that can get occasionally triggered. My late father, for instance, was a very beautiful, loving, mature guy with a beautiful set of character traits loved by almost everyone in Hollywood (where he worked) and Santa Barbara (where he lived the last 15 years of his life). Yet i, my mother, my late sister and other close relatives and friends all knew that he had a “shadow side” of a hot temper, “a good ol’ Irish temper,’ that could flare up out of a clear blue sky if something triggered him badly and “insultingly” enough (e.g., a car or boat engine suddenly and inexplicably malfunctioning). He seemed a very ugly guy in the middle of one of his temperamental rages. Then, two minutes later, he was the most sensitive, contrite, warm and loving guy in the world. We all have our own shadow side….

So, as i said in a prior email, Joe, this multi-faceted set of issues about SSB and the SSB org has people reacting in different ways. So many people are already “traumatized” by what has been said and done by people who are “pro”-SSB or “con”-SSB or else somewhere in between.

Perhaps, Joe, you can send some of your writings to me that would indicate otherwise, but it is now clear to me that you, too, are NOT really in any kind of “middle ground” position in all this, but have consistently and exclusively staked out a position that is critical only of SSB’s critics, whom you lump together indiscriminately as all being “Anti-Sai’s.”

And it seems that Barry P and Robert P have been “triggered” by the unloving, disrespectful style with which you communicate to them and to other people. I now have first-hand evidence myself of the relentlessly disrespectful manner with which you communicate to people in your communications to me and about me over the last few days–yes, all manner of sarcasm, innuendo, ultimatums, presumptions and accusations of “forgeries, tampering, suppression,” and even name-calling, for instance calling me an “Anti-Sai” when i’m really not in that “camp.”

For i have clearly expressed from early 2001 onward certain “pro-Sai” sentiments–though i must say i began to have a much more circumspect attitude about SSB when, around March 2001, i read in the Sanathana Sarathi that Christmas 2000 discourse by Sathya Sai, blasting away with all the same name-calling terms that Jagadeesan of Malaysia had used in an earlier open letter. Where was the empathy and compassion? Why all the self-promotion and self-aggrandizement toward himself and all the venomous and threatening verbiage toward his “critics”–people who started off only being “questioners,” trying to find answers from SSB or from org leaders when they sensed certain improprieties. And why didn’t SSB at that time simply answer in straightforward fashion that he is performing “sexual healing” or “karma cleansing” or “raising of the kundalini” for the male youth under his care? Where is his appreciation for Truth (satya) or Love (prema), and empathy for the male youth and the critics. Moreover, we had all been told by Prof. Kasturi that Baba had only “love” and “compassion” for his critics, making him seem so Divine. But on the really significant issues raised in 2000 by “questioners” (soon to become staunch “critics”), Baba’s only public response was to release at the Xmas 2000 discourse a furious verbal attack on them and lots of words of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. Zero love. Zero compassion. Zero empathy.

And Joe, i must ask you, just how much real empathy for fellow human beings do you have? I’ve been trying to appreciate your view of things in this matter, which is why i’ve spent so many hours responding to so many of the points (some of them trivial) you have raised in your emails or you have raised at your webpages on the Hislop letters. But have you at all tried to appreciate my view of things?

What i’m seeing/hearing from SSB, Jagadeesan, yourself and many others are a lot of the factors evident in the Authoritarian personality type identified back in the 1950s and in more recent decades by experts such as Robert Altemeyer. Lots and lots of “black and white thinking,” “your with us or against us” stereotyping, contentiousness, angry vitriol, excessive emotionalism, argumentative “overkill” tactics, too many inflammatory accusations, and overall lack of respect, empathy or friendliness toward one’s interlocutors.

Well, there are several specific points you still raise, Joe, so i’ll take the long time to answer them:

>You are confusing me about your alleged “originals” and the subsequent xeroxed copies. Were the “originals” you claimed you had signed by John Hislop in ink?

I simply can’t remember, Joe. The BBC has whatever “originals” or “copies of originals” that i got from the prior S.F. Center president back in the 1980s. I made xeroxes of those “original copies” right before i sent them off to the BBC.

>Or, were they copies to the original hand-signed letters?

Jack would have xeroxed for each and all of the Directors a number of copies (approx. 10, i would think, for was that not the number of Directors back then?) of each of these 3 memos he wanted to send to the Directors. And then Jack would have sent these xeroxed copies to those Directors while keeping the truly “original” 3 typed memos for himself. Now, it is an uncertain matter whether Jack signed in ink each of these xeroxed copies sent to Directors or whether he just signed in ink his original typed memos before xeroxing them for the Directors. I am inclined to think that he may have personally signed each of his memos to the Directors, but he may not have done so. Certainly he did not personally sign each of the far greater number of xerox copies of his frequent “center directives” that he sent out to SSB Center presidents, for that number already i believe was somewhere over 60 centers (and presidents) by 1981. Jack would just sign his original typed-up “center directive” and then make and send xerox copies of that out to the 60+ center presidents and probably to each of the ten or so Directors as well.

>My statement about you possessing copies (and not the original hard-copies) has not been refuted by you. No one is in possession of the actual original letters with ink signatures. Are they?

The truly “original” memos and letters and SSB center directives that Jack himself typed up may all be somewhere in the estate of the late John S. Hislop in Mexico or somewhere in the USA. I have no idea if his wife Victoria is still alive or not. I have no way of contacting her, either. It’s really hard to find any online information at all about J Hislop. Which is sad, because he had such a prominent role for so many years in the SSB Org (and before that with the Mahesh Yogi TM movement)!

>Weren’t you supposed to pass the alleged Hislop Letters to the next president of the Sai Center?

No, Joe, there was no requirement that the 3 Hislop memos and the copy of his letter to the Paynes be passed on to the next SSB center president, for these were never originally sent out to all the center presidents anyway (as per Jack’s explicit instruction in his memo to Directors of 2-21-81). These memos were intended only for the Directors to whom Jack addressed and sent these, and to certain other people who asked. Somehow the center president who preceeded me (and whose name you now know) was also given copies of the Hislop memos.

>Why did you take them from the Sai Center if you originally saw no harm in them?

Joe, i did not “take them from the Sai Center,” for they had never been in the “possession” of the S.F. Sai Center; they were in the possession of the former president, who did not give them to me until i had already been president for at least a year or two or more (circa 1983-4 or later). I’ve emailed this former president this morning to ascertain whether he has a better memory than i as to when, exactly, he might have passed them along to me. But his memory may not be any better than mine.

>Why didn’t you pass them on to the next president?

I’m not really sure that i even yet had them in my possession to be able to give them to the next president. This person succeeded me sometime in 1984 or possibly even 1985 (i can’t recall. I served a total of somewhere around three years). I don’t even have a clear memory of which person succeeded me as president of the S.F. SSB center. I have a hunch it was one particular person, a current devotee whom i will email. If she is still alive, she may have a memory of this matter. At last check, she was already in her mid-80s and may not have a good memory about these things.

>If you saw harm in them, why did you maintain silence about them for 10+ years?

I saw concern, not harm. Moreover, I didn’t maintain total silence about them, for i recall once in a while referring to that SSB quote reported by Hislop, “Sai is millions of miles away from the devilish passion attributed to Him….” For instance, I had included that quote in a favorable manuscript (never published) about SSB that i fancied i might one day have published; and i made use of it in my first open letter to the local Santa Barbara SSB Center when i resigned in early Feb. 2001. Back when i lived in S.Francisco, the quote came up from time to time in response to the fact that some of us read Tal Brooke’s book about SSB at various times in the 1980s, and some folks in my large circle of acquaintances had also heard of the case of Terry Jr. I used to discuss with some devotees this entire topic of how SSB was such an “enigma,” such a “mystery.” We, like so many of the “SSB defenders” then and today, spent far more time rationalizing and trying to figure out SSB rather than look at other sides of the issue. It was only in the late 1990s that people began to uncover massive more evidence of “SSB touching the genitals of male youth”–the so-called “oiling procedure” and far worse behavior (actual masturbation, etc.), and also evidence of SSB having male youth touch, fondle, and suck his own genitals. It was at this time that the old 1981 Hislop letters became far more relevant. But by that point in time, i did NOT have those memos at ready access (they were out in my garage somewhere), and family health crises with my wife from 1998-2001 left me simply no time for pursuing any of this. I would mention, too, that i had not been an officer in the SSB movement since i moved away from S.F. and re-located in 1987-8 to Santa Barbara in Southern California (my “position” as a Council liason for the Northern California region was necessarily terminated). Incidentally, to my best recollection, I never made or showed copies of these Hislop memos to any Santa Barbara SSB Center officers until after I left the SSB movement in early 2001. Even then, i think i only made reference to them to Glen Meloy when he raised the names of Diana and Terry Payne Jr..

>Timothy, kindly supply me with proof that Sathya Sai Baba has sexually abused “many people”. Make me a list of names (from real people) who claimed they were sexually abused. You cannot cite names from the bogus Sai Petition because I have already shown how anyone can submit fake signatures under fake names and using fake emails there. Let us see if you can get more than a dozen names. Jed Geyerhahn, Greg Gerson, David Paul and Edwin Reurings claimed they were not sexually abused, although they are listed as sexual abuse victims on Anti-Sai websites.

Joe, regarding your points about the scale of numbers of male youth who were “abused”–first, let’s re-word that and refer to male youth who either had SSB touching their genitals or else being verbally asked or bodily positioned to touch SSB’s genitals–i.e., some form of legally inappropriate “sexual touching,” what is generally called “molestation.” Whether the experiencers themselves at this point in time refer to it as “abuse” or not is another question that i don’t want to debate here. Yes, some of the male youth might have enjoyed or been neutral about the experience–after all, most of these lads had been led to believe by the mythology of the SSB movement that this was “God incarnate” touching them.

But we certainly know what worldwide laws state : any exposing or touching of anyone’s genitals or exposing one’s own genitals or constraining anyone in any way to touch one’s own genitals without that person’s permission is harassment. Touching or exposing the genitals of any minors or engaging any minors in touching/seeing one’s own genitals is a definitely an illegal, criminal activity, except for licensed physicians or in unusual emergency situations. This, in essence, is what all statutes in all civilized societies say about this matter.

Jack Hislop was certainly in agreement with this legal mindset when he stated in his Jan. 18, 1981 memo that SSB would be a criminal if he was doing anything like this, even if SSB did have supernormal powers.

Now, Joe, there is no doubt a much larger number of male youth who have had these kind of inappropriate forms of sexual touch and exposure. Just to mention the strange “oiling” procedure –wherein SSB “anoints the perineum” of male youth and, in the process, usually sees their exposed genitals– it seems from all spoken testimony that there is a huge number of such persons. Almost every center in the USA of any size seems to have one, two, three or more male youth who’ve had this happen to them. Right there, that’s some 200-400 persons. In the USA alone. Start adding to that the numbers of Sai centers in the many other nations of the world and we easily do have probably well over 1,000 or 2,000 persons who have experienced this inappropriate “invasion” of their genital area by SSB. For many years, most of these male youth and their devotee parents would never have called this “abuse.” But i can tell you as a longtime officer in the 1980s in S.F. and a member of the S.Barbara center in the late 1980s to 2001 that many people were mystified by all of this.

But now, as for the far more serious kind of sexual touching, molestation and genital exposure (e.g., SSB exposing himself), at least 40 persons, by my count, have been involved in this. Joe, I actually have a long annotated list of these persons, most with their names mentioned, several referred to anonymously by writers and correspondents. All were garnered by me from different internet sites, books, and personal conversations over the years, but most of the names came to me in the time period between 2001-2 and then afterwards. You’d be very surprised, Joe, how many people not at all involved in any of this have specifically named to me certain males who visited SSB from the 1970s onward but who quickly left him because SSB had pulled them into such situations of sexual touching.

But, here, Joe, i simply do not feel SAFE with you to share this long list, for I don’t have any confidence that you will keep these names confidential, and some of these persons (and the persons who told me about them, whom i mention in my annotations) would, i am sure, prefer to remain confidential. Some of these names have in fact already been made “public” (at least to a rather wide circle of internet readers). But some of these names have never, to my knowledge, been posted before. The late Glen Meloy is probably the only person with whom i have shared my own compilation list of those claiming (or being claimed by others) to have had these kind of interactions with SSB.

Of course i don’t regard each of these cases of named persons as being of the same weight. Obviously, the status of numerous names on my list are only in the category of “hearsay.” But in matters like these, even hearsay evidence has some usefulness in the larger matter of serial sexual molestation. For we know that in these kinds of molestation cases (as well as cases of sexual harassment in the workplace, etc.) there is an obvious “tip of the iceberg” phenomenon. There will always be many more people who have had these kinds of experiences than become openly known.

For instance, until the BBC release of “The Secret Swami,” i did not even know that Mark Roche had been an “experiencer” of this kind of molestation. I had met Mark several times in the 1980s in northern California, and we even talked about SSB’s expressed views on sexuality, but Mark never opened up and told me about his own sexual experiences with SSB.

Here’s a case of someone right under my nose in N.California in the 1980s and i did not even know that he had experienced these things until i saw the BBC documentary in 2005. So just how many other persons have had this happen that many of us don’t even know about?

And, more importantly, how many of these persons would ever come forth even if there were a big court case? You see, many people simply don’t want any exposure of this aspect of their personal history in such molestation cases, even when there is a financial reward, such as in a class action lawsuit. This is especially true with cases of molestation of a male by a male homosexual, because of the obvious humiliation involved.

So, Joe, please be real here: the numbers are almost certainly going to be greater than we think.
Now, I would be very surprised if the numbers of “experiencers” of molestation behavior by SSB are over 1,000.
Yet it is quite plausible, from what we know of other cases of serial sexual predators, and with the boys’ schools right there near SSB and the further fact reported by Kasturi and other biographers that “SSB would have one or two male youth in his room every night,” that SSB might have easily performed these sexual interactions with at least 100 male youth to perhaps as many as two or three times that number. After all, Sathya Sai has had at least four decades (at least 14,000 days and nights) to be “active.”

>It is also amusing how critics claim that one can hear Sai Baba unzipping the pants to alleged victims from inside the private interview room (although many wear pajama pants that don’t have zippers), yet all the wild, loud and frenzied “moaning” and “gurgling” that some victims attributed to Sai Baba went unheard by all the people just outside the private interview room,

Joe, i never said it was “loud and frenzied”– it could easily have been very soft moaning sounds, inaudible beyond the curtains or walls. Moreover, and here’s where it gets really tricky, if we accept that SSB has some paranormal powers (again, the source of those powers remains undetermined), he could easily “warp spacetime” or something. Don’t laugh or mock me on this one. You yourself have stated in print that he has these weird shapeshifting abilities (switching from male to female genitals, though i’m still not convinced that he hasn’t just learned to make muscular adjustments to show one or the other like a heramaphrodite). The point is that SSB might be able to create “insular” interdimensional environments wherein he can engage in these behaviors without easy detection. Just look at what so many people have reported about “alien abductions“–the “missing time” pheonemon and being lifted and transported out of one’s bed and relocated to other areas without one’s spouse noticing anything. This can all get very, very weird. But, again Joe, just because SSB might have supernormal powers does not make him in fact the Divine Purna Avatar, just as we should not treat as “God” every “alien Space brother/sister” who abducts someone against gravity up into a spaceship or into some interdimensional realm. Have you ever made a serious study of this kind of literature (UFOs, aliens, abductions), such as the very readable book about the proceedings of the 5-day conference held at MIT in 1992, reported in a 1995 book published by Knopf and written by the respected mainstream journalist, CDB Bryan, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. There’s a ton of literature on this topic by various good writers. Just how widely have you read on the paranormal? There are all sorts of paranormal things that can happen. And again, anyone wielding these powers is not necessarily “God” incarnate.

Hence, all the “vibhuti-manifestation” phenomena at Colusa and other places that you invoke mean very little, except that they are hotspots for some kind of paranormal activity. But again, we know that elemental spirits in the subtle realms can do this sort of thing with ease. Respected physicist Michio Kaku, author of a graduate school textbook on superstring theory and a few texts for lay audiences has stated that anyone with access to just one extra dimension would have “godlike” powers over our conventional realm of 4-dimensional spacetime.

>Do Not Misrepresent My Words: Timothy, please do not misrepresent my words by incorrectly citing them. I said, as one complete thought:

The obvious implication is that if Sai Baba does possess this type of paranormal power, he is beyond gender, and thus beyond sexual desire. If one accepts that Sai Baba does possess this paranormal power, his actions, no matter how seemingly “sexual”, cannot be equated with those of an ordinary human being (as is often seen in the explanations of Lord Krishna’s clearly “sexual” behavior with the Gopis).

Joe, that was only for brief email purposes. i don’t plan to quote you publicly on this, so please calm down.

And with that, Joe, i’ve spent far many more hours on this for you and simply must move along here…. We may have to simply “agree to disagree” on many of these things.

Be happy, in great peace and love

Timothy

P.S.–Joe, i was reflecting on your apparent upset that in a simple email i had not bothered to quote an entire paragraph from you on one particular point, even though the other points you made in that paragraph (ie., SSB’s paranormal powers) were elsewhere dealt with by me in that email. You got so upset that i had taken your words “out of context.”

>Do Not Misrepresent My Words: Timothy, please do not misrepresent my words by incorrectly citing them. I said, as one complete thought:

The obvious implication is that if Sai Baba does possess this type of paranormal power, he is beyond gender, and thus beyond sexual desire. If one accepts that Sai Baba does possess this paranormal power, his actions, no matter how seemingly “sexual”, cannot be equated with those of an ordinary human being (as is often seen in the explanations of Lord Krishna’s clearly “sexual” behavior with the Gopis).

And i wrote back to you on this:
>>Joe, that was only for brief email purposes. i don’t plan to quote you publicly on this, so please calm down.

And yet, beyond the limited confines of private email correspondence, some time ago (whenever you created it) you put up onto your basically quite vicious webpage about me for all to see a massive form of taking my words out of context. For instance, when, out of the full context those items in a list i posited of possible ways of getting guidance, including meditation, utilizing the rational mind, etc., you selected only those widely found practices (including those widely used by legions of SSB devotees) of consulting an astrologer, flipping a coin, selecting answers from some scrambled papers (”throwing the chits”), etc., to make them and myself sound “kooky.” Then you add a venomous bit of rude sarcasm: “It would not surprise me if Timothy Conway flipped coins, tossed papers or consulted the I Ching to formulate his opinions about Sathya Sai Baba.”

It has been over three days now since i clarified that issue for you, and yet you’ve not posted my email clarification about this piece on getting guidance, the chit-throwing by SSB devotees, nor my admission that i’ve never used these particular oracular methods or astrologers, even though i mentioned them because millions of people have done so. Hence, you publicly misrepresent me.

Again, Joe, i don’t really care what you say about me on the Internet, short of prosecutable slander and defamation (though my wife, mother and friends would sure be upset by what you’ve posted if they were to read it, so where’s the ahimsa?). I know what, in truth, i really am (Pure Awareness associated with a passing, mortal, mind-body personality).

I only wanted to point out here, Joe, that i detect from your emails to me and to others and your countless internet pages a tremendous disrespect from the start for your interlocutors or correspondents. Rather than address issues and resolve problems in a collective “win-win” peacemaking fashion, far too often you resort to onesided bias, dishonesty and misrepresentation (e.g., not giving the proper context for someone’s remarks), sarcasm, name-calling, a penchant for playing insidious and injurious “gotcha” games, smear tactics, “guilt-by-association” campaigns, lack of fair-mindedness, and an almost complete absence of expressing any love, friendliness or emapthy toward anyone you perceive as not being on your side.

So, Joe, this email is just a mirror held up to save you from your own karma-producing aggressive mind. It’s one thing to be honestly assertive of one’s needs and feelings, and assertive of consensually verifiable facts, it’s another thing to be rudely and injuriously aggressive and pathologically one-sided.

I hope you take these words in the spirit of love with which they are offered.

Namaskaram

–timothy

P.S.–Joe, i was reflecting on your apparent upset that in a simple email i had not bothered to quote an entire paragraph from you on one particular point, even though the other points you made in that paragraph (ie., SSB’s paranormal powers) were elsewhere dealt with by me in that email. You got so upset that i had taken your words “out of context.”

>Do Not Misrepresent My Words: Timothy, please do not misrepresent my words by incorrectly citing them. I said, as one complete thought:

The obvious implication is that if Sai Baba does possess this type of paranormal power, he is beyond gender, and thus beyond sexual desire. If one accepts that Sai Baba does possess this paranormal power, his actions, no matter how seemingly “sexual”, cannot be equated with those of an ordinary human being (as is often seen in the explanations of Lord Krishna’s clearly “sexual” behavior with the Gopis).

And i wrote back to you on this:
>>Joe, that was only for brief email purposes. i don’t plan to quote you publicly on this, so please calm down.

And yet, beyond the limited confines of private email correspondence, some time ago (whenever you created it) you put up onto your basically quite vicious webpage about me for all to see a massive form of taking my words out of context. For instance, when, out of the full context those items in a list i posited of possible ways of getting guidance, including meditation, utilizing the rational mind, etc., you selected only those widely found practices (including those widely used by legions of SSB devotees) of consulting an astrologer, flipping a coin, selecting answers from some scrambled papers (”throwing the chits”), etc., to make them and myself sound “kooky.” Then you add a venomous bit of rude sarcasm: “It would not surprise me if Timothy Conway flipped coins, tossed papers or consulted the I Ching to formulate his opinions about Sathya Sai Baba.”

It has been over three days now since i clarified that issue for you, and yet you’ve not posted my email clarification about this piece on getting guidance, the chit-throwing by SSB devotees, nor my admission that i’ve never used these particular oracular methods or astrologers, even though i mentioned them because millions of people have done so. Hence, you publicly misrepresent me.

Again, Joe, i don’t really care what you say about me on the Internet, short of prosecutable slander and defamation (though my wife, mother and friends would sure be upset by what you’ve posted if they were to read it, so where’s the ahimsa?). I know what, in truth, i really am (Pure Awareness associated with a passing, mortal, mind-body personality).

I only wanted to point out here, Joe, that i detect from your emails to me and to others and your countless internet pages a tremendous disrespect from the start for your interlocutors or correspondents. Rather than address issues and resolve problems in a collective “win-win” peacemaking fashion, far too often you resort to onesided bias, dishonesty and misrepresentation (e.g., not giving the proper context for someone’s remarks), sarcasm, name-calling, a penchant for playing insidious and injurious “gotcha” games, smear tactics, “guilt-by-association” campaigns, lack of fair-mindedness, and an almost complete absence of expressing any love, friendliness or emapthy toward anyone you perceive as not being on your side.

So, Joe, this email is just a mirror held up to save you from your own karma-producing aggressive mind. It’s one thing to be honestly assertive of one’s needs and feelings, and assertive of consensually verifiable facts, it’s another thing to be rudely and injuriously aggressive and pathologically one-sided.

I hope you take these words in the spirit of love with which they are offered.

Namaskaram

–timothy

P.S.–Joe, i was reflecting on your apparent upset that in a simple email i had not bothered to quote an entire paragraph from you on one particular point, even though the other points you made in that paragraph (ie., SSB’s paranormal powers) were elsewhere dealt with by me in that email. You got so upset that i had taken your words “out of context.”

>Do Not Misrepresent My Words: Timothy, please do not misrepresent my words by incorrectly citing them. I said, as one complete thought:

The obvious implication is that if Sai Baba does possess this type of paranormal power, he is beyond gender, and thus beyond sexual desire. If one accepts that Sai Baba does possess this paranormal power, his actions, no matter how seemingly “sexual”, cannot be equated with those of an ordinary human being (as is often seen in the explanations of Lord Krishna’s clearly “sexual” behavior with the Gopis).

And i wrote back to you on this:
>>Joe, that was only for brief email purposes. i don’t plan to quote you publicly on this, so please calm down.

And yet, beyond the limited confines of private email correspondence, some time ago (whenever you created it) you put up onto your basically quite vicious webpage about me for all to see a massive form of taking my words out of context. For instance, when, out of the full context those items in a list i posited of possible ways of getting guidance, including meditation, utilizing the rational mind, etc., you selected only those widely found practices (including those widely used by legions of SSB devotees) of consulting an astrologer, flipping a coin, selecting answers from some scrambled papers (”throwing the chits”), etc., to make them and myself sound “kooky.” Then you add a venomous bit of rude sarcasm: “It would not surprise me if Timothy Conway flipped coins, tossed papers or consulted the I Ching to formulate his opinions about Sathya Sai Baba.”

It has been over three days now since i clarified that issue for you, and yet you’ve not posted my email clarification about this piece on getting guidance, the chit-throwing by SSB devotees, nor my admission that i’ve never used these particular oracular methods or astrologers, even though i mentioned them because millions of people have done so. Hence, you publicly misrepresent me.

Again, Joe, i don’t really care what you say about me on the Internet, short of prosecutable slander and defamation (though my wife, mother and friends would sure be upset by what you’ve posted if they were to read it, so where’s the ahimsa?). I know what, in truth, i really am (Pure Awareness associated with a passing, mortal, mind-body personality).

I only wanted to point out here, Joe, that i detect from your emails to me and to others and your countless internet pages a tremendous disrespect from the start for your interlocutors or correspondents. Rather than address issues and resolve problems in a collective “win-win” peacemaking fashion, far too often you resort to onesided bias, dishonesty and misrepresentation (e.g., not giving the proper context for someone’s remarks), sarcasm, name-calling, a penchant for playing insidious and injurious “gotcha” games, smear tactics, “guilt-by-association” campaigns, lack of fair-mindedness, and an almost complete absence of expressing any love, friendliness or emapthy toward anyone you perceive as not being on your side.

So, Joe, this email is just a mirror held up to save you from your own karma-producing aggressive mind. It’s one thing to be honestly assertive of one’s needs and feelings, and assertive of consensually verifiable facts, it’s another thing to be rudely and injuriously aggressive and pathologically one-sided.

I hope you take these words in the spirit of love with which they are offered.

Namaskaram

–timothy