{UAH} INTERESTING FORGERY: 'Guru-Buster' Basava Premanand Busted Again!
'Guru-Buster' Basava Premanand Busted Again!
Mr. Basava Premanand is known as the James Randi of the Indian sub-continent, which I regard as a compliment indeed.
--James Randi, 'Skeptic'
©2008Lisa De Witt
In the Nov 2007 Volume 20; No.07 (dated 15-11-2007) issue of his Indian Skeptic Magazine, Premanand tries to pass off a fraudulent black and white photo of Sathya Sai Baba with Idi Amin, who was born in 1925 and died in 2003. This tampered photo is eerily similar to one copyrighted and published in the online RadioSai Newsletter in February 2006 with the caption...Dr G Venkataraman (left) and Sri K. Chakravarthi with Swami after the ceremony.
It is obvious that Chakravarthi's image was replaced with Idi Amin who would actually be a year older than then 81 year old Sai Baba if Amin were still alive. The only time Sai Baba traveled to Uganda was in 1968 when he visited devotees, one of which was then Major General Idi Amin's doctor, a Dr. Patel. At that time, Sai Baba advised both Dr. Patel and a Dr. Gadhiato leave the country. A few years later Amin staged a coup and became dictator, eventually expelling all Asians and massacring countless civilians.
In February 2007, Robert Priddy had posted a color copy of the very same composite on his blog (Ref.) with an article about Idi Amin. In true paranoid form, the great intellectual giant Priddy ignorantly implies Sai Baba went to Uganda to hold 'secret meetings' with Amin to convince him to delay the expulsion of Asians when Amin was not even dictator yet! One can see Priddy's attempt to lie about and distort the well-documented accounts of both Patel and Gadhia as to Sai Baba's reason for visiting Uganda. On one hand, Priddy mocks devotees' stories about Amin and then tries to pass them off as being legitimate, showing his inability to discern between fact and fiction or gossip. Priddy also believes Ullrich Zimmermann
(Ref.), Keith Ord, Alaya Rahm and Neptune who claim to have seen Sai Baba's genitalia supernaturally morph from male to female! Far be it for Priddy to mock others for what he deems devotees' 'gullibility' when he cannot even resolve his own hypocrisy, contradictions, rationalizations and equivocations which point toward his own very deep-seated confusion. Like Barry Pittard, Priddy hides out on the internet where he can insulate himself from having to answer questions about these issues.
Basava Premanand has resorted in the November 2007 issue to publishing no less than nine articles either written by or about discredited anti-Sai extremist and apostate, Robert Priddy. The very shady British-born Priddy, whose legal birth name was Robin Crichton Priddy, wrote a pro-Sai Baba book published by Samuel Weiser in 1997, republished by Sai Towers in 1999-2000 (Ref.) and as far as I know is still being sold in the ashram bookstore to this day. In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed, among other miracles, that Sai Baba healed his very debilitating spinal abnormality in a series of dream operations. Priddy has since refused to answer my questions regarding his glaring contradictions. On Robert Priddy's website, he lists the initial date of publication of his pro-Sai Baba book, Source of the Dream as sometime in 1994 (1st ed., Bangalore - out of print)(Ref.). This is very important since Robert Priddy has also provided his alleged diary notes from March, 1994 in which he entered the following
information about his chronic back problem:
SUNDAY 27/3/94 (Bhajan all day)
Afternoon darshan: Sat in chair at back. He came down to the last block and looked in my direction – but did not fixate gaze on me. [Same way?]
I had back problems again.
Below this entry, Priddy has tried recently to explain away his contradictory claim (which I have pressed him about) in his book, Source of the Dreamthat his back was healed by Sai Baba in a series of dream operations.
Priddy writes the following comment in blue below the above diary entry:
Comment: Once I had thought that Sai Baba had helped cure my spinal misalignment problems - caused by several falls from childhood onwards - especially though[sic] a dream. I later realised, when the problems returned and got worse, that it had just been some temporary placebo effect.
In a recent blog post, Priddy continues to dig his hole even deeper with the following statement (Ref.),
I should add that I have never received any kind of homosexual suggestion in my meetings with Sai Baba, nor in any of the several hundred dreams I have recorded in which he has figured prominently. Once he put his lips to my mouth, at which I felt disgust, but he instead seemed to such[sic] out of my spine something which was causing the spinal problems I suffered from since the age of 40-odd. It was made clear in the dream that it was not a kiss even, but some kind of therapy. Strangely, some years later I was with Sai leaders after a conference in Denmark when I told of this and the wife of the leader in Austria said she had experienced EXACTLY the same. She too had spinal problems after falling down a flight of stairs. I can't explain this other than by the machinations of unconscious wish fulfillment of hoping to be cured, but I can say that there was no improvement in either of our conditions afterwards. (I was born with spina bifida okulta).
Apparently Priddy does not realize he just provided in written evidence his own admission that his back problem was not "cured" as he claims in his book which was also published that year and for which he received a disability pension in 1985. Thus, we are left to believe Priddy intentionally committed fraud in Source of the Dream when he claimed his back was healed by a series of dream operations.
In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed the following conversation took place between him and an Osteopath. This June 1987 event was apparently proceeded by a dream operation in November 1986.
Almost at once he claimed that neither of the two sets of my X rays from different years were mine, because in them the lower spine was in a much more serious condition than I proved to have when he examined it physically. It showed an excessive curvature and a lower vertebra that was badly and permanently displaced. He was even surprised that I was able to walk about with it! Without any comment whatsoever from me he remarked, 'I would have staked my professional reputation that these X rays are not yours!' However, my name was photographed into each one. He asked me what on earth I had been doing - how the great improvement in my spine was achieved. I told him I had hardly been able to walk much of the time, let alone exercise. He shook his head and said, most perplexed, that anyway there was simply no method or exercises he knew whereby I could have made the condition so much better...It was not until afterward that I remembered the dream of the operation 'under anesthesia' and the bandages on my thighs and mid-riff on either side of the crisis point in my lower spine! Before the 'rat in the drum' episode I had even been unable to walk about the house for long without having to lie down. Yet within a month I had gone to India, sitting on airplanes and walking for hours in a day without more than a few tensions! Though I had felt sure that Baba was helping me, I had not realized how radical a change this had required to my anatomy!(Source Of The Dream, 1999 ed.; "Enigmas of Suffering and Healing"; pp: 179, 181)
However, in April 1989, Narasimhan wrote in a letter to Priddy (Ref.),
As regards the dreams related by you they are certainly significant although it may not be easy to make out precisely what they mean in relation to the future.
I do hope that by Bhagavan's grace you will soon get over your spinal trouble. I presume you are making regular use of Swami's vibhuti.
--James Randi, 'Skeptic'
©2008Lisa De Witt
In the Nov 2007 Volume 20; No.07 (dated 15-11-2007) issue of his Indian Skeptic Magazine, Premanand tries to pass off a fraudulent black and white photo of Sathya Sai Baba with Idi Amin, who was born in 1925 and died in 2003. This tampered photo is eerily similar to one copyrighted and published in the online RadioSai Newsletter in February 2006 with the caption...Dr G Venkataraman (left) and Sri K. Chakravarthi with Swami after the ceremony.
It is obvious that Chakravarthi's image was replaced with Idi Amin who would actually be a year older than then 81 year old Sai Baba if Amin were still alive. The only time Sai Baba traveled to Uganda was in 1968 when he visited devotees, one of which was then Major General Idi Amin's doctor, a Dr. Patel. At that time, Sai Baba advised both Dr. Patel and a Dr. Gadhiato leave the country. A few years later Amin staged a coup and became dictator, eventually expelling all Asians and massacring countless civilians.
In February 2007, Robert Priddy had posted a color copy of the very same composite on his blog (Ref.) with an article about Idi Amin. In true paranoid form, the great intellectual giant Priddy ignorantly implies Sai Baba went to Uganda to hold 'secret meetings' with Amin to convince him to delay the expulsion of Asians when Amin was not even dictator yet! One can see Priddy's attempt to lie about and distort the well-documented accounts of both Patel and Gadhia as to Sai Baba's reason for visiting Uganda. On one hand, Priddy mocks devotees' stories about Amin and then tries to pass them off as being legitimate, showing his inability to discern between fact and fiction or gossip. Priddy also believes Ullrich Zimmermann
(Ref.), Keith Ord, Alaya Rahm and Neptune who claim to have seen Sai Baba's genitalia supernaturally morph from male to female! Far be it for Priddy to mock others for what he deems devotees' 'gullibility' when he cannot even resolve his own hypocrisy, contradictions, rationalizations and equivocations which point toward his own very deep-seated confusion. Like Barry Pittard, Priddy hides out on the internet where he can insulate himself from having to answer questions about these issues.
Basava Premanand has resorted in the November 2007 issue to publishing no less than nine articles either written by or about discredited anti-Sai extremist and apostate, Robert Priddy. The very shady British-born Priddy, whose legal birth name was Robin Crichton Priddy, wrote a pro-Sai Baba book published by Samuel Weiser in 1997, republished by Sai Towers in 1999-2000 (Ref.) and as far as I know is still being sold in the ashram bookstore to this day. In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed, among other miracles, that Sai Baba healed his very debilitating spinal abnormality in a series of dream operations. Priddy has since refused to answer my questions regarding his glaring contradictions. On Robert Priddy's website, he lists the initial date of publication of his pro-Sai Baba book, Source of the Dream as sometime in 1994 (1st ed., Bangalore - out of print)(Ref.). This is very important since Robert Priddy has also provided his alleged diary notes from March, 1994 in which he entered the following
information about his chronic back problem:
SUNDAY 27/3/94 (Bhajan all day)
Afternoon darshan: Sat in chair at back. He came down to the last block and looked in my direction – but did not fixate gaze on me. [Same way?]
I had back problems again.
Below this entry, Priddy has tried recently to explain away his contradictory claim (which I have pressed him about) in his book, Source of the Dreamthat his back was healed by Sai Baba in a series of dream operations.
Priddy writes the following comment in blue below the above diary entry:
Comment: Once I had thought that Sai Baba had helped cure my spinal misalignment problems - caused by several falls from childhood onwards - especially though[sic] a dream. I later realised, when the problems returned and got worse, that it had just been some temporary placebo effect.
In a recent blog post, Priddy continues to dig his hole even deeper with the following statement (Ref.),
I should add that I have never received any kind of homosexual suggestion in my meetings with Sai Baba, nor in any of the several hundred dreams I have recorded in which he has figured prominently. Once he put his lips to my mouth, at which I felt disgust, but he instead seemed to such[sic] out of my spine something which was causing the spinal problems I suffered from since the age of 40-odd. It was made clear in the dream that it was not a kiss even, but some kind of therapy. Strangely, some years later I was with Sai leaders after a conference in Denmark when I told of this and the wife of the leader in Austria said she had experienced EXACTLY the same. She too had spinal problems after falling down a flight of stairs. I can't explain this other than by the machinations of unconscious wish fulfillment of hoping to be cured, but I can say that there was no improvement in either of our conditions afterwards. (I was born with spina bifida okulta).
Apparently Priddy does not realize he just provided in written evidence his own admission that his back problem was not "cured" as he claims in his book which was also published that year and for which he received a disability pension in 1985. Thus, we are left to believe Priddy intentionally committed fraud in Source of the Dream when he claimed his back was healed by a series of dream operations.
In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed the following conversation took place between him and an Osteopath. This June 1987 event was apparently proceeded by a dream operation in November 1986.
Almost at once he claimed that neither of the two sets of my X rays from different years were mine, because in them the lower spine was in a much more serious condition than I proved to have when he examined it physically. It showed an excessive curvature and a lower vertebra that was badly and permanently displaced. He was even surprised that I was able to walk about with it! Without any comment whatsoever from me he remarked, 'I would have staked my professional reputation that these X rays are not yours!' However, my name was photographed into each one. He asked me what on earth I had been doing - how the great improvement in my spine was achieved. I told him I had hardly been able to walk much of the time, let alone exercise. He shook his head and said, most perplexed, that anyway there was simply no method or exercises he knew whereby I could have made the condition so much better...It was not until afterward that I remembered the dream of the operation 'under anesthesia' and the bandages on my thighs and mid-riff on either side of the crisis point in my lower spine! Before the 'rat in the drum' episode I had even been unable to walk about the house for long without having to lie down. Yet within a month I had gone to India, sitting on airplanes and walking for hours in a day without more than a few tensions! Though I had felt sure that Baba was helping me, I had not realized how radical a change this had required to my anatomy!(Source Of The Dream, 1999 ed.; "Enigmas of Suffering and Healing"; pp: 179, 181)
However, in April 1989, Narasimhan wrote in a letter to Priddy (Ref.),
As regards the dreams related by you they are certainly significant although it may not be easy to make out precisely what they mean in relation to the future.
I do hope that by Bhagavan's grace you will soon get over your spinal trouble. I presume you are making regular use of Swami's vibhuti.
___________________________________
Gwokto La'Kitgum"Even a small dog can piss on a tall Building", Jim Hightower
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The claim that I faked the photograph with Amin, Sai Baba and Venkataraman is only a truth with modifications. It was stated that the photo was a figurative Photoshopped image illustrating the actual relations that pertained, as written up by Venkataraman after Sai Baba'a warm recollections o and praise for Amin in a Christmas Discourse in December 2006 (https://robertpriddy.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/dictator-idi-amin-sai-babas-warm-recollections/)
ReplyDeleteIndeed, my back was not healed by Sathya Sai Baba, which I realised well enough after some years. But I had, like thousands of others who interpreted their experiences as due to the omnipresence of Sai Baba, taken the improvement in my back and neck problems during the first weeks of visiting Sai Baba (and receiving vibuthi from him) to be due to him. In fact it was due to the warmth and improved and relaxed activity of visiting India. Only after I left Sai baba in 2000 did a considerable improvement in my condition come about through having found much improved support soles (footbeds) which corrected my entire stance and spinal subluxations.
Lisa de Witt was known as an excessive web troll who wrote the most disgusting things about all Sai Baba dissidents, calling them alcoholics, rapists, Nazis, gang-bangers and what have you. This can be confirmed by reading some of her 'creations' at
http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/28/deWitt_raving.html
Robert Priddy