My experience: My father and I spent five days with Swami in 1972 when I was nineteen during which time we received many interviews and abundant grace... I've written about the experience in my book "The Father, The Son and the Best Friend," (which is yet to be published). On our last day I had a short private interview with Swami in which he did something for me which cured me of a case of an extremely bad case of adolescent depression-fueled, post-drug-involved rampant sexual impulses. After I returned to college in America I was spontaneously celibate for about six months, and all the energy which had been raging below was now centered in my heart...and this without any effort or discipline. I had been malnourished through incorrect eating (I was vegetarian, but not eating right)and too much fasting, and when I got home I ate sometimes nine meals a day for months! I slept 4-5 hours a night and awoke with a spontaneous joy and bliss each morning. I felt like a happy child again ... young women offered themselves to me and I just wasn't interested - I only wanted to tell everyone about Swami and share my joy. A lot of people thought I'd gone nuts, but then a lot of others got turned on to the spiritual path through my nuttiness, too.

What did Baba do for me in that interview? He materialized white vibuthi that had a grainy quality to it, depositing half in my hand, bidding me to eat it, then keeping the other half in his hand as he squeezed the perineum - the crotch muscle - very hard and told me to breathe deeply as he did it. When he removed his hand there was no vibuthi in it, nor did I find any in my shorts later. This procedure was completely non-sexual. Swami's manner was that of a familiar, beloved, expert, clinical family doctor, and the whole thing took him less than a minute to perform. I was a little confused at the beginning, but something in me knew what he was doing, even though my exposure to yoga was minimal at that point.

Afterwards we talked a little and then he looked deeply into my eyes and wordlessly conveyed a love so intimate and deep and selfless ... He had his hands on my shoulders and it was as if he were placing me above him. It was too much for me. I broke. And I break every time I think on that moment, and perhaps the only reason I haven't meditated on that moment every day since 1972 is that my heart is still not large enough to hold all that love... His love simply demands more than our little shells can stand. If I were to try to describe what he conveyed to me in that moment and keep trying for the rest of my life, I still wouldn't get it right.

That night he took a bunch of us down to the dry Chitravati and materialized some things. He answered a lot of questions and there was a big show going on, as there often is around him. But what was happening for me seemed somehow "other" than the show, and it has ever since. Beginning in '72, I've never felt comfortable with the devotee scene. I've generally never liked going to Sai centers, though I've had periods of involvement, usually out of a sense of duty, even guilt. "Swami says..." etc.

I've sat at the feet of many teachers and have been in a lot of spiritual scenes and have even been through periods of doubt and upset - like this one - in relation to Swami, but the love I associate with him always returns and is always supreme, even when my mind can't understand; even when I try to forget him or even try to force him out... He goes beyond even being a best friend. His brand of love feels to be one with the primary reality behind all this, behind the drama.

And yet...There is much that I and many of us must look at in this particular drama. If even 1% of it had any credibility, and of that, if anyone came away from Swami feeling abused, traumatized, trashed, that's cause for concern.

Although I have benefitted immeasurably by all of my contacts with Sathya Sai Baba, physical and otherwise, throughout the years since my visit with him in 1972, at this point I am not altogether convinced that all of the allegations made against him are false. I endeavour to be true to the love he showered on me and awakened within me, but I also endeavour to be true to my own conscience and voice of reason. In this spirit, "doubt is the best friend of faith." (I'm not sure who originally said this, but it has always served me well.) I endeavor to be true to my deepest relationship to Swami, which demands that these matters before us not be swept under the carpet with the haste of blind faith, but be examined coolly, slowly, and thoroughly in the context of, and as an aid to, one's spriritual practice.

Is our spiritual practice wholly wedded to a faith in Swami as The Avatar? Do we understand what an Avatar is? Is there another dimension of spiritual practice which might better illumine our own true nature than an emotional dependence on a savior figure, and blind, unquestioning faith in a person or a doctrine or a set of beliefs? Has our world - internal and external - become a self-enclosed system which refers only to the person of Swami at every turn? These are all important questions to ask whether or not the any of the allegations are true, whether or not we believe they are true. Have we made a cult of Swami? Has that cult taken the place of real spirituality? Self-enclosed systems have to be destroyed sooner or later by some means or other. If the pilgrim would keep walking forward through the pain of that destruction, he/she would find greater life, greater love, real liberation, as opposed to the consolation of a belief system.