In the Lennons' Playboy interview, Yoko says: "Anyway, when I went to est, I saw Werner Erhardt, the same thing [as primal scream therapy]. He's a nice showman and he's got a nice gig there. I felt the same thing when we went to Sai Baba in India. In
India, you have to be a guru instead of a pop star. Guru is the pop star of India and pop star is the guru here."

Sai Baba, eh? For those who don't know, this was a quack guru who claimed to be capable of marterializing objects out of thin air. While he claimed to possess this otherworldly power, the objects he "materialized" were completely ordinary. Usually the
object was a fig. When he *really* wanted to impress his audience, he would "materialize" a watch. Also, while Sai Baba was violently opposed to homosexuality in public, he -- you guessed i-- practiced it in private on young male disciples.

IMO, as with the Jim Jones, Heaven's Gate and Q cults, one has to wonder about the intelligence and mental health of anyone who would follow such an obvious con. Fortunately, John Lennon's infatuation with Sai Baba appears to have been brief. In
Skywriting By Word of Mouth, Lennon wrote this:

"From pilgrimages to India with magic Alex Mardas, to what turned out to be a phony miracle worker called Babaji (?), who performed conjuring tricks such as pulling cheap watches with his picture on them "out of nowhere," to a packed house of mainly
middle-aged American women (whilst outside the camp, thousands of crippled Indians were selling the same cheap stuff to make a living)..."

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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