In the second to last issue of that journal, I wrote a review of an affirmative Sai Baba book entitled My Baba and I, which was written by Jack Hislop, who at the time was the President of the North American Sai Baba organization. In the 1980s, Brian Walsh and I founded a journal called Understanding Cults and Spiritual Movements (UCSM) which was designed to critically analyze a number of gurus and masters in America, Europe, and India. Understanding Cults and Spiritual Movements Years later, my gut reaction turned out to be correct, as overwhelming photographic evidence emerged which indeed demonstrated that Sai Baba faked his miracles by doing some very amateurish magic tricks—tricks, by the way, that even a child could reproduce given enough practice. Simply put, Sai Baba's miracles looked suspiciously like magic tricks.
Although I enjoyed the narrative immensely, I felt even then that something rang false about Schulman's narrative.
I picked up a book by Arnold Schulman simply titled Baba, which described in colorful details the miraculous exploits of Sathya Sai Baba, who had become renowned throughout India for both his extraordinary powers and for his teachings on love. We were on a family summer vacation in Idyllwild, California, and on one lazy afternoon I walked into the local library which was then situated in Fern Valley a short distance away from our cabin. I first heard of Sathya Sai Baba when I was 15 years old.