Why did Conny lie? On this page Conny Larsson said:
“Do you remember in Puttaparthi 1980 when I had broken my knee and I came with crutches to you on Darshan meeting on the 25th of December? When you called me on to the compound and asked me to let go of my crutches and walk, which I did in front of everyone. Do you remember how you called me in for an interview after the enormous response you got from the people that thought they had seen a miracle. Do you remember how you asked me not to talk to anyone about it, giving them the opportunity to create their own story which they did. From then on you called me the ‘Crutch boy’ and called for me as soon as you wanted to impress on a Doctor or a Minister etc. Again you used me to make people to believe that you were divine.”
However, Conny told a very different story in an article entitled, God’s Little Clown. In this article, Conny related how he had sustained a “badly crushed” knee after being trampled by a horse. While in the hospital (with his leg in a cast) Conny’s friends asked him to take a group to India to see Sai Baba. Conny’s doctor said that such a trip was “out of the question” and that Conny “would not be able to walk for at least six months”. Nevertheless, due to his friend’s insistence, Conny went “hobbling with crutches” to India, against his doctors orders.
Sai Baba called Conny’s group for an interview and Conny Larsson said:
“In the interview Swami said to me, ‘Get up without the crutches.’ I protested, ‘No!’ He said, ‘Get up’, and repeated this a third time. Somehow I got up and as I did so I felt a surge of energy shooting through my leg from the foot right through my body to my head. I was able to walk normally and unaware, started dancing around like a fool shouting, ‘I can walk, I can walk!’ When we walked out of the interview room, I held my crutches high over my head for all to see.”
Conny experienced a “surge of energy” and the ability to dance on a badly crushed knee that his doctor said he would be able to walk on for at least six months! And this was not a miracle! In the first version, Conny said that SSB told him to let go of his crutches and walk on the “compound...in front of everyone” and was later called for an interview. In his second version, SSB called him for an interview first and told him to “get up” without his crutches (in the interview room, not the compound) and that Conny raised his crutches, over his head, on his way out of the interview room. In the first version, Conny claimed that SSB did not cure him, but faked a cure and allowed others to create their own stories of the “miracle”. In the second version, Conny said that the felt a “surge of energy” shooting through his leg and was able to dance on a “badly crushed knee” that his doctor said he would not be able to walk on for at least six months! Why did Conny change his story?
Conny also related this story to Americans at the XIII Annual South Central Regional Conference in Houston Texas, on September 4th – 7th 1998 (which was recorded on audio tapes). In the third version to this story, Conny said that his knee was broken into 6 pieces and the doctors said that he would not be able to walk for at least 3 months (not 6 months, as claimed earlier).
Like the first version, Sai Baba called Conny Larsson out onto the compound and asked him to let go of his crutch and walk. After having the cruch knocked out of his hand, Conny stood there on one leg and Baba told him to “Go”. The third time Sai Baba told him this, Conny said:
“And I don’t know what happened, there was some explosion from my feet, coming from Earth, going all the way up and blow my mind. No conscious whatsoever. And from that moment, I don’t know anything about what happened...From that moment when this bubbles came, or electricity, or whatever it came. It went out through my head and blow my consciousness. I don’t know anything. But I have heard it and have heard people say that have seen the video, I jumped, I screamed, like the cartoons, you know? Like that. I jumped around shouting and screaming and run up to the ladies there. And somehow, I ended up in the interview room. I didn’t know what. Baba was doing the darshan. I somehow made my way up to the interview room. With the two legs. Without pain or anything...Of course, I didn’t go back to the crutches at all.”
Despite the miraculous nature of his cure, Conny is now claiming that it was not a miracle and there was nothing miraculous about it! Connie Larsson told this story (many times) to various groups of devotees all around the world.
Update: August 28th 2006: Just recently, Conny replied to some questions on his own website and contradicted himself yet again. This time around, Conny claimed:
- That he was operated a couple of months earlier to the time he went to Puttaparthi.
- By the time he went to Puttaparthi he was using only one crutch.
- He had been given permission from his doctors to go to Puttaparthi.
- Ann-Marie Eherenkrona (the lady who wrote Conny’s story in a book called “God’s Little Clown”) slanted Conny’s story with a favorable bias.
All four of these points are contradicted by Conny’s testimonies given in September 1998 (10 months prior to his defection from Sai Baba) at the XIII Annual South Central Regional Conference in Houston Texas, in which Conny told his “crushed knee story” and specifically stated, out of his own mouth, the following:
1) “So now, I had crushed my knee. One of my divine horses kicked me so bad, my knee was broken in six pieces. I had two legs in one. Just hanging apart. I went through the severe operation and I was scheduled to go to Baba and they told me though ‘No. You have to stay 3 months hospitalized.’ I had an iron needle stick, thick like this, all through my heel and I was hanging with the legs like this and I was lying there newly operated. And I thought, ‘I can’t do it. I just can’t come there.’ And I was so sad. And then, after 3-4 weeks, or something like that. Maybe 5 weeks. People started to come and say, ‘We can’t go. If you don’t go, we don’t go.’ And I was usually the one who brought people down there (Reference).”
My Comment About Point 1: Now, Conny is trying to say that he was operated a few months prior, and not 5 weeks like he formerly claimed. The doctors told Conny that he would have to be hospitalized for 3 months.
2) “And at that time, I had to go on the crutches. And when I go on the crutches, I had to do like this. With the both of the legs because as soon as I did anything it was so hurting...And I had so much pain. So I thought, “Oh you man! You don’t pass me!” And I was thinking, I was using the word, that pain can do you use...So then people somehow opened up and on the way, I dropped one of the crutches. I had only one crutch and I had such a difficulty to come through. And then he took me out there, on one of the crutches, and I had to use one crutch and one leg and letting the other leg hang in the air (Reference).”
My Comment About Point 2: Therefore, Conny was using two crutches at that time and dropped one in the commotion. He said he was suffering from immense pain and was even swearing at Baba in his head because the pain was so intense! After Baba healed Conny, he claimed he was totally and completely free from pain. Now, however, Conny is attempting to tell others that his knee was in such a good state that he was only using one crutch.
3) “And then they approached the professor of the clinic and said that, ‘This is the situation. He is leading us. We can take him in a wheelchair, or whatever.’ And they said, ‘No. The doctor says no. No way. He’s going to be in the bed for at least 8 or 10 weeks.’ And then, they kept on arguing with the doctors and finally one of the doctors, there were many at the team, said, ‘On your own risk. Don’t involve us in this. It’s your own risk.’ (Reference)
My Comment About Point 3: Therefore, the doctors did not give their permission as Conny is now claiming.
4) My Comment About Point 4: Perhaps Ann-Marie Eherenkrona slanted “God’s Little Clown” with her favorable bias. However, Conny never dissented with Ann-Marie’s story and even repeated it with more fervor and devotion than was related in the book. Ann-Marie could not slant Conny’s actual words and testimony that were given at the Sai Retreat in Houston Texas where Conny made all these claims out of his own mouth (Reference).
Conny can’t keep any of his stories straight (which is why he is wholly unbelievable). So we are faced with two possibilities: Conny lied when he was a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba or he is lying now. Either scenario does not bode well for Conny Larsson (formerly “God’s Little Clown” and presently a very non-cognus mentus Anti-Sai Clown).
Reference
