That Guru's Not Dead!

In a story oddly reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, followers and heirs of an Indian guru are now in a legal battle over whether the guru is dead or in a deep state of meditation. Shri Ashutosh Maharaj was - or is, depending on whose side you're on - one of the wealthiest gurus in India with assets valued around £100 million. According to his family, he died in January and his followers placed his body in a freezer. His followers, on the other hand, believe he is simply meditating and claim that they froze his body in order to preserve it for when he eventually awakens.

While he is thought to have died from a heart attack, his devotees believe he has simply drifted into a deeper form of the meditation he promotes as a pathway to self-realisation. A statement on the group's website reads: "His Holiness Shri Ashutosh Maharaj ji has been in deep meditative state (Samadhi) since 29th January 2014."

According to one of his aides, who asked not to be named, "Maharaj has been in deep meditation. He has spent many years meditating in sub-zero temperatures in the Himalayas, there is nothing unusual in it. He will return to life as soon as he feels and we will ensure his body is preserved until then", he said.

His body is held in a guarded room in a deep freezer on his 100 acre retreat in Nurmahal, Jalandhar, where only a few elders and sect doctors are allowed to enter.

Although Punjab Police initially confirmed his death, the Punjab High Court later dismissed its status report and local governmental officials said it was a spiritual matter and that the guru's followers cannot be forced to believe he is dead.

While there may be a spiritual component to all of this, Maharaj's followers also seem motivated by financial concerns. According to his family, if it can be successfully argued that the guru still lives his followers will maintain control of his extensive financial resources. There's no mention in the story of whether or not Maharaj made a will, but it sounds like he didn't - so everything goes to his family by default once he is officially dead. There's a lesson for any would-be gurus out there - if you don't want anything this silly to go on once you pass away, make sure that you have a will specifying exactly how much of your estate is to remain with your followers and how much of it is to be distributed elsewhere.

Tears of Stone?

I like to tell people I don't believe in anything supernatural, but I have a strong belief in the paranormal. To my way of thinking this position is largely axiomatic, in that I figure if something exists at all it's part of the natural world, whether it's material, spiritual, or some combination of the two. Here's a case that might be an extremely rare medical condition or might be the result of some process that touches on both the spiritual and material realms. Either way I see it as paranormal - that is, a phenomenon that lies outside the bounds of everyday experience. Doctors in India are examining the case of a young girl who appears to "cry stones" from her eyes.

Physicians in India have been left shocked after discovering seven-year-old Kura Nitya cries stones from her eyes.

According to a local newspaper, Kura has been excreting stones from her right eye for the last two weeks but doctors are not sure what is causing the phenomenon.

On average the young girl weeps between 12 to 25 stones a day. Nitya says she doesn't feel any pain but her right eye swells before the stones drop out.

Her grandfather Gopal Reddy says he first noticed the strange happenings in October. 'Initially, we thought it was some divine power and prayed to God for this phenomenon to stop,' he told the Star online.

The girl's parents have seen several different specialists but none have had an answer.

Ophthalmologist Dr Kalyan Chakaravarthy said Nitya was healthy and he could find no reason as to why she was weeping stones.

The stones are currently being tested in order to determine their composition. The most logical medical explanation is that they're calcified material of some sort, since calcium compounds are usually the hardest materials found in the body. If they're composed of actual stone, though, something far weirder must be going on, since the human body normally doesn't produce such substances.

Deadly Curse Guards Temple Treasure

Last month I covered the story of a vast temple treasure recently discovered in India. Five of the temple's six vaults have now been opened, revealing a fortune in gold, gems, and other valuables. However, the dig ran into a hitch opening the last vault, referred to as Vault B by the archaological team. A group of priests has determined that the vault is guarded by a deadly curse, based on an etching of a snake found on the door and additional astrological investigation.

A group of priests who conducted an astrological examination or 'devaprasnam' at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple here has concluded that family members of those who open its yet untouched vault B would die, said an expert on Thursday. They also warned against videography of the treasure discovered so far.

Speaking to reporters late night after the conclusion of the four-day 'devaprasnam', lead priest K. Padmanabha Sharma said that no videography of the temple's unearthed treasure trove should take place.

"Of the treasure troves that are in the temple, vault B should not be opened and of the remaining five vaults, there should be no valuation done, besides there should be no exhibition of the treasure that has been found," said Sharma.

The temple, among the richest in the world, has six vaults. Five of these were opened on the orders of the Supreme Court and a treasure trove estimated to be more than Rs.1 lakh crore was discovered.

Vault B was not touched by a committee that was appointed by the court for stock taking of the temple's treasures last month.

The astrological examination that began at the temple on Monday involved discussions among the members of the team headed by Mathur Narayanan Renga Bhatt, an expert in conducting rituals.

The discussions, held in the open, concluded that it would be best that vault B was left unopened because it was believed that it could only be opened by "God".

The experts concluded that if anyone opened the vault, one of his family members may die either due to a snake bite or consumption of poison.

Egypt is most famous for its tomb curses that were set to protect the wealth that was buried with its pharaohs, but clearly this tradition was not limited to the Middle East. It remains to be seen if the vault will ever be opened, what is stored inside that was important enough to merit a curse, and if the vault is finally opened whether or not anyone actually dies as a result.

Not Magick After All

Back in May I commented on a story regarding what appeared to be a platform of skulls discovered at an archaeological dig in India's Dharwad region. When the skulls were initially found experts suggested that they may have been assembled for some sort of magical ritual, and as I noted in my previous article casting a spell while standing on top of a platform of skulls would look seriously awesome. Alas, further investigation suggests that the skulls were not part of a magical ritual at all, but rather those of famine and epidemic victims who died during the so-called "Skull Famine" of 1789-92, a natural disaster that is estimated to have killed approximately eleven million people over four years.

The huge number of skulls — about 600 — makes this the largest single human burial in India or elsewhere, said the team, which started excavation works on January 12. Quoting experts’ opinion, sources told Express: “It is the rarest of the burials executed for the victims of a natural calamity. It was a community burial. All other theories, like large-scale massacre of traitors, slaughter of prisoners of war and religious homicide, cannot be validated.”

The experts also dispelled the theory that it was a collection of remains made by occult practitioners of Vamachara (witchcraft). The experts said one ghastly natural calamity that happened in the Deccan in particular, and south India in general — and well-recorded in the history of the region — was the severe famine of 1789-92. This famine is remembered even now in folklore as ‘bones lay unburied, whitening roads and fields. The ground was covered with skulls of the unburied’.

So rather than the skulls being related to some magical purpose, it would appear that the mass burial was a response to the concurrent deaths of many people who needed to be buried quickly. That's a lot less over-the-top than the image of an evil sorcerer standing atop the heads of enemies conjuring the malevolent powers of the universe, but in the end probably much more believable.

Vast Temple Treasure Unearthed in India

One of the classic powers attributed to grimoire spirits is the ability to find lost or hidden treasure. In the modern age this is naturally a more difficult power to take advantage of, as most of the world's valuables can now be kept track of unlike in the medieval period in which such items were much more commonly misplaced. Still, treasures likely do remain in archaeological sites around the world that have yet to be found. Recent excavations in India have uncovered a series of vaults beneath an ancient temple in which an astonishing cache of precious metals and jewels dating back to the sixteenth century was stored.

Onlookers and devotees thronged the shrine in the bustling center of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of India's southern Kerala state, as officials said treasure worth more than $20 billion had been found -- more than India's education budget.

Sacks filled with diamonds were piled next to tonnes of gold coins and jewelry, media reported, in the vaults of the 16th century Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple, the royal chapel of the former rulers of Travancore, now part of Kerala state.

"The current market value of the articles found so far by the committee members would be roughly 900 billion rupees ($20.2 billion)," one temple official who was not authorized to speak to the media told Reuters.

It is not uncommon for temples in India to amass wealth, though if the reports are accurate the Kerala find is one of the largest in history. Seekers commonly make substantial donations to temples or spiritual gurus, which can add up to astronomical sums. In addition, gurus who become known worldwide can multiply their earnings many times.

Platform of Skulls Unearthed in India

Christian Day's magical skull "Robert" has been a source of much amusement around the blogosphere ever since his group of "warlock-craft" practitioners posted their awful binding ritual on YouTube. But all laughter aside, skulls do play an important role in many systems of magick from around the world. An apparent example of this was recently discovered at an archaeological site in India. There many skulls were found intentionally buried close together forming what appears to be some sort of platform, which suggests they were placed that way for use in some sort of magical ceremony.

Prof. R M Shadaksharaiah of the department of history and archaeology in Karnatak University told `The Times of India' on Tuesday that irrespective of the carbon-14 tests determining the period of the burial of skulls, the reason for such arranged burial was witchcraft.

He pointed out that the lower jaw and the rib cage were missing. "Skulls were placed systematically, just like tiles on a floor. The manner in which they were kept clearly suggests it to be a platform of skulls made purposefully for performing some black magic or ritual," he said.

I'm not familiar with the various Indian systems of magick appropriate to the period in which the skull platform was constructed, but I imagine that casting a spell while standing upon it would have been suitably impressive. In fact, that reminds me of this hilarious article by Lionel Snell on "Over-The-Top-Occultism" or OTTO.

When the 70's occultist says "there's no point in using a silver censer when a coffee tin serves just as well", the OTTO initiate replies "there's no point in using a coffee tin when a 800 year old human skull looted from the ruins of a Mexican temple serves just as well."

Words to live by, those.

India Has the Right Idea

One of the problems with witchcraft persecutions in many parts of the world is that the accusations themselves are not illegal. Authorities usually have to wait until violence is instigated against accused witches before they can arrest and charge anyone. A new bill in India is set to change that. In addition to criminalizing violence against accused witches, it institutes criminal penalties for the accusers as well.

According to the bill, whoever accuses or defames a woman by calling her Dayan or Dakan or Dakin, Chudail or Bhootni or Bhootdi or Chilavan or Opri or Ranndkadi or any other name or symbol suggesting her to be a witch, and accuses a woman of performing witchcraft or her performing any puja, use of mantra, tantra etc. aimed at harming any person; shall be punishable with imprisonment up to a term of three years with minimum fine of Rs 1,000 which may increased to Rs 5,000.

Furthermore, whoever, in the name of performing witchcraft or her being possessed one', uses criminal force against a woman and/or instigates or provokes others in doing so with intent to harm and/or to displace her from the house, place or the property, lawfully occupied or owned by her or to coerce her to leave the area of which she is a rightful resident or a visitor, shall be punishable with imprisonment of a term which may extend to seven years and with fine which may extend to Rs 20,000.

Besides, whoever intimidates a woman, calling her a witch and accuses her of practising witchcraft, to the extent that the woman is forced to commit suicide shall be punishable with imprisonment of a term of five years which may extend to 10 years with minimum fine of Rs 25,000 which may extend to Rs 50,000.

This is an idea that needs to catch on anywhere that accused witches are still being executed by angry mobs, since clearly those accusations put lives in danger. Here's hoping that the bill passes and helps put a stop to this nonsense.

Living on Air?

One of the most bizarre concepts I've seen come out of Indian mysticism is the idea of "Breatharianism," or living on air. Breatharians claim that it is possible to survive without food or water, partaking all of one's nourishment from either inhaled air, some sort of prana-based spiritual practice, or even sunlight. It's a rather extraordinary claim that has a pretty dubious track record as far as scientific investigation goes.

Jasmuheen (born Ellen Greve) was probably the most famous advocate of breatharianism during the 1990s. She claimed "I can go for months and months without having anything at all other than a cup of tea. My body runs on a different kind of nourishment." Several interviewers found her house full of food, but she claimed the food was for her husband. In 1999, she volunteered to be monitored closely by the Australian television program 60 Minutes for one week without eating to demonstrate her methods. Greve claimed that she failed because on the first day of the test she had been confined in a hotel room near a busy road, saying that the stress and pollution kept her from getting the nutrients she needed from the air. "I asked for fresh air. Seventy percent of my nutrients come from fresh air. I couldn’t even breathe," she said.

Investigators went ahead and complied with her request to moved to a location with cleaner air. But while Greve was able to maintain the discipline of fasting in this new location, after four days it was clear that her health was in serious danger.

On the third day the test moved to a mountainside retreat where she could get plenty of fresh air and live happily. After Greve had fasted for four days, Dr. Beres Wenck, president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association, urged her to stop the test.

According to the doctor, Greve’s pupils were dilated, her speech was slow, she was "quite dehydrated, probably over 10%, getting up to 11%". Towards the end of the test, she said, "Her pulse is about double what it was when she started. The risks if she goes any further are kidney failure. 60 Minutes would be culpable if they encouraged her to continue. She should stop now".

Wiley Brooks, founder of the Breatharian Institute of America, is another supposed Breatharian who was caught in an embarrassing situation in 1983. Brooks does admit that he still needs to eat some amount of food, but has stopped teaching in order to work on this "problem."

Wiley Brooks is a purported breatharian, and founder of the "Breatharian Institute of America". He was first introduced to the public in 1980, when he appeared on the TV show That's Incredible!. Wiley has stopped teaching in recent years, so he can "devote 100% of his time on solving the problem as to why he needed to eat some type of food to keep his physical body alive and allow his light body to manifest completely."

This reminds me of a story that I heard years ago. I don't know if it's true or if it's an urban legend, but apparently there was this mechanic who was working on developing a car engine that would run on a mixture of water and gasoline. He had apparently gotten the mixture up to about 70% water, and explained that his goal was get the engine to run on 100% water and thus eliminate fossil fuels. It's been long established that people can massively reduce their food intake for extended periods of time - the extraordinary claim is that a sufficiently advanced mystic can defy the rules of entropy and consume nothing.

And as for that embarrassing situation?

In 1983 he was allegedly observed leaving a Santa Cruz 7-Eleven with a Slurpee, hot dog and Twinkies.

Might Brooks have believed that Slurpees and Twinkies consist mostly of synthetic chemicals neither counts as food? If so, in the age of processed food there must be plenty of his sort of "Breatharians" out there.

Hira Ratan Manek (born September 12, 1937) claims that since June 18, 1995, he has lived exclusively on water, and occasional tea, coffee, and buttermilk. He says sunlight is the key to his health, citing the Jainist Tirthankara Mahavira, ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Native Americans as his inspiration.

According to his website, three extended periods of his fasting have been observed under control of scientific and medical teams: the first lasting 211 days in 1995-96 in Calicut, India, under the direction of Dr C. K. Ramachandran. During that period he is reported to have lost 41 kg.

What's amazing here is that Manek had 41 kg (almost 100 pounds) to lose over this period. That suggests he started out his fast rather overweight. My immediate thought is that buttermilk is rather high-calorie, and perhaps Manek was consuming it a little more often than "occasionally." Under observation probably just reduced his intake of it resulting in the weight loss.

So has anyone ever succeeded in demonstrating such an ability under controlled conditions?

Prahlad Jani, a Jain holy man, spent ten days under strict observation by physicians in Ahmedabad, India, in 2003. The study was led by Dr Sudhir Shah, the same doctor who led the study of Hira Ratan Manek. Reportedly, during the observation, he was given only 100 millilitres of water a day to use as mouthwash, which was collected and measured after he used it, to make sure he hadn't consumed any. Throughout the observation, he passed no urine or stool, but doctors say urine appeared to form in the bladder, only to be reabsorbed. However, despite Jani's claim to have gone without food for decades, Jani was not engaged in strenuous exercise during the ten-day trial, and longer trials were not recorded under similarly strict observation. Further, his weight did drop slightly during the 10 days, casting some doubt on his claim to go indefinitely without food.

Prahlad Jani recently underwent another study, this time for fifteen days. Again, the researchers observed no apparent ill effects from starvation or dehydration, even though without water most people die from dehydration after three or four days.

Jani, who claims to have lived without food or water since his childhood, was under the close watch of three video cameras 24 hours a day. Researchers conducted various medical tests on him. The research team, consisting of 35 scientists, could not find any evidence that Jani ate or drank anything during the 15 days.

Doctors have not found any adverse effects in his body from hunger or dehydration. They think that yoga exercises may have caused Jani’s body to undergo a biological transformation. The researchers said tests found that his brain is equivalent to that of a 25-year-old.

In fact, according to the Daily Mail, the doctors said that after fasting for two weeks, Jani was healthier than the average 40-year-old.

My conclusion would be slightly different here. If the data is taken at face value, Jani must have some sort of mutation that makes him a lot less susceptible to dehydration than usual. Since he claims to have been going without food or water since childhood, I don't think that yogic practices could be entirely responsible - though they probably have allowed him to keep his body so much healthier than it otherwise might be.

The Wikipedia article notes that Jani was allowed to bathe during the previous study and I'm wondering if his special ability is that he can absorb water through his skin. Most of use can do this to some degree, but, say, if he can transport water efficiently through his skin and into his lymphatic system it might allow him to rehydrate himself by soaking rather than drinking, and since he doesn't appear to urinate the only water his body would need to replace would be that lost through breathing and perspiration. Still, that doesn't explain how he manages to go without food since the body is expending energy all the time and it has to come from somewhere.

Regardless of whether or not a biological explanation is forthcoming from this most recent study, Jani does indeed appear to possess a paranormal ability that no other individual has been able to successfully demonstrate under controlled conditions. It just goes to show that there are still plenty of remarkable human abilities out there that mainstream science has yet to explain, even though there are also people who claim to have such abilities when in fact they do not.

A Bad Month for Indian Holy Men

March 2010 proved to be a bad month for holy men in India. At the beginning of the month one of these gurus was arrested and charged with running a brothel in Delhi. I guess being a holy man wasn't paying well enough or something, and sure enough, the brothel was bringing in the cash.

Media predicts that Shiv Myra Dwivedi earned $10 million [£6.5 million] from the racket, but local media reports said his earning could have reached more than ten times that figure. Shiv Myra Dwivedi alias Ram Murat Dwivedi alias Rajiv Ranjan Dwivedi called himself Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj 'Chitrakoot waale' and claimed to be a disciple of Sai Baba.

Police said Mr. Dwivedi, who boasts a religious following of more than 100,000, was arrested with another alleged pimp and seven prostitutes, including one British Airways and another Indian airlines flight attendant. According to sources, two of them are air-hostesses, one an Masters of Business Administration student and the fourth an aspiring Bollywood actress. The girls are aged between 22 and 25 years. The accused supplied sex workers in Delhi. This included clients who flew down to Delhi and stayed in five star hotels.

Indian police are also looking for a prominent astrologer named Siddesh who is charged with kidnapping and raping an underage girl. This goes to show how dangerous perceived spiritual authority can be in the hands of a truly psychopathic individual.

“It is only since a year that we know Siddesh . We did not suspect him. He often took my daughter to Mastamma Devi temple at Jogimatti,” said the girl’s father. The traumatised girl who is undergoing treatment at the district hospital told Deccan Herald that after her father dropped her at the school, she came out to buy a pencil from a shop, when she was pulled into an auto, gagged and taken to some place.

“Siddesh, who was there said he would marry me. They made me wear a red sari, bangles and perform pooja. There were four more men along with Siddesh. I did not know any of them. They gave me some sedative and raped me.”

Now running a brothel constitutes a criminal enterprise in most parts of the world and rape is just plain heinous and awful, so I think it should be clear that there's nothing holy about the spiritual leaders involved first two cases. This last one, though, strikes me as a different matter entirely.

At the end of March another holy man, Nithyananda Swami, resigned as the head of his spiritual center following the release of a videotape showing him "frolicking" with two women.

Video footage allegedly showing Nithyananda Swami - head of Dhyanapeetam, or 'knowledge centre' - frolicking with two women angered hundreds of devotees so much that they tried to ransack his centre outside the southern city of Bangalore this month.

The 32-year-old has denied any links to the women and said the tapes were doctored, but the police are investigating whether he has 'outraged religious feelings' and have asked people to come forward with evidence.

Now if the women were somehow coerced that would be one thing, but the information in the article suggests nothing of the sort. I'm continually disappointed by people of many religious traditions around the world who seem to have the idea that sexuality is incompatible with spiritual realization. In fact, in my experience it's the other way around - denying part of your fundamental nature is to divide consciousness rather than exalt it. This strikes me as the pathway to spiritual failure, not enlightenment or metanoia or whatever term your tradition uses for spiritual realization. I know that I would rather have a guru who has a positive attitude toward his or her sexuality rather than one who considers it debased or evil.

UPDATE: A month after stepping down as the head of his spiritual center, Nithyananda Swami has been arrested and presumably charged with the aforementioned "outraging religious feelings." I'm guessing there are at least a few American religious figures caught in scandals over the last several years who are very glad we don't have that particular law here in the States.

Monkey God Named Chairman of Indian College

Say all you want about Indian colleges and universities, but apparently researchers at this business and engineering school have mastered the necessary spiritual technology to summon Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, to tangible appearance - or at least appearance tangible enough to serve as chairman of the college. We American magicians had better get busy unless we want to have our evocatory work outsourced to the subcontinent.

From the article:

The position comes with an incense-filled office, a desk and a laptop computer. Four chairs will be placed facing the empty seat reserved for the chairman and all visitors must enter the office barefoot, said Vivek Kangdi, the school's vice chairman.

One wonders what a meeting with the chairman would be like. Does he appear in the empty chair as a shimmering field of energy that radiates luck and power? Or maybe something more like a translucent guy in a high school mascot uniform? Indian magicians have remained closed-lipped for now, presumably to keep their summoning techniques from being duplicated elsewhere in the world. After all, imagine what could go wrong if everyone knew how to summon their deities to tangible appearance. There would probably be more than a few lightning bolts called down from Heaven upon the unwary.

The nature of Hanuman's appearance would of course offer valuable clues upon which a rival conjurer could base his or her own research. The incense, for example, probably is required so that Hanuman can form a body from the smoke as in Western evocations, but the proper type is cleverly not mentioned. Five chairs, one reserved for Hanuman and the other four for visitors, could allude to the pentagram representing spirit descending into matter, but without the exact office configuration it's hard to be sure.

Let's just hope that Hanuman doesn't sit at his desk all day playing Minesweeper. That could be a disaster for everyone involved.