(BIGU is a form of fast wherein the adept subsists solely on the energy created by intense meditation and spiritual work. Of course people are hoping for military applications with this phenomena but I don’t see how that will work as warfare is something diametrically opposed to the lifestyle required of the cultivator. Nevertheless, an interesting man and study. I hope results of the testing will somehow become public.)
Starving Yogi Astounds Indian Scientists
AHMEDABAD, India — An 83-year-old Indian holy man who says he has spent seven decades without food or water has astounded a team of military doctors who studied him during a two-week observation period.
Prahlad Jani spent a fortnight in a hospital in the western India state of Gujarat under constant surveillance from a team of 30 medics equipped with cameras and closed circuit television.
During the period, he neither ate nor drank and did not go to the toilet.
“We still do not know how he survives,” neurologist Sudhir Shah told reporters after the end of the experiment. “It is still a mystery what kind of phenomenon this is.”
The long-haired and bearded yogi was sealed in a hospital in the city of Ahmedabad in a study initiated by India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the state defence and military research institute.
The DRDO hopes that the findings, set to be released in greater detail in several months, could help soldiers survive without food and drink, assist astronauts or even save the lives of people trapped in natural disasters.
“(Jani’s) only contact with any kind of fluid was during gargling and bathing periodically during the period,” G. Ilavazahagan, director of India’s Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), said in a statement.
Jani has since returned to his village near Ambaji in northern Gujarat where he will resume his routine of yoga and meditation. He says that he was blessed by a goddess at a young age, which gave him special powers.
During the 15-day observation, which ended on Thursday, the doctors took scans of Jani’s organs, brain, and blood vessels, as well as doing tests on his heart, lungs and memory capacity.
“The reports were all in the pre-determined safety range through the observation period,” Shah told reporters at a press conference last week.
Other results from DNA analysis, molecular biological studies and tests on his hormones, enzymes, energy metabolism and genes will take months to come through.
“If Jani does not derive energy from food and water, he must be doing that from energy sources around him, sunlight being one,” said Shah.
“As medical practitioners we cannot shut our eyes to possibilities, to a source of energy other than calories.”
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Related Links:
Why Militaries of the World are Studying Chi Gong and the Powers of the Mind
It was an experiment that didn’t set out to demonstrate how mind control techniques used by cult groups can work effectively in practice. But that’s one of the results from a behavioral study done to test whether elderly people isolated together could so completely convince themselves they were young again that their bodies actually would begin to morph ‘backward’ in resonance .
What Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer wanted to know was whether the body clock of a group of men in their 70s and 80s could be re-set to 1959 by their collective mindset.
After just a week, those in this experimental group (compared with a control group of similar aged men) measured significant physical and mental changes in a range of areas:
—They had less arthritis;
—More joint flexibility;
—Improved posture and gait;
—Better hearing and eyesight;
—Sharper minds and better performance on mental tasks;
—Elevated spirits and optimism about life.
If the group mind set is healthy, then the group can be healthy. You don’t necessarily need to be in a cult, or be a victim of mind control…how about a community of like minded and heart’ed’ individuals living a life that’s authentic?
ledgergermane reveals: Different Life Forms in Front of Us: Scientists Predict the Possibility of a Shadow Biosphere
The possibility of strange forms of alien life seems to have just got a whole lot closer to home. Astrobiologists from Arizona State University, Florida, UC Boulder, NASA, Harvard and Australia have recently theorized about a “shadow biosphere” – a biosphere within a biosphere where alternative biochemistry may be thriving in a way that we haven’t yet thought to examine. Such “weird life” may have had, for hundreds of millions of years, their own ecologies right here in our own backyard. Indeed, like Dark Energy and neutrinos, “weird life” may be all around us even now, only in a non-obvious way. Some astrobiologists are now suggesting that “weird life” is just as likely to be found here on Earth as it is in the Martian regolith, the seas of Europa , or certainly the complex bio-hadronistry on the surface of a neutron star.
I have included a link to their full article here: Davies, etal, Astrobio2009
Now, while I think that shadow organisms and shadow biospheres are certainly cool enough to blog about, please allow me to take the logical next step by citing yet another intriguing astrobiology paper that came out of the Santa Fe Institute. Published nearly a decade ago in an astrobiology related Nature commentary article titled, “Where are the dolphins?” scientists Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart realized blackbody SETI for example) we will likely mistake it for being just a regular old hot rock! (and showed mathematically that it’s already happening here on Earth) that as a civilization advances they begin to use the available electromagnetic spectrum for communication more fully and efficiently until ultimately their radiative emissions are indistinguishable from radiation. In other words, when we look out into space with telescopes to search for signs of alien life ( So either three things must be true to find life through a telescope: 1. The civilization is at a very precise moment in its development,2. The civilization wants to be found and so sets aside some broadcast space for a message, 3. We know their decompression algorithm and what frequency band to apply it to.
It’s this last possibility that relates to the shadow biosphere in a philosophical sense. Unless we know how to interpret the signs of such life, we may not be able to distinguish it from the natural background.
Modern science confirming the multiple-interconnected-world experiences of Esoteric Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism, Shinto, etc. If the work is done to open the third eye all sorts of beings, from different orders of reality, can be seen.
The first related Eastern reference that popped into my mind was Bodhidharma’s favorite, the Lankavatara Sutra and its three world view. Our physical plane is intersected by celestial beings and those suffering in hell. If Eastern cultivation and Western science can soberly look at each other eye to eye maybe a variety of strange and vexing phenomena can be more than just a “Shadow” Biosphere -maybe we can be friends with this world.
