-
Endless War’s Pin-Up Girl
June 13, 2013 | 76 comments
-
The Three-Mile-An-Hour God
June 6, 2013 | 30 comments
-
American Exceptionalism Put to the Test
May 30, 2013 | 71 comments
-
What Are the Risks of Syria Involvement?
May 23, 2013 | 25 comments
-
Pray and Grow Rich
May 16, 2013 | 68 comments
Another Perspective
The Hunger Artist
And the Goddess Amba’s miracle elixir.
Several people have directed my attention to a story about Prahlad Jani, an 82-year-old Indian yogi who claims that he has had nothing to eat or drink — not a cup of tea, not even a Ding Dong — for the past 70 years.
Now that’s quite a feat. Most people cannot survive more than a few months without food or a week without water. Who am I kidding? Most people can’t survive a half hour without shoving something down their gullet.
Nor should they. I’m reminded of something Joe E. Lewis said: “I went on a diet once, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I’d lost exactly two weeks.”
For those seeking enlightenment, a yogi is someone who thinks the entire cosmos is situated within his own body. (If true, this would certainly ease the pain at the gas pump.) Be that as it may, most doctors regard the yogi’s claims as fantastic. They say something else must be at work. They say without nourishment, the yogi’s organs would have crashed like a stock car into a crowd of NASCAR fans. (I think that’s the scientific term.) Twice, the mystic has been dragged out of his jungle lair and forced to endure weeks of poking and prodding and observation, and both times doctors had to admit they were stumped. Despite not eating or drinking a thing, the yogi’s vitals were not only normal, they were better than normal.
Scientists, meanwhile, remain split. Some say this is no more than a case of humbuggery, that the yogi is a flim-flam man, a mountebank, a snake oil salesman. Others say that just because something is unexplainable to contemporary science, doesn’t mean it will be fifty years from now. For example, a hundred years ago nobody knew black holes existed. Except for maybe the one in Calcutta. They say we have just begun to skim the surface of human potential. Humans are capable of doing all kinds of miraculous things, it’s just that we don’t know it. Take those 90-pound moms we’re always hearing about who supposedly deadlift half-ton trucks off their trapped infants?
Urban legends, you say? Probably. According to this story, it took six people to lift a car off a trapped 3-year-old.
THEN THERE ARE the smug Krista Tippett spiritual types who say, Nah, nah, science can’t explain everything. And wouldn’t life be boring if it could?
Actually life is pretty boring. At least for those of us who don’t have our own shows on National Public Radio.
The Tippetts point to centuries of tales of deeply spiritual folk who reportedly did wonderful and inexplicable things, like the so-called flying saints or saints who could appear in two places at the same time, such as the Amazing Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, who supposedly mastered both techniques. (Unfortunately for many would-be saints, it was often hard to tell whether these were deeply religious folk with miraculous powers or evil folk doing the devil’s work.) Another is the Catholic mystic Marthe Robin, who died in 1981, and supposedly went 53 years without eating or sleeping.
My personal favorite is Christina the Astonishing who, in 1171 AD, during her funeral mass, sprung from her coffin and flew up to the rafters, where she claimed she had just returned from a round-trip visit to heaven, hell, and purgatory. Christina said she had promised God to dedicate her life to doing penance for the souls in purgatory. It was said that Christina would hop around on one leg exclaiming, “Look upon me O Lord, for I am like unto a flamingo.” Even better, she often threw herself into furnaces and icy lakes for hours or days at a time, writhing in pain, but afterward she would be right as rain. Sometimes during one of her ice baths, she would allow the current to drag her downstream to the mill where the mill wheel “whirled her round in a manner frightful to behold.” Afterward she would appear without a bruise on her.
Kind of makes the yogi look like old pie.
While his doctors may be stumped, the yogi has an explanation as to his ability to defy nature that I, for one, find hard to swallow. He says the Hindu goddess Amba feeds him an invisible elixir.
I have to say, the yogi’s explanation is rather anti-climactic. I was hoping for something more philosophical or at least more sci-fi-ish, as if he had developed the ability to transcend this dimension and exist in some fifth dimension that is beyond our current understanding. Instead we get Goddess Amba’s Miracle Elixir.
How about a bottle, mister?
Only costs a dollar, guaranteed.
Call me a cynic, but if that’s what the yogi’s peddling, I’ll spend my dollar on a Ding Dong.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (48) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Christopher Orlet
More Articles From Another Perspective
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/05/14/the-hunger-artist
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
The Spectacle Blog
Democrat Dan Maffei Blames Budget Cuts for Girl’s Rape, Mother’s Murder
Robert Stacy McCain | 4:12PM
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Pingback| 5.14.10 @ 6:28AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : The Hunger Artist [spectator.org] on links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Tom| 5.14.10 @ 8:27AM
Why don't they just keep Mr. Jani under observation for 3 months? That would seem to be long enough to prove something weird is happening.
Ned| 5.14.10 @ 10:01AM
Force him to live with my first ex-wife and he doesn't get any food unless she fixes it for him. If he survives then I guess he really is capable of living off of miracle elixir.
Tom| 5.14.10 @ 10:09AM
Ned,
I think I was married to your ex too.
roger that| 5.14.10 @ 11:01AM
That's why the Lord hates divorce, you just pass the problem off.
Is the frozen pizza done yet?
Ned| 5.14.10 @ 12:07PM
Caveat emptor.
Stephie| 5.14.10 @ 3:00PM
HEY HEY HEY! You guys lay off the gals and go take your elixir!
Tim*| 5.14.10 @ 3:34PM
If I'm not mistaken , she was also married to my buddy Al ,The Abominable Anorexic .
denny| 5.14.10 @ 4:22PM
HOT POCKEEETS!
Job| 5.14.10 @ 4:55PM
A similar situation from the Apocrypha (cut off from the end of Daniel): "Now the Babylons had an idol, called Bel, and there were spent upon him every day twelve great measures of fine flour, and forty sheep, and six vessels of wine.... Then said the king unto [Daniel] Thinkest thou not that Bel is a living God? seest thou not how much he eateth and drinketh every day?... Now in the night came the priests with their wives and children, as they were wont to do, and did eat and drinck up all.... And [the king] took the priests with their wives and children, who shewed him the privy doors, where they came in, and consumed such things as were upon the table. Therefore the king slew them, and delivered Bel into Daniel's power, who destroyed him and his temple." (Bel 1:3,6,15,21)
yoyo| 5.14.10 @ 5:00PM
why all this condescension? he believes it and can do it. can you.
his faith far surpasses your intellect.
Job| 5.14.10 @ 5:29PM
We don't know, yet, if he can do it. Maybe he is raiding the refrigerator at night. If he's a charlatan he gives faith a bad name.
yoyo| 5.14.10 @ 6:04PM
Please do the research. He was under 24 hour observation, unable to cheat.
Is the hospital staff that gullible?
Human potential is not what you think.
Jorge| 5.14.10 @ 6:14PM
Yoyo there is no real scientific evidence, perhaps you should go back to school and get your GED. It could help.
Tim*| 5.14.10 @ 9:16PM
He Cheats !
He's got Ding Dongs & a six pack hidden under his bed.
avinash| 5.14.10 @ 6:23PM
Dear Friends,
I am sorry If I hurt any ones openion
Be open minded for these type of issues, neither belive nor reject, just get the information and observe what will happen in Nature till the end of our life
I actually take positive message from every issue and leave the negative a side.
In this case, I dont bother about proving his ability to stay with out food and water but i just take a message that Doing meditation is good for health in many ways ( I am doing since 10 years)
If I am there in his vicinity, I will ask what are his experiences in meditation and how he do that, instead of How he can able to survive with out food and water. I dont know whether he is true or not, let the others who wanted to know it let them do tests on him in any way.
We will not get any thing even it is proven or not proven. Just imagine with a broder mind
Do Meditation, it helps for good health (but take good food and water )
Be happy, maintain good health, all the best
Job| 5.14.10 @ 7:18PM
Avinash is Prahlad Jani's Public Relations manager.
avinash| 5.15.10 @ 5:40AM
hahahahahaha :) :D
Pingback| 5.14.10 @ 8:59PM
The American Spectator : The Hunger Artist | Cyber Scraps links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Buster| 5.14.10 @ 9:51PM
I find the responses here obtuse and lacking in the curiosity that marks good science. He endured a controlled test, and produced results that are at the least interesting. Good science dictates that the methods, and the results be investigated, not summarily ridiculed and discarded, those are the tokens of bad science.
Pingback| 5.14.10 @ 10:12PM
The American Spectator : The Hunger Artist | Artist News links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
doolittle| 5.14.10 @ 11:31PM
personally I would just be happy to have the metabolism of the average chinese/oriental who seem to be able to eat enormous amounts of food and not get fat
John Blake| 5.14.10 @ 11:53PM
Prahlad Jani apparently did not ask to be taken from his refuge, poked and prodded, subjected to a "controlled conditions" experiment. After seventy years, surely contemporary researchers of integrity could ascertain the truth or falsehood of his claim.
If he is certifiably exempt from the Second law of Thermodynamics, why not inquire further-- we could all use a divine elixir.
In other news, since the early 1980s Crop Circles in SW England, particularly Wiltshire, have appeared regularly each summer season. Crude forgeries are easily detectable, but genuine phenomena are wholly inexplicable. These enormous artifacts are unquestionably volitional --made by entities unknown according to some plan-- but are otherwise beyond any scientific or perhaps even rational pale. Take Hamlet's word, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio..." Prahlad Jani may be a fraud, but what's his scam? He ain't touting diet pills.
Job| 5.15.10 @ 11:29AM
The scam could be simple as receiving the alms of his followers.
Pingback| 5.15.10 @ 1:04AM
Spor And Apex – Knock You Down Nowhere To Run (Remixes) (2010) | pornround.com links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 5.15.10 @ 2:48AM
Farmers Market this week links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Gvensk| 5.17.10 @ 1:49PM
This guy has not gone through any scientifically controlled testing. He's obviously a hoax. It's all well and good to have an open mind...until one's brains start pouring out.
calebcarter| 5.18.10 @ 5:37AM
All his powers are God gifted to him. He has completely surrendered himself to the God. His existence without food cannot be understood with the help of this worldly science. It can be felt only by spiritual science. Hats off to this man!!
http://www.articlesbase.com/he.....69634.html
singh| 5.22.10 @ 1:34PM
just found his Answers to media . intersting http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265460
singh| 5.22.10 @ 1:40PM
2003 story http://timesofindia.indiatimes.....295761.cms
Jess| 5.26.10 @ 7:01PM
--> IF false, no biggie. He can join a big line of scammers who want attention, fame, etc.
--> IF and a BIG If true, this could cause a revolution.
no toiling for your food... no fight for resources.. . The entire world changed...
....
but errrrrr..... the Western scientists are too busy proving juice can make you gain weight to bother with this 'little possible study of Jani...'
sunny| 5.26.10 @ 7:06PM
Well, at least not the most sarcastic Western article out there... (there are a bunch of skeptical 'the Earth is flat' type reincarnators laughing and negating everything with no evidence'.
As to the Goddess answer anti-climatic, well... that depends on how you look at it. If you go by own history of religion and upbringing, yes, it may be. But you realize the mind is a powerhouse of archetypes and can program the person to believe anything.. it could possibly be true...
See, there are many ways of looking at things. For instance, to someone from the 16th centry, a cell phone over 'invisible rays' may be something of a Godly invention..
Simlarly.. perhaps Jani somehow biologically connected with a different dimension and his cells responded differently (using oxygen alone as food) -- which HE PERCIVED as a form of Divinity which his mind programmed from past knowledge.
Remember, truth is a viewpoint.
fjdsk| 7.1.10 @ 2:45AM
beijing massage