Wisdom and Knowledge Series, post #40. Buddhism, post #22.1 (40.2.21.1):
My latest and hopefully last reply post I make on the general subject of 'supernatural powers', in a discussion someone else started on a video of a guy allegedly levitating above ground while sitting cross-legged, at the 'Dhamma Wheel' message board:
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=34682
Holy smokes! I read some awesome things just now. Three stories from the same book 'Living with the Himalayan Masters', by Swami Rama. But first, here is an introduction to the book:
In this inspirational collection of stories Swami Rama relates his experiences with the great teachers who guided his life, including Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Ramana Maharshi. Living with the Himalayan Masters documents Swami Rama's spiritual quest, which showed him that direct experience is the source of real knowledge.
"I will tell you how I grew up and how I was trained, abouat the great sages with whom I lived and what they taught me, not through lectures and books but through experiences," writes Sri Swami Rama in the opening pages of this timeless saga.
These stories record his personal quest for truth and enlightenment. Inspiring, illuminating, entertaining, mystifying, and frequently droll and humorous, they bring you face-to-face with some great Himalayan Masters including Mataji of Assam - a ninety-six year old lady sage who never slept; Gudari Baba, who taught Swami Rama the value of direct experience; Yogi Sri Aurobindo, who integrated meditation with action; Uria Baba, who teaches that every human being has the potential for healing; Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation.
Source: https://www.vedicbooks.net/living-with-himalayan-masters-p-12402.html
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I got the below copy & pastes from the same book above, but from another site with the PDF version:
Levitation on page 95. I boldface parts:
...This swami informed me of a roving adept who visited Amarnath cave shrine every summer, but no one
knew where that adept lived permanently. People coming from Ladakh often saw him treading the mountain
paths all alone. My interest was not only to visit the cave shrine but to meet this roving adept of the
Himalayas. Of all those I have met in my life, three were very impressive and left deep imprints in the bed
of my memory. That adept was one of them. I stayed with him for seven days, just fifty yards away from the
shrine. He visited this cave shrine practically every year.
He was about twenty years of age, was very handsome, and the luster of his cheeks was like that of
cherries. He was a brahmachari who wore only a loincloth and possessed nothing. He was so acclimated to
high altitudes that, with the help of yoga practices, he could travel barefoot and live at elevations of 10,000
to 12,000 feet. He was insensitive to cold. Living with him was an enlightening experience to me. He was
perfect and full of yoga wisdom and serenity. People called this young adept Bal Bhagawan (Child-God
Incarnate), but he always kept himself above such praises and constantly traveled in the Himalayan
mountains. He already knew my master and had lived in our cave monastery. He asked about several
students who were then practicing meditation with my master. He spoke briefly in gentle sentences, but I
could feel that he was not pleased when my guide started bowing, touching his feet, and running around in
emotional devotion. This great adept became an example for me.
I had never before seen a man who could sit still without blinking his eyelids for eight to ten hours, but
this adept was very unusual. He levitated two and a half feet during his meditations. We measured this with
a string which was later measured by a foot rule. I would like to make it clear, though, as I have already told
you, that I don’t consider levitation to be a spiritual practice. It is an advanced practice of pranayama with
application of bandhas (locks). One who knows about the relationship between mass and weight
understands that it is possible to levitate, but only after long practice. But this was not what I was seeking. I
directly wanted to have an experience with this adept.
I asked him a question about the highest state of enlightenment, and muttering a mantra from the
Upanishads, he answered, “When the senses are well-controlled and withdrawn from contact with the
objects of the world, then sense perceptions no longer create images in the mind. The mind is then trained in
one-pointedness. When the mind no longer recalls thought-patterns from the unconscious, a balanced state
of mind leads to a higher state of consciousness. A perfect state of serenity established in sattva is the
highest state of enlightenment. The practice of meditation and non-attachment are the two keynotes. A very
firm conviction is essential for establishing a definite philosophy of life. Intellect intervenes and blind
emotion misguides. Though both are great powers, they should be known first, analyzed, and then directed
toward the source of intuition. Intuition is the only source of true knowledge. All this—whatever you see in
the world—is unreal because of its constantly changing nature. Reality is hidden beneath all these changes.”
He instructed me to march fearlessly on the path that I was treading. After seven days of satsanga the guide
and I left this great sage. I returned to Shrinagar and then went on to my abode in the Himalayas to enjoy the
autumn.
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Page 108:
Transmutation of Matter
In 1942 I started on a journey to Badrinath, the famous Himalayan shrine. On the way there is a place called
Shrinagar, which is situated on a bank of the Ganges. Five miles from Shrinagar there is a small Shakti
temple, and just two miles below that was the cave of an aghori baba. Aghor is a very mysterious study
which is rarely mentioned in books and hardly understood even by the yogis and swamis of India. It is an
esoteric path involving solar science and is used for healing. This science is devoted to understanding and
mastering the finer forces of life—finer than prana. It creates a bridge between life here and hereafter. There
are very few yogis who practice the aghori science, and those who do are shunned by most people because
of their strange ways.
The villagers in the area around Shrinagar were very much afraid of the aghori baba. They never went
near him, because whenever anyone had approached him in the past he called them names and threw
pebbles at them. He was about six feet five inches tall and very strongly built. He was about seventy-five
years of age. He had long hair and a beard and wore a loincloth made of jute. He had nothing in his cave
except a few pieces of gunnysack.
I went to see him, thinking that I would pass the night there and learn something from him. I asked a
local pandit to show me the way. The pandit said, “This aghori is no sage; he is dirty. You don’t want to see
him.” But the pandit knew much about my master and me, and I persuaded him to take me to the baba’s
cave.
We arrived in the evening just before dark. We found the aghori sitting on a rock between the Ganges
and his cave. He asked us to sit beside him. Then he confronted the pandit, saying, “Behind my back you
call me names and yet you greet me with folded hands.” The pandit wanted to leave, but the aghori said,
“No! Go to the river and fetch me a pot of water.” When the frightened pandit came back with the water, the
aghori handed him a cleaver and said, “There is a dead body which is floating in the river. Pull it ashore,
chop off the thigh and calf muscles, and bring a few pounds of the flesh to me.” The aghori’s demand shook
the pandit. He became very nervous—and so did I. He was extremely frightened and did not want to carry
out the aghori’s wishes. But the aghori became fierce and shouted at him, saying, “Either you will bring the
flesh from that dead body or I will chop you and take your flesh. Which do you prefer?”
The poor pandit, out of deep anxiety and fear, went to the dead body and started cutting it up. He was so
upset that he also accidentally cut the first and second fingers of his left hand, and they started bleeding
profusely. He brought the flesh to the baba. Neither the pandit nor I were then in our normal senses. When
the pandit came near, the aghori touched the cuts on his fingers—and they were healed instantly. There was
not even a scar.
The aghori ordered him to put the pieces of flesh into an earthen pot, to put the pot on the fire, and to
cover the lid with a stone. He said, “Don’t you know this young swami is hungry, and you also have to eat?”
We both said, “Sir, we are vegetarians.”
The baba was irritated by this and said to me, “Do you think I eat meat? Do you agree with the people
here that I am dirty? I too am a pure vegetarian.”
After ten minutes had passed he told the pandit to bring him the earthen pot. He gathered a few large
leaves and said, “Spread these on the ground to serve the food on.” The pandit, with trembling hands, did
so. Then the aghori went inside the cave to fetch three earthen bowls. While he was gone the pandit
whispered to me, “I don’t think I will live through this. This is against everything that I have learned and
practiced all my life. I should commit suicide. What have you done to me? Why did you bring me here?” I
said, “Be quiet. We cannot escape, so let us at least see what happens.”
The aghori ordered the pandit to serve the food. When the pandit took the lid off the pot and began
filling my bowl we were astonished to find a sweet called rasgula, which is made from cheese and sugar.
This was my favorite dish, and I had been thinking of it as I was walking to the baba’s cave. I thought it was
all very strange. The aghori said, “This sweet has no meat in it.”
I ate the sweet, and the pandit had to eat it too. It was very delicious. What was left over was given to the
pandit to distribute among the villagers. This was done to prove that we had not been fooled by means of a
hypnotic technique. All alone in the darkness the pandit left for his village, which was three miles away
from the cave. I preferred to stay with the aghori to solve the mystery of how the food was transformed and
to understand his bewildering way of living. “Why was the flesh of a dead body cooked, and how could it
turn into sweets? Why does he live here all alone?” I wondered. I had heard about such people, but this was
my first chance to meet one in person.
After I meditated for two hours we began talking about the scriptures. He was extraordinarily intelligent
and well-read. His Sanskrit, however, was so terse and tough that each time he spoke it took a few minutes
to decipher what he was saying before I could answer him. He was, no doubt, a very learned man, but his
way was different from any other sadhu that I had ever met.
Aghor is a path which has been described in the Atharva Veda, but in none of the scriptures have I ever
read that human flesh should be eaten. I asked him, “Why do you live like this, eating the flesh of dead
bodies?”
He replied, “Why do you call it a ‘dead body’? It’s no longer human. It’s just matter that is not being
used. You’re associating it with human beings. No one else will use that body, so I will. I’m a scientist
doing experiments, trying to discover the underlying principles of matter and energy. I’m changing one
form of matter to another form of matter. My teacher is Mother Nature; she makes many forms, and I am
only following her law to change the forms around. I did this for that pandit so that he would warn others to
stay away. This is my thirteenth year at this cave, and no one has visited me. People are afraid of me
because of my appearance. They think I am dirty and that I live on flesh and dead bodies. I throw pebbles,
but I never hit anybody.”
His external behavior was very crude, but he told me that he was behaving that way knowingly so that
no one would disturb him as he studied and so that he would not become dependent on the villagers for food
and other necessities. He was not imbalanced, but to avoid people he behaved as though he were. His way
of living was totally self-dependent, and although he continued to live in that cave for twenty-one years, no
villager ever visited him.
We stayed up through the night and he instructed me, talking the entire time about his aghor path. This
path was not for me, but I was curious to know why he lived such a lifestyle and did all that he was doing.
He had the power to transform matter into different forms, like changing a rock into a sugar cube. One after
another the next morning he did many such things. He told me to touch the sand—and the grains of sand
turned into almonds and cashews. I had heard of this science before and knew its basic principles, but I had
hardly believed such stories. I did not explore this field, but I am fully acquainted with the governing laws
of the science.
At noon the aghori insisted that I eat something before leaving. This time he took out a different sweet
from the same earthen jar. He was very gentle with me, all the time discussing the tantra scriptures. He said,
“This science is dying. Learned people do not want to practice it, so there will be a time when this
knowledge will be forgotten.”
I asked, “What is the use of doing all this?” He said, “What do you mean by ‘use’? This is a science, and
a scientist of this knowledge should use it for healing purposes, and should tell other scientists that matter
can be changed into energy and energy into matter. The law that governs matter and energy is one and the
same. Beneath all names and forms there lies one unifying principle, which is still not known in its entirety
by modern scientists. Vedanta and the ancient sciences described this underlying principle of life. There is
only one life-force, and all the forms and names in this universe are but varieties of that One. It is not
difficult to understand the relationship between two forms of matter, because the source is one and the same.
When water becomes solid, it is called ice; when it starts evaporating, it is called vapor. Young children do
not know that these three are forms of the same matter, and that essentially there is no difference in their
composition. The difference is only in the form it takes. The scientists today are like children. They do not
realize the unity behind all matter, nor the principles for changing it from one form to another.”
Intellectually I agreed with him, and yet I did not approve of his way of living. I said goodbye and
promised to visit him again, but I never have. I was curious about the fate of the pandit who had gone to his
village the previous night in a state of fear, so I went to see him. To my surprise he was completely
changed, and was thinking of following the aghori and becoming his disciple.
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Supernatural occurrences, starting on page 138:
Between five and five-thirty we were still talking, when the swami suddenly said, “Now sit in
meditation. In five minutes I will leave my body. Its time is over. This instrument which is called body is
not capable of giving me more than I have already attained, so I will leave it behind.”
Five minutes later, he sang out, “Aumm . . .” and then there was silence.
I checked his pulse and heartbeat. I thought, “He may have suspended his pulse and heartbeat for some
time and might start breathing again.” Then I checked his body temperature, his eyes, and all that. My
brother disciple said, “Enough of that. We have to immerse his body before the sun rises.” I told him,
“Don’t worry. I will do it myself.” But he said, “I want to help.”
When we both tried to lift him, we found that we could not budge his body. Then we brought a branch
from a pine tree and inserted it under his thighs to pry him loose, but we failed. We tried everything we
could think of for over an hour, but could not move him an inch.
I often recall what happened next. I shall never forget the experience. A few minutes before sunrise I
heard someone say, “Now we will carry him.” There was no one around, so I thought, “Perhaps I am
imagining it.” My brother disciple also looked around. I asked, “Did you hear something?” He said, “Yes, I
also heard it.” I asked, “Are we hallucinating? What is going on?”
Suddenly the swami’s body rose into the air, apparently of its own accord, and slowly moved toward the
Ganges. It floated in the air for a few hundred yards, and then lowered and sank into the Ganges.
I was shocked, and could not assimilate this experience for a long time. When people talked of miracles
some swami was alleged to have performed, I had always said, “There is some trick in it.” But when I saw
this levitating body with my own eyes, it very quickly changed my attitude.
Source: Living with the Himalayan Masters, by Swami Rama. http://www.znakovi-vremena.net/en/Swami_Rama-Living_with_the_Himalayan_Masters.pdf
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Lastly, Wikipedia entry 'Miracles of Gautama Buddha':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_of_Gautama_Buddha
samsarictravelling
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