According to the Hindustan Times Sai Baba has been in the Super Specialty Hospital since 28 March due to a lung infection. In early April he has had a pacemaker put in, and is on a ventilator and dialysis. Doctors say he is in stable condition and is conscious and responsive, though he cannot speak as he is intubated.
Even Avatars have physical bodies that undergo physical trauma. Buddha died of food poisoning after eating tainted pork, Christ was tortured and crucified, and Ramakrishna had throat cancer. Integral frontman Ken Wilber suffered serious injuries in July 2006 due to his autoimmune disease, injuring his shoulder and spine. He suffered twelve grand mal seizures in December of the same year and flatlined three times (That's also the year Baba broke his hip, an injury which has confined him to a wheelchair, as well as the year where my own trauma started me on the path of the mystic). Since then he has aged rapidly. One must remember, however, that Ken is built like Achilles, whereas Sai Baba is made of something softer. (UPDATE: Radio Sai has provided a short video of one of Baba's discourses from 2003 in which he says basically the same thing I had written here yesterday. An exerpt reads:
Dr. A. N. Safaya has put out a 16 minute video detailing Swami's condition and the efforts taken by the doctors to save him. Dr. Safaya says that Swami's condition has improved since he was admitted and he should make a full recovery. I will pray for Baba's swift recovery.
Baba said in 1963 that he will live for 96 years and that eight years later, 2030, he will incarnate for the third and final time as Prema Sai Baba, whose mission is to end the Kali age (according to one source this should happen in 2053).
In 2008 I was writing a short story called "The Man from Heaven" about a Buddhist monk who tried to prevent the First World War in 1889, warning the world leaders of the impending disaster, but had an accident and entered suspended animation. He wakes up in the present day and becomes a minor media sensation for a while, then, realizing not only he failed to prevent the war but that the world did not come to an end, must struggle to adapt to a world radically different from his own. After writing 19 pages and realizing that I was less than a quarter done with the story, it became apparent that this would not be a "short" story by any stretch of the imagination. An 80 page story occupies a sort of limbo. It is too short to be published on its own, but too long for the few remaining literary magazines to accept it. I supposed it could be adapted to a film script, but seeing as how the only audience the studios care about is 15 to 30 year old men who only like tits and explosions, no one would green-light a script about a 19th century Buddhist monk trying to adapt to 21st century life (not to say tits and explosions are bad, just that they are different from confused monks wandering around searching for answers to troubling questions). For that reason the project was scrapped.
Anyway, the idea for the story came from this real life example, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, a high level Siberian Lama whose body has been preserved for over 80 years (other wiki warning!). In 1927 Lama Itigilov told his monks to perform funeral rituals on him. He warned of the coming of communism and for all the monks to flee Russia (Stalin would try to exterminate them). One source I read says he told the monks that in 100 years (or 75 years, according to other sources) he would awaken from his hibernation to save the world, just like the fictional monk from "The Man from Heaven." Whether or not he's coming back, 84 years without any sign of decay with no form of preservation is amazing.
Stories of miraculous preservation are well known from the lives of saints. The bodies of some saints remain in very good condition without any preservation for centuries, despite being subjected to conditions that should rapidly decay a body (exposure to mositure, air, or chemicals). What makes Lama Itigilov interesting is that his skin remains soft, his joints flexible, and liquid blood remains in his veins. A medical examination revealed his body to be similar to that of a person who died between 12 and 36 hours ago (judging from the few available pictures, his moustache seems to be missing though, and his nose has deflated). His body's proteins have not denatured in any way.
The 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, died in a hospital in Zion, Illinois in 1981. The doctors allowed his followers to perform the traditional three day Tibetan death rituals in the hotel room. During that time, while the Karmapa's body was in lotus posture, his heart remained warm, just like in a living person. The chief of staff at the hospital, Radulfo Sanchez, admits that there is no medical explanation for the Karmapa's heart remaining at body temperature for three days after death. When his body was cremated the Karmapa's two perfectly healthy dogs died and a rainbow appeared over the monestary where the cremation was being performed. Tibetan tradition speaks of the rainbow body, a body made of pure light which only those who reach highest enlightnment assume following the death of their physical body. The ranibow body is completely indestructable, and some say it can even be constituted into a new physical body at will (perhaps as Jesus did during the resurrection?). Yogananda's guru Sri Yukteswar said the same thing in Autobiography of a Yogi (Chapter 43: The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar), that perfected beings possess bodies of light that can materialize and dematerialize at will.
Is Lama Itigilov really in a state of suspended animation? Will he awaken in 2027 to save the world, or did he realize the rainbow body, leaving his earthly form intact merely as a relic, a symbol to demonstrate to the world the veracity of the path of spirit? We'll have to wait 16 years to find out. In the mean time we can watch this clip from Al Jazeera of all sources. Runs 3 minutes 19 seconds.
I know, I've been neglecting the troubles in Japan. Earlier this month Japan was struck by the largest earthquake ever recorded in the region. It sent a tsunami across the Pacific, and irreparably damaged several nuclear power plants. The death toll is estimated at 18,000 the last time I heard on the radio. Officials in Japan are saying this is the worst disaster to hit the country since the end of the Second World War.
What with the ongoing "Kinetic Military Action™" the US is waging in Libya, and arming al Qaeda, and the Iranians releasing a video saying the Mahdi has come back from wherever he's been the past thousand years, and Israel has to be destroyed before the year is over so he can begin the end of days, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinajad is the only one on the planet who can see or hear him, so you better do what Ahmadinajad says, I haven't had the time to get to yet another depressing topic.
But all is not bad news! We are blessed to live in the time of Charlie Sheen and The Donald running for president. Need more proof? I bring you good tidings from Japan.
While the Japanese military was digging out bodies, 2,000 of them, one turned out to be alive. A four month old baby was found amidst the wreckage. The little girl has been returned to her family, who were also spared by the devastation.
Elsewhere (no map is provided, so place names mean nothing to me), a 70 year old woman, and her house, were harmlessly transported by the waves to a new location. A 60 year old man was also found floating on his roof ten miles out to sea. The fact that they were searching that far out is astonishing enough, let alone finding a surviver out there.
It's stuff like this that almost makes up for all the crap people are doing to screw the world.
If you have attended an American school in the past 30 years you will know what I am talking about. One of the big lies that they try to teach kids in schools is that you can't tell if someone is a criminal just by looking at them. Criminals look just like everyone else. Well, Jeffrey M. Valla and some other folks at Cornell University have done what I've been wanting to do for years, toss that myth out to the garbage. A study they conducted has demonstrated you can tell if someone is more likely to be a criminal just by looking at them, something I've been saying for years.
Every time I saw pictures of criminals on TV I noticed they all looked alike. Every single one of them. This study has vindicated my personal experience. People cannot tell what kind of criminal they are looking at, but they can tell that the person they are looking at is a criminal of some kind. The folks who did the study even went out of their way to find pictures of criminals who looked the least criminal, to stack the deck against the hypothesis that people can tell the difference by looks alone, and still they got positive results.
The one outstanding issue, however, is that women, but not men, have trouble spotting rapists. The authors suggest this is because rapists have to look as non-threatening as possible in order to succeed in their criminal acts. They admit that this explanation is purely speculative and more study is needed (more $$$ + job security). You can read the full text of the study here (PDF).
Do we want the Truth or do we want to be "educated"? There is a tendency of people in control, whether in universities or in governments, to want to "educate". Not for the Truth, but for the convenience of the moment, thinking they are the prophets of the zeitgeist, and by their manipulation of the public mind they will bring people around to the "right" direction.
- Richard Rose
Like the Tao, any description of this thing (I don't know what to call it) would limit what it is, and what it is is limitless, so it cannot be described. Even saying this is limiting it. Go figure.
