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The Traveler's Guide to the Astral Plane
By Steve Richards Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
Copyright © 1983 Steve Richards
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60925-985-3
CHAPTER 1
Suspended Animation
In the mid-seventeenth century a crew of Indian workmen were digging a drainage ditch outside the city of Amritsar, when they suddenly cut into what appeared to be a tomb in the brittle shale. It contained the body of a sadhu, which showed no sign of deterioration, in spite of the fact that it had evidently been buried there for some considerable time. The workers disinterred the body and brought it to the surface, 'and in so doing' says John Keel, 'unwittingly helped launch another one of India's most fascinating mysteries.'
As soon as the sunlight struck the sadhu's body, he began to stir. Within a few moments he was completely conscious. He claimed that he had been buried for 100 years, without food, water, or air, and without suffering any ill effects.
He was the first man to demonstrate the amazing phenomenon known as suspended animation. But he would not be the last. A century and a half later another sadhu would appear in the same part of India and make the same claim.
His name was Haridas, and he claimed that he could with proper preparation, be buried alive, remain underground for any length of time he chose, and be disinterred without experiencing any ill effects. He demonstrated this remarkable skill in the city of Jummu, and later repeated it at Amritsar, and Jesrota. One of his observers was a government minister named Raja Dhyan Singh who apparently brought him to the attention of the Maharajah of Lahore, the famous Rundjit Singh. The Maharajah naturally demanded a demonstration, and one was not slow in coming.
For several days prior to his burial, Haridas flushed his bowels in true yogic fashion, and engaged in other activities for bodily purification including bathing in hot water up to his armpits, and refusing every food except yogurt and milk. Doctors who examined him found that he had cut the tissues under his tongue, so that he could swing his tongue backwards and use it to plug his windpipe. On the day of his burial, he swallowed some thirty yards of linen and regurgitated the whole thing in the presence of several British officers. He then announced that he was ready.
The Maharajah, the French General Ventura, Captain Wade, the British political agent at Lodhiana and the principal Sikh chiefs assembled at a grave of stonework which had been constructed for the occasion. The fakir sealed his ears and nostrils with wax, cast off his clothing, threw back his tongue so that it sealed his gullet, and proceeded to go into a trance. He was then enveloped in a linen bag, which was sealed with the Maharajah's personal seal. The bag was put into a sealed and padlocked chest, and lowered into the grave.
A large quantity of earth was thrown over the chest, and barley was planted on top. Finally, a guard was detailed comprising four companies of soldiers, with four sentries 'furnished and relieved every two hours, night and day, to guard the building from intrusion.'
With all these precautions, the Maharajah still had doubts, and thrice ordered the fakir to be disinterred. But each time there was Haridas, just as he had been buried, his body cold and lifeless, but mysteriously preserved from decomposition.
At the end of ten months the fakir was disinterred for the last time. General Ventura and Captain Wade raised the chest from the grave, then broke its seals and unlocked its padlocks. 'On opening it' wrote the Captain, 'the legs and arms of the body were shrivelled and stiff, the face full the head reclining on the shoulder like that of a corpse. I then called to the medical gentleman who was attending me to come down and inspect the body, which he did, but could discover no pulsation in the heart, the temples, or the arm. There was, however, a heat about the region of the brain, which no other part of the body exhibited.' The servants then went about the process of his resuscitation. This included bathing with hot water, friction, the removal of wax and cotton pledgets from the nostrils and ears, the rubbing of the eyelids with ghee of clarified butter, and what will appear most curious to many, the application of a hot wheaten cake, about an inch thick to 'the top of the head.' After the cake had been applied for the third time, the body was violently convulsed, the nostrils became inflated, the respiration ensued, and the limbs assumed a natural fullness. But the pulsation was still barely perceptible. 'The tongue was then anointed with ghee, the eyeballs became dilated and recovered their natural colour, and the fakir recognized those present and spoke.' It should be noticed that not only had the nostrils and ears been plugged, but the tongue had been thrust back so as to close the gullet, thus effectively stopping the orifices against the admission of atmospheric air.
'While in India' says Madame Blavatsky, 'a fakir told us that this was done not only to prevent the action of the air upon the organic tissues, but also to guard against the deposit of germs of decay, which in case of suspended animation would cause decomposition exactly as they do in in any other meat exposed to air.'
Haridas became a favourite of the Maharajah, who gave him enough diamonds and emeralds to make him a man of some means. His feats were studied by several British physicians, including Dr. MacGregor, who vouches for the fakir's extraordinary powers in his Medical Topography of Lodhiana. 'He might have attained world fame' wrote Keel, 'except for one sad fact.' He took a strong interest in matters of the flesh. After he deprived several of his lady followers of their highly valued virginity, the government ... banished him back to the mountains. He was never heard of again.
Now there is no question about the historical facts here. The same feat has been performed by the famous Egyptian fakir Tahra Bey.
Tahra Bey was born in 1897 to Coptic Christian parents in the city of Tanta—home of the thirteenth-century fakir Sheikh Ayid Ahmad el Badawi. He studied medicine in Constantinople, and for a time maintained a clinic in Greece, but his heart was in the art of the fakirs, an art which he had been studying since childhood.
While in Greece he says he was 'lowered into the very abyss of death' for twenty-eight days and emerged none the worse for his extraordinary experience. Encouraged by this initial success as well as by the hostility of the Greek Orthodox Church, Tahra Bey abandoned his medical practice and set out to demonstrate his skills in the great world.
After passing through Bulgaria, Serbia, and Italy, he arrived in France, where he was 'buried' for twenty-four hours in a lead coffin filled with sand and completely submerged in water. He claimed that he performed his feats by inducing a state of trance, slowing his heartbeat to a minimum, throwing his head back, retracting his tongue into his throat, and pressing on certain nerve centres in his neck. After he lost consciousness, his assistants would stuff his ears and nose with cotton, thereby rendering it impossible for him to breathe by any surreptitious means.
While in France, he was challenged to a 'duel of the fakirs' by the Frenchman Paul Heuze. The duel took place in Paris on 11 December 1928 and was joined at the last moment by a French conjurer who called himself 'Karma.' It is notable that M. Heuze was able to reproduce most of Tahra Bey's feats, such as sitting on a bed of nails, but that when he was 'buried alive' he remained immured for only an hour. 'He declared afterwards that there was nothing mysterious about it,' says Rawcliffe, 'and that no state of trance was necessary.' But he had twenty-three hours left to go before he could say that he had done as much as the Egyptian fakir. And even the extraordinary American magician Harry Houdini was able to remain submerged for only an hour and a half under the same conditions.
Yogis who have performed the same feat, however, using trance techniques instead of mere will-power, have repeated Tahra Bey's performances and even surpassed them. On 15 February 1950 the yogi Shri Ramadasji allowed himself to be immured under conditions similar to those of Tahra Bey for an astonishing sixty-two hours! According to Dr. Vakil, who supervised the experiment, the sadhu was interred in an airtight cement coffin onto which 1400 gallons of water had been pumped. At the conclusion of the experiment he was revived with smelling salts and quickly returned to consciousness, hardly any worse for having undergone such an amazing ordeal.
Western critics who have tried to explain this phenomenon have resorted to several ingenious theories. Rawcliffe suggested that the fakirs use drugs. And John Keel, who showed considerable courage in trying the feat himself, believes that the fakirs merely select a place where the dirt is porous and the air can seep through. But although there is no question that a man can breathe underground this way, that fact in itself does not explain the mystery.
There is an old story in the Chirurgical Journal of Leipzig about a fellow who was 'buried alive' in Germany and who had no apparent difficulty breathing for over an hour before losing consciousness. 'The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil,' says Poe, who relates the tale, 'and thus some air was necessarily admitted,' thus vindicating Keel's theory. But this story is a bit different from those of the fakirs and yogis we hear about, because the German was buried by mistake.
He was an artillery officer, who was thrown on his head by an unmanageable horse, and who suffered concussion. Physicians were called, and every remedy known to science at that time was applied, but to no effect. 'Gradually,' says Poe, 'he fell into a more and more hopeless state of stupor, and finally, it was thought that he had died.' What had happened, of course, was that he had fallen into a sleep so profound that all vital signs had ceased. This would appear to be the same kind of trance Haridas and Tahra Bey claimed to be able to induce at will. That fact in itself suggests that such a trance is within the range of human potential. As for the German, his story has an ending of the most ironic sort. Having been rescued from premature burial, the poor fellow fell victim, says Poe 'to the quackeries of medical experiment. The galvanic battery was applied and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.'
There is no question whatever about this phenomenon. Poe himself tells several other stories which are equally interesting. One of these concerns a London lawyer, a Mr. Edward Stapleton, who was buried in 1831, without however, having had the opportunity to die first.
Like the German, and for that matter, Tahra Bey and Haridas, Mr. Stapleton had entered a trance state so profound that he was thought to be dead. He had, after all, suffered from typhus fever, and there was every indication that the disease had claimed his life. His case aroused the curiosity of his physicians, and they decided to continue studying it post-mortem, engaging the services of a body snatcher for the purpose. It was the third night after the funeral. 'The supposed corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet deep,' says Poe, 'and deposited in the operating chamber of one of [London's] private hospitals'
Mr. Stapleton was actually being dissected when one of the surgeons had the idea of using the galvanic battery on him. Imagine the poor doctor's surprise when 'the patient, with a hurried, but quite unconvulsive movement, arose from the able, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed at him for a few seconds, and then—spoke.... Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor'
His words were not understood, but his situation was. He was revived 'upon the exhibition of ether' and 'was rapidly restored to health.' What was most remarkable about this was that whereas Mr. Stapleton's body was in trance, his mind was awake. In fact, according to Poe he declares that at no period was he altogether insensible—that, dully and confusedly, he was aware of everthing that happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced dead by his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. [The words that he spoke, and which no one could understand, were], I am alive.
This is what makes suspended animation interesting, Haridas told Captain Osborne that while in the state he had the most 'delicious dreams.' He did not elaborate on their nature, but Poe, who had the experience himself posed a question that seems curiously suggestive in this connection, namely, 'Where, [while the body was in trance], was the soul?'
Now the very act of posing this question seems to imply that it was not with the body itself since if it was the answer would be trivial. But Poe must have had dreams of a different sort—if dreams they were—and the same must have been true of Haridas, and the others.
If we believe the yogis, the soul is freed from the body in suspended animation, just as it would be in death itself, the only difference being that in suspended animation it has the option of returning. One could say that it 'projects astrally,' to use the common term, but that would not be completely satisfactory. It ventures forth onto the astral plane, to be sure, but with a critical difference.
Whereas the Western student wishes to project that he may conquer time and space, the Eastern student has a more serious and interesting purpose in mind. He wishes to conquer consciousness itself—to traverse the six realms of Sangsaric existence, as the Eastern books say, to visit Heaven and Hell at his pleasure, as well as all the realms between, and eventually to transcend the realms themselves, attaining thereby the state of enlightenment.
In Focus on the Unknown, Alfred Gordon Bennett mentions 'a certain writer and occultist' he had known at one time and 'who, after many years' residence in the East' became 'an adept at Raja Yoga,' and who tried suspended animation himself. He arranged to have himself buried for several days and then disinterred. Bennett writes:
After being revived by prearranged occult means he was able to give a perfectly lucid and rational account of the astral journeys he had undertaken whilst his body lay in samadhi.
He spoke of matters—places, people, happenings, and events—which seemed to have no reasonable or rational connection or association with the places, people, happenings, and events likely to be met with or experienced in any of the known normal spatial dimensions. But at the same time, it was patently obvious that he had also travelled extensively in our normal dimensions, and the difficulty was, despite the lucidity of his reminiscences, to decide just where this normal traveling ended and his supernormal traveling began.
He says that this difficulty was most pronounced immediately after awakening, and although he gives none of the details of this occultist's experiences, he suggests that such a feat is possible to anyone with sufficient determination and courage.
A more detailed account appeared in the August 1931 edition of The Rosicrucian Digest and was signed by Dr. James Douglas Ward.
Ward spent some two and a half years studying suspended animation in India, along with three of his countrymen. He says that the methods were quite similar to Western hypnotism, with twelve stages of suggestion and sixty 'intermediate charges.'
In the most advanced stage of trance, the heart shrinks to one half its normal size and the soul takes leave of the body. Astral projection-type experiences are obtained in less advanced stages, he says, but it is not until the most advanced stage is reached that the practitioner is able to project into the higher psychic planes.
He says that the Masters of his school 'called for volunteers to accompany the leading Master out of his body into the spiritual and spend forty-eight hours behind the screen with the veil lifted.' Ward himself volunteered, along with a Hindu and two other Americans named J. M. and J. S. His experiences were extremely mystical.
He says that he 'turned to a plane or condition' where he 'viewed the Celestial Throne, on which was mounted a symbol of the Arc of Safety.' Over that he saw a vision of the Royal Arch of Masonry, which looked with its seven colours like a rainbow in the sky, and through the arch he saw 'woven' the Lost Word. This experience was accompanied by a mystical illumination concerning the Word, which he says he received in the 'sixth degree' of his school, but which had never had the fullness of meaning to him that it did at that moment. He learned why man had the Word, and why he thought he had lost it and yet why it could not be lost. He also had certain illuminations concerning the mystical meaning of love, which appear to be more felt than understood.
Another account which is less mystical but more detailed, comes from a Dr. Wiltse. This is a case of spontaneous suspended animation, which came upon him during the summer of 1889, when he was suffering from 'typhoid fever with subnormal temperature and pulse.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Traveler's Guide to the Astral Plane by Steve Richards. Copyright © 1983 Steve Richards. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
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