Interviews with Mystics and People of Miracles in India

The author photo (upper left) is shown alongside book photos of the three interview subjects selected for this article.

 

 

In Mystics and Men of Miracles in India (1976) Mayah Balse reported about interviews with contemporary men and women while observing "It is a force which works miracles."  Four of these reports have been selected for this blog article.  The other blog article about this book is "Paranormal Mystics and Miracles in Modern India".

 

Interview Subject: Ramanand Yogi

Location of Interview: Yogic Research Center in Hyderabad

Chapter Titles mentioning him include: "Living Burial"

Correlations with other cases: (as mentioned in this book) ". . . Braid in his treatise Human Hibernation (1850) . . . records the case of a fakir who was buried alive at Lahore in 1837 . . ."; also cited is Gheranda Samhita (undated Sanskrit manuscript).

"Have you heard of the Yogi who was buried alive?," asked the young lady doctor sitting next to me.

"Buried alive?" I asked, astonished.  "No.  Where?"

"In Hyderabad," she said.  "In fact I was on the panel of doctors who watched him doing the feat.  And believe me we were able to watch him.  He was . . . encased in an airtight glass box, with special instruments recording his heart beat and pulse rate, which in no way influenced the atmosphere inside the box.  It all comes under yoga research."

"How do you do this miraculous thing?," I asked him.  He put out his tongue . . . I saw that he had two tongues.  Like a snake, I thought.  I was too startled for a minute to ask him anything else.

 

 

When he talked, no one could guess he had two tongues.  The two separate parts moved with such coordination that his speech was perfectly normal.

"Was your tongue always like this?"

"No," he said.  "In the beginning my tongue was normal.  When I began pranayama, holding of breath and intense concentration, I had a vision . . ."

 

 

"Were you not afraid of mutilating yourself thus?"

 

"No," he replied, "I went to see a doctor who performed the operation.  No stitches were needed . . . it healed rapidly . . ."

 

 

The initial experiments were conducted by Anand, a renowned council member of the International Brain Research Organization. He and his colleague, G. S. China, put Ramanand Yogi through a series of experiments to test his claim to living burial.  There were also tests to prove if Ramanand could really stop his pulse and slow down his heart.  The results of these tests on the Yogi were published in 1961 . . . Nine years later in 1970, at the request of a BBC Television team, Ramanand Yogi . . . consented to a re-enactment of their previous experiment.

In the 1970 experiment in New Delhi, the time spent by the Yogi in the air-tight box was shorter — only six hours; but the results yielded by the analysis shattered all previous theories . . . By the end of the experiment . . . his oxygen requirement (had been brought) to one-fourth of that normally supposed necessary to sustain life . . . The television team departed briskly to project their knowledge . . .

 

 

"I just lie down in the box and take a couple of deep breaths . . . I go into a trance.  My eyes look within at some spot between the eyebrows.   Then everything becomes dark.  I see a few lights moving, sometimes two, often more.  Then I do not know what happens.  When the maximum period is reached, some automatic process awakens me suddenly and I press the buzzer indicating that I am to be released from the box.  The conductors of the experiment have helpfully provided a buzzer, which saving grace would not have been possible in the old state of earth burial.  As regards what happens to my breathing and pulse rate, the doctors will be able to enlighten you better."

The Yogi quite early in life had shown spiritualistic leanings.  His parents tried to discourage him because they were afraid his ascetic inclinations would disrupt his married life.  He had become a father at the age of 18 years and in that very year he was intuitively guided to take up Yoga  (1942).

He looked for a Guru but was disappointed in his search.  It was during this time that he had visions.  In one of these in 1948, he dreamt he could survive burial in an underground pit.  He tried this out and found it to be true.  In the beginning the length of time he could remain in the closed pit was short — only 24 hours.  Perpetual practice bettered this record and by 1951 he found he could remain buried without food, drink or air for as long as 28 days.

 

 

In the year 1951 he had a narrow escape.  During one of his trances, a doctor examined him and found no heartbeat and pulse.  Even the normal respiratory movements were not visible . . . the doctor did not pronounce him dead, because he was well-acquainted with yogic lore.

Interview Subject: Kalika Prasad Singh

Location of Interview: Delhi

Chapter Titles mentioning him include: "The Third Eye"

In the course of this talk Kalika Prasad said: "You will be surprised but alcohol has strangely powerful forces in it [stating one of his main deductions].  I will tell you an interesting case.  This happened in Delhi.  One evening I was having my usual large, when I heard a car drive up.  Somebody called my name loudly.  I saw a man standing by a parked car.  In the car, evidently in a state of collapse, was a woman.  I went down quickly, the glass still in my hand, being too preoccupied to put it down.

 

"The woman was gasping for breath and the husband appeared very flustered.  I just dipped my hand in the liquor I had been drinking and anointed her forehead with it.  I placed some on her head and rubbed it in like oil.  A remarkable thing happened.  The gasping and breathlessness stopped at once and she began to breathe more freely.  Both husband and wife were surprised.  But I was not."

 

 

"I do no Yoga," he said, "nor have I acquired any siddhis [supernatural attainments] . . . I have chosen the god Bhairav as my object of contemplation but you may choose any you wish.  They are all the same."  

 

  

Kalika Prasad has acquired the power [Gift of Spirit] to do faith-healing as well as an uncanny knack for telling the future, to a surprisingly accurate degree.  You need not take your horoscope along, though he says his method is astrology-based.  He has a unique way of telling the future.

"Give me any number," he asked me, "between one a hundred and eight."  After I had picked one number at random he looked at his watch and started making calculations.

"What are you doing?" I asked him.

"Since you do not have your horoscope," he said.  "I calculate as if you were born this very minute."

 

 

He had no vision, nor did he see the God Bhairav.  He only heard a voice speaking to him and telling him what to say.  Only he could hear this voice . . . None of the others could hear it though they were in the same room.

 

 

"Dastagir Baba was a bearded sage," said Kalika Prasad . . . Once I went to see him.  It was my first encounter with him.  And he asked me: 'What do you want?'  At once I replied: 'Give me the supernormal power of peering into the future.'  Thereupon Dastagir Baba laughed and said: 'Go, you will get it.'

"I went away full of joy.  The very same day I happened to see a telephone directory lying open at a certain page and my eye was immediately drawn and arrested by a few words, though they were no larger in type than the others.  The words were: COLLEGE OF ASTROLOGY . . . I joined the course, paying the fee of Rs 125 for six months."

 

 

" . . . While I was examining it [a keepsake bone of Dastagir Baba's own guru after his samadhi], I felt someone blow hard into my ear.  I turned but there was no one there. . . . After that incident I got a peculiar clairvoyant insight which far surpassed the rigid boundaries of astrological knowledge."

"Other mystics go away into the Himalayas to meditate and pray," said Kalika Prasad, "as for me I did not stir out of Delhi.  I stayed right there, in Moti Bagh.  My guru Bholenath had come to Delhi and was staying with me.  We were looking for a good place to go into our trances when it suddenly struck me!  There was an excellent place in the very building where I stayed.

"The next day I told me wife, 'Bholenath and I are moving into the servant's quarter.  It is unoccupied." 

"We hear in our ancient classics about the curses of rishis and munis . . ." 

It all depended on fate. 

". . . why do bad when it is in your hands to do the reverse . . ."

 

 

I asked Kalika Prasad his method of clairvoyance and he said: ". . . I see nothing."

 

 

When a session is on, Kalika Prasad closes his eyes and makes vague passes in the air with his hands.  Anyone who knows his methods is aware he is not to be interrupted, when he is in this mood.

On the first occasion I visited him, I did not know this and asked him a question in the middle, as one would do in a normal interview.  He stopped speaking abruptly and then looked at me vaguely as if he had not heard the question.  When I repeated it he said: "The mood has gone."  Then he walked out of the room.  When he is in these creative moods he is not to be interrupted.  When I asked him if it was a trance, he said: "No.  But afterwards I sometimes do not remember what I have said." . . . In fact he makes dreadfully accurate prophesies.  One at least in my case has already come true.

 

 

 

Interview Subject: Narayan Baba

Location of Interview: Sanjiva Reddy Nagar in Hyderabad

Chapter Titles mentioning him include: "The Miracle Worker" 

Correlations with other cases: (including) 'Bhagwan' Sathya Sai Baba

The housing colony of Sanjiva Reddy Nagar nestles beyond Amirpet in Hyderabad and is reached by a winding bazaar road full of cows, pedestrians and honking motorists.  Rows of identical cottages greet the eye.  In one of these lives the unpretentious mystic Narayan Baba. 

"I do nothing," he said.  "It is my guru the Sai Baba of Shirdi who performs these wonders."

"And where is your guru?"

"He attained samadhi in 1918, but his spirit works through me."

 

He asked me to spread out my hands underneath.  The vibhuti [materialized fragrant ash] fell like dust, grey in colour, sometimes fine, sometimes lumpy.  I wrapped it up.  I could not make out where it came from, though I had watched his hands closely all the time . . . four times for different people [this occurred] and each time I observed him . . . "I can't do the materialization on order.  Once at a Press Conference, some reporters asked me to do it for them.  I couldn't . . . For the same reason I can give rings and idols only to some people and not all who demand them." 

 

Narayan Baba, I was amazed to learn, has established 36 spiritual centres abroad in different parts of the world.  He often goes there for his healing sessions.  They have been named "Narayan Baba Spiritual Healing Centres."

He said: "I have never been to school.  I have been tutored only in Yoga."

"It was Abdullah Baba who asked me to get married.  He said it was all right to enjoy a woman once you had mastered all the eight siddhis.  So at thirty when I became a full-fledged mystic, I got married."

"Who is Abdullah Baba?"

 

"The Mohammedan name surprises you?" he asked.  "He was a Mohammedan mystic who took samadhi some time back. . . ."

In an article written about him in 1971 it is said: "At the instance of  Ramana Mahashri, he left for the Himalayas and for a few years accompanied Ek Bhooti Maharaj, renowned for his exceptional knowledge of Ayurveda, to many sages and saints . . . and to all places of pilgrimage."

"What is your means of livelihood?," I asked him.  

 

"This," he said, pointing to the platter, heaped with notes and coins.  It was not much.  The total days collection could not have been more than 15 rupees and he gave darshans only on Thursday . . . he ran a household, had put two children in an expensive hill school, had a car and an Alsatian [dog] and lived in his own house.

"This is not much," he said.  "But there are people who give a donation . . . Just today a lady from Africa has sent me a draft for five thousand rupees."

[regarding a case of facilitating spiritual healing for two deaf children]  He seats both parents and child in front of him, then presses behind the child's ears.  Then he puts his forefingers into the child's ears and presses hard, making the child scream with agony.  Then he suddenly releases the pressure.  This he does a couple of times.  The screaming grows higher in pitch.  Then he releases the child again.  Both these cases had been examined by doctors and given up as hopeless . . . One child, the son of a doctor, was a year old.  The other, the daughter of a corporal in the Air Force was about five years of age. After 15 days . . . the corporal reported his daughter could hear air crafts taking off and landing . . . In the other case, the effect was slower and for almost three weeks there was not even a glimmer of improvement.  A therapist had examined the child soon after his first birthday, when it had been discovered he was not responding to sound.  He had declared that one ear was hopeless but the other seemed to have a little hearing.  After three weeks of Narayan Baba's medicine [water with vibhuti skimmed and put into both ears], the child began to show some signs of hearing.  If the transistor [radio] was on, he went towards it.  If the fridge was switched on, he would go towards the sound. . . . The parents Dr. and Mrs. Ghosh then paid a visit to Mysore where there is a specialized hospital and they gave the child a hearing aid . . . I have personally followed up both the above cases.

Narayan Baba is also reported to have removed stones from the kidneys and gall bladders of afflicted men with just a superficial touch.  Astonished doctors have found these phenomena inexplicable . . . X-rays reveal that there are no stones in the organs . . . I read press clippings from foreign newspapers crediting these miracles and also giving photographs.  

In Hyderabad he removed stones from the gall bladder of a patient in the presence of Shri Kalyan Rao IGP, Shri Rangaiah Naidu, Deputy Commissioner of Police and some Ministers.

Narayan's method of prophesying is not involved.  He looks at the questioner as the query is asked, then just turns back to stare in concentration at the photograph.  His expression when he does this, is most calm and detached, hands folded together in his lap.  It is almost as if he is looking at a cinema screen . . . Many people have vouched for the accuracy of the predictions and he has personal letters from admirers to prove it.

 

"Baba," I asked him later, "How do you know what is going to happen?"

"I don't know," he said.  "But Guru Sai Baba of Shirdi tells me."

 

 

This falls into the category of clairaudience or specially perceptive hearing . . . Tales from Hindu mythology frequently mention the sudden manifestation of heavenly voices which proclaimed joyful tidings or sad news . . . Narayan Baba hears his guru speak . . . He worked by instinct.  He did not hold with trances.