|
Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Stigmata and other phenomena
return to main-page of the "Jesus" article
Historians Will and Ariel Durant, a husband-and-wife team who spent decades writing a chronicle of the world, inform us:
"In [ancient] Greece, church and state were one ... The precincts of the temple were sacred and inviolable... The temple was not for the congregation but for the god; there, in his home, his statue was erected, and a light burned before it which was not allowed to die. Often the people identified the god with the statue; they washed, dressed, and tended the image carefully, and sometimes scolded it for negligence; they told how, at various times, the statue had sweated, or wept, or closed its eyes." (The Story Of Civilization, Vol. 2, The Life Of Ancient Greece, pg. 192)
Miracles, you say? hey, buddy, get back in line - they're a dime-a-dozen.
There are wondrous stories, often told to children, attributed to Jesus, Mother Mary, the saints, Theresa, Bernadette, Francis - and others. Some of these stories might be true, but most are not.
But what we do know is that every religion has its reports of stunning miracles and marvels. Every religion has its pantheon of holy men, saints, gurus, shamans, mystics, seers, medicine men, oracles - you get the idea. And every religion has its epic sagas of healings, visions, phenomena in the sky, weeping statues, prophecies, levitations, rain-making, dreams, shrouds, visitations, stigmata, holy relics, contact with the dead, out-of-body experiences, premonitions, gifts of the spirit, answers to prayer, encounters with angels, dramatic rescues - on and on.
In my young adulthood, for a time, I was part of a strict fundamentalist group. It too had lots of stories about miracles which had occurred for its members. The church, in fact, published a book featuring scores of these divine-intervention stories; eye-witness accounts. One testimony, most noteworthy, that I recall to this day, was that of a blue-collar worker at a steel plant. Somehow a terrible accident occurred, and he found himself drenched in molten metal at thousands of degrees Fahrenheit! And yet, just like Daniel walking around in the fiery furnace, he stepped out of that inferno with not even a hint of charcoal-smell on him. An invulnerable unseen force had completely shielded him from the flesh-melting conflagration. The church, of course, was quick to take full credit: "This is how God protects you when you're a member of the one, true church!"
However, there are 40,000 "one, true churches," and most of them will have their own stories of miraculous intervention for their members.
|
- 70 years without eating!
Inedia (Latin “fasting”) is the strange occurrence of being able to live for months or even years without food intake.
Certain RCC saints and holy people seem to have exhibited this wonder and the party-faithful have attempted to employ this unusual ability as "proof" of the "one, true church."
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, however, in his Science Set Free, explains that inedia has been discovered within other cultures and religions, and offers no opportunity for any particular church to claim “God loves us best!”
The following is an excerpt from Dr. Sheldrake’s book:
I first heard of this phenomenon when my wife and I visited Jodhpur, in Rajasthan, India, in 1984. An Indian friend took us to visit a local holy woman called Satimata in the nearby village of Bala. We were told that when her husband died in 1943, when she was about 40 years old, she wanted to immolate herself on his funeral pyre in the tradition of suttee, but she was prevented from doing so. Instead, she vowed never to eat again. When we met her, she was supposed to have lived for 43 years without food or drink, and without producing feces or urine. Yet she looked like a normal elderly village woman, apart from the fact that she was surrounded by devotees… Of course, I assumed she must have been eating and drinking secretly. Yet her devotees were adamant that she was genuine…
I later found that she was not unique: other holy men and women in India [did the same] … In 2010, a team from Allied Sciences (DIPAS) investigated an 83 year-old yogi called Prahlad Jani… His devotees claimed that he had not eaten for 70 years. In the DIPAS study, he was kept for two weeks in a hospital under continuous observation and filmed on CCTV cameras. He had several baths and gargled, but the medical team confirmed that he ate and drank nothing, and passed no urine or feces.
A previous medical investigation in 2003 had given similar results. The director of DIPAS said, “If a person starts fasting, there will be some changes in his metabolism but in his case we did not find any.” This is an important point because surviving a two-week fast is in itself not particularly impressive. Most people could do that, but there would be very noticeable physiological changes while they did so.
|
|
Do you recall the "mind-induced stigmata"?
In the article "Reincarnation On Trial," I reported to you that those who hold to the "R" doctrine assert that stigmata, and other unexplained marks on the body, constitute "proof" of reincarnation.
Everybody wants to get into this act, but see the discussion there concerning how such phenomena is controlled by the brain - and offers no evidence either of "R" or the "one, true church."
|
Lao-Tze: “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”
We must "remove," let go of, old, untrue ideas. Do your own research; and when you do, you will find that the world is not quite the way your dear religious grandmother said it was. The truth of the matter seems to indicate that all people are granted signs and wonders, in spite of their religion, not because of it.
The Spirit Guides "meet us where we are," offer what is needed, to bring each person into an awareness of God - irrespective of one's religion or lack thereof.
|