Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Paranormal modification and Production of biological form

For thousands of years, humans have been involved in the intelligent modification of biological form and development, through selective breeding. In this way, one can produce plants and animals with desirable features, including desirable size, color, and rate of growth. Darwin himself used the results of such intentional modification of biological form as one of the pillars of his theory of evolution by natural selection. He reasoned that if in a short period of time we humans can induce such changes on a small scale, then just imagine what mutation and natural selection can accomplish over millions of years. In other words, Darwin appealed to something visible to us (selective breeding within an existing species) to demonstrate something invisible to us (the origin of new species). But there is another visible kind of intelligent modification of biological form and development. It goes beyond the conventional processes of selective breeding that Darwin used as evidence for the possibility of evolution of complex new forms. I am talking about paranormal modification of biological form and development. This paranormal modification can take place in many ways, including the mentally transferred intentions of human agents, the transference of impressions from mothers to embryos within their wombs, the transference of physical modifications from one life to another by agency of a surviving soul, and the influence of superhuman beings from the lower levels of the cosmic hierarchy on the human organism. If we can detect within our experience such visible modification of biological form and development by paranormal means, we are justified in assuming that more powerful agents might be able to accomplish more. Instead of simply making changes within an existing species, they might be able to manifest new biological forms by their greater paranormal powers. The reasoning is essentially the same as Darwin’s. In this chapter, we shall review cases involving both human and apparently superhuman modification and production of biological form.

Modern Scientific Reports on Cellular modification in laboratories

We begin our review with cases of human agents acting on singlecelled organisms under laboratory conditions. Some of these cases are summarized by Dossey (1993, p. 190). In one set of experiments Barry (1968) had ten persons try to slow the growth of fungus cultures. From a distance of 1.5 yards, the experimenters concentrated on 194 culture dishes for fifteen minutes, willing them not to grow. The cultures were then placed in incubation for several hours. Out of the 194 culture dishes,

151 showed slower than normal growth. Tedder and Monty (1981) replicated Barry’s experiment, this time using a group of subjects who were stationed at distances from one to fifteen miles from the fungus cultures. This group was able to retard the growth of the fungus in sixteen out of sixteen attempts. Nash (1982) had sixty subjects attempt to influence the growth of bacteria cultures. He reported that the subjects were able to retard and increase the growth rate to a significant degree.

Describing another set of experiments by Nash (1984), Dossey (1993, p. 190) stated, “Sixty university volunteers . . . were asked to alter the genetic ability of a strain of the bacteria escherichia coli, which normally mutates from the inability to metabolize the sugar lactose (“lactose negative”) to the ability to use it (“lactose positive”) at a known rate. The subjects tried to influence nine test tubes of bacterial cultures—three for increased mutation from lactose negative to lactose positive, three for decreased mutation of lactose negative to lactose positive, and three tubes uninfluenced as controls. Results indicated that the bacteria indeed mutated in the directions desired by the subjects.” This is significant, because the subjects were able to affect not only growth but the genetic structure of the organism.

Dossey (1993, pp. 191–192) noted: “Although skeptics often criticize spiritual healing as being simply the result of suggestion or a placebo response, the above experiments show that this cannot be true, unless skeptics wish to attribute a high degree of consciousness to bacteria and yeast. These results suggest that the effects of spiritual healing can be completely independent of the ‘psychology’ of the subject.”

Beverly Rubik conducted laboratory research on “volitional effects of healers on a bacterial system” while director of the Institute for Frontier Sciences at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The experiments were performed using the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium, a very well studied organism. The chief subject in the study was faith healer Olga Worrall, who had demonstrated positive abilities in other experiments.

One set of experiments involved volitional effects on bacterial cultures infused with low and high concentrations of the antibiotics tetracycline and chloramphenicol, which inhibit growth to various degrees. To influence the cultures, Worrall would hold her hands close to, but not touching, the culture dishes. After about 20 generations of bacterial reproduction (bacteria reproduce by dividing in two), the cultures that Worrall acted upon were compared with the control cultures. In all cases there was a significant increase in growth of the bacteria in the cultures treated by Worrall.

In the experiments in which the bacterial samples were infused with low concentrations (1 microgram per milliliter) of tetracycline, samples treated by Worrall showed 121 percent more growth than the control samples. In experiments with concentrations of 10 micrograms/ml of tetracycline, samples treated by Worrall showed 28 percent more growth than the control samples. In experiments with concentrations of 10 micrograms/ml of chloramphenicol, samples treated by Worrall showed 70 percent more growth than the control samples. In experiments with concentrations of 100 micrograms/ml of chloramphenicol, samples treated by Worrall showed 22 percent and 24 percent more growth than the control samples (Rubik 1996, p. 105).

Another set of experiments involved studies of motility of bacteria. The bacteria were placed on slides in a solution of phenol sufficient to immobilize but not kill them. The slides of bacteria were then observed under a microscope. Rubik (1996, p. 108) stated, “Application of . . . phenol completely paralyzes the bacteria within 1 to 2 minutes. Worrall’s treatment inhibited this effect . . . such that on the average up to 7% of the bacteria continued to swim after 12 minutes exposure to phenol compared to the control groups which were completely paralyzed in all cases.”

Distance Healing on Humans

Today, many people around the world are using alternative medical treatments in addition to, or instead of, modern Western medical treatment. Many alternative medical treatments involve spiritual and paranormal influences, such as prayer. A study published in the Journal of the american medical association (Eisenberg et al. 1998) found that 35 percent of all Americans had used prayer to help solve health problems. Another national study, published in time magazine (Wallis 1996), found that 82 percent of all Americans believe that prayer has healing power. A study published in the annals of internal medicine (Astin et al. 2000) found that “a growing body of evidence suggests an association between religious involvement and spirituality and positive health outcomes.”

In support of this assertion the authors of the study cited reports from a variety of scientific and medical journals.

In their study, Astin and his coworkers did a thorough review of published medical reports on “distant healing.” Their definition of distant healing includes “strategies that purport to heal through some exchange or channeling of supraphysical energy” as well as prayer (Astin et al. 2000, p. 903). Searching through the professional literature, Astin’s group found 100 clinical trials of distant healing. They then analyzed these according to a stringent set of criteria. This resulted in many being excluded from consideration. They stated (2000, p. 904), “The principle reasons for excluding trials from our review were lack of randomization, no adequate placebo condition, use of nonhuman experimental subjects or nonclinical populations, and not being published in peer-reviewed journals.” After this strict selection procedure, 23 clinical trials remained. Astin’s group noted that even these had some minor methodological shortcomings that could be improved with better experimental design and controls. Nevertheless, they found that 13 of the 23 studies (57 percent) showed a positive treatment outcome. They concluded (2000, p. 910): “Despite the methodologic limitations that we have noted, given that approximately

57% (13 of 23) of the randomized, placebo controlled trials of distant healing that we reviewed showed a positive treatment effect, we concur. . . that the evidence thus far warrants further study.” Regarding studies on nonhuman subjects, such as bacteria, Astin’s group, citing a review by Benor (1990), said (2000, p. 904): “The findings of controlled trials of distant healing in nonhuman biological systems are provocative enough to merit further research.”

Local Healing by Faith Healers

Let us now consider some specific cases of healing by spiritualists. Kathryn Kuhlman, a Christian faith healer who worked from the 1940s to the 1970s, was responsible for some interesting cures that appear to be well documented, such as the case of George Orr. In 1925, Orr was working at the Laurence Foundry Company in Grove City, Pennsylvania. A drop of molten iron splashed into his eye, injuring it severely. Dr. C. E. Imbrie determined that the cornea of the eye was covered by scar tissue, causing almost complete loss of vision. In 1927, the Pennsylvania State Department of Labor and Industry said the injury was equivalent to the loss of an eye, and granted Orr complete compensation. On May 4, 1947, Orr and some family friends attended one of Kuhlman’s meetings, in Franklin, Pennsylvania. Orr prayed for a healing. He felt a tingling in his eye, which began to shed tears. Later, on the drive back home, he realized he could see. The scar on his eye had disappeared. Dr. Imbrie later examined Orr and was astonished by the cure (Rogo 1982, pp. 275–277). The Orr case is significant because the healing was not just the result of an activation of the body’s own powers of regeneration. Rogo (1982, p. 277) stated: “Because scar tissue on the eye does not simply vanish or dissolve, George Orr’s cure must be considered a legitimate miracle . . . It was not of a sort that might occur naturally, Orr was under no medical treatment at the time, and the healing was instantaneous, complete, and permanent.”

In 1948, Karen George was born in Conway, Pennsylvania, with a clubfoot. Rogo (1982, p. 277) said, “The bottom of her left foot faced upward and a walnut-sized ball of flesh was embedded in its surface. The toes were pushed together as well, and the kneecap was twisted over to the side of the leg.” A doctor put a brace on Karen’s leg when she was three months old, the first of many braces. None of them worked.

Karen’s mother recalled, “When we saw no improvement from the first brace, we changed doctors. Karen was four months old then. We took her to another orthopedist who was recommended to us. He immediately put her in a cast that encased the whole leg and left it on for a month. She cried almost constantly. When they took the cast off, the leg flopped back exactly as it had been before. The doctor let her go about a month and then tried another cast. More crying almost day and night. And when he took off that cast, the leg promptly went back into its twisted position” (Spraggett 1970, pp. 77–78).

The orthopedist told the Georges that when their daughter was two and a half years old, she could have surgery. But the Georges did not want to wait that long. And they did not have faith in the operations. Mrs. George said, “We met other parents with children who had the same problem in the doctor’s waiting room and they told us of repeated operations, and sometimes after years of treatment the child was still deformed. We knew, too, from talking to other parents and seeing their children that Karen’s was a very serious case” (Spraggett 1970, p. 79).

Having heard of Kathryn Kuhlman, the Georges brought their daughter to one of her meetings. Kuhlman and her congregation prayed for Karen’s healing. Within two days, the lump on Karen’s foot was gone. Spraggett (1970, p. 80) said, “Karen George received no further medical treatment for her foot. Her mother took her to Kathryn Kuhlman’s miracle services regularly. Over a period of a month the child’s foot imperceptibly improved until one day Mrs. George examined it and it was perfectly normal.” When Karen was twenty years old, Spraggett (1970, p. 80) visited her and personally observed her perfectly normal foot.Sometimes miraculous healings occur in connection not only with living humans, but with humans long departed, as in the case of healings by departed saints. John Fagan, a dock worker in Glasgow, Scotland, underwent such a cure (Rogo 1982, pp. 266–271). On April 26, 1967, the middle-aged Fagan found himself vomiting blood. He entered the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and underwent medical testing, which showed he had stomach cancer. The doctors, without telling him he had cancer, recommended surgery. Rogo (1982, p. 267) stated, “The resulting surgery revealed that the cancer had eaten through the stomach and into the transverse colon. The stomach was greatly ulcerated, and the cancer had apparently spread far by the time of the operation. The cancerous tissue could not be completely removed, and the doctors duly advised Mrs. Fagan that her husband had only from six months to a year to live. Again, Fagan was not told of this prognosis.” Fagan was released from the hospital, and as predicted, his condition grew worse. He went back into the hospital on December 21, 1967. Doctors informed Mrs. Fagan that inoperable secondary tumors had developed. There was nothing they could do for Mr. Fagan other than give him medications to reduce the pain he was suffering. Mrs. Fagan cared for her husband at home. He remained in bed, getting weaker as he approached death. A Catholic priest, Father John Fitzgibbon, of the Church of Blessed John Ogilvie, started visiting the Fagans, who were Catholic. Expecting the worst, Father Fitzgibbon gave Fagan the last rites. As a last hope, he gave Mrs. Fagan a medal of Blessed John Ogilvie, a Scottish Catholic martyr killed by Glasgow Protestants in 1614, and suggested she pray to him. Mrs. Fagan followed the priest’s advice. Friends of the Fagan’s would also come and pray to Blessed John Ogilvie. Rogo (1982, p. 268) states, “By March, Fagan was so weak that he could neither get up from bed, eat, or even talk. He could only vomit repeatedly, since by now his stomach was literally dissolving itself. . . . The Fagans’ doctor, Archibald MacDonald, arrived . . . [March 6] . . . and was so shaken by his patient’s condition that he could do nothing but advise Mrs. Fagan that he would return after the weekend to sign the death certificate. He gave her husband a pain killer and left. Fagan then fell into a deep sleep.” The next day, Fagan’s condition changed completely. His pain and vomiting stopped, and he felt hungry. Dr. MacDonald was astounded by the recovery, which was soon complete.

When Fagan’s miraculous cure became known, Catholic Church officials in Scotland hoped to use it to convince the Vatican to take the final step in canonizing John Ogilvie as a saint. In order to accomplish this, the Church officials had to extensively document Fagan’s cure. They convened a panel headed by Father Thomas Reilly. This panel obtained an account of the case from Dr. MacDonald, and then chose a committee composed of three Glasgow doctors to investigate further. After two years’ study, the committee could find no medical explanation for the cure. In 1971, the Vatican sent Dr. Livio Capacaccia, an expert on diseases of the stomach and intestines at the University of Rome, to Scotland. Although Dr. Capacaccia was inclined to believe Fagan’s cure was miraculous, Father Reilly encouraged him to carefully consider possible natural explanations for the cure. Dr. Capacaccia made some proposals, which were studied by the committee. For example, he proposed that perhaps the secondary cancerous growths had undergone spontaneous remission. The committee concluded that the medical evidence ruled this out. Another theory was that something other than secondary cancerous growths caused Fagan’s relapse. Along these lines, Dr. Gerard Crean, an expert on diseases of the stomach and intestines from Edinburgh, suggested that the original operation had removed all the cancerous growths, and that Fagan’s relapse had been caused by discharge from an abscess that later healed itself. Rogo (1982, p. 270) states, “Crean’s theory was finally rejected on the basis that (1) Fagan was too near death to have been suffering from a simple abscess; (2) the original surgeon was ready to confirm that not all of Fagan’s cancer had been removed during the surgery; and (3) Fagan’s decline was consistent with his doctor’s original diagnosis and prognosis. The panel could find no alternative explanation and concluded that Fagan was suffering from a secondary malignant cancer that had—for no apparent medical reason—suddenly healed of its own accord.”

In May 1971, Fagan underwent thorough medical testing at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. The examiners concluded that Fagan’s relapse was “entirely consistent with the natural history of a patient with recurrent gastric carcinoma” and that there was “no satisfactory explanation” for his cure (Rogo 1982, p. 270). Dr. Capacaccia returned to Glasgow in October 1971 and reviewed all of the medical evidence in consultation with the doctors involved in the investigation. He found that the cure was miraculous and reported his conclusion to the Vatican. Pope Paul VI declared the cure a miracle caused by John Ogilvie, who was soon thereafter declared a saint.

Postmortem healings also took place in connection with St. Martin de Porres of Peru, who was born in 1579 and died in 1639. The Catholic process of declaring sainthood goes in two main stages. The first is beatification and the second is canonization. The beatification of St. Martin de Porres came in 1837. His canonization came in 1857. In connection with the beatification process, Pope Gregory XV on March 19, 1836 approved the following cure as miraculous. A woman in Lima broke a piece of pottery, and a sliver entered her eyeball, causing all the fluid to leak out. This injury left the eye incurably blind. Rogo (1982, p. 265) stated, “The master of a nearby monastery, however, sent the woman a small bone fragment, a relic of Martin de Porres, and instructed her to hold it to the damaged eye. She did as she was directed and woke the next morning to find her eye and sight totally restored. Though this was medically impossible, the cure was authenticated by the woman’s own doctor, who had examined the original wound.” The second cure connected with the beatification of St. Martin of Porres also took place in Lima. A Peruvian child fell eighteen feet from a balcony and split his skull. The child went into convulsions. A doctor looked at him and found his case hopeless. The child’s mother, and the Spanish noblewoman who employed her, prayed to Martin de Porres, and after the hours, the child got up from bed, having recovered completely. Two more recent cures were recognized by the Vatican in 1962. In 1948, Dorothy Caballero Escalante, an elderly woman in Paraguay, was suffering from an inoperable intestinal blockage. Her daughter, having been informed that her mother was near death, prayed to Martin de Porres, and she recovered fully. In 1956, Anthony Cabrera Perez, a boy four years old, was playing in a construction site in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. A large block of cement fell on his leg, crushing it. Gangrene later infected the leg. Doctors at St. Eulalia’s Hospital treated it with medicine, which failed to act.The doctors then decided to amputate the leg to save the boy’s life. But the parents prayed to Martin of Porres, and the next morning the gangrene was gone and the boy’s leg soon healed.

Stigmatics

Over the centuries, certain persons of Christian faith, including, but not limited to, saints, have developed marks (stigmata) on their bodies corresponding to the wounds Christ suffered during the crucifixion. These persons, called stigmatics, usually develop wounds in the palms of the hands and in the feet, corresponding to nail wounds, and sometimes also develop a wound on the side of the chest, corresponding to the place where a Roman soldier stabbed Christ with a spear. Several authors have explained these stigmata as psychosomatic effects, produced on the body by the mind of the stigmatic, who imagines the crucifixion scene. One argument in favor of this is that the wounds sometimes appear in slightly different places (Stevenson 1997, pp. 34–42), just as they do in different artistic representations of the crucifixion. In other words, just as artists may imagine the marks on the body of Christ in a slightly different way, so might the stigmatics. Alternatively, the stigmata could be manifested on the body of the stigmatic directly by some supernatural being, or by some combination of the psychosomatic and supernatural influences. I favor the latter suggestion, but in either case, the stigmata do represent a paranormal modification of biological form. Stevenson (1997, p. 34) noted that usually a variety of paranormal phenomena, in addition to stigmata, manifest in the lives of stigmatics, including “visions, bilocations, healing powers, extrasensory perception, the ability to live normally without food and water, and postmortem incorruptibility of the physical body.”

The German psychiatrist A. Lechler studied the stigmata case of Elisabeth K. Although he does not give her last name, he does provide extensive documentation of his thorough study of her hypnotically induced stigmata, including photographs. Elisabeth K. was born in 1902, and suffered from many psychiatric disorders. Lechler began treating her in the late 1920s. Stevenson (1997, pp. 43–52) gives a summary of a report on Elisabeth K. by Lechler (1933).

Elisabeth identified with the sufferings of others. For example, if she saw someone with a limp, she developed a limp herself. Once she heard of someone with an inflamed tendon in the arm, and thereafter her own arm developed the symptoms of tendonitis, including redness, pain, and swelling. Lechler (1933, p. 11) wrote: “Whenever she read in the Bible stories about the healing of the lame, she had the feeling that she herself was lame and numb in her legs. She attended a lecture (illustrated with lantern slides) about the suffering and death of Jesus; as she looked at the picture of the Savior on the cross, she felt severe pain in her hands and feet at the places where nails had been driven into Jesus.”

This incident occurred in 1932. Lechler wanted to see if the actual stigmata might appear. He hypnotized Elisabeth and told her to continue thinking, while she was asleep that night, about nails being driven through her hands and feet. The next morning, Elisabeth, very much alarmed, showed her hands and feet to Lechler, who noted (1933, p. 11): “The sites I had indicated during the hypnosis all had areas (about the size of a small coin) that were red and swollen with the skin somewhat opened up and showing moisture. Elisabeth calmed down when I explained to her the cause [his hypnotic suggestions] of the wounds. Then with her consent I gave her, in a waking condition, the further suggestion that the wounds would become deeper and also that she would weep bloody tears.” The wounds did in fact become deeper, exposing the underlying tissues, which appeared bloody. There were, however, no bloody tears. Lechler gave further hypnotic suggestions, and before two hours had passed, Elisabeth came to him with bloody tears running down her cheeks from her eyes. Lechler took photographs, which he later published, of the wounds and the face with tears. He then gave Elisabeth a suggestion that the tears would stop. They did. He also gave a suggestion that the wounds would close up, and within 48 hours they did. Lechler soon thereafter induced the stigmata on Elisabeth’s hands and feet a second time, during which he observed actual bleeding more distinctly than the first time. Another time, Lechler suggested to Elisabeth that he was putting a crown of thorns on her head. The next morning, her forehead was red and swollen and covered with wounds, triangular in shape, like those made by a thorn. When Lechler suggested the wounds would bleed, within an hour they did.

Lechler did not keep Elisabeth under continuous observation during these experiments. Realizing that he could not be one hundred percent sure she had not inflicted the wounds upon herself, he performed another series of experiments, during which she was kept under continuous observation by either him or nurses from a hospital. The same stigmata were produced in this second set of experiments—the wounds on the hands and feet, the bloody tears, and the wounds on the forehead. In some of these cases, Lechler personally observed the wounds begin to bleed.

Therese Neumann (1898–1962) was another stigmatic who achieved wide recognition (Rogo 1982, pp. 65–69). As a devoutly Catholic girl living in the Bavarian village of Konnersreuth, she dreamed of becoming a missionary to Africa. But on March 10, 1918, she was injured while fighting a fire at a nearby farm. A few weeks later, she fell down some stairs, and went to a hospital suffering from internal injuries and convulsions. After she was released, she remained at home, a bedridden invalid, her body covered with bedsores. Her left foot began to decay from lack of use. She also lost her sight. By this time, Therese had become devoted to Thérèse of Lisieux. Rogo (1982, p. 66) stated, “On April 29, 1925—the very day Thérèse of Lisieux was beatified—Neumann was spontaneously healed of her blindness. A few days later her left foot . . . regenerated new skin after rose leaves from St. Thérèse’s grave were placed under its bandages. On May 17, 1925—the date of Thérèse of Lisieux’s formal canonization— Neumann’s paralysis immediately disappeared. And on September 10, the anniversary of St. Thérèse’s death, Neumann found her strength so revitalized that she could leave her bed without aid.” Rogo (1982, p. 66) pointed out that Neumann’s paralysis and blindness could have been purely psychological in origin. Nevertheless, the healing of the foot did seem mysterious.

During Lent of 1926, Neumann had dreams of Christ, and developed stigmata, with bleeding wounds on her hands and feet, and a deep bleeding wound on her chest. She said: “The five wounds hurt me constantly, although I have already become accustomed to pain. It is as though something is penetrating into my hands and feet. The wound in the side seems to be really one in the heart. I feel it at every word I utter. If I draw a deep breath when speaking forcibly or hurrying, I feel a stabbing pain in my heart. If I keep quiet, I don’t notice this. But I suffer this pain willingly. Actually, the wounds close up during the week. The real pain lies much deeper inside” (Rogo 1982, p. 67). Later, in November, Neumann developed on her forehead eight wounds, the stigmata associated with the crown of thorns. In 1927, the wounds on her feet deepened, going from her instep all the way through to the soles. Similarly, the wounds on the backs of her hands went all the way through to the palms. Rogo (1982, p. 67) said, “Protuberances resembling nail heads slowly appeared within the wounds on her hands. These nail-like structures, apparently formed from hardened skin, were examined by several doctors and priests. They passed completely through her feet and hands, taking up most of the area of the wounds. The ‘nails’ could be seen on the backs of her hands, bent to the sides of her palms, and also on her feet. A soft, membranelike tissue surrounded them. During her ecstasies this membrane would break to allow blood to flow.”

Each Friday, Neumann would have a vision of the crucifixion, and during these visions her wounds would exude large amounts of blood, which would be soaked up by continuous application of bandages. In addition to her stigmata, Neumann also exhibited other paranormal abilities, such as miraculous healing of others, clairvoyance, and appearing in two places simultaneously.

Stevenson (1997, p. 49) notes this interesting incident in connection with the Neumann stigmata: “A physician of Silesia, Dr. A. Mutke . . . had steeped himself in information about the case of Therese Neumann, which received immense publicity during the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, the physician became severely ill. As he was recovering, a colleague visited him one day and said to him: ‘What has happened to your hands? You are stigmatized.’ On the back of each of the physician’s hands there was a dark red, almost bloody area that was fairly well defined and about the size of a 2 mark piece (of that period in Germany) . . . The stigmata appeared and disappeared—on both hands—five times in all. In November 1934 Dr. Mutke wrote a report of his experience to the Bishop of Regensburg, but the case never became publicly known, and we lack further details.” Gemma Galgani (1878–1903) provides another well documented case of stigmata (Thurston 1952, pp. 52–54). Her stigmata appeared each Thursday evening and continued until Friday afternoon. Her biographer, Father Germano di St. Stanislao, described the appearance of the stigmata: “Red marks showed themselves on the backs and palms of both hands; and under the epidermis a rent in the flesh was seen to open by degrees; this was oblong on the backs of the hands and irregularly round in the palms. After a little the membrane burst and on those innocent hands were seen marks of flesh wounds. The diameter of these in the palms was about half an inch, and on the backs of the hands the wound was about five-eighths of an inch long by one-eighth wide.” Father Germano said the wounds “seemed to pass through the hand—the openings on both sides reaching each other.” Within the wound in each hand, he said, one could on some rare occasions see tissue that was “hard and like the head of a nail raised and detached and about an inch in diameter” (Thurston 1952, p. 53).

Not long after each appearance, the stigmata disappeared, leaving hardly a trace. Father Germano said, “As soon as the ecstasy of the Friday was over, the flow of blood from all the five wounds ceased immediately; the raw flesh healed; the lacerated tissues healed too, and the following day, or at latest on the Sunday, not a vestige remained of those deep cavities, neither at their centres, nor around their edges; the skin having grown quite uniformly with that of the uninjured part. In colour, however, there remained whitish marks” (Thurston 1952, p. 54).

Maternal effects

Some medical professionals and other scientists have long believed that a strong mental impression in a pregnant woman can influence the developing body of the child within her womb. For example, if a woman sees someone with an injured foot and then constantly remembers this, her child might be born with a malformed foot. Such incidents are called “maternal impressions.” The view was common among the Greeks and Romans, and among European physicians until the nineteenth century (Stevenson 1992, p. 353–356). In 1890, W. C. Dabney reviewed in a medical encyclopedia 69 reports published between 1853 and 1886 documenting a close correspondence between the mother’s mental impression and the physical deformation in her child. Stevenson (1992, p. 356), describing Dabney’s conclusions, stated, “He found that defects related to errors of embryological development [such as a deformed or missing limb] tended to be associated with maternal impressions received early in pregnancy; in contrast, birthmarks and other abnormalities of the skin and hair tended to be associated with maternal impressions occurring later in pregnancy” (my interpolation). By the end of the nineteenth century, however, many physicians had given up belief in the phenomenon of maternal impressions. Dabney (1890, p. 191) offered the explanation that “thinking men came to doubt the truth of those things which they could not understand.” Such doubts became all-pervasive in the twentieth century. By this time medical science had become exclusively materialistic in its assumptions about the nature of the human organism. Stevenson (1992, p. 356) suggested that the failure of Western medical professionals to find any materialistic explanation for maternal impressions “eventually led to denial that there were any phenomena to be explained.” Nevertheless, in many parts of the world, the phenomenon of maternal impressions on children is still accepted even today.

Stevenson (1997) reviewed 50 cases of maternal impressions. For example, Sylvia Hirst Ewing believed she was a reincarnation of a deceased woman named Julia Ford. Ford had a small hole in her skin near the middle of her right eye. Sylvia Ewing had a similar cavity. It would sometimes exude pus, or mucus, or a tearlike liquid. When she became pregnant, Sylvia Ewing constantly worried that her child would be born with a similar disfiguring hole. The child, Calvin Ewing, was born on January 28, 1969, with a hole at exactly the same place as his mother (Stevenson 1992, p. 364).

In some cases, the maternal impressions occur in dreams (Stevenson 1992, p. 364). Brydon (1886) reported a case in which a woman four months pregnant dreamed that a rat had chewed off the big toe of her right foot. When her child was born, it was missing the big toe of its right foot. Hammond (1868) reported a case in which a pregnant woman dreamed about a man who had lost part of his ear. Her child was born with a defective ear, matching the one the woman saw in her dream. Hammond (1868, p. 19) stated: “I have examined this child, and the ear looks exactly as if the portion had been cut off with a sharp knife.”

Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876) was the founder of modern embryology. He told how his sister, while away from her home, saw a fire in the distance and strongly feared it was her own house burning. At the time, she was six or seven months pregnant. When her daughter was born, she had a red mark on her forehead. The red mark was pointed at the tip, like a flame (Stevenson 1997, pp. 105–106).

The Druse are an Islamic sect, living mostly in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Tamimi Mishlib was an Israeli Druse woman. The Druse have a belief that a pregnant woman can produce a birthmark on a child within the womb under the following conditions: (1) she develops a desire to eat a certain food, (2) she does not eat that food, (3) while resisting the desire to eat the food she presses her finger on a part of her body. The result should be that the child is born with a birthmark at the same place on its body. For this psychosomatic operation to work, it should be carried out during the period when the child within the womb is particularly sensitive to this effect, i.e., the first three months of pregnancy. Tamimi Mishlib decided to test this folk belief. One day she felt a strong desire to eat some honey. She did not eat the honey, but simply looked at it. While looking at the honey, she pressed her right forearm with the thumb of her left hand. Her son, Hamad Mishlib, was born with a birthmark on his right forearm, corresponding to the place she pressed her own forearm (Stevenson 1997, pp. 150–151).

Reincarnation effects on Biological Form

As we saw in chapter 6, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson has documented cases of past life memories spontaneously reported by young children. Out of 895 cases of children who claimed to remember a previous life, unusual birthmarks and/or birth defects were reported in 309 of the subjects (Stevenson 1993, p. 405). These birthmarks or defects corresponded in appearance and location to wounds or other marks on the deceased person whose life the child remembered. The marks on the deceased person were verified by statements from living witnesses who knew the deceased person. In 49 cases, Stevenson was able to also use postmortem medical reports and death certificates to verify the wounds or marks on the prior personality. A correspondence between a birthmark on the living child and a wound on the deceased person was judged satisfactory if both the birthmark and wound occurred within an area of 10 square centimeters at the same anatomical location. Stevenson noted that out of the 49 cases where medical documentation was available, the marks corresponded in 43 (88 percent) of the cases (Stevenson 1993, p. 405). This strong correlation increased the confidence in the accuracy of informants’ memories concerning wounds and other marks on deceased persons for the other cases. For 18 cases in which two birthmarks on a subject corresponded to gunshot wounds of entry and exit, in 14 cases the evidence clearly showed that the smaller birthmark corresponded to the wound of entry and the larger birthmark corresponded to the wound of exit. Exit wounds are nearly always larger than entry wounds. According to Stevenson (1997, pp. 1131–1137), the probability that the location of a single birthmark would correspond to a wound from a previous life is about 1 in 160. The probability that the locations of two birthmarks would correspond to the locations of two wounds is 1 in 25,600. Stevenson (1997, p. 1135) cites cases in which the birthmarks and wounds occur within 5 centimeters of each other. In the case of single birthmark/wound correlations, the probability for such occurrences is 1 in 645, and the probability of double birthmark/wound correlations is 1 in 416,025. Let us now consider some examples of unusual birthmarks related to wounds suffered in a past life. Henry Demmert III was born with a mark corresponding to a knife wound suffered by Henry Demmert, Jr. (Stevenson 1997, pp. 417–421). Henry Demmert, Jr., was born in Juneau, Alaska, on December 6, 1929. He was the son of Henry Demmert, Sr., and his wife Muriel. Because they were Tlingit Indians, Henry and Muriel also gave their son the Tlingit name Shtani. Muriel Demmert died soon thereafter, and in 1932 Henry Demmert, Sr., married his second wife, Gertrude. When Henry Demmert, Jr., grew up, he worked as a fisherman in Juneau. On March 6, 1957, he went to a party where he and others drank a lot of alcohol. A fight broke out around 5:30 the next morning, and Henry Demmert, Jr., was stabbed in the heart. He died at the Juneau hospital at 6:45 a.m. The death certificate said the attacker’s knife cut and wounded the left lung and heart.

Henry Demmert, Sr., and his second wife, Gertrude, had a daughter Carole. She married Cyrus Robinson, and they had a child, Henry Robinson. Shortly before Henry was born Gertrude Demmert had a dream about him. The child was searching for Henry Demmert, Sr., and Gertrude. Henry Robinson was born on October 5, 1968. When Henry Demmert, Sr., and Gertrude saw their newly born grandson, they both noticed a birthmark at the same place as the stab wound that had killed Henry Demmert, Jr. Shortly after Henry was born, his parents separated. Henry Demmert, Sr., and Gertrude adopted him. They gave him the name Henry Demmert III, believing him to be a reincarnation of their son Henry Demmert, Jr. They also gave him the same Tlingit name (Shtani) they had given Henry Demmert, Jr. When Henry Demmert III was about two years old, he made some statements to his grandfather about his wound. Stevenson (1997, p. 420) reported, “Pointing to his birthmark he said that he had ‘got hurt there.’ He added that this had happened when he ‘was big.’”

In 1978, Ian Stevenson examined Henry Demmert III and photographed the birthmark. Stevenson (1997, p. 420) said: “The birthmark was inferior and slightly lateral to the left nipple. It was located at approximately the level of sixth rib. It was . . . approximately 3 centimeters long and 8 millimeters wide. The medial end of the birthmark was slightly more pointed than the lateral end. The birthmark was not elevated. It may have been fractionally depressed below the surrounding skin.” Stevenson (1997, p. 420) added: “A knife-entering the chest at the site of the birthmark, or near it, would penetrate the heart if directed medially and upward. No other member of the family had a birthmark in this location.” The birthmark had an approximately triangular shape. Stevenson (1997, p. 421) commented: “The suggestion of triangularity in the birthmark may provide an indication that the weapon stabbing Henry Demmert, Jr., had a single cutting edge, like a clasp knife or a kitchen knife, instead of having two cutting edges like a dagger.”

Ekouroume Uchendu was a member of the Igbo tribe in Nigeria. He was, as Stevenson (1997, p. 1652) puts it, “a practitioner of indigenous medicine.” He had a sister named Wankwo. When Wankwo was grown up and married, she and a man named Kafor quarreled. Kafor threatened to kill Wankwo. Upon being threatened in this way, Wankwo went to her brother Ekouroume Uchendu for help. He killed Kafor by sorcery. Wankwo later died.

Ekouroume Uchendu had several wives. In 1946, a daughter, Nwanyi, was born to Onyenyerego, one of his senior wives. From an oracle, Ekouroume Uchendu learned that Nwanyi was a reincarnation of his sister Wankwo. Nwanyi died when she was just one year old. Believing that Nwanyi’s departure from this world was deliberate, Stevenson (1997, p.1633) stated: “He thought that the least she—the reincarnation of his sister Wankwo—could have done, given the trouble he had taken to kill Kafor, was to stay in the family for longer than a year. In what can only be regarded as a fit of rage, he cut off some of the dead Nwanyi’s fingers and toes. In addition, he tied her legs together with some cord, symbolically preventing her from ever walking again. To block the Wankwo/Nwanyi personality from ever returning, he put some of the amputated fingers and toes, along with some ‘medicines,’ in a little bag and hung this up in his house. This ritual was intended to banish Wankwo/Nwanyi permanently and prevent her from ever being reborn in Ekouroume Uchendu’s family.”

After this, Ekouroume Uchendu took yet another wife, named Irodirionyerku, who knew nothing about Nwanyi and the ritual mutilation carried out after her death (to stop her from coming back into Ekouroume Uchendu’s family). Over the course of eleven years, Irodirionyerku had three children. Then one day, while doing some remodeling of the house, she took down the bag that contained the toes and fingers of Nwanyi, without knowing what it was. Stevenson (1997, pp. 1635–1636) said she was pregnant at the time this happened. When Irodirionyerku’s child Cordelia was born in 1958, in the village of Umuokue, Imo State, Nigeria, she had birth defects. Stevenson (1997, p. 1636) described them: “Several fingers on each hand were markedly shortened, and some had no nails. . . . There was a deep constriction of the left lower leg above the ankle. (This was said to correspond to the groove made by the cord with which Ekouroume Uchendu had tied Nwanyi’s legs.) The right leg had a similar, but much less prominent mark at about the same level . . . All the toes (except the right great toe) were shortened, none had nails . . . Ekouroume Uchendu said that he had amputated some but not all of Nwanyi’s fingers and that the birth defects of Cordelia’s fingers ‘corresponded exactly’ to the mutilations he had made on Nwanyi’s body.”

Irodirionyerku’s pregnancy was normal, except that Cordelia remained within the womb slightly longer than normal and the labor was also longer than normal. Irodirionyerku was in good health, and did not take alcohol or drugs. Her previous three children were normal, and a subsequent child was also normal. But she and her husband said that no members of their families had birth defects (Stevenson 1997, p. 1638). Several tribes in West Africa mark the bodies of dead infants by mutilation so that they might recognize the person if the person reincarnates into the same family as a “repeater child” (Stevenson 1997, p. 1626).

Sunita Khandelwal was born on September 19, 1969, in the small town of Laxmangarh, near the city of Alwar, in the eastern part of the province of Rajasthan in India. She was the sixth child of Radhey Shyam Khandelwal, a grain dealer, and his wife, Santara Bai. At birth, Sunita had on the right side of her head a large birthmark.

When she was two years old, Sunita began to speak of a previous life. The first thing she said was, “Take me to Kota.” Kota is a city in the southeast part of Rajasthan, about 360 kilometers from Laxmangarh. When Sunita’s family inquired about what was in Kota, she said, “I had two brothers. I was the only daughter. I have a mummy and pappa. We have a silver shop and a safe. We have a car and a scooter. My mother has many saris.” In some of her statements she was less clear about the nature of the shop, simply stating there were silver coins in the shop. She also revealed that she had a paternal uncle older than her father. Pointing to the birthmark on her head, she said, “Look here, I have fallen” (Stevenson 1997, p. 468).

When she was three years old, Sunita asked to be taken to Kota, refusing to eat until her wish was carried out. Her parents thought to take her to the nearby city of Jaipur, telling her it was Kota. But Sunita said, “This is not Kota. This is Jaipur. You are telling lies and will be punished” (Stevenson 1997, p. 468).

Thereafter, Sunita gave further revelations about her life in Kota. She said her father was of the Bania, or merchant, caste, and that his shop was in the Chauth Mata Bazaar. The family house was in the Brijrajpura quarter. Revealing more of the circumstances of her death, she said, “I was a girl and died at the age of eight,” and, “My cousin pushed me down the stairs because I had asked for water” (Stevenson 1997, p. 469).

In 1974, H. N. Banerjee, a reincarnation researcher in Jaipur, learned of Sunita’s case through a friend of the Khandelwal family. Although initially reluctant, the Khandelwals agreed to let Banerjee take them and their daughter to Kota. Their first stop in Kota was the shop of a photographer, Pratap Singh Chordia, who knew many of the residents. From the information supplied to him, Chordia suggested Sunita’s father in her previous life may have been Prabhu Dayal Maheshwari. Sunita had once mentioned the name “Prabhu” in connection with her father. Also, Prabhu Dayal’s shop was a jewelry shop (with silver jewelry), and the shop was in the Chauth Mata Bazaar. Chordia did not know, however, that Prabhu Dayal had a daughter who died from a fall.

Taking Chordia’s advice, the party went to the Chauth Mata Bazaar to search for Prabhu Dayal’s shop. Stevenson (1997, p. 470) says, “Sunita, according to her mother, recognized a shop with a man in it who was writing. Sunita said that he was her father. This man was Prabhu Dayal Maheswari, and he was sitting in his own jewelry shop. The matter was explained to him. . . . Prabhu Dayal then invited Sunita to come to his home. Sunita led the way and found Prabhu Dayal’s house. She then made a number of other recognitions and some further statements about the life she was remembering. Prabhu Dayal and his wife had lost their only daughter in April 1968. This child, Shakuntala, had fallen over the low railing of a balcony and landed head first on a cement floor below. She died a few hours later. With a few exceptions everything Sunita had said in Laxmangarh was correct for the life and death of Shakuntala in Kota.” Stevenson (1997, p. 487) listed some of the correct items: “She was the only daughter; she died at the age of 8; her parents were both living; a paternal grandmother had died, but a paternal grandfather was living; she had no uncle younger than her father, but one older than he; she had two brothers and a girl cousin.” Stevenson also detailed other statements and behaviors of Sunita, of a more personal nature, such as food preferences and nicknames for relatives, that matched those of Shakuntala.

The members of the families of Sunita and Shakuntala had never met, with one exception. Sunita’s maternal uncle, a jeweler who lived in Delhi, had occasionally met Prabhu Dayal in Kota, but their meetings were strictly commercial, not social. He had never visited Prabhu Dayal’s home, and knew nothing about the death of Prabhu Dayal’s daughter (Stevenson 1997, pp. 473–474). So it was unlikely that Sunita could have learned of details of Shakuntala’s life and death from her own family members.

Stevenson visited Kota and verified the following details about the death of Shakuntala. On April 27, 1968, during the late afternoon, Shakuntala was on the balcony of the inner courtyard of her house, playing with her younger cousin. The balcony had a low railing. Her mother, Krishna Devi, heard her fall down from the balcony to the concrete floor, a distance of about five meters. Krishna Devi found her daughter unconscious and bleeding from one ear. She called her husband, who quickly returned home from his shop. Stevenson (1997, p. 474) stated, “Prabhu Dayal said that when he had come home he had noticed that Shakuntala had injured the top of her head and that there was some slight bleeding from a wound there.” He then took his daughter to the M. B .S. Hospital in Kota. The medical records show that Shakuntala was admitted and that she died nine hours later from “head injury” (Stevenson 1997, p. 475).

When Sunita was born she had a large birthmark on the top of her head. It bled for three days. Stevenson (1997, p. 487) described the birthmark as it appeared when photographed in 1979: “The mark was approximately round in shape with irregular edges and about 2.5 centimeters in diameter. It was . . . hairless . . . slightly raised and slightly puckered.” A relative said no other member of the family had a birthmark like this.

Recollecting what happened during the time between her fatal accident and her rebirth, Sunita said, “I went up. There was a baba (holy man) with a long beard. They checked my record and said: ‘Send her back.’ There are some rooms there. I have seen God’s house. It is very nice. You do not know everything that is there” (Stevenson 1997, p. 484).

Here are some brief accounts of other cases documented by Stevenson. A woman in Thailand was born with three linear scars in the middle of her back. When she was a child, this woman remembered a previous life as a woman who was killed by three strokes of an axe on her back (Stevenson 1993, p. 410). A Burmese woman was born with two round birthmarks on her chest. The marks overlapped, and one was larger than the other. When she was a child, she recalled dying in a previous life after being shot accidentally with a shotgun. According to a witness who knew the dead woman, the shotgun that killed her had been loaded with two kinds of shot (Stevenson, 1993, pp. 410–411). A female Burmese child was born with a long, vertical birthmark near the middle of her lower chest and upper abdomen. She recalled having previously existed as one of her aunts. This aunt had died during heart surgery. Stevenson (1993, p. 411) obtained the aunt’s medical records and found that the incision for theheart surgery matched the birthmark. “Two Burmese subjects,” said Stevenson (1993, p. 411), “remembered as children the lives of persons who had died after being bitten by venomous snakes, and the birthmark of each corresponded to therapeutic incisions made at the sites of the snakebites on the persons whose lives they remembered.” A Turkish boy was born with a malformed right ear, and the right side of his face was underdeveloped. The boy remembered a previous life as a man who died after someone shot him in the head with a shotgun. Stevenson (1993, p. 411), having verified the existence of this man, examined his medical records and found that he died in the hospital six days after a shotgun wound to the right side of the skull.

An Indian child was born with small stubs instead of fingers on one hand. The child remembered existing in a previous life as a child who put his hand in a farm machine and lost his fingers. Stevenson noted that in most medical cases of brachydactyly (shortened fingers) the bones are still present in the fingers. Usually, only the middle finger bone is shortened. But in this case, there were no finger bones present at all. Also, cases where the fingers of only one hand are affected are rare. Stevenson (1993, p. 411) said he could not find a single published case in the medical literature. A Burmese girl was born with the lower part of her right leg missing. Stevenson (1993, pp. 411–412) reported, “She said that she remembered the life of a girl who was run over by a train. Eyewitnesses said that the train severed the girl’s right leg first, before running over the trunk.”

Some might suppose that children, aware of their birthmarks, may have invented imaginary past lives with histories that corresponded with the birthmarks. But we should remember that in many cases Stevenson has verified not only the existence of the past life person but has, through examination of the deceased person’s medical records, also verified the wound or incision matching the living subject’s birthmark.

Stevenson (1997, pp. 2099–2100) offered this explanation of this kind of evidence: “I believe that the cases I have described in this work strongly suggest . . . an influence by a deceased person on the embryo of a person who will be born later and (in most cases) come to have memories of the events in the life of that deceased person. . . . they further suggest an interaction between mind and body during life and the survival of mind after death. They also suggest that the form of a deceased person concerned in such a case can influence the form of the succeeding person who will remember the first person’s life. And finally, they suggest that memories of the first person’s life exist on some intermediate vehicle between death and presumed rebirth.” Putting it a little more directly, Stevenson (1997, p. 2102) concluded that “sometimes mental images in the mind of a deceased person who has survived death can influence the form of an embryo or fetus so as to cause birthmarks and birth defects.”

Paranormal Healings by Humans acting as mediums for Spirits

João Texeira da Faria, later known as João de Deus (John of God), is a Brazilian psychic healer of international fame. Hereafter, I will call him John of God. I have relied on Pelligrino-Estrich (1997) for the accounts of his activities found in this section. John of God was born in 1942 in a small town in the state of Goias, Brazil. His family was very poor, and he had little formal education. When he was sixteen years old and wandering jobless, he stopped to bathe in a creek near Campo Grande. He then heard a woman’s voice calling him. He saw in the shade of some trees a beautiful woman with fair hair. He spoke with her for some time. That night, he concluded it must have been Saint Rita of Cascia (1386–1456), the “saint of the impossible,” a patron of the dispossessed and desperate. He returned to the creek the next day, but instead of the woman, he saw a beam of light. When he turned away, he heard the woman’s voice say, “João. You must go to the Redemptor Spiritual Center in Campo Grande. They are waiting for you there.” Simultaneously, the beam of light disappeared. John went to the center, where a man greeted him, saying he was expected. John lost consciousness, and woke three hours later to find people congratulating him. He was informed that he had been possessed by “the entity of King Solomon” and had healed many persons. John remained at the center for three months as a healer and decided this was his life’s mission. He traveled from place to place, moving when physicians, dentists, or priests would have the local police charge him with criminal offences, such as medical malpractice. Finally, he set up his permanent clinic in its present location at Abadiania, Brazil, in 1978. In 1981, he was brought into court for practicing medicine illegally, but a jury acquitted him (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, pp. 32–39). In 1987, John of God himself suffered a stroke, which partially paralyzed half his body. Eventually, he successfully cured himself (Pelligrino-Estrich

1997, pp. 26–27).

John of God’s clinic is in the village of Abadiania in the Goias Plateau. Thousands of people from around the world have come there for healings. The clinic is a small white building. Inside, early in the morning of a typical day, John rests in a small room, decorated with pictures of Christ, the Madonna, and Dom Inacio, the principal entity who works through John to give cures. In fact, the clinic is called Casa de Dom Inacio, the House of Dom Inacio. The cures start each day at eight o’clock in the morning and continue into the night. John of God has received honorary degrees and awards from many famous persons, governments, and institutions. For example, the President of Peru gave him that country’s Medal of Honor for curing his son (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, pp.15–16).

There are several rooms in the clinic. There is a small room where John of God begins his day by calling upon one of thirty-three spirit entities to enter him. Pelligrino-Estrich (1997, p. 42) says, “The entities are spirits of deceased doctors, surgeons, healers, psychologists and theologians who are of such high soul elevation they need no longer reincarnate to our physical plane. They do, however, continue to elevate in the spirit plane by the extent of their benevolence and charitable works.” Over all the entities are Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Dom Inacio (St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order). After the entity enters him and takes over his body, John of God begins his work. Although he can incorporate only one entity, he can change entities at will. Also, entities can work on patients without entering into John of God’s body (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 44).

People coming before him first pass through two rooms, called “current rooms,” where mediums sit on both sides, for the purpose of generating spiritual energy, or current. In the first current room are twenty or thirty mediums in meditation; in the second, or main, current room are fifty mediums. As the patients walk through the two rows of mediums in the second current room, they come before John of God, who is sitting on a seat covered with white cloth. As the patient comes before John of God, the entity within him assesses the patient’s past lives, medical condition, spiritual consciousness, and present circumstances. Depending on the nature of the case, the entity prescribes various treatments, including herbal remedies, invisible operations, or visible operations. Herbal remedies are provided by the clinic’s pharmacy. Those requiring invisible operations go to a treatment room. The most severe cases lie down in beds and enter into a coma while entities operate invisibly upon them. Others sit upon their beds, guided in prayer and meditation by twelve special healing mediums, while they also undergo invisible operations by the entities. Twice a day, John of God enters this room and says, “In the name of Jesus Christ you are all cured. Let what needs to be done be done in the name of God” (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 19). At this time, the invisible operations are completed internally. Pelligrino-Estrich (1997, p.19) says, “Scientific teams have found by X-rays, following these invisible operations, that there are incisions and stitches internally.”

In a large hall, John of God carries out the visible operations. Patients first go to the main current room, where they remain for a half hour in meditation. John of God then leads some of them into the main hall, where they undergo visible surgery. John of God, possessed by the spirits of entities with different medical specialties, then carries out the operations with surgical instruments like scalpels (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, pp.

20–22). Pelligrino-Estrich (1997, pp. 42–43) says about John of God, “His fingers work with skilled precision, even when his head is turned or his attention is diverted elsewhere. Many of the surgical routines cannot be done by highly skilled surgeons.” John of God says, “It is not me who cures. God is the healer—I am simply the vessel” (Pelligrino-Estrich

1997, p. 44). Patients undergoing these operations, under the influence of a kind of spiritual anesthesia, feel no pain (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 45). John of God also possesses a mystical antiseptic power. Pelligrino-Estrich (1997, p. 45) says, “There has never been a known case of infection in the house even after hundreds of thousands of physical operations over the past thirty years.” Another strange feature of the operations, which sometimes involve large incisions, is the small amount of blood that flows out (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 46).

The cures are not simply the result of surgical procedures, visible or invisible. Their success may also depend on removing the negative influence of harmful entities that may have attached themselves to the patients (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 90). Another factor to be considered is the patient’s record of karmic debt. Pelligrino-Estrich (1997, p. 96) says, “The record is imprinted in the superconscious mind and carried in the soul which brings with it the debt and the disease or malady it chooses to endure when it is reincarnated. The affliction may be immediately apparent, as in the case of birth defects or deformity, or they may develop at any time in the life cycle. Karmic illness brought from a previous life cannot be cured except by way of repayment of the debt. . . . It can be paid by unselfish service to mankind or by personal suffering in the manner in which the debt was incurred. The ultimate aim is awareness, learning and cleansing of the soul.” All of the operations are videotaped, and the tapes can be seen and studied at the clinic or purchased and taken away. At the end of the day, John of God has a special session with all of his assisting mediums, and then he allows the possessing entity to leave his body.

The healings of John of God have been subjected to many scientific studies. For example, a group of physicians and scientists from the faculty of clinical biophysics at the Dr. Bezerro de Menezes University in Brazil, led by Dr. A. Arlete Savaris, observed and tested John of God for two years. The results, favorable to the authenticity of the cures, were published in the book Curas Paranormais Realizadas por João da Faria, available from the university, but only in Portuguese (Pelligrino-Estrich

1997, p. 100). In 1984, Dr. Klaus Schubert of Germany carried out a series of investigations with a group of scientists. The conclusions of the group were positive. One outcome of this research effort was a documentary film titled medium João de Deus (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 111).

Another set of tests was carried out by Alexander Moreira de Almeida, Tatiana Moreira de Almeida, and Angela Maria Gollner, all of the faculty of medicine of the Federal University de Juis de Fora, in the state of Minais Gerais, Brazil. The authors, who chose to focus on the visible surgeries, stated: “We filmed and photographed a series of operations, the patients were interviewed and examined and all of the organic substances were collected and removed for pathological testing at the university. None of the patients received any form of anaesthetic and only one of them said he felt a mild form of pain during the operation. . . . No form of antiseptic was observed. . . . Our conclusions firmly uphold that the surgery is genuine. The pathological tests reveal that the removed substances are compatible with their origins and that they are human tissues” (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, pp. 103–105).

The relationship between the visible surgical intervention and the actual healing event is sometimes quite mysterious. One of John of God’s techniques is to insert scissorlike surgical clamps into the nose of a patient. He then twists the clamps. Strangely enough, this technique is used to accomplish cures in all parts of the body. Pelligrino-Estrich (1997, p. 110) says, “In one observed case this technique was used to rejoin six compound fractures in a man’s feet. The man came into the center on knee pads and walked out on his reassembled feet! He went back to work within a week.”

Of course, the invisible operations are of more interest to us, as they are a better demonstration of modification of biological form by paranormal methods. Dr. Klaun of the Minas Gerais state, a recent graduate of medical school, became ill with a brain tumor. He went to America for treatment. He was told that an operation was possible, but he would have only a fifty percent chance of living. And if he lived, it would be most likely for a short time, and he would be a paralyzed below the waist. Dr. Klaun’s father was a physician and an official for the Brazilian government’s ministry of health. As such he was familiar with John of God, having received complaints from doctors accusing him of medical malpractice as well as testimonials from satisfied patients. Dr. Klaun’s family thus decided to try a spiritual operation at John of God’s clinic at Abadiania. In November 1994, Klaun came to Abadiania with his father and two doctors. These two doctors had participated in the original diagnosis of his brain tumor (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 107).

Pelligrino-Estrich (1997, pp. 108–109) stated: “He [Klaun] was placed in the intensive operations room and went into a coma for three days, during which he was operated on by spirit. For three days and nights his body all but shut down physical functions—no food, no elimination and no movement. When he finally awoke on the third day he was advised to have another X-ray. The enormous tumour had completely disappeared. The before and after X-rays and the critical observations of such qualified medical practitioners constituted a medically observed phenomenon. All were prepared to participate in a statement which verified the pre-operation and post-operation conditions. On 15 November,

1994, a testimonial video was produced before hundreds of people in which each doctor and the patient testified to their observations and the successful result. Firstly the radiologist showed the pre-operative X-rays and made his statement. In his opinion there was no chance of survival by normal surgery. . . . Dr. Maureso de Veta of the Brazilian Ministry of Health . . . gave his professional opinion of the inoperability of the tumour and declared that the tumour was indeed gone, without any sign of surgical entry to the skull.” Klaun himself said his doctors “were stunned that the X-rays showed no sign of any surgical cut to across the tumour and that I was in such remarkably good health” (PelligrinoEstrich 1997, p. 109).

Dr. Ronei Pappen is a Brazilian medical doctor. His offices are at Rua Santo Antonio 653 in Porto Alegre. On August 22, 1995, Dr. Pappen was in an automobile accident. His skull was crushed, injuring his eyes and optic nerves. As a result, he became totally blind. He also suffered extensive internal injuries. His colleagues told him he would never see again. Aware of John of God’s work, Dr. Pappen went to Abadiania, on October 12, 1995. He there underwent invisible operations, and after some time fully regained his sight. Since then, he has worked as an assistant to John of God, in addition to continuing his own medical practice (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 55).

On October 26, 1996, Deanna Rovacchi of Florence, Italy, gave this signed testimonial of her treatment: “I had been fighting cancer for eight years. I had one mastectomy (removal of the right breast) and for the past eight years I have been under the care of one of the most reputed cancer clinics in Europe, the Steiner Clinic in Bern, Switzerland. With careful diet, drugs and injections I was able to slow down the spread of the disease but ultimately, by early 1995, the best I could expect was another twelve months of life . . . I had two tumours on my neck, a larger one in my abdomen and small nodules on my left breast. . . . In the first week in July 1996 I flew to Brazil with . . . my best friend Mara who had a similar condition to mine. We were operated invisibly by João Teixeira da Faria, given herbs and returned to Italy. . . . On 11 October 1996 Mara and I went for our regular check-up at the Steiner Clinic. The doctors were amazed. Mara was declared totally clear of tumours and all of my tumours had disappeared except for one on my neck which was shrinking rapidly. The doctors said they had never seen anything like it in all their years at the clinic. Not only were the tumours gone but the disease was in full remission” (Pellegrino-Estrich 1997, pp. 136–137).

Surprisingly, some of John of God’s enemies have become his satisfied patients. For example, on July 3, 1996, John of God spotted among the patients waiting in line to see him police commissioner Firto Franki, one of the prosecutors who filed cases against him. John of God, under the control of one of his entities, said, “You have pursued me for more than ten years. You have made my life hell and now you come to me for help?! Let me show you, once and for all, the extent of my work” (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 40). John of God had six of his patients testify to their cures. Then John of God said, “You came to me ten years ago under the pretences of being ill and then testified against me as a fraud based on your own lies. You knew my work was authentic because you sent your friends to me for treatment, but still you continued to persecute me. Do you publicly acknowledge here before these witnesses that my work is genuine?” (Pelligrino-Estrich 1997, p. 41) Franki agreed to give a statement that John of God’s cures were genuine.

Healings by Supernatural Beings at lourdes

Lourdes is a town in southern France, at the base of the Pyrenees Mountains. It is the site of one of the most famous Marian apparitions and has become synonymous with miraculous healings. The Lourdes healings are not mediated by a human intercessor, such as John of God. At Lourdes, the influence of the entity apparently acts directly on the subjects. The entity, whether or not correctly identified as the Virgin Mary, appears to occupy a higher place in the cosmic hierarchy than an ordinary departed human.

On February 11, 1858, three girls from Lourdes (Bernadette Sourbirous, her sister, and a friend) went out to search for firewood. While the other two girls crossed a stream called the Gave, Bernadette, afraid of catching a cold, remained behind, watching. While her friends were gone, she saw a golden cloud emerge from a rocky hillside grotto on the other side of the stream. In the middle of the golden cloud she saw a beautiful young lady dressed in white. Bernadette knelt in prayer. When the other two girls returned, they saw Bernadette kneeling, but could not see the entity. Bernadette told the girls what she had seen and asked them not to tell anyone, but they did. At first, no one in Lourdes took the story seriously. Bernadette felt compelled to return to the grotto and did so on February 14, accompanied by some townspeople. Bernadette saw the entity, but the townspeople did not. The same thing happened on February 18. During these visitations, the people who came along could see Bernadette enter into a trancelike state, as she replied to the words of the invisible entity only she could see and hear. With each visitation the crowds grew larger (Rogo 1982, pp. 284–285).

On February 25, Bernadette, as usual, knelt on the ground and went into her trance. At one point, she stood up. She walked a short distance and then fell to the ground. She began digging, and some water began to fill the hole. Later she explained, “Whilst I was in prayer, the Lady said to me in a friendly but serious voice, ‘Go, drink and wash in the fountain.’ As I did not know where this fountain was, and as I did not think the matter important, I went towards aside the Gave. The Lady called me back and signed to me with her finger to go under the grotto to the left; I obeyed but I did not see any water. Not knowing where to get it from, I scratched the earth and the water came. I let it get a little clear of the mud, then I drank and washed” (Estrade 1958, p. 94). Over the next few days, the water continued to flow out, forming a pool. The miraculous appearance of the spring increased the faith of the people who gathered there.

Another paranormal occurrence was recorded by Dr. Pierre Romain Dozous, who was present at the grotto during one of Bernadette’s trances. He stated: “Her rosary was in her left hand, and in her right she held a blessed candle which was alight. . . . She suddenly stopped, and placed the lighted candle under . . . her left hand. The fingers were sufficiently apart to allow the flame to pass through . . . but I could not see any sign of burning on the skin. . . . taking my watch, I observed her in this position for a quarter of an hour. . . . Bernadette rose, and was about to leave the Grotto. I retained her a moment, and asked her to show me her left hand, which I examined most carefully. There was not the slightest trace of a burn” (Bertrin 1908, pp. 49–50).

Others witnessed similar episodes involving Bernadette and candle flames. The significant fact is that Bernadette’s flesh was not burned. Bertrin (1908, pp. 50–51) stated, “A nervous state may cause insensibility, but it could not prevent fire from consuming the flesh with which it comes into contact. . . . where is the delusionary who can put his hand over a strong flame and keep it there for fifteen minutes without being burnt?”

Residents of Lourdes began taking water home from the spring in the grotto, and they claimed that it cured a variety of illnesses. Today there is a church at the site, and the spring water has been channeled into bathing pools. Pilgrims seeking cures are monitored and regulated, and since 1884 cures have been carefully documented by physicians of the Bureau des Constatations Médicales, the BCM. The membership of the BCM is not restricted to Catholics. The BCM has an office directly at Lourdes and also has an advisory committee in Paris that reviews cases of special interest (Rogo 1982, pp. 285–286).

Rogo (1982, pp. 286–287) describes the procedures the BCM employs for documenting cases: “When a Lourdes pilgrim believes that he has been cured, he is taken immediately to the BCM’s offices where he is examined by a physician, who also takes possession of all pertinent medical data and documents the patient may have brought with him. This initial evaluation at the BCM is intended to determine whether the patient was actually sick or injured at the time of his journey, was actually cured at the shrine, and was cured in a medically inexplicable way. If the healing seems to meet these three tests, a doctor registered with the bureau in the patient’s hometown or district is contacted. The patient is sent home, and the doctor there is given the responsibility of observing him for one year. This procedure serves as a precaution against the occurrence of a relapse that might not otherwise come to the attention of Lourdes officials. The doctor is also expected to interview the patient’s own physician and collect any medical records from him that may bear on the case. The patient is then asked to return to Lourdes after the year has expired, at which time he is once again examined by the BCM. Only when all the doctors involved in this evaluation agree that the cure seems inexplicable is the case given candidate status as a miracle. In making its final evaluation, the BCM looks for several characteristics that they consider differentiate a miraculous healing from a biological one. They verify that the cure was instantaneous, that it led to the termination of the patient’s convalescence, that it wasn’t consistent with the normal process the condition in question undergoes while healing biologically, and that it occurred at a time when the patient was no longer receiving any conventional treatment. Also subject to this careful analysis are cases in which a damaged limb or organ—such as a permanently damaged eye—is miraculously restored to use.”

In 1868, Pierre de Rudder, of Jabbeke, Belgium, broke his leg when he fell from a tree. Large pieces of broken bone had to be taken from the wound. The missing bone made it impossible to set the two pieces of the broken leg back together. The leg was held together only by muscle and skin. Doctors recommended amputation, but de Rudder would not consent. After eight years of tolerating this painful condition, he went to Oostacker, Belgium, home to a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. Before he went, he saw Dr. van Hoestenberghe in Jabbeke. The doctor found an open wound at the place of the break, and he could see that the two pieces of broken bone were separated by a space of three centimeters. De Rudder made the trip to Oostacker in great pain, his wound oozing pus and blood. Three men had to carry him off the train. When he arrived at the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, by aid of crutches, he began to pray. In the midst of the prayer, he was overcome by a strange feeling. He stood up without his crutches and began to walk. The broken leg bone had healed (Rogo 1982, pp. 293–294).

When de Rudder returned to Jabbeke, Dr. van Hoestenberghe examined him and was astonished to see the transformation. The doctor then wrote to the medical bureau in Lourdes: “Pierre is undoubtedly cured. I have seen him many times during the last eight years, and my medical knowledge tells me that such a cure is absolutely inexplicable. Again, he has been cured completely, suddenly, and instantaneously, without any period of convalescence. Not only have the bones been suddenly united, but a portion of bone would seem to have been actually created to take the place of those fragments I myself have seen come out of the wound” (Rogo 1982, p. 294).

In 1898, de Rudder died, and in 1900 Dr. van Hoestenberghe got permission to exhume the corpse and conduct an autopsy. His studies were documented with photographs. Rogo (1982, p. 294) states: “These photos clearly show that the two parts of de Rudder’s leg bone had been fused together by a new piece of healthy bone over an inch long that had formed, apparently instantaneously, over its broken ends. Such growth or regeneration of bone is medically unprecedented. . . . Today de Rudder’s leg bones are preserved at the University of Louvain in Belgium.”

Dr. Prosper Gustave Boissarie, a doctor with the Bureau of Medical Authentication (Bureau de Constatations Médicales, or BCM), tells of the case of Joachime Dehant. She had on her leg “a sore a foot long by six inches wide, reaching to the bone and attended by gangrene, and which had lasted twelve years” (Boissarie 1933, p. 3). The sore was the result of cholera and typhus. Dehant, who was 29 years of age, weighed only 60 pounds.

Dehant, who lived in Belgium, was sent to Lourdes at the request of the Countess of Limminghe. Dehant was so sure she would be cured, she wanted to buy a shoe and stocking for her injured leg. But Dehant stated, “There was no means of taking the measurement of my sore leg and foot. A large sore about a foot long from the ankle to the knee covered the leg, and the foot, which was all turned around, was thinner and smaller than the other. I had to be content with the measurement of the other foot” (Boissarie 1933, p. 3).

Joachime Dehant set out from Belgium on September 10. The journey by train was painful, not only for Dehant but for her traveling companions. Her sore was constantly oozing blood and pus, accompanied by a horrible smell. From time to time she changed her bandages, each time removing pieces of dead flesh. She reached Lourdes on September 13, and was taken to the bathing place. Before she went, she once more changed her bandages: “This task required more than an hour. I removed pieces of decayed bone and gangrenous flesh, which I left on the floor” (Boissarie 1933, p. 4). Her first bath did not result in a cure. The next morning, she again went to the bathing place and remained in the water for 27 minutes. When she came out, her companion, Léonie Dorval, removed the bandages and said: “Joachime, there is no longer any sore; you are cured!” Joachime replied, “Blessed be Our Lady of Lourdes! See how well she knows how to do things! She has not only put new skin on my leg, but she has made new flesh and a calf!” (Boissarie 1933, p. 5) Everyone who had seen Joachime Dehant before her cure was amazed. Dr. Boissarie stated (1933, p. 3) that she came out of the water “radically cured, with skin covering the wound.”

The next day, Joachime bathed again, and another extraordinary transformation took place. Joachime had suffered not only from a large sore but from deformation of her hip, knee, and foot. Describing what happened the day after the cure of Dehant’s sore, Bertrin (1908, pp. 105–106) stated: “Both she and her companion saw her deformed foot straighten itself until it was as straight as the hands on a clock. The leg stretched to its full length, the muscles uncontracted, and the knee resumed its normal shape. In the hip a movement was felt which caused unutterable pain. Joachime swooned, and Léonie thought she was dying. But after a time she regained consciousness and opened her eyes. All was over. The pain had completely gone, and her body which had been deformed so long had become straight and agile.”

Upon returning to Belgium, Joachime Dehant was examined by Dr. Gustave Froidbise, who verified the cure. He also gave testimony that he saw the wound just before Dehant’s departure from Belgium, thus defusing any thought that Dehant had been cured before going to Lourdes (Boissarie 1933, p. 8). Here is the text of the statement he gave after examining Dehant just before her departure from Lourdes: “I, the undersigned, Gustave Froidbise, doctor of medicine, etc., at Ohey, in the province of Namur, Belgium, declare that I have examined Mlle. Joachime Dehant, aged twenty-nine, born at Wanfercée-Baulet, resident at Gesves, and I certify as follows: Dislocation of the hip-joint on the right side. Retraction of the lateral tibial muscles of the right leg which causes club-foot (talipes varus). An ulcer which covers two-thirds of the outer surface of the right leg. Hence my present declaration, Ohey, September

6, 1878. Dr. G. Froidbise” (Bertrin 1908, p. 106). To this document he added the results of his examination of Dehant on the day she returned from Lourdes: “I, the undersigned, doctor of medicine, etc. at Ohey, province of Namur in Belgium, declare that I have examined Mlle. Joachime Dehant, aged twenty-nine, born at Wanfercée-Baulet, and resident at Gesves, and I affirm that the lesions mentioned in the accompanying certificate have completely disappeared. A simple redness shows the place where the ulcer existed.—Dr. G. Froidbise. Gesves, Sep. 19th, 1878” (Bertrin 1908, p. 107). Dr. Henri Vergez, of the faculty of medicine at the University of Montpellier, stated: “The sudden cure of a sore, or rather of a spreading chronic ulcer, in a very decayed constitution, and the spontaneous reduction of dislocation of the hip, are facts quite outside natural explanation” (Bertrin 1908, p. 107).

Some extreme skeptics went so far as to suggest that Dehant had no wound at all. But the testimony of many credible witnesses eliminated this suggestion. Simon Deploige, professor of law at the Catholic University of Louvain, and a physician, Dr. Royer, conducted a careful investigation of the evidence for the wound. Dr. Boissarie (1933, pp. 8–9) reviewed their procedures: “Taking Dr. Froidebise’s certificate of September 6th as a starting point, they followed the history of this ulcer, so to speak, from hour to hour, up to the time of its disappearance. They questioned . . . : 1st. Joachime Dehant’s neighbors who saw the ulcer immediately before the departure for Lourdes; 2nd. The fellow travelers on the journey; 3rd. The managers of the hotel where Joachime stopped at Lourdes. Not one of these witnesses questioned was related to the cured girl. . . . All the witnesses questioned were interviewed in their homes without preliminary notice and without having had any opportunity of collusion among them. All read over their depositions and certified their being a faithful and exact account.”

Deploige and Royer stated in their conclusion: “Two facts seem duly established by this inquiry. 1st fact: The existence on Mlle. Joachime, at least up to September 12, 1878, at ten o’clock in the evening, if not up to the morning of the 13th, of an ulcer covering nearly the whole right leg from the knee to the ankle, exposing the raw flesh, which was broken out in pimples, inflamed and blackish in places; disgusting to the sight, suppurating profusely, giving out a foul odor and, according to medical testimony, incapable of being cured, naturally, in thirteen days, and making no progress towards improvement. 2nd fact: The entire disappearance of the same ulcer and its replacement by new, dry, healthy skin from September 13, 1878, in the forenoon or, at the very latest, towards nine or ten o’clock in the evening” (Boissarie 1933, p. 9). Church officials, after reviewing all the medical evidence, declared the cure miraculous.

Early in the history of Lourdes, there were suggestions that the cures may have been the result of medicinal properties of the water. A chemical analysis showed the water to have a mineral content similar to other waters in the region (Bertrin 1908, p. 116). Others proposed that the power of suggestion may have caused the cures. But even very young children, unable to comprehend such suggestion, have been cured of physical defects. Bertrin (1908, pp. 142–143) states, “George Lemesle, aged two years and seven months, was cured of infantile paralysis (1895); Fernand Balin, aged two years and six months, was cured of a crooked knee (1895); little Duconte, two years old, whom his doting mother carried to the Grotto in an almost dying condition (1858), was restored to health; Yvonne Aumaître, whom the doctor, her father, plunged into the miraculous water in spite of her cries, was taken out cured of a double club-foot (1896); at the age of nineteen months, A. Mertens was cured of paralysis in the right arm (1895); Pierre Estournet, an unweaned baby, had his eyes cured (1864); and lastly, Paul Mercère was cured of two congenital ruptures when a year old (1866). Of course there is no question of psychotherapeutics in such cures.” Dr. Alexis Carrel, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology in 1912, was a vocal supporter of the Lourdes healings (Rogo 1982, p. 261).

In November 1882, Francois Vion-Dury, a soldier, suffered burns on his face as he rescued people trapped in a fire at a hotel café in Dijon, France. As a result of the burns, the retinas of his two eyes became detached, causing almost complete blindness. He was released from the army with a pension on July 11, 1884. In the course of a proceeding to get the amount of his pension increased, he was examined by Dr. Dor, of Lyon, France, who on September 16, 1884, stated: “Although the retina in the left eye has returned to place, this eye is still unable to distinguish night from day. With the right eye, M. Vion-Dury has difficulty in counting fingers held a foot away. He is thus incapable of doing any work and must be considered completely and incurably blind in both eyes” (Agnellet 1958, p. 52). In 1890, Vion-Dury entered a hospital at Confort, France. Nuns at the hospital convinced him to pray for the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes and gave him a bottle of Lourdes water. The next day, after his prayers, he put some of the water on his eyelids. “My sight came back in a flash,” he later recalled. “I didn’t believe it myself” (Agnellet 1958, p.

53). Dr. Dor, a Protestant, reported to a conference of eye specialists in Paris: “Vion-Dury was nearly blind. His visual acuity was one-fiftieth, about the same in each eye. . . . The detachment of the retinae was diagnosed by a large number of specialists and had resisted all treatment. Vion-Dury’s condition was static for seven and a half years. Then, without any special treatment . . . his sight became about normal” (Agnellet1958, p. 53). The Church recognized Vion-Dury’s cure as miraculous.

In 1887, Catherine Lapeyre had a cancerous tumor on her tongue. A doctor recommended an operation. Instead, Lapeyre went to Lourdes, but after washing her mouth and bathing in the waters was not cured. In January 1889, Lapeyre was admitted to the main hospital in Toulouse, France. After unsuccessful attempts at treatment, a surgeon decided to remove the tumor. Before the operation, a photograph of the tongue was taken. Boissarie (1933, p. 40) said the photograph showed “a malignant tumor, jagged and vegetating, which had developed on her tongue.” Three months after the operation, the tumor returned. The surgeon proposed another operation, but Lapeyre did not want it, and left the hospital for a room in Toulouse. In July 1889, she was refused a place on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, as she had already gone in 1887. Her friends advised her to simply pray with them to the Virgin for nine days. Lapeyre did this and also washed herself with Lourdes water. On the ninth day she was cured. Boissarie (1933, p. 41) stated: “Her tumor diminished and disappeared. The glands of her neck were no longer swollen; she was able to eat and to talk. The dreadful pains in her head which had followed the path of the nerves of the tongue and caused corresponding pains in the ear had completely disappeared. In a few hours this trouble, which had seemed incurable and which had reappeared after the operations, had ceased without leaving any trace other than a very ordinary scar.” Boissarie (1933, p. 42) added, “Thus, according to the statements of the doctors, and from the progress of the disease as shown by the photograph, which gives a very exact idea of the lesion, there is no doubt that Catherine Lapeyre had a cancer of the tongue and consequently an incurable affection, which would have proved fatal in a very short time. Her cure, happening within a few hours, with no treatment, upsets every calculation. We never experience such results in the practice of medicine.” When Lapeyre was examined at the medical bureau in Lourdes in 1897, doctors saw the tongue was healed and that there was no chance of reappearance of the cancer.

Amelie Chagnon was born in France in 1874. As a child she was very much devoted to the Virgin Mary. At age thirteen her foot became red and swollen. In 1889, she went to Lourdes, but was not cured. By age seventeen, a bone in her foot had become thoroughly decayed from tuberculosis. This bone had become soft, and its articulations with other foot bones had been detached. Around the bone was a deep oozing sore. She also had a swollen knee. Treatments at a hospital in Poitiers were not effective, and her maladies were deemed incurable. For three months, she remained in bed, unable to move. During this time she expressed a desire to go once more to Lourdes, and refused further medical treatment (Boissarie 1933, pp. 10–14).

Amelie arrived at Lourdes on August 21, 1891. So convinced was she of a cure that she brought with her a new pair of shoes, although she had not been able to wear shoes for four years. She was dipped once into the waters, but nothing happened. But upon being placed in the water a second time, she felt a sudden snapping of her knee and an intense outflow of pain from her foot. She was cured. Boissarie (1933, pp. 10–11) said: “Caries, sores, tuberculosis of the bone, destroyed articulation—all were cured in a few moments. The sore was replaced by a firm scar. The decayed, movable bone, which marked a bluish trail under the skin, had resumed its normal aspect and firmness. It was joined to the neighboring parts. In the knee there was no more swelling or pain but an entirely healthy articulation.”

One of Amelie’s attendants, Madame de la Salinière, recalled: “There were six of us to support the young girl upon the sheet in the water . . . Between the two immersions, at the moment when we lifted the child upon her sheet to take her out of the water, I perceived the sore upon her foot very distinctly. Upon Amélie’s urgent request: ‘If you will put me back into the water, I am sure I will be cured,’ we went back down the three steps which we had just ascended. . . . At the end of a minute or two, what was our astonishment to see the girl jump out of the sheet and walk, saying: ‘I feel nothing more; the Blessed Virgin has cured me.’ I immediately knelt to examine her foot and saw very distinctly a pink surface which seemed freshly healed.”

Amelie Chagnon then went to the medical bureau, where she was examined by doctors, including Dr. Boissarie, who said (1933, pp. 15–16): “She showed us her certificates declaring that she was afflicted with white swelling of the knee and a sore with decay of the bone. We looked in vain for any trace of these lesions. There was none in the foot or in the knee. . . . The cure . . . had been instantaneous in its essential parts.” Testimony was gathered from physicians who had treated Amelie

Chagnon in Poitiers. Dr. Dupont stated: “For several months I attended Mademoiselle Amélie Chagnon for caries of the bone of the foot and white swelling of the knee. I had decided to extract the whole diseased bone and to inject chloride of zinc into the tissues of the knee. The young girl begged me to defer this treatment until after her return from Lourdes. On the eve of her departure I saw her suffering so much that I wondered how she could stand the fatigue of the journey. She had not left her bed for several months. Upon her return . . . her foot had healed. . . . There was no sensitiveness along the line of the bone. In the knee every movement was possible without pain. The girl knelt, got up and walked without experiencing the slightest suffering” (Boissarie 1933, p. 16). Dupont added, “I have received more than a hundred letters in which I am asked for information about the case. The majority of these letters were signed by colleagues. To all I replied: ‘The disease and the cure are indisputable’” (Boissarie 1933, p. 16). The medical bureau also gathered supporting testimony from the nurses who had attended Chagnon in Poitiers and pilgrims who had accompanied her on her journey to Lourdes.

Marie Briffaut became ill in August 1888. For four years, she had her leg in a cast and could not rise from her bed. She suffered from coxalgia, a disease of the hip joint. The bones of the joint were decaying, and an oozing open sore had formed, from which came pieces of decayed bone. Briffaut’s entire leg was swollen, and she felt intense pain. The infection also poisoned her blood (Boissarie 1933, pp. 22–23). Describing her condition, Briffaut said, “For two years, my tongue was black, my mouth was dry, and I vomited everything I drank, for I took no solid nourishment. One day, when they wished to change the linens, my back and my leg stuck to the cast, and it was necessary to tear the skin before they could raise me; I was all blood. . . . The doctors gradually discontinued their visits. They declared I would not get well and that death would soon come” (Boisarrie 1933, p. 23).

Unable to walk, she made the journey to Lourdes in a coffinlike box. Her neighbors thought she would die on the way. Somehow she survived the rail journey of over seven hundred miles, and arrived at Lourdes in September 1893. Her first bath in the pool at Lourdes gave no result. When she was lowered into the water the next day, she felt something happening. “The pains ceased. My leg was no longer heavy; it seemed as if some one had lifted an enormous weight which was bearing me down” (Boissarie 1933, p. 23). After she was raised out of the water, she said, “I am cured” (Boissarie 1933, p. 23). Her attendants then examined her.

Marie Briffaut said, “There was no longer a sore; the leg was neither black nor swollen; they touched it without giving pain—I was cured!” (Boissarie 1933, p. 23)

In the 1950s, Ruth Cranston, a Protestant researcher, was given access to the BCM records at Lourdes, and produced one of the most authoritative books on the cures there, titled the miracle of lourdes (1955). Here is one of the cases she documented. In 1924, Charles McDonald, of Dublin, Ireland, came down with tuberculosis. The next year, his health improved somewhat, and he moved to South Africa, where he again became ill in 1931. He returned to Dublin, where his condition worsened and was deemed untreatable. In November 1935, he moved into a hospice to prepare for death. As a last chance, he decided to go to Lourdes. At this time he was suffering from Pott’s disease, involving destruction of bone in the twelfth thoracic vertebra, resulting in curvature of the spine. The bone of his right shoulder showed the effects of tubercular arthritis, and he also had nephritis, an acute destructive inflammation of the kidney. McDonald arrived in Lourdes on September 5, 1936. At that time he was unable to walk. The day after bathing in the Lourdes water, he was walking, and when he returned to Ireland a medical examination showed that his tuberculosis, arthritis, and nephritis were cured. Following the BCM procedures, McDonald returned to Lourdes a year later, in September 1937. Thirty-two physicians of the BCM examined him and studied his medical records, which included a statement by McDonald’s doctor that he went to Lourdes with an advanced case of tuberculosis with various complications. The BCM found that McDonald’s case satisfied its criteria for a miraculous healing (Rogo 1982, pp. 287–288).

The BCM report stated: “Charles McDonald has been afflicted with (1) tuberculosis of the left shoulder . . . ; (2) tuberculosis of the dorsal spine . . . ; (3) chronic nephritis characterized by the presence of pus, blood, albumin. These three conditions were in full evolution at the moment of the pilgrimage to Lourdes . . . They were abruptly halted in their evolution on September 7 [1936]. An immediate functional healing after a bath in the piscine was followed in less than four days by . . . return of normal urinary secretion rid of its infectious germs; cessation of pain, return of partial movements of the left arm and lumbar region. . . . No medical explanation, in the present state of science, can be given; considering the extraordinary rapidity of the healing of these tuberculous affections, judged incurable by the specialists called in to treat him, and whose beginning was noted by general infection, later by bony localizations” (Rogo 1982, pp. 288–289).

On July 4, 1921, Dr. Pierre Cot provided this statement about the medical condition of Mademoiselle Irène Salin, then twenty-one years old, in order to help her qualify for a place on a pilgrimage to Lourdes: “I, the undersigned, Pierre Cot, doctor of the Faculty of Montpellier, living at Maussanne, declare and certify that I have had under my care for two years Mademoiselle Irène Salin, suffering from Pott’s disease in the lumbar region. Actually the patient presents evidence of disease in the last three lumbar vertebrae, with persistent pain in the whole of that region. She has to wear a plaster corset” (Marchand 1924, p. 51). Pott’s disease is tuberculosis of the spine with destruction of bone resulting in curvature of the spine. Dr. Cot’s diagnosis of Pott’s disease was supported by four other physicians and evidence provided by X-rays (Marchand 1924, p. 55).

Salin’s condition was such that she could not walk without assistance. Dr. Cot was not very much in favor of allowing Salin to go on the pilgrimage. He allowed it only on the condition that she remain in her plaster corset and wear a brace called “Bonnet’s splint.” She was also to be supported by a cradlelike apparatus called a gouttière. Salin arrived in Lourdes on August 18, 1921, after a painful journey. During her stay in Lourdes, she was bathed in the pool twice, with no immediate result. On August 23, Salin boarded a train for her home in Provence, expressing her hope that she would in fact someday be cured at Lourdes. During the train ride, she found she could walk. While Salin was riding in a carriage from the train station to her home, Dr. Cot happened to pass by in his car and was astonished to see her cured. On August 26, Dr. Cot visited Salin, removed her splint, and found that all of her symptoms of disease had disappeared.

On September 14, Dr. Cot wrote: “Mademoiselle Irène Salin, aged twenty-one, suffering from Pott’s disease in the lumbar-sacral region, was put in a Bonnet’s splint from March, 1919, to June, 1920; then, as painful symptoms still persisted and walking was impossible, a plaster corset was applied, which she wore from April 5, 1921, to August 26 of the same year. At that date I removed the plaster corset, and state, that then Mademoiselle Salin presented none of the classical signs of Pott’s disease. The movements of anteroand postero-flexion of the spine, as well as the lateral movements, were perfectly free and painless. The patient walked without pain, and felt no fatigue therefrom. I am obliged to avow, with all the impartiality which certificates of this kind ought to have, that it is impossible to explain otherwise than supernatural such a complete and rapid cure” (Marchand 1924, p. 54).

In 1927, at age 13, Louise Jamain was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris. In 1930 she underwent operations at another hospital, which did not arrest the spread of the disease. By

1937, Jamain entered the Laënnec Hospital near death, suffering from pulmonary, intestinal, and peritoneal tuberculosis. Although she could not feed herself and was coughing blood, she decided she wanted to go to Lourdes. On March 28, she boarded a train for Lourdes. On the train and after her arrival in Lourdes, she had severe attacks of coughing, bringing up blood. On April 1, she was taken to see the evening procession at Lourdes, but after fainting she was taken to the hospital, where she lay in her bed motionless, as if dead. Jamain later recalled, “It was 3 o’clock in the morning and I was lying on my bed in the Saint-Michel Hospital at Lourdes. Three friends around my bed were talking about the difficulties of arranging for my funeral and having my body taken back to Paris. They recalled that I had no family, that my father was dead, having been gassed in the war, and that my mother and four brothers had died from tuberculosis. But the first thing I did was to ask for something to eat. My friends brought me some white coffee. You can guess their astonishment because for six months I had been fed only be injections and by serum” (Agnellet 1958, p. 110). After drinking her coffee, Jamain went to sleep. The next morning she got up from her bed feeling hungry and ready to eat something.

Jamain then went to the medical bureau. The doctors were amazed at her recovery. By the time she left on the train to Paris a few hours later, all signs of her illness had disappeared. On arriving in Paris, she was taken to the Laënnec Hospital. Agnellet (1958, p. 111) stated, “The staff were astonished to see walking along the corridor of the chest section a patient who should by rights have been in the cemetery. In the ward where she had been dying a few days before there were incredulous exclamations to check the cure—and perhaps to disprove it. But their efforts resulted in confirmation. There were no signs of the pulmonary lesion on the Xrays and no trace of Koch’s bacilli in the sputum. The cure was clinically established. It was certified by the signatures of Dr. Bezancon and Dr. Cachin, who could hardly be supposed to have received a bribe from the Basilica at Lourdes.” In 1951, Jamain’s cure was certified as miraculous by Church officials.

Gérard Baillie was born in 1940 in France. As a young child he became blind from chorio-retinitis. Agnellet (1958, p. 118) stated: “This disease consists in the infective degeneration of the internal layers of the eye, the choroid and the retina, and is progressive. As the cones and rods which form the sensory nerve endings in the eye and make up the retina are gradually destroyed, the field of vision contracts as though the circular shutter of a camera were being closed in front of the eye. When the destruction reaches the intra-ocular end of the optic nerve, the nerve itself atrophies in its turn. Blindness is then complete and absolutely incurable, since nerve cells never regenerate once their nucleus is destroyed. Only the axon can be restored and in the case of chorio-retinitis the degeneration affects the whole of the cell.”

At two years old, Baillie was placed in the Institute for Blind Children at Arras, France, and specialists there confirmed he was suffering from chorio-retinitis. Two years later, Baillie was taken by his parents to Lourdes. Agnellet (1958, p. 119) stated: “Gérard’s complete blindness on arrival at Lourdes is confirmed by fifteen certificates and the testimony of a hundred people.” After a few days at Lourdes, Baillie started recovering his sight in stages. Doctors at the medical bureau, as well as other eye specialists, confirmed that he could see again. In 1950, the cure was complete and a medical examination “showed that the retinal layers of the eye and the optic nerves were entirely restored” (Agnellet 1958, p. 120).

Gertrude Fulda and her sister were famous music hall dancers in Austria. In 1937, she felt intense pains in her abdomen, and an operation revealed an intestinal perforation and inflammation of the peritoneum, the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity. A few days later, she came down with nephritis, a severe infection of the kidneys. The infection spread to the adrenal glands, which stopped functioning, thus bringing on Addison’s disease. She developed the usual symptoms of the disease. Her skin turned brownish, and she lost her appetite. Soon her body lost almost all of its flesh. Only by injections of hormones did she avoid death for seven years. But finally, a physician announced to Gertrude Fulda’s grandmother that she would soon die. Fulda’s grandmother sent to France for a bottle of Lourdes water. Gertrude washed herself with the water, without result. She then decided that she wanted to go to Lourdes, but was not able to make the journey until 1950. On July 10, she was examined by doctors at the medical bureau, who recommended hormone treatments and would not allow her to bathe at Lourdes. Fulda refused the treatments, and said she would die if not allowed to bathe in the Lourdes waters. On August 8, the Lourdes doctors gave their consent for her to bathe, and she was cured right away. Agnellet (1958, pp. 141–142) stated, “This was not a question of progressive improvement or of convalescence. Gertrude Fulda was cured instantly. The Medical Bureau noted this cure on the 16th August 1950, stating that all symptoms of the illness had disappeared in spite of the suspension of treatment. Her skin lost its discoloration, her pains went and all organic functions immediately became normal. The blood count confirmed the cure and her blood pressure also returned to normal. The suprarenal glands, destroyed by the abscesses around the kidneys, had suddenly been regenerated and were once again secreting into the bloodstream normal amounts of hormones which it had been necessary up to then to introduce artificially into the circulation.” Her cure was verified by her doctor in Vienna and by the doctors of the Lourdes medical bureau when Fulda returned there in 1952.

Paranormal Production of Partial and Complete Biological Forms

In the case of Lourdes, we see modification or restoration of existing or previously existing biological form by the action of a being higher in the cosmic hierarchy. Now we want to consider the new production of partial or complete biological forms. We have already encountered some instances of this in the accounts of mediums found in previous chapters.

For example, as we learned in chapter 5, Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, cofounder with Darwin of the theory of evolution, saw a form manifested in the presence of the medium Haxby in London. Haxby, seated behind a curtain in a small room separated by a curtain from the drawing room in which Wallace and other witnesses were sitting, entered into a trance, and from behind the curtain appeared a white-robed human form, which then began to move about the room. Wallace stated that he was able to feel the hands and touch the garments of the form. This human personage was of a different size than the medium, Haxby, ruling out impersonation by the medium (Wallace 1905, v. 2, pp. 328–329). After the human form disappeared behind the curtain, Wallace and others looked in. Wallace stated: “Haxby was found in a trance in his chair, while no trace of the white-robed stranger was to be seen. The door and window of the back room were securely fastened, and often secured with gummed paper, which was found intact” (Wallace 1905, v. 2, pp. 328–329). If Wallace’s observations are to be trusted, this rules out the idea that a man other than Haxby secretly entered and carried out a deception.

Wallace witnessed another materialization of a complete human form in the presence of the medium Eglington. While Eglington was sitting behind a curtain hung across a corner of a room, a robed male figure emerged. Just before the materialization, Wallace and others had carefully searched the walls and floor behind the curtain and found no secret entrances. Immediately afterwards, every item of Eglington’s clothing was carefully searched, and the investigators found no robes. Meanwhile, Wallace and another person checked the walls and floor behind the curtain and found nothing out of the ordinary. Nor had Eglington left anything behind the curtain. So here again impersonation by either Eglington or a confederate was ruled out (Wallace 1905, vol. 2, p. 329).

In the presence of the medium Monk, Wallace witnessed the actual production of a humanlike form. The place was an apartment in London. It was broad daylight. A cloudy figure emerged from the side of Monk’s body. It was connected to him by a cloudy band. Wallace (1905 v. 2, p. 330) stated: “Monk . . . passed his hand through the connecting band, severing it. He and the figure then moved away from each other till they were about five or six feet apart. The figure had now assumed the appearance of a thickly draped female form, with arms and hands just visible. Monk. . . clapped his hands. On which the figure put out her hands, clapped them as he had done, and we all distinctly heard her clap following his, but fainter. The figure then moved slowly back to him, grew fainter and shorter, and was apparently absorbed into his body as it had grown out of it.” Hensleigh Wedgwood told Wallace how he had more than once seen a tall, robed, male figure appear alongside Monk. Wedgwood touched the figure, feeling its clothes and body. Once the figure lifted the chair upon which one of Wedgwood’s fellow investigators was seated (Wallace 1905, vol. 2, p. 331).

In 1874, Wallace saw in London some materializations of human forms in the presence of the medium Kate Cook, who was sitting in a chair behind a curtain hung across a corner of a room. The materialized form was that of a white-robed woman taller than Cook, and with different features. Wallace (1905 vol. 2, p. 328) said: “I could look closely into her face, examine the features and hair, touch her hands.” After a half hour, the materialized form would disappear behind the medium’s curtain. Within just a few seconds, Wallace and others looked in and saw only Kate Cook, dressed in black, sitting in trance.

Sir William Crookes, who won a Nobel Prize in physics and served as president of the Royal Society, saw many materializations by Kate Cook. The usual skeptical explanation is that she quickly changed clothes behind the curtain and came out before the audience as the materialized figure. But Crookes testified that he once accompanied the materialized person behind the curtain and observed Kate Cook lying on the floor in trance (Wallace 1896, p. 189). Furthermore, once the electrician C. F. Varley, a Fellow of the Royal Society, attached electrical monitoring equipment to Cook, in order to detect any movement by her as she rested in trance behind the curtain. Wallace (1896, pp. 188–189) noted: “The apparatus was so delicate that any movement whatever was instantly indicated . . . under these conditions, the spirit-form did appear, exhibited its arms, spoke, wrote, and touched several persons . . . at the conclusion of the experiment Miss Cook was found in a deep trance.”

In his book lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, the medium D. D. Home devotes two chapters to “trickery and exposure.” He showed how false mediums created various illusions, such as materializations of human forms and limbs, materializations of objects, and so forth. He also showed that these fake effects depended upon conditions of darkness and lack of proper experimental control. His own effects were demonstrated in the light and under the control of prominent scientists and other leading members of society. Home, although very skeptical of materializations, did believe that some materializations were genuine: “I need hardly remind my readers that the carefully conducted experiments of Mr. Crookes with Miss Cook were repaid by evidence giving undeniable certainty of the phenomenon” (Home 1879, p. 415).

Materializations of limbs also took place in the presence of Home himself. Recalling a sitting with Home, Sir William Crookes described, “A beautifully formed small hand rose up from the opening in the dining table and gave me a flower; it appeared and then disappeared three times at intervals, affording me ample opportunity of satisfying myself that it was as real in appearance as my own. This occurred in the light, in my own room, whilst I was holding the medium’s hands and feet.” Crookes noted several other appearances of hands in the presence of Home, at times when the medium was carefully observed and controlled (Carrington 1931, pp. 175–176).

Productions of various parts of the human form were observed in the presence of the medium Eusapia Palladino. On July 27, 1897, the astronomer Camille Flammarion participated in a séance with her in the home of the Blech family in Paris. As usual, a cabinet was prepared by stretching a curtain across the corner of a room. The medium sat outside this cabinet. Among items placed inside the cabinet were two trays of putty, one large and one small. They were placed on the floor. The purpose of the trays of putty was to catch the imprints of materialized hands or feet (Flammarion 1909, p. 68). As usual, Flammarion and another participant physically controlled the medium by grasping her hands and feet. During parts of the séance, Flammarion and the others then felt the touches and slaps of invisible hands. De Fontenay saw a detached hand remove a pad of paper from the table (Flammarion 1909, p. 72).

During a break in the sitting, Mrs. Blech checked the trays of putty on the floor of the cabinet. They were untouched. She put the small tray on the round table outside the cabinet, and the large tray on the chair in the cabinet. The séance resumed in the dim red light. De Fontenay and Flammarion resumed controlling the medium, holding her hands. Flammarion felt her fingers digging deeply into his hand. After some time, she said, “It is done.” When the small tray of putty was examined, it had the impressions of four fingers, in the same positions as the fingers that had gripped Flammarion’s hand (Flammarion 1909, p. 74).

Later, the chair within the cabinet moved out and took up a position near Mrs. Blech. It then rose up and rested on top of Mrs. Blech’s head. The large tray of putty resting on the chair, weighing nine pounds, floated across the table into the hands of Mr. Blech. Eusapia exclaimed, “It is done.” Blech felt no pressure on the tray of putty in his hands. When they looked at the tray, the sitters saw the imprint of the profile of a human face in the putty. Mrs. Blech moved forward and kissed Eusapia on her cheeks, and detected no odor from the putty, which had a strong scent of linseed oil. The imprint of the face resembled Eusapia’s (Flammarion 1909, pp. 74–75).

Flammarion took the tray of clay, walked into the nearby dining room, and placed the tray on a table there, so they could examine the facial imprint more carefully. Eusapia came with the party. Flammarion observed her carefully. During the entire time, she stood motionless with both hands on the table. Eusapia then moved back into the other room. Flammarion (1909, p. 77) said, “We followed her, observing her all the while, and leaving the clay behind upon the table. We had already got into the chamber when, leaning against one of the halves of the double door, she fixed her eyes upon the tray of clay which had been left upon the table. The medium was in a very good light: we were separated from her by a distance of from six to ten feet, and we perceived distinctly all the details. All of a sudden Eusapia stretched her hand out abruptly toward the clay, then sank down uttering a groan. We rushed precipitately towards the table and saw, side by side with the imprint of the head, a new imprint, very marked, of a hand which had been thus produced under the very light of the lamp, and which resembled the hand of Eusapia.”

On November 16, 1897, Flammarion conducted a sitting with Eusapia at his home in Paris. Arthur Levy came with an attitude of distrust and skepticism. Eusapia and the researchers sat at a table close to a curtain hung across a corner of the room. Levy and another sitter, George Mathieu, controlled the hands and feet of Eusapia. During the sitting, a hand appeared and disappeared above Eusapia’s head (Flammarion 1909, p. 89). At another séance with Eusapia in Flammarion’s home, a Mr. and Mrs. Pallotti were present. The room was lit dimly by a night lamp set some distance from the table. Two of the sitters, Mr. Brisson and Mr. Pallotti, were controlling the medium. Mrs. Flammarion and Mrs. Brisson were sitting away from the table, some yards away, facing Eusapia. Mr. and Mrs. Pallotti expressed a desire to see their daughter. Flammarion (1909, p. 128) said, “There was a great movement of the curtain. Several times I see the head of a young girl bowing to me, with higharched forehead and with long hair. She bows three times, and shows her dark profile against the window.” The Pallottis talked to the figure, and felt the face and hair of the apparition. “My impression was that there was really there a fluidic being,” said Flammarion (1909, p. 128). But he believed the Palottis were simply imagining the materialized figure to be their departed daughter.

Other careful researchers also observed fluidic limbs materialize from Eusapia Palladino. During a sitting with Eusapia, Mrs. Frederick Myers, reported armlike protrusions extending from Eusapia’s body (Gauld 1968, p. 236–237). On another occasion, a Mrs. Stanley saw a similar armlike protrusion. Just after this incident, Mrs. Meyers, who was also present, assisted other witnesses in undressing and searching Eusapia. They found nothing suspicious (Gauld 1968, p. 237). Fluidic limbs, of the kind noticed by Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Stanley, were seen at other séances with Eusapia. Nobel laureate Charles Richet reported (1923, p. 419): “Venzano saw a fluidic hand take shape and emerge from the right shoulder of the medium to get a glass full of water and carry it to the medium’s mouth. Professors Morselli and Porro were present at these experiments.” Giuseppe Venzano was a physician, Enrico Morselli a psychiatrist, and Francesco Porro an astronomer. When a special commission of researchers investigated Eusapia in Naples, they reported fluidic limbs. The commission reported: “Mr. Feilding, while holding and seeing Eusapia’s two hands, was touched behind the curtain by a living hand, three fingers below and the thumb above, and grasped so that he felt the fingernails in his flesh. These hands occasionally became visible. Mr. Baggally, while seeing and holding the hands of the medium, was touched on the back of his own hand by a hand stroking it and proceeding up his arm” (Richet 1923, p. 420). Carrington (1931, p. 175) cited a report by Professor Felippe Botazzi, from a sitting with Eusapia at the University of Naples: “Botazzi felt a hand grasp the back of his neck. He moved his own left hand to the place of contact and reported: “I found the hand which was touching me: a left hand, neither cold nor hot, with rough, bony fingers which dissolved under pressure; they did not retire by producing a sensation of withdrawal, but they dissolved, dematerialized, melted.” He then felt a hand placing itself on his head and quickly moved his own hand to touch it, reporting, “I felt it, I grasped it; it was obliterated and again disappeared in my grasp.” Later, the hand rested on his forearm. Botazzi grasped it with his left hand, reporting, “I could see and feel at the same time; I saw a human hand, of natural colour, and I felt with mine the fingers and the back of a lukewarm nervous, rough hand. The hand dissolved, and (I saw it with my eyes) retreated as if into mme Palladino’s body, describing a curve” (Carrington 1931, pp. 174–175).

Hans Driesch (1867–1941) was a German philosopher and scientist. He was one of the last important biologists to support the doctrine of vitalism (Berger 1991, pp. 113–114), which holds that the laws of material science alone are not sufficient to explain life. He was also actively involved in psychical research, and served as president of the Society for Psychical Research. He found a close connection between psychical phenomena and his vitalistic approach to biology. According to Driesch, some guiding nonmaterial agent was involved in the development of biological form. He used the Aristotelian word entelechy to name this vital principle.

Driesch’s interest in vitalism began with some experiments with sea urchins. He found that when he separated individual cells from the early embryonic stage of a sea urchin, they would each grow into an adult sea urchin. He attributed this to a vital principle that guided and ordered the development of ordinary matter. The materializations of ectoplasmic limbs and bodies produced by Eusapia Palladino and other mediums, were, according to Driesch, another variety of this same principle. He considered his vitalistic biology to be “a bridge leading into physical parapsychological phenomena” (Berger 1991, p. 114).

He explained the connection between vitalist biology and psychical materializations as follows: “Think of the little material body, called an egg, and think of the enormous and very complex material body, say, an elephant, that may come out of it: here you have a permanent stream of materializations before your eyes . . . a spreading of entelechial control” (Berger 1991, p. 114).

Bilocation events

Another form of paranormal production of biological form occurs in the phenomenon of bilocation, in which a duplicate form of a person appears in another place. Much of the documentation for this can be found in accounts of the lives of Christian saints. Rogo (1982, p. 81) states: “It shouldn’t be presumed, though, that bilocating saints are sending only some apparitional or ethereal representations of themselves to far-off places during the production of this miracle. For according to traditional mystical lore, this ‘second self’ is able to eat, drink, and carry out any physical act the body is capable of performing. In fact, according to Church doctrine, during the process of bilocation the human body is actually duplicated through the grace of God.”

One day in the year 1226, St. Anthony of Padua (1195–1231) was giving a sermon in a church in Limoges, France. While speaking, he remembered he had promised to conduct a service at a monastery on the other side of Limoges. Stopping his sermon, he knelt in prayer. At this moment, monks in the monastery saw St. Anthony walk in and conduct the service, after which he stepped away into the shadows. Meanwhile, in Limoges, he ended his prayers and rising to his feet again began speaking (Rogo 1982, pp. 81–82).

Many bilocations were documented in the life of St. Martin de Porres, born in Peru in 1579. As a young man, he entered the monastery of the Holy Rosary in Lima. He did not become a priest, but served as a lay helper. He lived at the monastery, humbly serving the priests, until he died in 1639. After his death, various Church commissions interviewed witnesses to his miracles, including bilocations. Rogo (1982, pp. 82–83) stated: “The original documents containing these eyewitness testimonies of the saint’s miracles include the Processus ordinaria auctoritate fabricatus super sanctitae vitae, virtutibus heroicis et miraculis (1664) and the Beatificationis et canonizationis Servei Dei Fratis martine Porres (1712), both of which are housed in the archives of the Order of Friars Preachers, Santa Sabina, in Rome. Another source of information on the saint’s bilocations is the Responsio ad novas animadversions R.P.D. fidei promotes super dubio an constet de virtutibus ecc issued in Rome in 1742. Also useful are the official volumes on St. Martin’s beatification and canonization processes published in Italy in 1960 and 1962 respectively.”

Once at the monastery in Lima, Brother Francis, a friend of Martin de Porres, became severely ill. As he lay on his bed in his room, the door of which was locked, he saw St. Martin, who brought hot coals for a fire. He also sponged the body of Brother Francis and remade his bed, before disappearing (Rogo 1982, pp. 83–84). Other residents in the monastery reported similar experiences. In addition, there are reports of appearances of St. Martin de Porres in Japan and China. He had often expressed a desire to be a missionary in the East.

Once when St. Martin was in Lima, his sister Joan and her husband were hosting a family reunion at their home outside Lima. Shortly after an argument broke out among the relatives, St. Martin appeared at the door, carrying food and drink. He seemed to know all about the cause of the argument, and negotiated a peaceful resolution. Martin remained in the home of his sister for the rest of the evening, and departed for Lima the next morning. Joan visited the monastery a few days later. She told the monks how he had appeared at her home just in time to solve the quarrel that had broken out there. The monks were astonished, because he had been busy tending patients in the monastery’s infirmary at that time (Rogo 1982, p. 84).

In 1970, a yogi named Dadaji visited a family of his followers in Allahabad, India. He went alone into a room of their house for solitary meditation. When he came out, he told his hosts that he had bilocated to the house of his sister-in-law in Calcutta, 400 miles away. This was verified by the Allahabad followers, and later confirmed by parapsychology researchers Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson (1976). Interviewing the Mukherjee family in Calcutta, Osis and Haraldsson found that they had seen an apparition of Dadaji in their house at the time of the yogi’s meditation in Allahabad. Roma, the Mukherjee’s daughter, said she was reading a book in the study when she saw the figure of Dadaji, who first appeared partly transparent and then became solid. Dadaji indicated that he wanted some tea. Roma got a cup of tea and a biscuit, and passed them into the study through the partly opened door. Roma’s mother and father saw the figure through a crack in the door. The family members did not enter the study, but remained in the living room. Later, after hearing a noise in the study, they entered and found the figure gone. But the tea cup was half empty and the cookie was gone. Although Roma was a follower of Dadaji, the other family members were not (Rogo 1982, pp. 90–91).

Conclusion

I have presented in this chapter only a sampling of the vast accumulation of observations related to paranormal modification and production of biological form. Just as Darwin used observations of intentional modification of biological form through selective breeding as evidence for evolution on a larger scale, we can take the observations in this chapter as evidence for the paranormal modification and production of biological form on a larger scale—the initial production of a large variety of biological forms, including the human form, by intelligent causation.

A Universe Designed for Life

The universe itself appears designed for life. Certain fundamental constants of nature, certain ratios between the forces of nature, appear to be very finely tuned. If their numerical values were even slightly different, the universe as we know it would not exist. Stable atoms, stars, and galaxies could not form (Barrow and Tipler 1996, p. 20). And thus, life itself, as we know it, could not exist.The values of the constants and ratios appear to be entirely arbitrary. In other words, as far as scientists today can tell, the values are not determined by any law of nature or property of matter. It is as if the values had been set by chance. But the odds against this are so staggering, in some cases trillions to one, that we are confronted with a genuine problem in cosmology, called the fine tuning problem. One possible explanation is that the finely tuned values were set by a providential intelligence. In these times, this is the last thing most scientists would concede. One way to avoid the God conclusion is to suppose that there are innumerable universes. Therefore cosmologists have begun to favor theories that result in the production of such universes. They imagine that in each universe, the fundamental constants and ratios have, by chance, different values. And we just happen to live in the universe where all the values are properly adjusted for life to exist. We should not be surprised at this. After all, if the values of the constants and ratios were not just the way they are, then we would not be here to observe them. Another way to avoid the God conclusion is to find some as yet undiscovered physical explanation, a new theory of everything, such as superstring theory, that would yield the fine tuning we observe in this universe.

All of the current discussions about the fine tuning problem take place within the general framework of the Big Bang cosmology. Under the general heading of the Big Bang cosmology, there are dozens of Big Bang theories, almost as many as there are Big Bang cosmologists. It is not my purpose here to explore all the technicalities of these theories. I just want to give a general composite picture of what they involve. First, the universe emerges as a fluctuation of the quantum mechanical vacuum, which is compared to a sea of energy. In the case of multiverse theories, many universes emerge as fluctuations of the quantum mechanical vacuum. These universes in their beginning stages are immeasurably small, dense, and hot. Then they began to expand rapidly for a short period of time. As they continue to expand, they are filled with a super hot plasma. Later, after more expansion, and cooling, the super hot plasma condenses into subatomic particles, which later begin to condense into the gases hydrogen, helium, and deuterium. More exotic types of matter and energy, called dark matter and dark energy, are also produced. In regions of more dense concentrations of dark matter and energy, the atomic gases condense into stars and galaxies. Within the superheated cores of these stars, heavier elements form. And when the stars finally explode into supernovas, still heavier elements form in the heat and shock. And after billions of years, we have the universe we observe. Its fate is not precisely known, but according to some cosmologists the universe will eventually contract into a black hole, and perhaps rebound again, emerging through a white hole.

The Big Bang theory grew out of observations that the universe appears to be expanding. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that light coming to us from distant galaxies was shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. The more distant the galaxies, the larger the red shift. Toward the red end of the spectrum, light waves become longer. So the wavelengths of light coming from these galaxies had been stretched. If the galaxies were moving away from us, that would explain the stretching of the light waves. Imagine a paddle boat in an otherwise still lake, with the paddle turning at a certain fixed rate. You are observing the boat from the shore. If the boat was anchored and held its position, the waves would come toward you at regular intervals. But if the boat started moving away from you, then the waves reaching you would be coming in further apart, even though the paddle on the boat was still turning at the same fixed rate. The wavelength of light coming from receding galaxies would get longerin the same way. And that is what scientists actually observe. The wavelengths of light are stretched. Scientists also say that the Big Bang theory predicted the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The cosmic microwave background is the heat left over from the initial superheated expansion of the universe billions of years ago. Furthermore, scientists say that the Big Bang theory predicts the abundances of hydrogen, deuterium and helium that we observe today in the universe.

There are many critics of the Big Bang theory. Among them is astronomer Tom Van Flandern, who has compiled a list of twenty principal problems with the Big Bang theory. These do have to be taken into account. To some, these problems suggest that the universe did not expand from an initial small state, as most cosmologists now believe. They suggest a steady state universe. To me, the current problems with the Big Bang theory suggest only that the expansion of the universe from a tiny seedlike form cannot be completely described without taking into account God and His powers. Aside from that, many elements of the Big Bang theory correspond to accounts of the origin of the universe found in the ancient Sanskrit writings of India.

Here is a brief summary of the Vedic account of the origin of the universe, taken from the Shrimad Bhagavatam and the Brahma Samhita. Beyond time and space as we know them, Maha Vishnu floats in cosmic slumber upon the waves of the Causal Ocean. From the pores of the Maha Vishnu emerge numberless universes in seedlike form. When Maha Vishnu glances upon these seedlike universes, energizing them with His potencies, they begin to expand in a flash of golden light. Within each universe, ele-ments are gradually formed beginning with the lighter ones and proceeding toward the heavier. While this is happening the celestial bodies are formed. And the universe continues to expand. The universes exist for the length of one breath of the Maha Vishnu.The universes come out from His body when He exhales and reenter his body when He inhales. The length of one breath is estimated to be 311 trillion years. Within this vast period of time, each universe continuously undergoes subcycles of manifestation and nonmanifestation lasting about 8.6 billion years each.

Both the Big Bang cosmology and the Vedic cosmology posit a sea of transcendental energy existing before the material manifestation of universes. Some cosmologists propose that universes expand from white holes and contract into black holes. White holes spit out universes, black holes eat them up. The Vedic version also proposes that universes expand from and contract into holes, the skin holes of Maha Vishnu. Both accounts propose that there is an initial period of rapid inflation. Both accounts propose an initial burst of light, or radiation. Both accounts propose that the universe goes on to expand. Both accounts involve many universes.

When the Big Bang theory was originally presented to my guru, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, he was opposed to it. His disciples presented it to him as an explosion of an original lump of matter, with no involvement by God. Of course, a simple explosion like that could not produce the universe we observe. But that was not an accurate picture of what the Big Bang picture actually says. When more realistic accounts of the theory were reported to him, he was more favorably inclined toward them. He accepted the principle of an expanding universe, as can be seen in a conversation with disciples that took place in Los Angeles, on December 6, 1973 (Conversations 1989, v. 6, pp. 228–229).

Bali mardana: Prabhupada, when the universes are emanated from the body of Maha-Vishnu, they begin to expand.

Prabhupada: Yes, yes.

Bali mardana: Is the universe still expanding?

Prabhupada: Yes. . . .

Karandhara: While the exhaling is going on, the universe is expanding . . .

Prabhupada: Yes.

Karandhara: In the inhaling, the universe is contracting.

Prabhupada: Yes.

And in his commentary on one of the verses of Shrimad Bhagavatam (3.29.43), he stated that “the total universal body is increasing.” The entering and reentering of the universes into the body of the Maha Vishnu is described in Brahma Samhita (5.48), which characterizes the Maha Vishnu as an expansion of God “into whom all the innumerable universes enter and from whom they come forth again simply by His breathing process.”

Nevertheless, the Vedic expanding universe cosmology is distinct from the modern materialistic Big Bang cosmology in that the substance of the Vedic universe emerges from God, as one of His energies, and the further deployment of this energy is accomplished and controlled by God. In the following discussion, I will show how careful examination of the modern Big Bang cosmology leads one toward the same conclusion. The argument takes this basic form: even if one assumes, as modern cosmologists do, that the origin and development of the universe are to be explained solely in terms of the interaction of various kinds of matter and physical forces, then one is led to the conclusion that the finely tuned nature of these interactions implies a cosmic intelligence behind them. Once that conclusion is reached, we may then have to go back and reevaluate the initial assumptions of the modern Big Bang cosmology, and we may be warranted in making substantial changes in those assumptions, so as to bring the Big Bang cosmology and the Vedic cosmology into sharper agreement. In my discussion of the Big Bang cosmology, it may appear that I am accepting its assumptions as fundamentally correct. But I am simply saying that if, for the sake of argument, we accept the assumptions underlying the current state of Big Bang cosmology as correct, then certain conclusions follow. It would not be practical for me, however, to qualify each and every reference I make to Big Bang cosmology in this way.

The anthropic Principle

Hundreds of years ago, most astronomers believed the earth was the center of the universe. Then the astronomer Copernicus introduced the idea that the earth rotated around the sun. Astronomers adopted what they called the Copernican Principle, the idea that the earth and its human inhabitants do not occupy any special place in the universe. But in the twentieth century astronomer Brandon Carter proposed that our position is to some extent special, returning to some degree to the previous view, which is also found in the Vedic cosmology. In order for humans to exist as observers, said Carter, we have to find ourselves in a certain position in a universe with certain characteristics. Carter (1974, p. 291) called this the anthropic principle. For one thing, according to current ideas about cosmology, the universe would have to be of a certain age in order for there to be human observers—about ten billion years old. According to current theories, it would take that long for successive generations of stars to convert helium and hydrogen into the heavier elements, such as carbon, one of the main ingredients of organic life. In an expanding universe, the size of the universe is related to its age. This means, say modern cosmologists, that we should expect a universe capable of supporting carbon-based human life to be at least ten billion light years in diameter, and our universe is of that size, according to currently accepted observations and calculations (Barrow and Tipler 1996, p. 3). I do not necessarily agree with the exact size and age estimates given for the universe by modern cosmologists and note that these are constantly changing.

Some versions of the anthropic principle hold that human observers should not only expect to find themselves in a universe of a certain age and size, but also in a universe where the values of physical constants and ratios of natural forces are finely tuned to allow the very formation of that universe and the human life in it. It is this initial fine tuning which is of most interest to me. My discussion of the fine tuning problem will be based primarily on two main sources: the book Just Six numbers by Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal of Great Britain, and the book the Cosmological anthropic Principle by astronomer John D. Barrow and physicist Frank J. Tipler.

Fine tuning

Physicist John Wheeler, known for his many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, wrote (Barrow and Tipler 1986, p. vii), “It is not only that man is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental . . . constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the other. Man could never come into being in such a universe. That is the central point of the anthropic principle. According to this principle, a life-giving factor lies at the center of the whole machinery and design of the world.” Let us now look at the numerical values associated with some of these fundamental constants and ratios of natural forces, and see exactly what would happen if each of them were changed only slightly.

The large number N and Gravity

According to modern cosmology, the size of the universe and the sizes of the objects and living things in it are related to the ratio between the force of electromagnetism and the force of gravity (Rees 2000, pp.

27–31). Atoms are composed of subatomic particles with different electric charges. Among these subatomic particles are electrons and protons. Electrons have negative charge and protons have positive charge. The electromagnetic attraction between the positive and negative charges of electrons and protons is one of the factors holding the atom together. The force of gravity also acts among the subatomic particles making up the atom. But the force of gravity is much weaker than the electromagnetic force. The ratio of gravity to electromagnetism is obtained by dividing the strength of the electromagnetic force by the strength of the gravitational force. The resulting number (n) is 1036, which means that the gravitational force is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times weaker than the electromagnetic force.

On the atomic scale, gravity does not have much of an effect. But on the larger scale, gravity does have a very noticeable effect, even though it is much weaker than electromagnetism. The positive and negative charges in atoms cancel each other out. This means that on the large scale we do not feel very much of an effect from electromagnetism (unless the electromagnetic charges in an object are aligned, as in a magnet or an electric current). But gravity is always positive. The more mass present in an object, the greater its gravity. So when there are large aggregates of atoms their masses add up, and the force of gravity increases proportionately. The combined force of the gravity in the mass of all the atoms in the earth holds us down on the surface of the earth. In fact, the force of gravity determines how big living things can be on a particular planet. If the force of gravity were slightly stronger, the maximum size of living things would decrease. Let us imagine that n was 1030 instead of 1036. Then gravity would be “only” 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times weaker than electromagnetism. As a result of this small change (just a few zeroes), the force of gravity on earth would be so heavy, that no creatures larger than insects would be able to survive the pressure. And even these little insect sized creatures would have to have massive legs. And that’s not all.

Everything in the universe would be much smaller. For example, it would take a billion times fewer atoms to make a star.According to current thinking, stars form when the gravitational force of the atoms in hydrogen and helium gas clouds causes the gas to condense.As the gas condenses it becomes heated, and when the gas becomes dense enough and hot enough, it triggers fusion reactions. The heat of the fusion reactions pushes the star’s material outwards, but the force of gravity holds it in. The balance between the outward expansion and inward contraction causes stars to assume a particular size. The star has to be big enough to have enough gas molecules to collapse into a core with enough pressure to start the atomic fusion process. And the star has to retain enough mass to keep the heat generated by that fusion process from forcing all the materials of the star out into empty space. In general, stars normally have to be quite big. If, however, the force of gravity were greater, it would take fewer atoms to start the fusion process and fewer atoms to overcome the outward expansion. If n were 1030 instead of 1036, it would take a billion times fewer atoms to overcome the force of outward expansion. This means that stars would be much smaller. They would also burn their nuclear fuel much more quickly. A fire with a little bit of fuel is normally going to go out more quickly than a fire with large amount of fuel. According to Rees (2000, p. 31), the average lifetime of a star would be ten thousand years rather than ten billion years. That would have quite a negative impact on the possibility of biological evolution of the kind scientists now imagine. Galaxies would also be much smaller, and would be more densely packed with stars. The dense packing of stars would interfere with the orbits of planets circling those stars. And we have to remember that the presence of life depends on stable orbits for planets. If our own planet’s orbit were not stable the extremes of temperature on earth would be too great for life as we know it to survive. Why does N have the precise value it does? Rees (2000, p. 31) says, “We have no theory that tells us the value of N. All we know is that nothing as complex as humankind could have emerged if N were much less than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.”

The Binding energy ε

The binding energy ε is another cosmic number that greatly influences the characteristics of our universe (Rees 2000, pp. 43–49). It determines how atoms are formed, and how nuclear reactions take place. Of course, this is also very important for the existence of life forms.

Atoms of different elements have different binding energies. For us, the most important is the binding energy of helium. According to today’s astrophysicists, the first generation of stars converts hydrogen into helium by fusion. The nucleus of a hydrogen atom contains one proton. The nucleus of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, contains one proton and one neutron. When two deuterium atoms fuse, they form an atom of helium, with two protons and two neutrons. The nucleus of the helium atom has a mass equivalent to .993 (99.3 percent) of the mass of the two protons and two neutrons it contains. In the process of fusion, .007 (0.7 percent) of the mass is converted into energy, mostly heat. This number .007 is ε, the binding energy of atomic nuclei. It is related to the strong nuclear force, which keeps the protons in the atom together. Rees (2000, p. 48) says, “The amount of energy released when simple atoms undergo nuclear fusion depends on the strength of the force that ‘glues’ together the ingredients in an atomic nucleus.” The greater the binding energy, the greater the strength of the strong nuclear force. The protons in the nucleus have positive charge, and normally positive charges will repel each other, thus blowing the atom apart. But the strong nuclear force is just strong enough to overcome this repulsion, and holds the protons together in the nucleus. We do not feel this force, because it operates only within the nucleus of the atom.

If the value of ε were even slightly different, there would be major effects on atomic structure. If, for example, the value of ε were .006 instead of .007, this would mean that the strong nuclear force was slightly weaker than it is now. But this would be enough to interrupt the formation of elements heavier than hydrogen. Heavier elements are formed by adding protons to the nuclei of atoms. Hydrogen, with one proton, is the lightest element. Iron has 26 protons. But to get to iron and the heavier elements, we first have to go from hydrogen to helium.The helium nucleus usually contains two protons and two neutrons, while the simple hydrogen nucleus consists of just one proton. So to go from hydrogen to helium requires a middle step, the conversion of hydrogen to its isotope deuterium, which consists of one proton and one neutron. Then two deuterium nuclei can fuse to form a helium nucleus, with two protons and two neutrons. The strength of the nuclear binding force between the protons and neutrons in the helium nucleus causes the release of part of their mass as energy, the binding energy. Now if this binding energy were .006 of the total mass of the protons and neutrons, instead of .007, the strong nuclear force would be weaker. It would be just weak enough so that a neutron could not bind to a proton. Deuterium nuclei could not form, and therefore helium nuclei could not form. The hydrogen atoms would still condense into heavy masses, and these masses would heat up. But there would be no fusion reactions to keep the star going. No other elements would be formed. There would be no planets and no life as we know it.

What if ε was .008 instead of .007, indicating that the strong nuclear force was slightly stronger than it is today? That would lead to a problem of another kind in the process of element formation. As we have seen, the strong nuclear force is needed to bind protons together. Today, the strong force is not strong enough to bind just two protons together. A combination of two protons is called a diproton. There are no stable diprotons in the universe today. This is because the repulsion between the two positively charged protons is stronger than the binding energy of the strong nuclear force. But the binding energy, at its current value of .007, is strong enough to cause a proton to bind to a neutron, thus forming deuterium. And then two deuterium atoms can combine to form helium. This happens because the neutrons supply the extra binding energy needed to bring the two protons together. Because the neutrons are neutral in electric charge, they do not add any additional force of repulsion. Now if ε were .008, then two protons could join together, forming a diproton, an isotope of helium with two protons and no neutrons. This means that all of the hydrogen atoms (each with one proton) in the early universe would quickly combine into diprotons. Today, only some of the hydrogen atoms form deuterium and normal helium, over long periods of time. This leaves hydrogen in the universe for the formation of hydrogen compounds necessary for life. Barrow and Tipler (1996, p. 322) put it like this: “If the strong interaction were a little stronger, the diproton would be a stable bound state with catastrophic consequences—all the hydrogen in the Universe would have been burnt to He2 during the early stages of the Big Bang and no hydrogen compounds or long-lived stable stars would exist today. If the diproton existed we would not!” The most important hydrogen compound is water, and in a universe in which ε was .008, there would be no water. The stable stars would not exist because they require hydrogen for fuel and there would be no hydrogen.

Going from helium to carbon also requires some fine tuning (Barrow and Tipler 1996, pp. 250–253). According to cosmologists, the first generations of stars burn hydrogen nuclei by a fusion process that yields helium nuclei. Eventually, the star runs out of hydrogen, and the helium core of the star begins to become denser. The condensation raises the temperature of the star to the point where helium begins to fuse into carbon. A helium nucleus has two protons. A carbon nucleus has six protons. Theoretically, three helium nuclei could fuse to form a carbon nucleus. But in practice this does not happen, because it is not very likely that three helium nuclei could collide at the same instant in just the way necessary to produce a carbon nucleus. Instead, there is a two step process. First two helium nuclei combine to form a beryllium nucleus, with four protons. Then a beryllium nucleus combines with another helium nucleus to form carbon. The problem is that the beryllium nuclei are unstable and rather quickly break back down into helium nuclei. Therefore, physicists would expect that very little carbon would be produced, certainly not the amounts of carbon present in the universe. But then the English astronomer Fred Hoyle showed that the carbon nucleus just happens to have a particular resonant energy level that lies just above the combined energy levels of beryllium and helium. The additional energy supplied to beryllium and helium by the heat of the solar core brings the beryllium and helium nuclei up to this level, enabling them to combine into carbon nuclei much more rapidly than might otherwise be expected. It is possible that all of the carbon produced in this way could have been immediately converted into oxygen, if the carbon nuclei combined with helium nuclei. But the oxygen nucleus has a resonant energy level that is below the combined energies of carbon and helium. This lucky circumstance means that the fusion reaction between carbon and helium becomes less likely. And therefore we have enough carbon for carbon-based life forms. Rees (2000, p. 50) noted: “This seeming ‘accident’ of nuclear physics allows carbon to be built up, but no similar effect enhances the next stage in the process, whereby carbon captures another helium nucleus and turns into oxygen. The crucial ‘resonance’ is very sensitive to the nuclear force. Even a shift by four per cent would severely deplete the amount of carbon that could be made. Hoyle therefore argued that our existence would have been jeopardized by even a few percentage points’ change in ε.” Commenting on the finely tuned resonances that enabled the production of heavy elements in the stellar interior, Hoyle said, “I do not believe that any scientist who examines the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars” (Barrow and Tipler 1996, p. 22).

Ω (omega) and the Cosmic Balance of Forces

According to modern cosmologists, the expanding universe in its very beginnings had three possible fates. (1) The force of gravity could have overwhelmed the force of expansion, and the universe could have rapidly collapsed back on itself, before any stars and galaxies could have formed. (2) The force of expansion could have overwhelmed the force of gravity, so that the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and galaxies to form. (3) The forces of gravity and expansion could have been adjusted very carefully so that the universe expanded at just the right speed for stars and galaxies to form and persist over billions of years.

The fate of the universe therefore depends upon a critical average density of matter. According to cosmologists, the critical density is 5 atoms per cubic meter. If the density is more than 5 atoms per cubic meter, gravity will be strong enough to cause the universe to collapse. If the density is much less than 5 atoms per cubic meter, the universe will expand too rapidly for stars and galaxies to form.

The cosmic number omega is the ratio between the critical density and the actual density (Rees 2000, pp. 72–90). If the critical density and the actual density are equal, then the ratio is 1, and hence Ω (omega) = 1. This allows a slowly expanding universe in which stars and galaxies can form, as is the case with our universe. But in our universe, the actual density of visible matter is far less than the critical density. If all visible matter, in the form of stars, galaxies and gas clouds, is taken into account, the actual density is only .04 of the critical density. But observations of the movement of the visible matter have convinced scientists that there must exist another form of matter in the universe, called dark matter. For example, spiral galaxies are shaped like rotating pinwheels, with two or more curving “arms” of stars streaming from a bright central core. When astronomers look at spiral galaxies, they see that they do not contain enough ordinary visible matter to keep the arms curving as closely as they do toward the centers of such galaxies. According to the current laws of gravity, the arms should be less curved. For the galaxies to maintain their observed shapes, they should have ten times more matter than they visibly have. This means there is some “missing matter.” What form does it take? Some astrophysicists suggest the dark matter may be made of neutrinos, strange particles generated during the Big Bang with very small mass, or myriads of black holes of extremely great mass. “It’s embarrassing,” said Rees (2000, p. 82), “that more than ninety per cent of the universe remains unaccounted for—even worse when we realize that the dark matter could be made up of entities with masses ranged from 10-33 grams (neutrinos) up to 1039 grams (heavy black holes), an uncertainty of more than seventy powers of ten.”

When the dark matter is added to the visible matter, the actual density of matter in the universe becomes about .30 of the critical density. For this to be the situation now, after billions of years of expansion, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density had to be extremely close to unity (i.e., one to one). Rees (2000, p. 88) stated,“Our universe was initiated with a very finely-tuned impetus, almost exactly enough to balance the decelerating tendency of gravity. It’s like sitting at the bottom of a well and throwing a stone up so that it just comes to a halt exactly at the top—the required precision is astonishing: at one second after the Big Bang, Ω cannot have differed from unity by more than one part in a million billion (one in 1015) in order that the universe should now, after ten billion years, be still expanding and with a value of Ω that has certainly not departed wildly from unity.”

λ (lambda): levity in addition to Gravity?

If gravity were the only force operating in connection with the expansion of the universe, then astronomers should detect that the rate of expansion is decreasing. Gravity should be slowing down the rate at which all the material objects in the universe are moving away from each other. In short, we should observe deceleration of the expansion. The force of gravity depends on the total density of matter. The more density, the more gravity. The more gravity, the more deceleration. Depending on the exact density of matter in the universe, the rate of deceleration could be faster or slower. But there should be some deceleration, as the force of gravity counteracts the expansion. Instead, scientists have noted an apparent acceleration in the rate of expansion. This was somewhat unexpected, as it indicates that in addition to gravity there may be another fundamental natural force that is repulsive, rather than attractive. In other words, there may be antigravity in addition to gravity.

The antigravity force was discovered by scientists who were hoping to find the total amount of dark matter in the universe (Rees 2000, pp. 91–95). The visible matter in the universe contributes only .04 of the critical density. The critical density is the exact amount of matter necessary for a Big Bang expanding universe to exist for long periods of time with relatively stable stars and galaxies. There must be enough matter to slow therate of expansion so that all the matter in the universe does not quickly disperse into a featureless gas. But there must not be so much matter as to thoroughly overcome the expansion, causing the universe to quickly recollapse into a black hole. Because the visible matter in the universe is distributed in ways not possible according to the laws of gravity, scientists have inferred the existence of clumps of dark matter, which although invisible possess gravitational force. Taking into account the gravitational force of these clumps of invisible dark matter allows cosmologists to explain the distribution of visible matter. But when the clumped dark matter is added to the visible matter, the total amount of matter is still only.30 of the critical density. Some scientists have proposed that the present state of our universe would most easily be explained if the actual density of matter in the universe very closely approached the critical density, so that their ratio (Ω) was one to one (Ω = 1). But that would require that there should be some more dark matter in the universe. Therefore, some scientists have proposed that there might be large amounts of extra dark matter evenly distributed throughout the universe. Unlike the clumped dark matter, this evenly distributed dark matter would not exert noticeable gravitational force on individual galaxies. And it would therefore not show its influence in the form of anomalies in the distribution of matter in and among galaxies. However, the evenly distributed dark matter might be slowing down the overall expansion of the universe.

To test their ideas, scientists measured the red shifts of a particular type of supernova: “A distinctive type of supernovae, technically known as a ‘Type 1a’, signals a sudden nuclear explosion in the center of a dying star, when its burnt-out core gets above a particular threshold of mass and becomes unstable,” stated Rees (2000, p. 93). “It is, in effect, a nuclear bomb with a standard yield. . . . What is important is that Type 1a supernovae can be regarded as ‘standard candles’, bright enough to be detected at great distances. From how bright they appear, it should be possible to infer reliable distances, and thereby (by measuring the red shift as well) to relate the expansion speed and distance at a past epoch. Cosmologists hoped that such measurements would distinguish between a small slowdown-rate (expected if the dark matter has all been accounted for) or the larger rate expected if—as many theorists suspected—there was enough extra dark matter to make up the full ‘critical density.’” Two groups of researchers were surprised to find that their measurements of these supernova red shifts showed no deceleration effect at all. Instead, their measurements showed the rate of the expansion of the universe was actually increasing. This meant two things. First, there was not any significant amount of extra dark matter. Second, in order to explain the increase in the rate of the universe’s expansion, scientists had to propose a kind of antigravitational force.

The idea of an antigravitational force goes back to Einstein. In the 1920s, Einstein was working on the assumption that the universe was static. But his equations would not allow a universe to exist in a static state. The attractive force of gravity would cause all the matter in the universe to contract. To balance this attractive force, Einstein added to his equations a “cosmological constant,” called λ (lambda), to balance the force of gravity. When cosmologists accepted an expanding universe, they lost interest in the idea of a cosmological constant tied to equations describing a static universe. But now it turns out that the expanding universe model itself appears to require λ. What exactly does λ measure? It does not measure the force of any kind of light or dark matter. Cosmologists have been reduced to proposing that λ “measures the energy content of empty space” (Rees 2000, p. 154). The current measured value of λ appears to be quite special. “A higher-valued λ would have overwhelmed gravity earlier on, during the higher-density stages,” stated Rees (2000, p. 99). “If λ started to dominate before galaxies had condensed out from the expanding universe, or if it provided a repulsion strong enough to disrupt them, then there would be no galaxies. Our existence requires that λ should not have been too large.”

Q

According to the Big Bang cosmology, our universe started out as a small dense globular mass of extremely hot gas. As it expanded, it became cooler. If the globe of gas had been perfectly smooth, then as the expansion continued the atoms of gas would have distributed themselves evenly in space. In order for matter to have organized into structures like stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies, there had to have been some variations in the smoothness of the original globular cloud of gas. Some regions had to have been slightly denser than others. In these slightly more dense regions, the atoms became attracted to each other by the force of gravity, eventually becoming stars and galaxies. Rees (2000, p. 106) explains the measure of this force: “The most conspicuous structures in the cosmos—stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies—are all held together by gravity. We can express how tightly they are bound together—or, equivalently, how much energy would be needed to break up and disperse them—as a proportion of their total ‘rest-mass energy’ (mc2). For the biggest structures in our universe—clusters and superclusters—the answer is about one part in a hundred thousand. This is a pure number—a ratio of two energies—and we call it Q.” In other words, it would not take very much energy to overcome the force of gravity holding galaxies and clusters of galaxies together.

Q is necessarily related to the original density variations in the fireball of the early stages of the Big Bang. If there were no density variations at all, then the matter in the universe would have expanded completely evenly, so that there would have been no clumping of matter in the more dense regions. So according to the present value of Q (one in a hundred thousand, i.e. 10-5), the initial variations in the energy of the Big Bang universe were no greater than one hundred thousandth of its radius. Scientists plan to confirm this with space satellites that can very accurately measure minute variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, which scientists take to be the remnants of the original Big Bang fireball.

It turns out that Q’s present value (10-5) is just about the only one that allows for the kind of universe in which there can be stable stars and planets on which life as we know it could exist. What if Q were smaller than 10-5? Rees (2000, p. 115) said “the resulting galaxies would be anaemic structures, in which star formation would be slow, and inefficient, and ‘processed’ material would be blown out of the galaxy rather than being recycled into new stars that could form planetary systems.” If Q were still smaller (smaller than 10-6), then “gas would never condense into gravitationally bound structures at all, and such a universe would remain forever dark and featureless” (Rees 2000, p. 115). But what would happen if Q were much greater than 10-5? Rees (2000, p. 115) said in such a universe most matter would quickly collapse into huge black holes and any remaining stars “would be packed too close together and buffeted too frequently to retain stable planetary systems.” So although the current value of Q is critical for our existence, there is no particular reason why Q has that value. As Rees (2000, pp. 113–114) put it, “The way Q is determined . . . is still perplexing.”

I do not want to leave the impression that there are no problems with the general scenario of galaxy formation implicit in this discussion. Although scientists do believe that stars and galaxies form more or less automatically according to physical laws during the condensation of gas clouds in space, they have not been able to accurately model the process on computers. Rees (2000, p. 110) noted that “nobody has yet performed a simulation that starts with a single cloud and ends up with a population of stars.” In other words, the evidence for the fine tuning of constants combined with the inability of scientists to accurately model the process of star and galaxy formation may lead us to the conclusion that more is required than matter acting according to certain laws. The overall active intervention of a supreme being may also be required. In other words, God is not necessary just to fill in the gaps, but as an overall enabling and coordinating factor.

D: the number of Dimensions

The number of spatial dimensions, D, determines important features of our universe. For our universe D is three. If D were two or four

482 Human Devolution: a vedic alternative to Darwin’s theory

or some other number, life as we know it could not exist.

In our universe gravity and electricity obey the inverse square law. If you move an object twice as far away from you as it is now, the force of its gravity upon you will be only one quarter of what it was. Four is the square of two (1/2 × 1/2), and one quarter is the inverse square of two (2 × 2). If the object is moved four times as far away, its gravitational force

becomes one sixteenth of what it was, one sixteenth being the inverse square of four.

In a four dimensional world, gravity would follow an inverse cube law instead of an inverse square law. This would have a devastating effect, according to Rees (2000, p. 135): “An orbiting planet that was slowed down—even slightly—would then plunge ever-faster into the Sun, rather than merely shift into a slightly smaller orbit, because an inverse-cube force strengthens so steeply towards the center; conversely, an orbiting planet that was slightly speeded up would quickly spiral outwards into darkness.” Only an inverse square law of gravity allows for stable orbits of planets. The same is true for orbits of electrons. If gravity and electromagnetism operated according to anything other than an inverse square law, there would be no stable atoms (Rees 2000, p. 136; Barrow and Tipler 1996, pp. 265–266).

If there were only two dimensions, it would be difficult for a functioning brain to exist. Barrow and Tipler (1996, p. 266), citing the work of Whitrow (1959), said, “He argues that if the spatial structure were of dimension two or less then nerve cells (or their analogues) would have to intersect when superimposed and a severe limitation on informationprocessing of any complexity would result.”

It also appears that reliable electromagnetic signaling (of the kind we use in radios, televisions, computers, and telephone systems, as well as in biological neural systems) is possible only in a three dimensional universe. Barrow and Tipler (1996, p. 268) explained, “In two-dimensional spaces wave signals emitted at different times can be received simultaneously: signal reverberation occurs. It is impossible to transmit sharply defined signals in two dimensions.” Reliable transmission requires not only that waves are without reverberation but also without distortion. Barrow and Tipler went on to say, “Three-dimensional worlds allow spherical waves . . . to propagate in distortionless fashion. . . . Only threedimensional worlds appear to possess the ‘nice’ properties necessary for the transmission of high-fidelity signals because of the simultaneous realization of sharp and distortionless propagation. . . . If living systems require high-fidelity wave propagation for their existence to be possible, then we could not expect to observe the world to possess other than three spatial dimensions.” Also, the gravity waves of Einstein’s general theory of relativity could only propagate in a universe with three spatial dimensions and one time dimension (Barrow and Tipler 1996, p. 273). A modern cosmological theory, string theory, relies on a universe with ten spatial dimensions and one time dimension; however, all but three of the spatial dimensions are compacted on the microscopic level and have no visible effect on wave propagation (Barrow and Tipler 1996, pp. 274–275).

How to explain the Fine tuning

The existence of a universe in which human life as we know it is possible depends on the fine tuning of several constants and ratios of physical forces. How did this fine tuning come about? Today, theorists recognize three main possibilities. First, the fine tuning in the universe of our experience might be determined by an as yet undiscovered physical law. Second, it could be that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes, each with different values for the constants and ratios, and we just happen to be living in the one with the values that will allow life to arise. Third, the fine tuning could be the result of providential design. Let us now consider each of these possibilities, beginning with physical determination of the fundamental constants and ratios.

In modern cosmology, some theorists propose that the fine tuning of universal constants and ratios of fundamental forces of nature will eventually be predicted by a grand unified theory of everything. At the present moment the biggest obstacle to a theory of everything is the unification of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity theory. Quantum mechanics does very well in explaining the world of atoms and subatomic particles, where the main forces are electromagnetism, the atomic weak force, and the atomic strong force. Relativity theory does very well in explaining the action of gravity on the larger scale of the universe. At present no theory has successfully integrated both quantum mechanics and relativity theory, and this unification is especially necessary to explain the very early history of the Big Bang universe, when all the forces of nature were unified. One theory that promises to unify gravity with the other three fundamental forces is superstring theory. According to superstring theory, the basic units of matter are very tiny circular “strings” of energy. The various subatomic particles are strings vibrating at different frequencies in ten dimensional space. Superstring theorists claim that many of the fine tunings of fundamental constants and ratios of natural forces could be directly derived from the theory. But at the present moment there is no physical verification of superstring theory. “Strings” are many orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest subatomic particles visible in the biggest particle colliders. Rees (2000, p. 145) calls attention to the “unbridged gap between the intricate complexity of ten-dimensional string theory and any phenomena that we can observe or measure.” Until some kind of verification can be obtained, superstring theory remains in the realm of speculation and cannot be called upon to resolve the fine tuning problem.

In the absence of a physical theory that determines the finely tuned fundamental constants observed in our universe, one can consider the possibility that some intelligent designer adjusted the constants. A good many cosmologists would rather not have it come down to this, so they appeal to the existence of innumerable other universes, in which the constants vary randomly. Among these universes is ours.

There are varieties of ways to get many universes. One proposal is that the Big Bang is cyclical. A Big Bang universe ends in a “Big Crunch,”compacting itself into a singularity, a point of unlimited density, and then bounces back into existence in another Big Bang. And the process repeats itself endlessly, with each universe having a different set of fundamental constants. But Barrow and Tipler (1996, pp. 248–249) stated: “Only in those cycles in which the ‘deal’ is right will observers evolve.

. . . The problem with this idea is that it is far from being testable. . . . Also, if the permutation at each singularity extends to the constants of Nature, why not to the space-time topology and curvature as well? And if this were the case, sooner or later the geometry would be exchanged for a noncompact structure bound to expand for all future time. No future singularity would ensue and the constants of Nature would remain forever invariant. . . . However, why should this final permutation of the constants and topology just happen to be the one which allows the evolution of observers!” For our purposes, the main point is that the cyclic universe idea is an untestable speculation motivated by the desire to avoid the idea that God finely tuned the fundamental constants and ratios we observe in our universe.

One of the main interpretations of quantum mechanics also assumes many universes. Quantum mechanics involves transforming the deterministic equations of ordinary physics to yield a wave function specifying a range of statistical probabilities. The situation we observe in the universe of our experience represents only one of these statistical probabilities. According to the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, the other possibilities are simultaneously realized in separate universes.

Yet another way to introduce many universes is to propose that just after the initial Big Bang many regions of the universe had their own Mini Bangs and moved away from each other so quickly that light signals were no longer able to pass between them. Thus isolated from each other, these noncommunicating regions are in effect separate simultaneously existing universes.

No matter how they get many universes, cosmologists concerned with the fine tuning question go on to propose that in each of these universes the fundamental constants are adjusted differently, by chance. And we just happen to find ourselves in the universe where all these constants are adjusted so as to allow the presence of stable stars, planets, atoms, and the development of life forms.

Among modern cosmologists, Rees (2000, p. 4), for example, favors this many universe explanation. But he himself has admitted it is “speculative” (Rees 2000, p. 11). There is no way of demonstrating by the methods of modern materialistic science that these many alternative universes actually exist. And even if it could be shown they existed, one would have to further show that in each of them the fundamental constants varied randomly.According to theVedic cosmology,alternative material universes do exist. An unlimited number of them emanate from Maha Vishnu. But in each one of them there is life, according to the Vedic accounts, indicating that in each universe the fundamental constants of nature would show the appropriate fine tuning. In short, the hypothesis of many universes does not in itself provide an escape from the fine tuning problem or rule out providential design. In the absence of a physical theory that yields the observed values of the fundamental constants, and in the absence of experimental evidence for a multiplicity of universes with randomly varying fundamental constants, the fine tuning of physical constants that we observe in our own universe, the only one that we can observe, points directly to providential design. In essence, all the attempts by modern cosmologists to come up with alternative explanations are motivated by the desire to avoid the default conclusion that God is responsible for the fine tuning.

Human Devolution: a Vedic Account

Let us now review the path we have taken. The evidence documented in Forbidden Archeology shows that humans of our type have existed on this planet for the duration of the current day of Brahma, about two billion years. This archeological evidence, along with genetic evidence, contradicts current evolutionary accounts of human origins and opens the way to new kinds of explanations. We then decided that before we ask how humans came into existence, we should first of all ask the question, “What is a human being?” Today most scientists assume that humans are simply a combination of the ordinary chemical elements. We concluded, however, that it is more reasonable, on the basis of all available scientific evidence, to start with the assumption that humans are composed not just of one thing, ordinary matter, but of three things—ordinary matter, subtle matter in the form of mind, and consciousness. With this established, we found it natural for us to assume that the cosmos is divided into regions with different balances of these three substances. We also found it natural to suppose that in each region conscious beings exist, of different grades and powers, with bodies adapted to the conditions there. With these basic elements in place, it is now time to integrate them all into a comprehensive account of what I call human devolution, in a specifically Vedic form. To put the Vedic account in its most simple terms, we did not evolve up from matter; rather, we have devolved, or come down, from the level of pure spiritual consciousness.

Today, most people favor relatively simple accounts of human origins. They favor either a simple creation account, or a simple Darwinian evolutionary account, or a simple extraterrestrial intervention account. The Vedic account of human devolution involves elements of all three. In common with the usual creation account, the Vedic account posits the existence of an overall conscious designer and controller, God. But the Vedic account also incorporates something from the evolutionary account. By evolution, Darwinists mean reproduction with modification. As we shall see, the Vedic account also involves reproduction with modification, a kind of intelligently guided genetic engineering, which starts with the more complex and subtle life forms and then moves on to simpler and grosser life forms. The Vedic account also includes an extraterrestrial element. The Vedic tradition may support variants of the account I am about to give, but these variants all share a family resemblance with each other, and, more generally, with creation accounts from others of the world’s wisdom traditions.

The conscious self originally exists on the level of pure consciousness, in relationship with the supreme self, God, known in Sanskrit by many names, including the name Krishna, which means all attractive. The constitutional relationship of the particulate conscious self with the supreme conscious self is one of eternal reciprocal enjoyment. If a conscious self departs from its constitutional relationship with the supreme self, it descends to the level of the material energies. The basic motivation for this descent is the desire to assume the position of independent enjoyer, apart from the supreme conscious self. Because one cannot assume this position in the domain of pure consciousness, one must try to assume it in another domain, that of the material energies. The particulate conscious self then takes on a material body for action within the material energies.

The material energies are of two basic kinds: the subtle material energies and the gross material energies. Conscious selves existing in levels or regions of the cosmos dominated by the subtle material energies have bodies composed principally of the subtle material energies—mind (manas), intelligence (buddhi), and false ego (ahankara). Conscious selves existing in the realm dominated by the gross material energies have, in addition to a bodily covering made of the subtle material energies, a bodily covering made of the gross material energies—earth (bhumi), water (apa), fire (anala), air (vayu), and ether (kham).

God himself (Krishna) is not directly involved in the affairs of manifesting the material universes to accommodate the conscious selves who have departed from the spiritual level of reality. For this purpose Krishna expands himself as the Maha Vishnu, who lies in the Causal Ocean. From the pores of Maha Vishnu come numberless universes. By His glance, the Maha Vishnu injects conscious selves into each universe. The Maha Vishnu also expands into each universe as the Garbhodakashayi Vishnu. From the Garbhodakashayi Vishnu in each universe comes a subordinate creator god, Brahma. Brahma is one of the conscious selves injected into a universe. He is charged with populating the universe. He does this by manifesting bodies to serve as vehicles for conscious selves.

Brahma exists on the highest, most subtle level of the material universe. His place is called Brahmaloka. The body of Brahma is composed primarily of the subtle material elements. In his commentary on Chaitanya Charitamrita (Adi lila 5.22), Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said, “The residents of Brahmaloka do not have gross material bodies to change at death, but they transform their subtle bodies into spiritual bodies and thus enter the spiritual sky.” From his mind, Brahma directly produces mental sons (manasa putras), such as the sage Kardama Muni. Then from his body, Brahma produces other sages and the first sexually reproducing pair—Svayambhuva Manu and his consort Shatarupa. The Sanskrit word svayambhuva means self born. Svayambhuva Manu and Shatarupa have sons and daughters. The daughters are given in marriage to some of the mental sons of Brahma, and they begin to produce children. This reproduction of great sages, demigods, and demigoddesses takes place on the higher more subtle levels of the material universe.

When it is time for the production of the forms for souls who require bodies made of the grosser material elements, the demigods and demigoddesses engage in reproductive activities to produce them. In the course of these reproductive activities they make use of bijas, or seeds. These bijas contain the plans for the forms of the bodies. Modern biologists have difficulty explaining exactly how the process of development takes place. Each plant or animal generally begins as a single cell, which begins to divide. Each cell contains the same DNA, the same set of genes. So it is not easy to explain how and why, in the course of the progressive division of a few cells into millions of cells (trillions in the case of humans), that the cells sequentially differentiate and arrange themselves into complex forms of bodily tissues. I propose that associated with each form is not only the DNA but also a bija, or subtle seed, containing the developmental plan for the particular kind of body.

In Bhagavad Gita (14.4) Krishna says, “I am the seed-giving father of all living entities.” And in Bhagavad Gita (7.10) Krishna says, “I am the original seed of all existences.” The word used for “seed” in this case is bija. It could be taken to mean the atma (conscious self), which comes from Krishna. Bodies are vehicles for conscious selves, and without the presence of a conscious self, a body would not exhibit symptoms of life. But the presence of the conscious self is not itself sufficient to explain the form of a particular body. All bodies, according to Vedic thought, have conscious selves, including plants and animals. But each unit of conscious selfhood resembles the others. If the conscious self is the same in all bodies, then how do we explain the generation of different kinds of bodies?

We can do so by considering an additional meaning of the word bija, or seed. In his commentary to Chaitanya Charitamrita (madhya lila 19.152), Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said, “Everything has an original cause, or seed. For any idea, program, plan or device, there is first of all the contemplation of the plan, and that is called the bija, or seed.” I propose that the development of bodily forms involves a seed of this type, in addition to the seed of the soul. This subtle developmental seed contains the plan for the body. In his commentary on Shrimad Bhagavatam (3.10.7), Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada explained that in the beginning “the living entities were all already generated in seedling forms by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and Brahma was to disseminate the same seedlings all over the universe.” From this it can be taken that the seeds (or seedlings) were given to the demigods, demigoddesses, and sages, who then used them in their reproductive processes to produce the forms of bodies to serve as vehicles for conscious selves.

Bodies of living things are manifested in the course of cyclical creations and destructions of universes and the planets within them. The basic unit of Vedic cyclical time is called the day of Brahma. The day of Brahma lasts for 4,320,000,000 years and is followed by a night of Brahma, which also lasts for 4,320,000,000 years. During the nights of Brahma, the conscious selves enter the body of the Garbhodakashayi Visnu in each universe and remain there until the next day of Brahma begins. Each day of Brahma is divided into 14 manvantara periods, each lasting about 300,000,000 years. There is normally a partial devastation between each manvantara period. During this period, the planets of the higher demigods are not touched, but the earthly planetary system is devastated. After each manvantara period, the demigods must again manifest the bodily vehicles for conscious selves. We are now in the seventh manvantara period. This means there have been six devastations, after which the earth has again been repopulated. This is interesting, because according to modern paleontology, the history of life on earth has been interrupted by six major extinction events, spaced at intervals of about the same order of magnitude as the devastations between the manvantara periods.

The fourth chapter of the sixth canto of Shrimad Bhagavatam contains a description of how repopulation occurred at the beginning of the sixth manvantara period. The repopulation was carried out by Daksha, a prajapati (generator of population). Shrimad Bhagavatam (6.4.19–20) says, “With his mind, Prajapati Daksha first created all kinds of demigods, demons, human beings, birds, beasts, aquatics and so on. But when Prajapati Daksha saw that he was not properly generating all kinds of living entities, he approached a mountain near the Vindhya mountain range, and there he executed very difficult austerities.” After this, Daksha and his wife Asikni had sixty daughters. The daughters were given to various demigods and sages. The sage Kashyapa received seventeen daughters as wives. In Shrimad Bhagavatam (6.6.24–26), Shukadeva Goswami said to King Parikshit, “O King Parikshit, now please hear from me the names of Kashyapa’s wives, from whose wombs the population of the entire universe has come. They are the mothers of almost all the population of the entire universe, and their names are very auspicious to hear. They are Aditi, Diti, Danu, Kashtha, Arishta, Surasa, Ila, Muni, Krodhavasa, Tamra, Surabhi, Sarama and Timi.” Some of the wives of Kashyapa gave birth to various kinds of demigods. According to Shrimad Bhagavatam (6.6.26–31), others produced various species of animals: “From the womb of Timi all the aquatics took birth, and from the womb of Sarama the ferocious animals like the tigers and lions took birth. My dear King Parikshit, from the womb of Surabhi the buffalo, cow and other animals with cloven hooves took birth, from the womb of Tamra the eagles, vultures and other large birds of prey took birth. . . . The sons born of Krodhavasa were the serpents known as dandasuka, as well as other serpents and the mosquitoes. All the various creepers and trees were born from the womb of Ila. . . . animals whose hooves are not split, such as the horse, were born from the womb of Kashtha.” One of the wives of Kashyapa was Aditi, and one of her sons was Aryama. Shrimad Bhagavatam (6.6.42) states: “From the womb of Matrka, the wife of Aryama, were born many learned scholars. Among them Lord Brahma created the human species, which are endowed with an aptitude for self-examination.” Exactly how the demigods use their reproductive processes to generate the bodily forms for conscious selves is not specified in the Shrimad Bhagavatam. But from other parts of the Vedic literature, we get some clues. The mahabharata (Adi Parva 118) tells us that once the sage Kindama and his wife transformed themselves into deer to engage in sexual intercourse. Not understanding their identities, King Pandu killed them, and was cursed. Similarly, we learn in the seventeenth chapter of the Ramayana of Valmiki that various demigods took on the forms of monkeys and engaged in reproductive activities to generate a population of monkeys with humanlike intelligence. Therefore, it is possible that the demigods take on the forms of a particular species and then, using bijas supplied by God, engage in a special kind of sexual reproduction in order to produce bodies of that same kind, as vehicles for conscious selves. Once this happens, reproduction of that species can continue in the ordinary way. There are, however, instances where demigods and humans on this planet produce offspring. For example, Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad Gita was born of a terrestrial mother, Kunti, and a celestial father, the demigod Indra.