In2-MeC

Amsterdam, the Netherlands
26 May 2004

I can't resist trying to correlate his teachings with other philosophies and literatures. This undesirable, speculative tendency comes from eighteen years of American schooling.

Rabrindranath Tagore, I find out, was also a "womanizer. " Nor does Swamiji like Hart Crane's "white wings of tumult" depiction of the bridge of consciousness. "It's not tumult," he says, and drops the subject. Emerson? "He may think like that, but who is he to say?" Whitman? "Sentimentalism. " Kahlil Gibran? "Pictures of naked people," he says, making a face. "Poets and artists are generally passionate. " William Blake? "More naked people. " But he approves Blake's verse:

God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But doth a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

. . . . .

"They say that when Ramakrishna saw money, his hand would curl away from it," Swamiji says, curling up his hand. "But a Vaishnava says, 'Oh, some money! Very good!'" Swamiji opens up his palm and smiles. "'I can use this money for Krishna. ' Yes, that is proper use of money. Everything belongs to Krishna. If we find money in the street, we should not let it lie or spend it on ourselves. We should return it to its rightful owner. That is the proper use of money. And when Krishna sees that we are using money properly for His glorification, He sends more. After all, He is the husband of the goddess Lakshmi. Money is Lakshmi. "

--The Hare Krishna Explosion by Hayagriva Das, pgs. 38 and 45

Jagannatha Deities made by the Hand of Lord Caitanya Himself!

These Jagannath Deities were hand-fashioned by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu almost 500 years ago at Srirangam when He was staying at the family of Gopal Bhattar Goswami, the son of Vyenkata Bhattar of North Chitra street. You can visit the house today as it's looked after by the son of the late Rangaraj Bhattar, a family descendent whose family live just across the road these days. . . but to get a photo is extremely rare. You may have been there too, I don't know, but this is an excellent photo, better than many of the darshans that I've had as it is often quite dark in there.

--ys, Jaya Tirtha Carana dasa

Gujarat doctors' panel tests sadhu's claim
that he hasn't taken food nor water for almost seventy years

This is not a photo of Prahlad Jani; this is a "sadhu" from Nepal

Prahlad Jani is a 76-year-old sadhu from the pilgrimage town of Ambaji in Gujarat. It was reported in several newpapers (Melbourne Herald Sun, London Times, Hindustan Times) and on the Sify Internet news service that he was examined by the Association of Physicians of Ahmedabad (APA) for 11 days. On 23 November 2003 he was released. Jani maintains that the goddess Ambaji visited him at age 8 and showed him the path of utter renunciation of bodily demands. Since that time he has dressed in the red cloth of a devotee of the goddess and lived in caves.

During the 11 days, his claim that he has not eaten any food nor drunk any water for 68 years was thoroughly tested by the APA, a panel of 40 physicians, at the Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad. He was kept under constant video surveillance inside a glass-walled room. The strictly controlled medical study found that Jani not only did not eat anything for the 11 days he was in the hospital, he did not even take a drop of water. Most people can live for several weeks without eating but the average human being can survive only 3 or 4 days without water. For the period Jani was under observation he passed no stool or urine.

Said Dr. Sudhir V. Shah, the neurologist who oversaw the test, "The medical community does not have any scientific explanation. . . This is a one-of-a-kind case. "

Prahlada Jani offered his own explanation. "I get amrta from the hole at the back of my palate. This enables me to go without food and water. I have never been sick all these years. "

Ghost caught on security videotape at Henry VIII's Hampton Court Palace

On 3 successive days in October 2003, alarms rang at about 1 PM near an exhibition hall at Hampton Court Palace in southwest London that indicated fire doors had been opened. On the first occasion, security vidcam footage showed the doors flying wide open for no apparent reason. On the second, a ghostly figure can be seen on the videotape, suddenly appearing and closing the doors. On the third, the doors open but as with the first occasion no figure appeared.

Not long before the anomalous alarms, an Australian tourist noted in the visitors' book that she thought she had seen a ghost in that area of Hampton Court Palace.

The huge Tudor palace, built in the 1520s on the River Thames, has been the scene of many dramatic events of British royalty. There are legends of some 30 ghosts that are supposed to haunt the place. Twelve days after giving birth to the future Edward VI, Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour died there in 1537. Her ghost is said to walk through one of the courtyards carrying a lighted candle. Her son had a nurse called Sibell Penn who was buried in Hampton Church in 1562. The church was pulled down in 1829 and the grave disturbed. An odd whirring noise began to be heard in the southwest wing of the palace around this time. Workmen traced the strange sound to a brick wall which they dismantled. A small room was uncovered containing an old spinning wheel like the one Penn used to use. When operated it made the same kind of whirring sound. The ghost of Henry VIII's fifth wife, Catherine Howard, has been seen running through what is called the Haunted Gallery uttering terrible cries.

The image shown in the vidcam footage of the second alarm is of a man in a long, fur-trimmed black cloak with a hood. He steps out of the shadows in the doorway. One of his hands reaches for the door handle to pull the door shut. The area around the figure seems blurred. His face appears unnaturally white compared with his outstretched hand.

"It was terribly spooky," says James Faukes, one of the palace security guards, about the image. "The face just didn't look human. My first reaction was that someone was having a laugh, no I asked my colleagues to take a look. We spoke to our costumed guides, but they don't own a costume like that worn by the figure. It is actually quite unnerving. "

Poisonous Polly Passings

In recent days you've read here about a police parrot and a preacher parrot. Today we offer a more sobering parrot story. A man in Tegelen, the Netherlands, had been keeping dozens of pet parrots in his home. One day in November 2003 he phoned the local hospital for an ambulance, complaining that he felt ill. When the paramedics arrived they found him dead on the floor of his house, which reeked with foul gas passed by the birds, and with the stench of ammonia from their droppings. The police ruled that the man died of parrot-fume poisoning.

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