PRATIBHA PATIL AND SPIRITUAL INDIA-3...

In politics, the opposition will never miss the chance to attack the present presidential candidate, Pratibha Patil but why is the media jumping into it without any investigation ?

It is because it is tabloidized and is not expected to be rational or intellectual. Or is the media under some corrosive foreign influence which has hatched a conspiracy to ruin India culturally?

I have spoken of two experiences both of which were one time affairs. But the third experience was more thorough and could be examined in depth.

Let me give a brief encounter here.

A woman seven or more years younger to me in age was addressed as “MAA” by devotees whom I met in week-end bhajans in Shillong in 1962/63. It appeared rather odd to me and I could never understand why people senior to her in age by twenty or more years even did that. I asked them why they addressed her that way and they said that when she got into trance, she spoke in the Bengali dialect of Shantipur, which is pure music to my ears, and became supernormal.

The Shantipur dialect is what I understood without the help of any interpreter. I waited to have that experience and expected , very rightly, too see the phenomenon many times since it was taking place in the familiar gathering where I was a constant attendee.

It happened one day when while singing bhajans at normal pitch reached a supernormal pitch which till today is unbelievable.  But since it happened many times in subsequent weeks, I had no doubt about this being supernormal.

Before the bhajans, she was a normal woman with her love for ornaments, good dress giving me tea, my addiction. But after the bhajans started, which she led, she was a transformed person. Her voice reached its crescendo and her body shivered till she lapsed into silence, closed her eyes which had developed some eerie, strange looks.

I could observe all this from a distance of only about five feet. Then she came out of her trance and started speaking in her Sylheti Bengali and not Shantipur Bengali . After the trance she returned to her normal self which always was like a terrible anti climax.

By all accounts, she was a very normal woman with nothing supernormal ever showing when she was not in a trance state. What she said in her trance did impress me immensely.

Sample the following.

1) She told a woman in her mid thirties to be careful about her mother. It surprised her and others as her mother was normal. Most unexpectedly few days after, she developed some health complication. It took many months for her mother to get cured partly.

2)A male approached her with his wife and showed the hands of his wife which had become crooked. It would never be cured because it was the result of the karma of her past life “MAA” said. It appeared normal to me but when she launched into exposition of the laws of Karma like an erudite scholar, I was taken aback.

3)My own marriage was getting fixed then and the talks had reached an advanced stage. One day, she suddenly said in her trance that it would never take place. I could not believe her. But she proved right.

4)The maternal sweetness she exuded and musical intonation of Bengali she spoke always contrasted with her Sylheti Bengali in the non normal state.

5) There were innumerable instances week after week when people waited for her to get into trance. Her own father and mother also addressed her as “MAA”.

Brahmachari Krishna Datta

In Delhi, we had the very impressive example of Brahamchari Krishan Datta regarded by his followers as a re-incarnation of Shringi Rishi in present age in trance. I saw it once. I met him in the drawing room of a devotee of his and he talked like a peasant with no sophistication or scriptural knowledge. Then he suddenly got up and went to the lawns where a carpet was spread on which he lied down, his body shivering. He covered his body with a chaddar or bed sheet and started with a different voice and at such an uncomfortable speed that I could not understand most of it.

Those days, I was in government service and could not squeeze time to go a second time. But even today, there are institutions built in his name and there is literature and even videos.

I have not examined it.

His devotees called it absolutely supernormal. Someone should investigate into it thoroughly as it is available in recorded form in Delhi. There were thousands in Delhi and western UP believing in him and they raised him to a great divine status.

The experience of Pratibha Patil resembles and comes nearest to this example of Brahmachari Brahma Dutt.

Post trance anti climax

I must sound a warning here. All the cases I have seen of such trances, are mostly of women. Their post trance behaviour always amused me. I know that many of them could not stay in that conditions for many years. There was some very unpleasant side to it all also, they being human beings.

(28 June 2007)