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Date Posted: 06:35:58 10/23/05 Sun
Author: H - 29 Aug 2005
Subject: Re: Babaji Truth or Myth?
In reply to: ketch - 29 Aug 2005 's message, "Re: Babaji Truth or Myth?" on 06:30:17 10/23/05 Sun

I have to say I agree with all of your points.

Nevertheless it may be that centuries of devotion at that shrine or object has somehow endowed it with a property which makes it genuine in the consciousness of God.

This could also be the case with the 'stigmata'. These wounds appear sometimes at the same spots and in the same way on the body of various people.

But it may not necessarily indicate that the historical Jesus had identical wounds. Maybe through the suffering of St. Francis or others, or through the physical proximity of some minor chakras, or any other unknown reason a pattern evolves that prompts the wounds to appear at the same spots. It is difficult, maybe impossible to assess such phenomena with our limited means of knowledge.

Btw do you know the strange case of Padre Pio? I once read a very large book on him that consisted mainly of his notebooks and letters.

The simplest explanation for stigmata is of course autosuggestion. Pio indeed wanted to suffer, but it is also true that he was ashamed of his stigmata and didn't want them. At first he experienced terrible pain at the spots where they later would appear. At that time an angel or being of light appeared either in dream or vision and tortured him with a luminous sword at various parts of his body, also inside. He was told that he was to suffer for Christ and the world for fifty years. This happened, and he lived on for exactly fifty years.

And then something remarkable happened. During the last couple of days before his death the stigmata began to slowly decrease in size. On the day of his passing they were still there, though somewhat smaller. But on the dead body they continued to disappear within several days until they were completely healed and no mark was left. The physicians then said that this was medically impossible - existing wounds do not heal after death. And these were serious wounds - he virtually had had a hole in his hand and due to the incessant bleeding had to be bandaged several times a day for decades.

Some time after his death he appeared to one of his disciples in dream and triumphantly proclaimed that suffering goes on in the afterlife as well.

All this rules out mere autosuggestion in the way we understand it. One could think that Pio was all the time in contact or possessed by an immaterial force who brought about many of the strange occurences, autosuggestion and individual effort being rather of secondary relevance.

Some other saints and spiritual teachers were also reported to be under influence of some being or force - e.g. J. Krishnamurti, and perhaps Sai Baba. Krishnamurti would actually speak to 'his' entity in trance-like states even in later life, but he had no idea what it was all about. He suffered from ongoing Kundalini pains, but did not understand its nature either.

There seem to be a lot of such people in India. Here in Germany we have a "Mother Meera" who is from India but married a German man. Apparently she was born with some force surrounding her and many people feel spiritually elevated or fall into meditative states in her presence. Nevertheless she seems to be basically an ordinary woman with lots of faults and prejudice who was groomed for her role by a spiritually ambitious relative.

There were countless miracles reported to Pio and strange occurences you rarely hear of elsewhere. In WWII the area around his monastery was in grave danger through bombing. One of the American pilots who was just approaching the place in his plane suddenly saw right in front of him, in high altitude, a giant apparition of Pio right in the air indicating with a gesture to stay away from this place. He was shocked and changed course. Later he went to the same spot on the ground in order to find out, discovered the monastery there and had a talk with Pio - who he did not know until then but recognised as the image he had seen in front of the plane. I think he became a devotee.

A lot of the miracles attributed to Pio are incredible. For instance, he would answer letters without opening the envelopes because he knew the contents already. These were not exceptions but happened on a daily basis. The Church did not like that and prosecuted him, trying to prove him to be a fraud, but in vain. Now he has been sanctified by John Paul II., I think he had met him in person and back then received some miraculous help from him too. That may have been in times of war.

H

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