Body, Spirit and Soul
The ONGC campus of Vadodara is a large settlement adjacent to a very large, lake like pond to its north. By early seventies, denser housing complexes had sprung up in some areas while others had isolated residential buildings. I occupied isolated residences in the colony during 1973-1983.
By habit and convenience, I was out on a stroll on the deserted roads of the colony every night between 10 and 11. During one of such night walks I came across some airy bodies – invisible but perceptible by touch. I linked their perception and experience with refinement of my jungle sensitiveness through null-mind-meditation for 15–20 minutes just before walking. The meditation lowered the body temperature to 96.5° F and left the mind almost numb for about an hour. I fixed the identity of ethereal bodies with spirits due to innately available feeling of their gender as I touched them. Later, after reaching Brahmic state in early 1981, their perception became routine. Most intriguing fact about them was their very low number in contrast to a normal expectation in some areas. For instance, while I was standing near the tank of village Vayor in Kachchh (Gujarat), during a fieldwork, I walked through a feminine spirit. A little distance away was the monument of a Sati. The spirit reciprocated my regard to Sati, leaving little doubt that the spirit belonged to a revered lady who sat alive on funeral pyre of her husband. There was a surprise, however. The place was a funeral ground, and many more spirits were expected there. How is it that only one was perceptible? A similar experience was from a large graveyard of Muslims in Kachchh. There also I came across a single male spirit. These two encounters with spirits in ’80 left me wondering: why are there only a few ‘active’ spirits among a large number of dead people? Obviously, most people end up with weak or ‘passive’ spirits. An explanation to my query was in sight at Bordeaux during 1983.
During October-November 1983, I was in a small coastal town of Bordeaux in Southern France for seven weeks. My room was booked in Hotel Normandie where I spent about a month and half. The hotel is a renovated mansion of eighteenth century on a wide street adjacent to an extensive artificial beech forest.
I came across a feminine spirit in my room. She could have been legacy of the huge mansion, a spirit from the adjacent forest or some one who committed suicide in the hotel recently. On the second or third day, I asked the Spanish manager of the hotel “ Has some one committed suicide in the hotel lately?” He replied in negative. He was with the hotel for the last twenty years. His answer settled the issue. My ethereal room partner was there since long. Very likely, she was a spirit from the mini-jungle of beech between the 30 Juillet street and La Garonne’ Estuary. She was hungry both for food and sex, but posed little problems for me. She remained confined to the hotel while I was on tour in Spain and welcomed me when I returned.
Some fifteen days before my departure from Bordeaux, I was shopping for sundry items. With little knowledge of French, I was stuck with a shopkeeper. His daughter arrived shortly after hearing our conversation and helped me, in English, about the price of the material already purchased. My shopping was over quickly with her help. Some days later, I received a letter from my wife enquiring if I met some female on a specific date. Her perception was right about a female interfering with the bond between us, though younger in age than my son and interacting for no more than five minutes.
A few days after the incidence, a strong feeling stirred my mind. The two individuals represented the same soul in my psychic identification. The girl in the shop was not different from the spirit in my room. The whole affair kept me nagging for a few days without an explanation for tying up the identity between an ethereal spirit in my room and the beautiful girl in the shop. They were not only materially different but their behavior was also contrasting. The spirit was starved while the happy young girl showed no trace of starvation in her eyes. Again, the girl, as a physical entity, disrupted the psychic linkage between my wife and me within five minutes whereas the spirit, present with me ever since my entry in the hotel, posed no problems between us. Body with soul behaves differently from the spirit, I concluded.
Paradox of the situation was that the teenaged was unaware of her link with the spirit and the spirit had no knowledge about her new reincarnation. Only the omniscient soul knew and supported them both for its own gains and possibly took me to the shop by a subconscious prompt. My ultimate conclusion was: the spirit and body belonged to a single soul and it was the soul, which severed the husband-wife linkage between two other souls, that is, between my wife and me. In comparison to a body, a spirit was a deficient object bereft of feelings among the living. The soul was mainly with the body but also linked to the spirit of past some how. My perceptions about identity of the object related to soul. Hence the spirit and the girl were felt as the same. The soul was not only enjoying food with a physical body but also gathering psychic food though ‘active’ and perceptible spirit.The spirit was rather perennial while the physical self of the girl was ephemeral.
A speculation was now possible about the birth or origin of spirits. Powerful souls like Sati of Vayor, Muslim male of Kachchh graveyard or the banshee of Hotel Normandie had rejected worldly enjoyments while living and took to penance for accelerated growth of their spirits either knowingly or by a subconscious prompting. Such persons become ‘active’ spirits after death and imbibe psychic food from living people around. Others become passive spirits after their death, unable to lift the food of consciousness from living persons. Technically, passive spirit population represents mostly primitive and world-indulgent souls.
Spirits have an invaluable role during reproductive phase between a pair of individuals of opposite sex when they are physically far apart and pairing is hampered. Spirits or astral bodies separate out of the physical body and remain paired for transfer of energy. My wife at Vadodara and I at Bordeaux were linked through our spirits while I was in France. The Banshee, a bodiless spirit of past, would not disrupt this linkage while drawing energy from me because her intake of consciousness energy is through astral-body route. The strong soul of the teenager, with a comparatively weaker spirit, disrupted the equilibrium of our system by drawing energy from me through the same route of antahkaran as that of my wife. She cut off my wife from me due to nearness of her physical body. In the world of spirits or astral bodies there is a rule: a male cannot deny conjugal pairing to a desiring female of equal potency and closer the couple more effective their interaction.
Lifespan of spirits may exceed 700 years, like the Mevlana of Konya in Turkey (14), visited by me in 1996. Tomb of an ‘active’ Chishti of Ajmer and similar spots constitute exalted places of worship in India. Among Hindus, I have come across some powerful spirits in temples along with their living counterparts in the same town, comparable with the duo of Banshee and the shop-girl at Bordeaux. Even some Samadhi-sthals have powerful spirits, ‘living’ since long.