No food or water for 70 years for Indian Yogi

[malaise]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgD_4OGdXA8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMLFLhw3UGs&feature=related

Unbelievable!

[SpiralHawk]

1. There you have it.

This is a key part of the Billionaire Republicon budget plan for 'feeding' the hungry.

[malaise]

2. LOL

If you believe it is possible - man run son solar energy :rofl:

[SpiralHawk]

3. "Think of the budgetary savings? We could afford more tax cuts for the rich." - Republicons

"Ve vill MAKE it work."

- Billionaire RepubliCorp FatCats & Allied Cabal O' Corrupt Cronies (R)

[Uben]

8. Hey! That cat's got some scratch!

I haven't seen that much money since I paid my taxes!

[Silent3]

4. Mmmmmm... brain nectar!

I wonder if it would make a good dessert topping?

[SpiralHawk]

5. Amrita

Soul Honey

[Silent3]

6. Also relieves coughing and soothes sore throats.

Maybe the guy just has a hive of bees in his skull, and they're slipping away bringing back pollen that he indirectly feeds on. :)

[edhopper]

7. The woo woo

is strong with this one.

Yes, quite unbelievable.

[SpiralHawk]

9. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Hoppratio..." - Hamlet

[edhopper]

10. Now is the emphasis on the word

"philosophy" or the word "your"? Is Hamlet questioning one man's philosophy, or the notion that philosophy or scholars, which Horatio is, have any real answers? Shakespeare is wonderful to interpret and reinterpret.

[SpiralHawk]

12. "One man's woo is another man's true." - Hawklet

[edhopper]

22. From the profound

to the inane.

[SpiralHawk]

26. Taking ourselves extra seriously are we?

[edhopper]

27. I wasn't comparing my statements to yours,

I was comparing to Shakespeare's quote to your follow up.
Let me know if you need further explanation.

[Warren DeMontague]

57. Apparently.

Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, meet Garbage Can.

[Cetacea]

102. Science hasn't exactly been innocent of the woo

from time to time...

[buddysmellgood]

11. Immediately after the interview, the yogi asked for what he calls "yum yums" and "splishy splishy"

[dmallind]

13. and yet in the runup to yesterday we were constantly chided that only

a tiny fringe believe patently absurd things. Seems to be running about 25% here so far, for something even more absurd than a possible rapture. For while raptures are per se risible, we have no objective evidence proving they are impossible. This crap, we have.

[originalpckelly]

14. What, he doesn't expel vapor when he breathes?

What about sweating?

It would seem, that unless he has a well inside of him, there would be a limit to this, even without urination or defecation.

[dmallind]

15. And in other news, David Copperfield has misplaced the Statue of Liberty...

Not a single DUer would even pause for a second to consider that claim being factual, but give a mountebank magician brown skin and a foreign name and some actually buy it. I wonder if it works in reverse? Do Nepalese woo-woo fans seek the inscrutable wisdom of David Blaine's mystical oneness with the universal consciousness?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

84. No brown skin needed

Remember Uri Geller?

[dmallind]

86. Good point. Did have the weird name though ;) nt

[FLPanhandle]

16. "Unbelievable!" is correct.

Unless the person watching those videos only has a couple of working brain cells, then maybe, just maybe, it's believable to them.

[Odin2005]

17. A lot of these Indian yogis are scammers and cultists.

[mopinko]

23. i saw some crazy things while i was there. hopeless people

grasp at straws. flowers for vishnu and a rupee in the collection box, and maybe you will get lucky.
there are 4 guys right now who are claimed to be the current incarnation of vishnu. i went to one's temple. it cost $42M. it is full of marble and gold. built on the rupees of people with nothing.
i found it quite despicable.

[Odin2005]

25. And New Age idiots think Indians are such wise, enlightened people.

[mopinko]

38. very superstitious.

belief in hinduism, belief in astrology, belief in herbal cures, belief in luck. but to be so hopeless, you must have a layer of remove, a last hope.
where i was it was brutality and depravation pretty much at the limit. pretty much like slum dog millionaire, actually. very much.
hard, hard, hard.

[fernhill]

92. And you have the authority to call people 'idiots?' I guess you would laugh at Einstein, then...

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

[malaise]

28. Same with all snake oil salesmen in all

religions.

[dmallind]

87. fakers the lot of 'em (yeah yeah I know....) nt

[neverforget]

18. so he's a perpetual motion machine?

[WinkyDink]

19. Right.

[Duer 157099]

20. Maybe he's a mutant

and his skin is capable of substantial moisture transport into his body, and his skin cells have also developed a non-chlorophyll based system of photosynthesis?

It could happen.

[Ikonoklast]

21. So, the guy's been dead for 70 years.

What's the big deal?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

24. yeah. another religious scammer. nt

[Poll_Blind]

29. He also "...miraculously generates urine in his bladder even though he does....

...not drink" and he claims to have "a hole in his palate through which a drop or two of nectar passes and which helps him survive."

Dude...

And anyone who believes that also has a hole in their palate. I'm all for mind over body and the powers of meditation but...Oh, right, I was looking for the right word: But not bullshit.

PB

[50000feet]

30. Scientifically possibly feasible, that's for sure.

Food and water, like any matter, is but a frequency pattern of energy. All it would take to synthesize any matterlike thing at all is to form energy in a manner the body could assimilate and use. All one would need is a supply of energy. That energy could come from the sun, but one needn't go even that far. Virtual energy arising from the zero-point field is quite sufficient. There is, in scientific fact, more such energy in a single cubic centimetre of space than there exists in all regular matter (not counting even dark matter or energy) existing in the currently known universe.

Formation of energy into matter goes by the name of physics. The only question, it seems to me, is whether there exists in the human constitution the ability to form matter for use, whether as food, water, nutrients, etc. To those who say there is no such ability, prove it.

[originalpckelly]

31. No, sorry, it's not.

He's not fucking green. And even photosynthesis needs water.

[50000feet]

39. Last time I looked,

water is energy also. Ya? Everything once was hydrogen, and before that light. Water, ergo, came from light.

[originalpckelly]

62. You obviously have no clue how photosynthesis works.

Yes, it does have to do with water and hydrogen and light.

[FLPanhandle]

34. LOL

50,000ft? You best come down for some oxygen.

[50000feet]

41. (breathing)

I know it might sound ludicrous, but what do we really know? But a few hundred years ago, Newton (and much of the rest of the scientific world) thought matter was eternal, unbreakable, composed of some sort of impenetrable lastingness. That root idea turned out to be spectacularly wrong. I have no confidence that root ideas underlying current scientific conceptions won't themselves, despite people like Hawking, be demonstrated spectacularly wrong.

Beyond that, quantum teleportation has proven that matter can be reformed without energetic means (ie, without crashing matter-bits together in high-energy collisions). All I'm talking is something very similarly that, non-energetic (informational) material reformation.

[WinkyDink]

68. Yeah, this guy's a regular Isaac Newton.

[Ikonoklast]

91. More like his lesser-known brother,

Fig.

[FLPanhandle]

93. Yes it does sound ludicrous.

As does your "scientific" explanation. It's obvious the extent of your science background is the internet. It's all bullshit.

Stop embarrassing yourself.

[trotsky]

40. The only known mechanism by which the body - ANY animal body - obtains energy....

is by the consumption of food. YOU are the one proposing an alternative method. You are the one with the burden of proof.

[50000feet]

43. Well, if the yogi guy isn't a fraud,

and I don't know if he or the story producers are, I've given a reasonable explanation. Personally, I hesitate to say "the only known mechanism ..." The statement might be true relative to your knowledge, but I don't see how you can speak for everyone now and past existing. That'sa lotta knowledge.

[Ikonoklast]

46. So, you think this guy can repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

Occam's Razor comes to mind.

[50000feet]

47. Your post sounds so 1950s. Err, 1850s.

Does quantum teleportation repeal the second law of thermodynamics? That phenomenon is a lab-demonstrated, non-energetic means of (re)forming matter and energy. The Second Law remains intact for the limiting contexts to which it can apply.

[Ikonoklast]

48. His corporeal existence is the limiting frame of reference.

[50000feet]

50. Corporeality

is but an energy wave-pattern and, in the quantum context, information. I don't see a problem.

Imagine telling an upstanding Newtonian of the 18th century about quantum non-locality. He'd think you crazy. We all know what happened to Newtonian physics.

[Ikonoklast]

55. Define the mechanism with which he absorbs 'energy'.

[jberryhill]

66. I always get a kick out of people who have never taken an actual course in advanced physics

...but who seem to have a handwaving explanation of just about anything relating to it.

Let's see, there have been gazillions of fraudulent Indian gurus, Breathairians, and other ascetic frauds.

But THIS guy is a reactor for outstandingly energetic physical processes.

Yah right.

[50000feet]

97. Let me give you

a little historiographical handwaving of recent scientific history. About 200 years ago, we, as upstanding Newtonians, thought the world was composed of eternal, indestructible matter-bits floating in absolute space through absolute time. The Three Absolutes of Newton.

Those absolutes formed the basis of Newton's idea of what the universe is made of---those floaty indestructible matterbits and what they do etc.

Though Newtonian theory remains relevant as a limiting case within both relativity and quantum physics, the Newtonian understanding of the stuff of the universe was proven completely wrong ... completely.

There's an important implication residing there. It's this: from within the Newtonian world-space, nobody could have predicted quantum non-locality, non-simultaneity, etc. Nobody.

Now zoom out in time. 200 years is virtually nothing in evolutionary time. Thus in the current state of science, we have an idea of process-to-date of over a minimum of billions of years, trillions+ and verging on infinity if you follow someone like Penrose.

The Second Law, for its part, is a tool useful for very young primates as we are. Tell me what the Second Law will predict will be our understanding of the stuff of the universe in a million years. Or a billion. Or ten billion. Or a trillion. The limited context in which the Second Law will prove (approximately) correct will, in any of those timeframes, be so small as to not even merit attention.

Those who say this yogi is a fraud do not know as they say they do. They're merely assuming he is.

[jberryhill]

98. Let me give you some advice

Get some actual physics under your belt before you lecture about it.

[50000feet]

104. Thanks for the advice,

but I've read enough science.

I also enjoy philosophy. I like where Arthur Schopenhauer says:

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Keep your eye on that Second Law, ey?

[50000feet]

81. The mechanism would probably be

consciousness. I accept, per some of the posts here, that I haven't explained anything, really, but have merely pointed to possibilities as a reasonable way forward to explain the yogi phenomenon, if it's true. For those aware of how any thought system advances, including how science advances, it's the exception that proves the new rule. It's thus those who trade in exceptions---those who think outside the box---that lead scientific advance.

A step back from this edge is the currently "known" where most people prefer to huddle. Huddling is safe. Someone who suggests something paradigm-changing is typically treated as a threat because that something threatens the safety of a worldview. Look at the emotional responses to my suggestions.

There was some scientist, Lord whoever he was, who in the early 1900s in a lecture to physics students attempted to persuade prospective students from entering the study of physics because, as he said, we've pretty much got it wrapped up. This is a true Hawking statement made at the zenith of Newtonian advance where, as Lord who's his face said---Lord Kelvin, I think, no slouch in physics---there exist but two clouds on the horizon, blackbody radiation and the Morley-Michelson. Those two clouds cannibalized Newtonian physics and rendered it but a limiting case in a new and very different scientific worldview.

Blackbody radiation, of course, became quantum physics. Here's a statement from the physicist who figured the blackbody problem out, Max Planck:

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

If what Planck says is true, then consciousness could, yes, be the very mechanism by which the yogi---who has himself dedicated himself to consciousness development---"absorbs energy."

[Confusious]

89. Your explanation is completely unreasonable. nt

[tkmorris]

56. Nonsense

Quantum teleportation has NOT been demonstrated to do what you are claiming, nor can it be said to be non-energetic.

[SidDithers]

80. Woo woo credo # 10

Use the word quantum in a sentence, despite not knowing what it means. For a more impressive effect, use it with the name of your favorite superstition - "quantum dowsing" sure sounds mighty serious.

http://www.insolitology.com/tests/credo.htm

:rofl:

Sid

[trotsky]

49. I'll await your proof.

That's how this works.

[MattBaggins]

103. He hasn't googled "Scientific Method" yet

He just learned quantum so give him some time.

[Obamanaut]

64. "If" you say? nt

[GreenArrow]

71. "a reasonable explanation"

Yours have actually been the only scientifically curious posts on this thread. I think it's a lot more instructive to look at how something like this could be true -- whether it is or not -- than to reflexively label it as impossible; a lot of doors are closed that way.

[EstimatedProphet]

78. Uh...no.

Posts making a generalized handwaving exercise saying things like "Everything is energy, and it's just a matter of moving energy around, so problem solved" provide nothing in the way of scientific analysis. That's like saying the mechanism by which cars operate is by putting gas in them, and then they go. It adds nothing to the discussion.

[50000feet]

82. Thank you, GA,

and I know that. That which is new always arrives unproven until it is. Even one as open and innovative as Einstein couldn't get with non-locality. As a culture we have barely begun to integrate what something like non-locality implies. To my mind, it implies a considerable shift in scientific thinking where information---not energy (Einstein), not mass (Newton)---takes centre stage as the new organizing principle. My guess? Energy will be rendered a function of information, and mass a function if informationalized energy, or some such.

[trotsky]

94. "That which is new always arrives unproven until it is."

But that's the thing - you're not proving anything. You're insisting it's everyone else's job to prove you wrong. Follow your own advice here and offer up some evidence to support your assertion. Propose a mechanism by which this is possible. Conduct an experiment to duplicate the results. C'mon, what are you waiting for?

[EstimatedProphet]

99. Your guess?

Thank you for proving our point. You're guessing about all of this, and trying to call it science.

Look, guess as to how you think the universe works all you want. Whatever gets you off, go ahead. But claiming that your guessing is backed up by science is simply not true. I also think that the universe is made up of energy, and that matter is just a form of energy that is acting slower. But I can still think that all I want, and that will never be an explanation for what the yogi does that gets him around the laws of thermodynamics. You're not demonstrating anything at all, you're just saying that the laws of thermodynamics don't matter because you don't think they do.

[Confusious]

90. Uh, no

You've opened the door so much you let your brains fall out.

[EstimatedProphet]

75. "Well, if the yogi guy isn't a fraud,..."

"...and I don't know if he or the story producers are,"

This part is true.

"...I've given a reasonable explanation."

This part is not true.

A reasonable explanation doesn't include technology so advanced as to be magic, or outright magic for that matter. What you described is unrestrained speculation.

[Name removed]

100. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Odin2005]

45. LOL WUT???

[PVnRT]

60. Here we go, another "prove me wrong" bullshit post

I'm starting to think many DUers just don't grasp basic logical concepts.

There is no known mechanism for condensing energy from the environment into a solid form for use by living creatures. That would violate the second law of thermodynamics, which is actual physics. The only point in the history of the universe where energy became solid matter was shortly after the Big Bang, when there was enough weirdness going on for that to happen without violating the second law.

"Virtual energy arising from the zero-point field..." Are you just typing random quantumy words now? "Virtual energy" comes from particles and antiparticles coming into existence and annihilating each other. The amount of energy is extremely low and averages to zero over time, unless this yogi is a black hole, slowly evaporating away.

[trotsky]

95. You aren't attacking someone for their beliefs now, are you?

;-)

"I'm starting to think many DUers just don't grasp basic logical concepts."

You don't have to think it anymore. Know it.

[Obamanaut]

65. If your job requires you to take a random pee test, call in sick for a

couple of days. If the test is today, you'll fail.

[WinkyDink]

67. Insanity.

[snooper2]

73. "a frequency pattern of energy"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

The really funny thing is you are probably 100% series with this shit :rofl:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

74. The woo, it is strong in this one.

:crazy:

[EstimatedProphet]

76. OK... HOW?

HOW would one through willpower alone form sunlight into matter that would provide food for a human body?

[SidDithers]

79. Nice...

:thumbsup:

Sid

[Confusious]

88. Is that suppose to be sarcasm?

Because I'm taking it as such, because if I didn't, I would have to say.....

[Stevenmarc]

32. Even without solid food in his system he sounds like he's full of shit

[aikoaiko]

33. The trick is acai berry enemas. There's more than one way into the alimentary canal.

oy!

[alarimer]

35. He's a fraud.

It is impossible for it to be true.
The only likely explanation is that he is a complete fraud.

[undeterred]

36. Is he related to that guy who never cut his fingernails?

:yoiks:

[Quantess]

37. Ooh! Another religious charlatan.

Next, he's going to cash in by announcing the day the world ends.

[backscatter712]

42. This story fails the laugh test...

:rofl:

I'm sorry, but this story is pure unadulterated horseshit!

Nothing but woo-woo to see here!

He creates urine in his bladder even though he doesn't drink anything? If you believe that, I've got beachfront property in Arizona I'd like to sell you...

[Vehl]

44. Fraud

lol India has, from the most ancient days, produced true yogis and fakes.

This guy is but carrying on the tried and true fake yogi tradition :P

[KittyWampus]

51. Cryptobiosis- learned that very word here on DU last week:

"A physiological state in which metabolic activity is reduced to an undetectable level without disappearing altogether. It is known in certain plant and animal groups adapted to survive periods of extremely dry conditions"

[GoneOffShore]

52. Absolutely unbelievable - And I don't believe it.

Pure bullshit.

[athenasatanjesus]

53. Whats India's Mainstream media like?

And how mainstream were the networks that were reporting on this?

[athenasatanjesus]

54. Dupe

And how mainstream were the networks that were reporting on this?

[Warren DeMontague]

58. unbelievable is right.

as in, I think it's bullshit.

[MilesColtrane]

59. There's a twinkie stash involved somewhere.

[CBGLuthier]

61. You are correct. It is unbelievable as in I don't believe it

[hobbit709]

63. If you believe that, I got some bridges to sell.

[Yo_Mama]

69. And any one who believes this....

should certainly not be laughing at the end-of-the-world people.

[dionysus]

70. rofl, what a buncha bullshit...

:rofl:

[blindpig]

72. Exactly.

Unbelievable.

[Ganja Ninja]

77. Why can't all poor people live like him?

Greedy bastards!:silly:

[H2O Man]

83. "Unbelievable" is correct.

[Xithras]

85. What a coincidence! My co-worker has survived three years without food or water.

Since his divorce three years ago, he's survived on soda, pre-preprocessed boxed crap, and McDonalds. Not one bit of real food, and not one glass of water.

[AlecBGreen]

96. very simple way to find out for sure

Conduct a controlled experiment. Should take a week to know one way or the other, right?

[malaise]

101. It's BS

and we should call it just that

[50000feet]

105. Geez, guys,

it looks to me that this mere possibility, having floated into your worldviews, struck so many of you like the monolith floating into a tribe of primates. Beat the darn thing into submission.

You on my wavelength here, Stanley?