Thread: What Tibetan Monks Can Do

Another one is, a Tibetan monk can (occasionally) go weeks without eating. They drop into a state of deep meditation, almost a stasis, and their bodies slow down to the point where they actually don't need food.

Is this the same kind of meditation that Shirley MacClaine used to keep warm while in the mountains in her book?
selkiegirl

No clue. Possibly?

I'd like to actually see them do these things, but I expect gatecrashing their temples and stuff is highly frowned upon.

They can also raise there body heat with a type of meditation called g Tum-mo.

ive never heard of anything like this

do you have the link to the article?

that's cool. would like to read further. link!

urbandiscount.vox.com/library/post/tummo.html

Originally Posted by juroara

ive never heard of anything like this

do you have the link to the article?

Originally Posted by european son

that's cool. would like to read further. link!

I am not entirely where I read it, it was definitely a chinese article, but it could be from the internet or sections of a random book I came across...

I'll find it eventually.

Originally Posted by Tsiyeria

Another one is, a Tibetan monk can (occasionally) go weeks without eating. They drop into a state of deep meditation, almost a stasis, and their bodies slow down to the point where they actually don't need food.

Really? I didn't know that, looks like I needa get into the background more.

Originally Posted by selkiegirl

Is this the same kind of meditation that Shirley MacClaine used to keep warm while in the mountains in her book?
selkiegirl

I think yeh it's kind of like Yoga meditation . Alternatively, Chinese Qi Gong is to an extent similar to that and can also raise body heat (but it's not primarily intended for raising temperature.)

Originally Posted by gagaku

They can also raise there body heat with a type of meditation called g Tum-mo.

There you go, but is "g Tum-mo" (whatever that means lol) yoga?

Originally Posted by jimothyjim

I'd like to actually see them do these things, but I expect gatecrashing their temples and stuff is highly frowned upon.

lol this reminded me instantly of Jim Carey busting into the Larma temple in Ace Ventura rofl

There's an exercise similar to this I have heard of where you create an entity over the course of a while.

Its an interesting one. I wonder about the possible dangers.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I think Tibetan Buddhism which has roots in the Bon religion is quite based on the elements. Earth, fire, water etc. Tummo appears to be increasing the fire element in the body.

Have you read Franz Bardon? His system is also based on the elements and he describes step by step how to work with them. There's a YouTube video of a guy doing one of Bardon's exercises here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_scRKbD4xw

I think its real personally.

edit: I just watched it again and it looks like he dowsed the candle wick with something flammable like paraffin. But still, it worked huh! This particular exercise actually uses both the fire and the air element together, not just fire as might be expected.

A search for 'tummo' on youtube comes up with some interesting videos too.

I have this really old book which was sent by Reader's Digest (My parents subscribed to it ages ago ) and in the "Paranormal" chapter there is a big article (extracted from a single Reader's article) on Tibetan Monks using yoga to control body heat.

Here's the rough english translation (this is my own translation ):

A Tibetan monk's control of body heat using yoga

"It is quite a phenomenal feat you would unlikely come-across to endure an entire frozen Winter in a snow-covered cave at a harsh altitude of 11000 to 18000 feet!" wrote Alexandra David-Neel in the late 1920s.

She added: "There are numerous hidden Tibetan meditating-masters able of such a demanding & tough feat who are not known to most of us."

Alexandra outlined the "keeping warm in snow" technique in the book she brought together with the collective experience that she gathered from 14 years of travelling-living in Tibet.

She pointed-out that the endurance came from "power arising from a certain well-practised yoga technique" and elaborated that:

"This yoga techique is heat/warmth-related, which is; however; not conveyed as everyday conventional heat of warmth in the words of original Tibetan language. It is instead an exclusive term used by this mystical movement......

This skill is top secret to the everyone but the Larmas; who treat it with extreme caution; tasked to pass this yoga technique on. They also claim that training the technique by lecturing and from specialised books do not have any solid practical effect, beginners must be mentored by experienced predecessors in order to see successful results.

Sometimes believers training this technique have to undergo a test to officically complete the study.
On moonlit cold-breezed nights, faithful students who believe they can pass the test are led to the river banks or lakeside. If the river or lake is frozen holes would be carved into the ice sheet.

The faithful students would cross their legs like that in a typical Buddhist-Larma-Hindhu meditation, drop to the floor totally naked lol.
Then they would soak their duvets (blankets) in the icy water and immediately wrap the ice-cold duvets around their bodies; they then attempt to dry them off by raising their body heat.
Once the duvets dry off they soak them back in the icy water and so on repeating the whole process again until dawm....

There is rumour that some can dry 40 duvets in a single night (wow better than your average drying machines! LMAO ). This figure is probably over-exaggerated or miniscule garments might have be used lol. That said, I've seen some monks drying a large amount of long-scarf-size garments....
[these monks wears a single cotton apparel; regardless of the seasons and no matter how high the altitude is from sea-level.]

To what extent this yoga technique training is capable of unlocking forbidden human potential is a question of abstract uncertainty and of discretion. However what is certain is that there are evidently numerous monks "in hiding" without clothes or merely clothed in the simplest imaginable manner; witnessed by many more other than myself. Rumour has it that these monks were sighed by expedition teams on their way of challenging the 'Mount of Saint Mary' (Mount Everest)."

[Alexandra David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet, pp.216-29]

Originally Posted by apachama

There's an exercise similar to this I have heard of where you create an entity over the course of a while.

Its an interesting one. I wonder about the possible dangers.

Really? Yes! I'm now sure I didn't get this idea from a dream LOL.
I want to hear more, tell me about it .
Where did you hear it? We might have got it from the same source.

The idea of creating an entity just sounds so creepy and phenomenal to me, it's practically literally creating a spirit ... sounds reasonably dangerous to me lol Gives me the bumps!

This is one guide. I'm not sure to what extent I believe this. But its an interesting idea to compartmentalise a bit of your personality as an other for one reason or another.

Originally Posted by juroara

ive never heard of anything like this

do you have the link to the article?

Originally Posted by european son

that's cool. would like to read further. link!

Originally Posted by apachama

There's an exercise similar to this I have heard of where you create an entity over the course of a while.

Its an interesting one. I wonder about the possible dangers.

Originally Posted by apachama

This is one guide. I'm not sure to what extent I believe this. But its an interesting idea to compartmentalise a bit of your personality as an other for one reason or another.

Apart from the one apachma posted above, I found this one here: http://www.akasha.de/meditations.html but I've noticed that this site decribes the excercise on a sim ple level (if the high-skill level even exists...), i.e. thought-processes that we do on an everday basis; I mean of course we all have the good and evil conscience in the form of an "entity" in us...

An interesting thing I have noticed. A druid friend of mine thinks that visualising in meditation is dangerous. The FWBO have a special ritual for visualising boddhisattvas practiced only by initiated order members.

But other religious groups visualise all the time. I think this might be a simple thing. Maybe a simple bundle of thoughts as a not very complex exercise can be done. But it will not be anywhere near as complex or interesting as what happens when creating a thought form is undertaken as a more serious, difficult and dangerous task.

nothing? no article? nothing?

how do I know you aren't just making up that you read this somewhere? I can't seem to find anything online and something crazy like this usually would be online

how long ago did you read this?

Originally Posted by juroara

nothing? no article? nothing?

how do I know you aren't just making up that you read this somewhere? I can't seem to find anything online and something crazy like this usually would be online

how long ago did you read this?

lol well you don't know, and probs won't know unless I actually locate the article.

But obviously I am not as lame as to waste precious time posting something I made up only to get attention or get more views or post counts; but then whether you choose to buy that is at your own discretion lol

Hmmm.....I'd say no more than 1&1/2 years ago; it's something that would be stuck with me even if I read it 10 years ago.

I think it's normal for anyone to hold doubt in this, I mean even I do lol. But then we just aren't always conscious of the fact that we know such minisculy little amount about our universe (& nothing of other universes; if they exist!).

I mean just look at all the paradoxes, phenomena and unsolved mysteries that have risen over the time period of intelligable communication and human dominance (which is but less-than a trillionth of a fraction compared to the history of our universe....that we know of)- aliens adbuctions, dejavus, being at two places simultaneously, how the universe came about, the mystery of the afterlife, super-human powers, OBEs, prophecies, shocking coincidents, time as 4th dimension, multi-universes as extra dimensions, what lies beyond the bounds of the universe.......you name it!

We really have to start to be broader and more liberal in our mindsets- it's not easy to accept "seeing is not always believing" and "seeing is not the only way to believe" in reality), that'll bring about a lot more acceptance in a shorter time period.

Who knows? Maybe the Dream World is another dimension or a separate universe, or maybe the many strange non-existent places in dreams are in fact existing places in a "blue planet" with intelligence (the odds of other habitable planets inhabited by intelligence in universe is actually almost certain (and the number of such numbers in the millions); you'll know if you read Bill Bryson's A short history of almost everything.)

There's a bit on it here just to show this is a genuine Tibetan practice.

Tibetan monks...

words...

Originally Posted by apachama

There's a bit on it here just to show this is a genuine Tibetan practice.

Bingo! Dang it that's it! Thanks for your link Apachama! It was an article in Mysteries of the Unexplained ISBN 0-89577-146-2. Page 176 , published by Reader's Digest Association.
I thought I did, but couldn't find the page in it.

Just to make things easier, here's the actual excerpt from the book; which is also on the wikipedia link that Apachama provided:

There are... apparitions that make public appearances. Some of these are said to be the perceptible double—the etheric counterpart—of a living person who is undergoing an out-of-body experience. Even more mysterious are the externalized perceptible manifestations of something whose existence originated in the mind of its creator by virtue of that person's incredible powers of concentration, visualization, and other, more occult, efforts of the mind. In Tibet, where such things are practiced, a ghost of this kind is called a tulpa. A tulpa is usually produced by a skilled magician or yogi, although in some cases it is said to arise from the collective imagination of superstitious villagers, say, or of travelers passing through some sinister tract of country.

And here is the excerpt of The Tibetan book of the great liberation" by Evans-Wentz (1954: p.29) ; discussing tulku (or nirmanakaya) and tulpa:

Inasmuch as the mind creates the world of appearances, it can create any particular object desired. The process consists of giving palpable being to a visualization, in very much the same manner as an architect gives concrete expression in three dimensions to his abstract concepts after first having given them expression in the two-dimensions of his blue-print. The Tibetans call the One Mind's concretized visualization the Khorva (Hkhorva), equivalent to the Sanskrit Sangsara; that of an incarnate deity, like the Dalai or Tashi Lama, they call a Tul-ku (Sprul-sku), and that of a magician a Tul-pa (Sprul-pa), meaning a magically produced illusion or creation. A master of yoga can dissolve a Tul-pa as readily as he can create it; and his own illusory human body, or Tul-ku, he can likewise dissolve, and thus outwit Death. Sometimes, by means of this magic, one human form can be amalgamated with another, as in the instance of the wife of Marpa, guru of Milarepa, who ended her life by incorporating herself in the body of Marpa.

I've the entire article since I own the Reader's Digest book lol, but because it's in chinese I'll need to do some personal translation.

It'll be posted soon- ~coming soon~