I came across an article which puts a valid question in my mind – Is our so called modern science is capable of providing an explanation or atleast have tolerance of accepting different phenomenon, which happen in spirituality and mysticism. In following lines, author “Raywat” is trying to explore one such phenomenon, “inedia” which is to survive without eating or more precisely without measurable energetic input through the case study of a man “Prahlad Jani” who claims of having survived without food for seven decades.

Our current understanding of science is that human body requires regular food to survive and it is not possible to live without it. But if we look around our own nature, and think that if a human can perceive the photosynthesis process which plants use to convert solar energy in to their food (chemical energy) then physically eating food to survive is not required. But in India, the concept of “inedia” is rather associated with religion. Jani himself claims that a goddess blessed him as a child, allowing him to solely live on the magical nectar that flows from a hole in his palate. Although, physical examination of Jani revealed no such hole.

Not only food, it is claimed that Jani has lived for decades without ingesting even a drop of water. But it is mentioned that he gargles daily with water.  He may or may not spit most of it out, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that he is ingesting or atleast absorbing some of it.

Jani has submitted himself to 15 day study by Indian physicians to verify his claim.The report prepared by examiners, does not provide any convincing evidence of Jani’s claim. Moreover, there are implicit flaws in published reports and there is no thorough description of the methods used for the confirmation of Jani’s claims.

After analyzing the study of Jani, the author asks a question to us. Can we finally conclude that Science has successfully proved this outlier phenomenon of “inedia”? I don’t think so. But it is not necessary that if current understanding of science is unable to prove an aspect of spirituality, that phenomenon cannot be possible.

I think science is like a tool which helps in doing a task and in this case it is identifying the truth. But not every tool can do the entire operations. For instance let us take washing machine; there are semi automatic and fully automatic washing machines. Both does the same operation of washing the clothes and drying them but the semi-automatic can do the task only to its capability and automatic with advanced technology can do the work better than semi-automatic.

Likewise science helps us to do the operation of understanding the truth to its capability. But there are things that are out of its reach, to understand them we need a tool which does the operation in a better manner. I feel that tool is spirituality and faith in it. Spirituality has always shown the way to science, although it may have taken some time by science to absorb the facts.  For example, Vedic Astrology has proclaimed about the solar system and 9 planets, thousands of years before, it have been justified by Science.

– Saurabh