[Advaita-l] Paranormal Experiences

[vijay kartik]

I would fully discount all such narrations which are not in the publications supported or blessed by the respective institutions. 
Many members would have noted the numerous "spiritual" journals that the many media houses (esp. Tamil ) have started in the last decade. Just to give spice and sensationalism to the concerned devotee group, these journals keep pouring out fanciful accounts of episodes supposed to have really taken place.
To add credibility, some of these are supposedly authored by persons who were close to the guru concerned. It is quite amusing to read these stories which are typically written in highly dramatic style , racier narrations than even suspense novels, building up the tempo and fervour step by step and never ends without a grand finish.
The main aim of these narrations is to deliver an interesting episode week after week and keep the interested devotees waiting for the next issue.

The funnier part is these stories also become authentic inputs for the numerous blog sites and internet forums for the devotees who unwittingly forward and re-forward to all possible places.

I would always discount such narrations if their origin is these commercial journals and / or internet. Those from old books, souvenirs, etc would at least have a higher proportion of truth.

Just my 2c.

Vijay




________________________________
 From: Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 12:20 PM
Subject: [Advaita-l] Paranormal Experiences
 
We come across quite a few incidences of paranormal experiences narrated by
devotees with respect to their preceptors. We read quite a few stated about
some than the others. For example, there is a lot of stories said about
kanchi mahaperiyava, sringeri periyava, ramana maharishi etc. Sometimes
people can wrongly associate two unrelated events - a blessing followed by
a cure of a disease or acquisition of wealth. Sometimes, the events
narrated involve knowledge and power that is beyond normal. Either the
person reporting should be explicitly lying, inventing it due to a trick of
the mind (lot of studies available on these) or telling the truth. I would
like to know the opinion of scholars on these validity of these
supernatural stories. And why these occur, if they?ans why they don't
occur, when it could be beneficial to a lot of people?
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