IF one can go without a single negative thought for between 13-30 yrs, say the Tibetan's, one's body upon death will shrink, sometimes leaving only hair & teeth, and sometimes dissolve into pure light, achieving a "Rainbow Body".
The physical elements of the body are said to fully revert into what are called the five lights of jñāna, which is their original form.
Head of the Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, the Karmapa shared the same status and importance as the Dalai Lama.
Dr. David Levy, his attending Doctor gave the following report upon his heart failure on the monitors. The medical team tried to revive Karmapa, but gave up after about 45 minutes. “We began to pull out the tubing, but I suddenly saw his blood pressure was 140 over 80. A nurse screamed, ‘he has a good pulse!’” Levy said.
Levy said, “it was clearly the greatest miracle I had ever seen.”
Levy reported that 48 hours after the time of death, Karmapa’s chest was still warm. “My hands were both warm, but his chest was warmer,” he said. “If I moved my hands towards the side of his chest, the body was cold, but the area around the heart stayed warm.” He also reported that there was no odor or decay, which typically set in quickly after death. “He stayed in deep meditation for three days, then it ended — he became cold and the process of death set in. The atmosphere changed as well,” Levy said.
In the 1970s, Karmapa traveled throughout the U.S. giving the public Black Crown Ceremony empowerment, an attendee snapped a picture. When the film was developed, the image of the Karmapa was transparent .
Material bodies dissolving into light is the subject of Rainbow Body and Resurrection by Father Francis V. Tiso, a priest of the Diocese of Isernia–Venafro who holds a PhD in Tibetan Buddhism.
In 1984, when Tiso was meditating with his eyes open in a chapel in Italy, he, too, had an extraordinary vision. Jesus Christ, he says, appeared before him in the form of a violet light-body. At that time. Tiso was considering taking a teaching position in the United States, but in this vision Christ indicated he should stay in Italy. "It was important not to make a mistake at that point in my life," reflects Tiso. "I did stay in Italy, where I was eventually ordained, and I lived in a hermitage chapel for almost twelve years."
Photograph of Lama Achuk
Francis Tiso remarks that one of his most intriguing interviews was with Lama A-chos. He told Tiso that when he died he too would manifest the rainbow body. "He showed us two photographs taken of him in the dark, and in these photographs his body radiated rays of light."
An individual who achieves a fully perfected Light Body or Rainbow Body in this very life is like a hologram, a gossamer web of photons, a powerful electromagnetic field that holds to human form until that allotted moment when it is time to leave the bubble of flesh behind.
While alive, it is said that the bodies of these beings do not cast a shadow in either lamplight or sunlight; at death, signs include their physical bodies dramatically shrinking in size, and their corpses exuding fragrances and perfumes rather than the odors of decomposition. A common Tibetan metric for the shrunken corpse of a body gone rainbow is the “length of a forearm.” In the case of Khenpo A Chц, as Father Tiso notes, the local Chinese press reported that his body “shrank to the size of a bean on the eighth day and disappeared on the tenth day. What remain are hair and nails.”
Lamo R. Tashi Lamo’s body after death, 60 cm
60 cm rainbow body of Lama Thubsher
Tiso suggests that the rainbow body of Christ which blasted him out of the tomb becomes materialized for us in the consecrated bread; and so Eucharist is the Christian technique to achieving the rainbow body.
I mean, is there truly a gulf of difference between Buddhism’s sambhogakayaand St. Paul’s absolutely fleshless soma pneumatikon? Or between the transfigured, radiant body of the risen Christ, or at least the resplendent bodies of the hesychasts, and the radiant flesh of Swami Premananda walking through the marketplace in an ecstasy of love for God’s beauty? And who’s to say Swami Ramalingam didn’t in fact experience full bodily transfiguration and divinization in this life, growing constantly physically more luminous and translucent as his fleshly body changed first into the suddha deha, the pure body, and then into the pranava deha, the body of the primordial OM, and then into the jnana deha, the body of perfect divine grace, or that he didn’t finally vanish away one day in 1874 into pure, immaterial, spiritual corporeality, and didn’t thereafter appear to his disciples in this … resurrected form? (324–325)
Swami Premananda
Swami Ramalinga, or Ramalingam Swamigal (1823–1874) was a Tamil saint who, according to his hagiography, was assumed into a higher state of existence from within a locked room on January 30th, 1874, leaving behind no traces or evidence of escape.
Swami Ramalingam (Vallalar) himself says, “Life of eternal bliss is union with God. Those who have achieved this will have transmuted this impure carnal body into a pure golden body, and again have the pure body transformed into a super-sensitive, spiritual body”.
in his later years, his physical body had become tenuous and translucent. Disciples have recorded that it cast no distinct shadow. It has been reported that several attempts were made to photograph him, but since light passed through his body, no clear image could be obtained. What could be seen were only his clothing and a very misty vision of his face and limbs, and from such a translucent body made so by pure living, dematerialization was but a few steps away.
The physical elements of the body fully revert into what are called the five lights of jñāna, which is their original form.
The reason for this transformative possibility in the first place is that the Five Elements exist within us in a multi-layered context. We contain the five material elements, but also the five original, pure Wisdom Elements, the cosmic spark as it were. The Hindu tradition describes five koshas or levels of existence, from gross to subtle, from bioenergetic to pure consciousness. The Buddhist world speaks of three bodies or kaya in a similar spectrum. The Kabbalah describes five worlds in a descending chain of existence.
Traditionally, the Buddhists perceive each of the Vajrayana chakras as the center of gravity of one of the elements—but containing an inner structure of five subelements. And so we have elements within elements waiting to be impregnated with divine radiance and to ascend to their true potential.
The Five Pure Lights is an essential teaching in the Dzogchen tradition of Bon and Tibetan Buddhism. For the deluded, matter seems to appear. This is due to non-recognition of the five lights. Matter includes the mahābhūta or classical elements, namely: space, air, water, fire, earth. Knowledge (rigpa) is the absence of delusion regarding the display of the five lights. This level of realization is called rainbow body.
St John Maximovitch of San Fransisco
After all Elijah as carried up to heaven by a chariot of light, and Moses who exuded divine light during his lifetime (as we read about in Exodus) and whose body eventually transformed fully into colorful light when he died, according to some legends. So when Peter, James, and John see two other mysterious men bathed in glorious light next to a wonderfully transfigured Jesus, they were wise to deduce their identities to be that of Moses and Elijah.
John the Evangelist uses the expression God is Light (1 Jn 1.5) In the Orthodox tradition presented in first-hand accounts in Symeon the New Theologian, Seraphim of Sarov, Archimandrite Sophrony, a this is an experience of the ‘Uncreated Light’, the divine energies, and is a foretaste of union with God, ‘deification’ or theosis.
Many believe this is how the Shroud of Turin was created.
Valuable research has been carried out by Paolo Di Lazzaro and others on the colouration of linen by ultra-violet radiation. In 2010 the researchers concluded that:
“Our results demonstrate that a short and intense burst of directional deep-UV radiation can provide a linen colouration having many peculiar features of the Turin Shroud image, including hue, colouration of only the outer-most fibres of the linen yarns and lack of fluorescence”
In April 2019 a paper in Applied Optics described how femtosecond pulse laser processing in the infrared came close to reproducing a 2-dimensional image of the face on the Shroud.
It seems therefore that different radiation in different frequencies can produce some of the characteristics of the image, but to date there has been no successful attempt to produce the image in its entirety. This research has used radiation in frequencies close to that of visible light. Dr. Silverman is a leading scientific expert on the so-called Shroud of Turin, which is the cloth traditionally said to be the burial shroud of Jesus and which holds an imprint of his face.
In his book, A Burst of Conscious Light. Near-Death Experiences, the Shroud of Turin, and the Limitless Potential of Humanity, he presents with evidence that this imprint actually was produced by a blast of radiation which the author links to the light of consciousness itself. Similar phenomena have been observed in relation to Near-Death-Experiences and this leads us to reconsider the power of human consciousness and the laws of nature.
When researcher Fritz-Albert Popp (b. 1938) first discovered that all living cells emit light—biophotons—he could not have anticipated the revolution this would create in the fields of both biology and physics.
Apparently biophotons are used by the cells of many living organisms to communicate, which facilitates energy/information transfer that is several orders of magnitude faster than chemical diffusion. According to a 2010 study, “Cell to cell communication by biophotons have been demonstrated in plants, bacteria, animal neutriophil granulocytes and kidney cells.”
Researchers were able to demonstrate that “…different spectral light stimulation (infrared, red, yellow, blue, green and white) at one end of the spinal sensory or motor nerve roots resulted in a significant increase in the biophotonic activity at the other end.” Researchers interpreted their finding to suggest that “…light stimulation can generate biophotons that conduct along the neural fibers, probably as neural communication signals.”
Stored in cell DNA, these messengers are the main communication network of the body, connecting cell parts, tissues, and organs.
Already they have been shown to regulate the growth, differentiation, and regeneration of cells. Coherent biophoton fields could prove to be the basis of memory and even consciousness, as suggested many years ago by Karl Pribram, David Bohm, and others.
Channels of light
An equally remarkable development is the re-discovery of the primo vascular system (PVS), after being overlooked for 30 years. This system of microscopic channels, which differ from the lymph, blood, and nervous tissues, qualifies as the actual tsa, nadi, or psychic channels utilized within Vajrayana, yogic, and Daoist traditions of meditation. The microscopic PVS is everywhere, even following the course of nerves and the brain itself.
Now, biophotons are photons, bits of light, that are generated spontaneously by most living cells. Research suggests that biophotons are created in the DNA that resides in the mitochondria in your cells. They are created in the 98% of each DNA molecule that is not used for genetic coding of behavior. The genome project referred to this as junk-DNA because they had no idea about its use.
Biophotons are important carriers of information in the brain, along with well-known electrochemical signals—neurotransmitters and nerve impulses (waves of ionic depolarization).
What this means is that each living cell is giving off, or resonating, a biophoton field of coherent energy. If each cell is emitting this field, then the whole living system is, in effect, a resonating field-a ubiquitous nonlocal field. And since biophotons are the entities through which the living system communicates, there is near-instantaneous intercommunication throughout. And this, claimed the original founder of biophotons Dr. Popp, is the basis for coherent biological organization — referred to as quantum coherence.
Well respected Biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho describes HERE how the living organism, including the human body, is coordinated throughout and is “coherent beyond our wildest dreams.”
It appears that every part of our body is “in communication with every other part through a dynamic, tuneable, responsive, liquid crystalline medium that pervades the whole body, from organs and tissues to the interior of every cell.”
". . . the visible body just happens to be where the wave function of the organism is most dense. Invisible quantum waves are spreading out from each of us and permeating into all other organisms. At the same time, each of us has the waves of every other organism entangled within our own make-up. . . . We are participants in the creation drama that is constantly unfolding. We are constantly co-creating and re-creating ourselves and other organisms in the universe. . . "
There have been experiments that have studied the output of biophotons among people who are engaged in deep, contemplative practice, in heart-centered prayer in which one simply bathes in God’s love and light (like the prayer described in The Cloud of Unknowing).
And the output of biophotons for people in deep prayer was extraordinary! Not just twice as much as the normal output, but hundreds of thousands of times more than the normal output. So, this suggests that when we are engaged in prayer and worship right here (when we are fulfilling our primary mission which is to glorify God), we are actually heightening a biological process that takes place in all of our cells. We are emitting biophotons of light from our bodies.
The knowledge that human DNA can be influenced and modulated by frequencies (sound, light, language, and thought) is likely to have been known to various spiritual traditions, mystics, and teachers over the ages. This is perhaps why a variety of exercises have existed that utilize thought focus (prayer), sounds (music, chanting, singing), light (both natural light and produced light, such as in stained glass), and language (specific recitations such as a mantra and zikr).
The Dua Of Light; the Prophet (saws) often prayed in Sujood, “O Allah, place light in my heart, and on my tongue light, and in my ears light and in my sight light, and above me light, and below me light, and to my right light, and to my left light, and before me light and behind me light. Place in my soul light. Magnify for me light, and amplify for me light. Make for me light, and make me light. O Allaah, grant me light, and place light in my nerves, and in my body light and in my blood light and in my hair light and in my skin light.” (Bukhari)
One of the most treasured practices of the Sufi path is zikr, the remembrance of Allah. To be in unity with Allah is to be in a constant state of remembrance of the source of all creation.
The various names of Allah are repeated several, often hundreds of times in unison by a group in the exactas of adoration. Certain movements, such as swaying back and forth or turning from right to left, are incorporated into the activity during the intonations, and are likewise performed in unison. In some tariqas a prayerful rotation of the whole body, arms extended while pivoting on one foot, is traditional.
And indeed, a study published found that Sufi's practicing Zakir, the Holy Names of God, emitted 100's of times more biophotons than normal, as Francis Tiso references in this interview.
Research at the University of Kassel in Witzenhausen, Germany, in 1997, showed that it is possible to produce visible light from the chest area under certain conditions. The first condition is that the meditation technique must be heart-centered, not transcendent. Secondly, a specific person with an actual need must be identified as a receiver of the transmitted light. Under these conditions, a sustained light emission of 100,000 photons per second was measured, where only the background count of 20 photons per second was observed without meditation.
That’s 100,000 biophotons vs 20 !
You can read the paper HERE or HERE “Visible Light Radiated from the Heart with Heart Rhythm Meditation” by P. Blair.
In full disclosure, this study has been controversial, with other scientists claiming this is impossible. It has not been replicated, however other studies of meditation has proven such practices induce increased Biophoton production, check out this paper HERE and on transcendental meditation HERE. .
INVOCATIONS OF DIVINE LIGHT
These are Sufi meditations that use chanting, out-loud and silently, to create vibrations that stimulate the heart and third eye. Specifically, the Arabic words Nur and Mu-now-win are spoken slowly, with emphasis on the vowels, placing the resonance of the sound in the throat and chest. They produce the sensation of having a miniature sun in the chest.
DIHKR
The repetition of the Arabic phrase, "La illaha illa 'llah Hu" is an ancient prescription for entering into the consciousness of the One and Only Being. It is performed with attention on the heart as the center of the experience and results in a feeling of profound heart-centeredness.
The great Sufi Scholar Henri Corban wrote in The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism about the divine inner light, the “Sun of the heart,” the Sun of the mystery,” the “Sun of the Spirit,” the “initiatic light.”
For Suhrawardi, the quest culminated in the visio smaragdina, the outburst of emerald light heralding ‘the secret of the mystery of Mysteries.’ The emerald light is described in Revelation:
“round [God’s] throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald.”
This re-ascent of light to light, the ascent of the ‘column of Light,’ this mystical experience fills a function of cosmic salvation. “To attain fully to this Illumination is salvation.”
Corbin emphasizes that “the terms light and darkness, clarity and obscurity, are neither metaphor nor comparisons. The mystic really and actually sees light and darkness, by a kind of vision that depends on an organ other than the physical organ of sight.”
In any case, the “body of light” is well alive in religious traditions.
See also -
Yan Sun, Chao Wang, Jiapei Dai. Biophotons as neural communication signals demonstrated by in situ biophoton autography. Photochem Photobiol Sci. 2010 Mar ;9(3):315-22. Epub 2010 Jan 21. PMID: 20221457
F A Popp, W Nagl, K H Li, W Scholz, O Weingärtner, R Wolf. Biophoton emission. New evidence for coherence and DNA as source. Cell Biophys. 1984 Mar;6(1):33-52. PMID: 6204761
After the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest ever preached was perhaps the Buddha’s Fire Sermon, also known as the Adittapariyana Sutta.
Below I include my two favorite translations, followed by a more modern poem of Samsara by Jack Kerouac…Plus a bunch of cool AI artwork.
I ought to note that T.S. Eliot titled the third section of his great poem The Wasteland, “The Fire Sermon.”
The last five lines of “The Fire Sermon” read as follows:
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning (307-11)
In his “Notes” to the poem, Eliot writes, “The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.”
The first, third, and fourth lines above are references to St. Augustine’s Confessions, while the second and fifth lines refer to Buddha’s Fire Sermon.
St. Augustine speaks in a similar way to the Buddha's sermon :
TO CARTHAGE I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God…
For this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense… For I was both beloved, and secretly arrived at the bond of enjoying; and was joyfully bound with troublesome ties, that I might be scourged with the burning iron rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and strife. (St. Augustine, Book III, Ch. 1 p. 1,)
How did I burn then, my God, how did I burn to re-mount from earthly things to Thee, nor knew I what Thou wouldst do with me? For with Thee is wisdom. But the love of wisdom is in Greek called “philosophy,” with which that book inflamed me.
Some there be that seduce through philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honourable name colouring and disguising their own errors… (St. Augustine, Book III, Ch. 4 p. 8, )
Then The Blessed One, having dwelt in Uruvelā as long as he wished, proceeded on his wanderings in the direction of Gayā Head, accompanied by a great congregation of priests, a thousand in number, who had all of them aforetime been monks with matted hair. And there in Gayā, on Gayā Head, The Blessed One dwelt, together with the thousand priests.
And there The Blessed One addressed the priests:—
“All things, O priests, are on fire. And what, O priests, are all these things which are on fire?
“The eye, O priests, is on fire; forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the eye are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, that also is on fire.
“And with what are these on fire?
“With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.
‘‘The ear is on fire; sounds are on fire; . . . the nose is on fire; odors are on fire; . . . the tongue is on fire; tastes are on fire; . . . the body is on fire; things tangible are on fire; . . . the mind is on fire; ideas are on fire; . . . mind-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the mind are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, that also is on fire.
“And with what are these on fire?
“With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.
“Perceiving this, O priests, the learned and noble disciple conceives an aversion for the eye, conceives an aversion for forms, conceives an aversion for eye-consciousness, conceives an aversion for the impressions received by the eye; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, for that also he conceives an aversion.
Conceives an aversion for the ear, conceives an aversion for sounds, . . . conceives an aversion for the nose, conceives an aversion for odors, . . . conceives an aversion for the tongue, conceives an aversion for tastes, . . . conceives an aversion for the body, conceives an aversion for things tangible, . . .
conceives an aversion for the mind, conceives an aversion for ideas, conceives an aversion for mind-consciousness, conceives an aversion for the impressions received by the mind; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, for this also he conceives an aversion.
And in conceiving this aversion, he becomes divested of passion, and by the absence of passion he becomes free, and when he is free he becomes aware that he is free; and he knows that rebirth is exhausted, that he has lived the holy life, that he has done what it behooved him to do, and that he is no more for this world.”
Now while this exposition was being delivered, the minds of the thousand priests became free from attachment and delivered from the depravities.
Thus I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Gaya, at Gayasisa, together with a thousand bhikkhus. There he addressed the bhikkhus.
“Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning?
“The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.
“The ear is burning, sounds are burning… “The nose is burning, odors are burning… “The tongue is burning, flavors are burning… “The body is burning, tangibles are burning…
“The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.
“Bhikkhus, when a noble follower who has heard (the truth) sees thus, he finds estrangement in the eye, finds estrangement in forms, finds estrangement in eye-consciousness, finds estrangement in eye-contact, and whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful- nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, in that too he finds estrangement.
“He finds estrangement in the ear… in sounds… “He finds estrangement in the nose… in odors… “He finds estrangement in the tongue… in flavors… “He finds estrangement in the body… in tangibles…
“He finds estrangement in the mind, finds estrangement in ideas, finds estrangement in mind-consciousness, finds estrangement in mind-contact, and whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, in that too he finds estrangement.
“When he finds estrangement, passion fades out. With the fading of passion, he is liberated. When liberated, there is knowledge that he is liberated. He understands: ‘Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived out, what can be done is done, of this there is no more beyond.'”
That is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus were glad, and they approved his words.
Now during his utterance, the hearts of those thousand bhikkhus were liberated from taints through clinging no more.
Finally, a modern poem of Samsara, by Jack Kerouac :
