Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (374 page)

Alas, we live in a maze of magic and miracles. Like bread fresh from the oven, some of it baked and some of it half- baked, books pour off the presses, books dealing with the mysteriously working powers of telekinesis and telepathy and trying to explain how the miracles are done, books that tell us about the work of faith-surgeons on the Philippines and till the vast field of parapsychology. It would be carrying coals to Newcastle if I were to make a further contribution to these fields. So I am going to stick to the territory I have prescribed for myself - visions.

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Yogananda Paramahamsa, who made such intelligent remarks about suggestive healing, died in Los Angeles on 7th March, 1952. It is said that after three weeks his body showed no signs of decomposition - as is often supposed to be the case after the death of a saintly man. Harry T. Rowe, Director of Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles, said in an official report [35]: 'The absence of any signs of decomposition on Paramahamsa's body is the most extraordinary case in all our experience. ... Even twenty days after his death no trace of corporeal decay could be observed .... No smell of decomposition could be noticed throughout this period ....'

The stuff of which saints are made!

Inge Santner writes in Die Weltwoche [36], Zurich, about a lecture given to the Viennese Catholic Academy by the Viennese psychiatrist and neurologist, Dr. Gerhard Kaiser, Lecturer in Forensic Medicine at Salzburg University.

Dr. Kaiser tackled the question of why the bodies of saints retain their shape decades or centuries after their death. Kurt Tucholsky[37] gives a wonderful account of Lourdes in his Book of the Pyrenees: They have recently exhumed her (Bernadette Soubirous) for her canonization next year. Her body was well preserved, her left eye, which was directed at the vision, is reputed to have remained open and her tomb to have smelt so strongly of flowers that letters which lay there smelt, too, so it was said at Lourdes ....

(Bernadette was not a saint at the time; she did not become one till 1933.) In the opinion of the Viennese scientist it does not need a miracle to preserve the fleshly envelope so that it survives the decades or centuries without visible signs of decomposition. Dr. Kaiser examined such cases as these:

Francis of Sales, who died in 1622, was found 'as if he was alive' when exhumed in 1632. His body did not turn to dust until 1665 when it emitted an 'extraordinarily sweet smell'.

Francis Caracciola died in 1608. His flesh and sinews were unchanged when he was exhumed in 1628.

When an incision was made, blood flowed from it.

Carlos Borromaus, died 1584, proved 'unnaturally supple' after medical examination in 1608. His corpse still looked exactly the same 250 years later, in 1880.