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Originally Posted by Interesting Ian  Are there any cases where people have actually swapped bodies? |
Hi Ian,
It is asserted in certain yogic texts that an extremely advanced yogi can vacate his own body and animate the recently deceased body of another if that body is in good condition. The Sanskrit term for this practice is Parakaya Pravesha.
A comtemporary yogi, Swami Rama, who founded the Himalayan Institute and died sometime in the 1990s, reported two cases of Parakaya Pravesha that he claimed to have witnessed personally. In his book,
Living With the Himalayan Masters, he says that he knew an elderly but advanced yogi who, when the opportunity presented itself, abandoned his aged body and entered into and animated the body of a young man who had just died. Rama wrote that the new body manifested the personality, memories, and even the strange way of walking that the elderly yogi had. Also, in the book
Swami, by Doug Boyd, Boyd reports that Swami Rama told him that Rama had also witnessed Rama's own yoga master perform the same feat, although in that case Rama said that his master only briefly animated a youthful dead body and then returned to his own body.
While there has certainly been interest in modern times in studying scientifically the abilities of yogis, I have not read of any yogi who has come forward and offered to demonstrate this alleged ability under controlled conditions. This claim seems so far removed from the experience of most of us that I feel I have no choice at present to regard these accounts as not anything more than anecdotal, and, as far as I know, there are not even that many anecdotal accounts of it. Surely if we located people who proved that they could do this, it would force a revision of a purely materialist theory of consciousness and mind. So, any yogis who can demonstrate Parakaya Pravesha out there -- if you are getting tired of living in your present body, please call in scientific researchers before you switch to a new one!