The yogic claim of voluntary control over the heart beat (1973)
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There is a line in the movie Close Encounters about how car accidents are real but had never been filmed (the point being that a lack of footage does not mean UFOs are not real). That was 1977. We now have millions more cameras and plenty of recorded car accidents because car accidents are in fact real. Conversely, bigfoot and UFO footage has all but disappeared with the increased numbers of cameras. Bigfoot is not real. Neither are these superhuman yogis. No doubt they can survive longer in harsh environments than the average person, but they cannot violate the laws of physics. If they could, we would rewrite those laws and hand them noble prizes for their work.
What happens when, in the next 150 years say, one cannot identify with appreciable probability [1] whether someone is human or not?
[1]: À la Turing test, but with a humanoid robot.
CGI will always be behind the curve. Science requires repeatability by independent researchers. A CGI hoax cannot survive independent footage of the event. So CGI cannot survive scientific scrutiny. It can certainly survive fake scrutiny (see viral vids) but not real investigation by people looking for the hoax.
You're walking down the street and a small woman walks past you and stumbles. You help her up and she says thanks, then gets back on her way. How can you "scientifically" prove whether she was a human or not?
Of course you could put her on an operating table and cut her open... but she moves and breathes and feels everything as a human. How could you force that treatment upon her?
And then you'd have to do it for everybody else. How do you know the surgeon isn't a humanoid robot?
How do you know you're not a robot yourself?
Simple short term example: how do our current political systems prevent the proliferation of rogue drones programmed by completely anonymous individuals to wreak havoc? Or computer viruses? We are just relying on the absence of a capable adversary, same as with security by obscurity.
While one stream can be faked, it would require large-scale collusion or subversion to fake the large majority of videos.
Your point probably works for bigfoot, but it isn't applicable to whether some obscure meditation practice can stop the heart.
> There are various stages of Yogic Flying. The initial stage is "hopping." The second stage is "floating," and the final stage is "flying." So far, no one practicing the Yogic Flying TM-Sidhi has been observed achieving a stage beyond hopping. Achieving the floating and flying stages is dependent upon the extent to which the practitioner is able to sustain his awareness at the level of the unified field, the level of transcendental consciousness. It is by maintaining one's awareness at this very fine level that one is able to influence the laws of nature to gain support of those laws whereby anything is possible. That is why the unified field is called the field of all possibilities; from that most fundamental and powerful level anything is possible. The author believes that eventually the final stage of levitation (flying) will be a common phenomenon.
This sort of flying comes out of Transcendental Mediation from the 1970s. You are right that this kind of hop is labeled "flying", even though it isn't flying.
However, I think sandworm101's comment of "yogis who can fly" should be read more generally to include levitation. For example, quoting from "Autobiography of a Yogi" at http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/chap7.php (and also mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_and_levitation ):
> "I saw a yogi remain in the air, several feet above the ground, last night at a group meeting." My friend, Upendra Mohun Chowdhury, spoke impressively.
> ... "How does he remain in the air, defying the law of gravitation?"
> "A yogi's body loses its grossness after use of certain pranayamas. Then it will levitate or hop about like a leaping frog. Even saints who do not practice a formal yoga[4] have been known to levitate during a state of intense devotion to God."
The footnote 4 mentions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila , who was "said to have been observed levitating during Mass on more than one occasion".
Then there's https://books.google.com/books?id=mSpQAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&dq=yo... ("The Autobiography of the Maha Yogi")
> ... It is the law the governs the life of a yogi, (an equivalent to the Arian law of the Buddhits that governs the conducts of the Bodhisattvas) that forbid he yogi to demonstrate his paranormal and supernatural powers in the presence of savages and barbarians, before the public or in front of television cameras. Yet, I am the only living contemporary who ever levitated four feet off the ground in front of a camera. I shall, of course, refrain from ever levitating in public, as a matter of fundamental principle for that would be a sacrilege. Furthermore, like several of my Siddhies, levitation in [sic] an Involuntary occurrence that happens in rare moments of religious ecstasy, perhaps as few as one or two times per year. There was no known yogi in history who has been able to levitate at will and on demand.
That's two yogis who claim something that sounds more than kind of hopping. After all, hopping can be done at will and on demand.
I've only done this style once, it was a great experience. I found it to be very much a team effort between me and my partner, we had to work to maintain balance from both positions. Very different from what I have experienced in regular yoga classes.
Except the most anyone has managed to achieve is lotus-position hopping.
This is an over sophisticated way to say "no evidence, no thing". I don't intend to defend the existence of big foot (which I think is a silly comparison), but if asked about it I'd rather make no claims about it.
The answer to whether it happened or not is moo.
The recording of real phenomena should be directly related to the number and quality of cameras or other recording devices (see rogue waves, shark attacks). Phenomena that seem inversely related or at least disconnected from the spread of cameras (Bigfoot, UFOs etc) become less likely to be real over time. We still get occasional new footage or other evidence, but it doesn't fit the curve followed by known real phenomena.
The fact that we don't have video footage of Egyptian Pharos is in no way evidence for them not existing, since they are purported to have existed prior to the invention of the video camera.
Things that are purported to happen today should have good quality recordings of them if they are at all common.
I could do this by practicing a fairly technical breathing technique - basically opening up the channels of breath by joining inhalation and exhalation. Still, I was able to convince myself that by practicing a very specific relaxation technique, I could lower my heart rate enough to scare nurses. I'm standing while typing this and my thumb-to-wrist test has me right around normal (72bpm).
So, from my perspective, parts of this seem reasonable. I think a true master (I've only been doing this a few years) may well be able to continuously regulate his heart to quite low levels. I've often mused that yoga is a hack of some of your body's autonomic processes. A flatline seems unrealistic even to me, but I'm sure curious about what benefits there might be in this technique.
Is there a culture that doesn't fall for mystical cons?
A human cannot live without water for the length of time claimed. Therefore we can conclude that the yogi is a liar.
The letter prints out some of the EKGs, but declines to show the moment when the flatline occurs, and the moment when the heart is again detected.[1]
You now have four facts: (1) the yogi's heart did not stop, (2) the EKG lead showed no activity, (3) the yogi is a habitual deceiver and (4) the most important data is intentionally hidden from the reader
Do you still feel confident that the yogi did not disconnect the leads?
[1] An alternative explanation would be that this 1973-era EKG machine did not make continuous recordings, in which case it defies reason to claim that it was watched carefully enough to rule out irregularities during the transition to/from flatline.
This is factually incorrect. We know of people who have survived longer without water.
> Therefore we can conclude that the yogi is a liar.
Therefore I can conclude you are a liar?
Your third point is just assumed, not proven.
People have survived at least 40 minutes with circulatory arrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm
EKG machines have been capable of continuous read outs since before this research was published.
It is entirely reasonable to be mildly skeptical of research. But with a clear grounding for your bayesian priors, extreme skepticism becomes inimical to the search for truth.
That said, I would like to see the EKG during the "transition" periods.
Of your points above, only point 1 is based in any sort of fact which relies on a current understanding of how a human heart functions. Therefore, the point you're making is that a human heart cannot be consciously stopped because a human heart cannot be consciously controlled.
With the current data you've been provided all you can do is conclude that the test was flawed, not that what the test suggested was true or false.
This does not appear to be accurate, based on a few minutes on Google. It's unlikely but possible for humans to live more than a week with no water.
Sounds a bit like he disconnected and reconnected.
What you are citing sounds more like convention.
They'll either "have a bad day" or decline. To date, no one has claimed the foundation's million dollar prize.
so, he sped his heart up somehow to the point where he could disconnect the leads without any disruption?
Also, how would someone go about faking tachycardia?