It is a stupid claim. You can read more about him by searching the internet with his name. Here is another piece on him:

Inedia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basically, he has never been properly tested, and my guess is that he never will be. Many people like making crazy claims, and have no regard for honesty at all. And, of course, frauds who have brains do not ever allow themselves to be properly tested, as then they would be exposed as frauds. There are plenty of fools who can be deluded into believing that they have done a proper test when they really have done something slipshod, and there are plenty of other liars in the world who would be willing accomplices.

Prahlad Jani

Prahlad Jani, a sadhu who claims to have gone without food for decades,[33] spent ten days under strict observation by physicians at Sterling Hospital, Ahmedabad, India, in 2003.[34] The study was led by Dr Sudhir Shah, the same doctor who led the study of Hira Ratan Manek. Reportedly, during the observation, he was given only 100 millilitres of water a day to use as mouthwash, which was collected and measured after he used it, to make sure he hadn't consumed any. He was reported to enter Samadhi state of consciousness almost daily during meditation. Throughout the observation, he passed no urine or stool, but doctors say urine appeared to form in the bladder, only to be reabsorbed.[33] However, Jani was not engaged in strenuous exercise during the ten-day trial, and longer trials were not recorded under similarly strict observation. Further, his weight did drop slightly during the 10 days, casting some doubt on his claim to go indefinitely without food. Jani claims a goddess sustains him through amrit that filters down through a hole in his palate.[33]



The Indian Rationalist Association has criticised the Indian Ministry of Defence for agreeing to take part in the tests, and for being taken in by a "village fraud".[35] Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association claimed to have been repeatedly denied sending an independent team to survey the room where Jani was held. He also claimed that "this particular hospital, led by this particular doctor, keeps on making these claims without ever producing evidence or publishing research." The Indian Rationalist Association also said that individuals making similar claims have all reportedly been exposed as frauds.[36]

...As of April 22, 2010, new tests are being conducted on Prahlad Jani under surveillance of 35 doctors and researchers of Defence Institute of Physiology & Allied Science (DIPAS).[37][38][39] He was kept for fifteen days, until May 6, and reportedly did not eat, drink or go to the toilet once during the time. This was apparently shown by blood tests, hormone profiles, MRIs and angiographs. The doctors also claimed to have found that he was "more healthy than someone half his age."


...Dr. Urman Dhruv, a physician, said, "We are collecting data on a person who has lived on an alternative pathway compared to an ordinary person. The comparative study of his reports of the tests conducted in 2003 and results of the recent and on-going tests would throw light on the process of aging in Jani's body - which seems to have undergone some type of genetic transformation."[40]

...For at least the past 40 years, Mr. Jani has been living, hermit-like, in a cave in the jungles close to the Gujarati temple of Ambaji. He rises at 4am, spending most of the day meditating.

He says that whenever the Rationalist Association has investigated individuals making similar claims, all have been exposed as frauds.

In 1999, they investigated a woman who claimed that she was the reincarnation of another Hindu goddess. For five years, she had remained alone in a small closet where it was claimed she had not eaten nor passed any urine or faeces.

In co-operation with the police, investigators from the association searched the room, finding a toilet hidden behind a shelf and a disguised hole through which she received food. Blood tests revealed the presence of glucose, indicating the intake of food.

To further prove the case, a gas was released into the room that made the woman vomit. The contents of her stomach were found to include pieces of recently-eaten chapatti and potatoes.

It's Tales from the Mystic East. You live there, don't you?

Here are some excerpts from the article, above, referring to the current study:


It will be interesting to see if the claims concerning Prahlad Jani are debunked. There would seem to be opportunity for them to be, unless the hospital and the doctors are engaged in a conspiracy.

---------- Post added 05-11-2010 at 09:39 PM ----------

Although I note that in one of the references attached to the Wikipedia story, a member of the Rationalist association says

hmmm. I too an inclined to think it is a fraud, much as I like the intrigue of it. Let's see if anything develops.

The fact that he does not do so might also indicate that he does not care one whit whether people believe it to be true, or not. There is nothing in the article to suggest that he is seeking publicity or wishing to attract attention to himself. Yogis have lived and practised in India from time immemorial, they have no particular reason to have their powers validated by men in white coats.

There are have been many case studies of the paranomormal physiological abilities of yogis some of which are included in a book I own called Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. [Ed. E. & E.W. Kelly Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. November 16, 2009]. If there is any interest I will provide some specifics later.

I would be willing to consider the evidence, if there were any presented. But the simple fact is, there is a claim with nothing to back it up. If I claimed that I could run 100 mph, would you have "an open mind" about it if I provided no real evidence at all, or would you figure that I probably was full of crap? That is where we are with this, a story that on the face of it seems absurd, and when looked into a little, one finds that there is no real evidence to back up the claim. My tentative conclusion is that the guy is a liar and a cheat. But if any new and real evidence were presented, then it may deserve another look. To come to a conclusion is not necessarily to decide once and for all that it is so, never to reconsider no matter what. To quote Clifford:
[INDENT][INDENT]Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete. [/INDENT][/INDENT]The Ethics of Belief

But until there is any new evidence, the matter may be regarded as settled.

involved a yogi who was confined to a small underground pit for eight days, connected to an EKG with 12 leads "short enough not to allow any movement". Almost immediately after the pit was sealed, a significant sinus tachycardia [elevated heart rate] developed and progressed until it reached 250 beats per minute but without any sign of ischemia [restriction in blood supply]. This tachycardia continued for 29 hours when, suddenly and with no prior slowing of the heart rate, "a straight line had replaced the EKG tracing". The investigators wanted to terminate the experiment, understandably fearing that the yogi was dead, but his attendants insisted that it continue. The flat-line state persisted for five more days until, half an hour before the experiment was scheduled to end, sinus tachycardia again developed. This continued for two hours after the yogi was removed from the put, when his heart rate finally returned to normal. The obvious explanation that the EKG leads had been disconnected, was ruled out, first because the machine was immediate checked for any malfunctioning, but more importantly because no electrical disturbance ever appeared, such as would accompany the disconnection of the leads.

The authors of the study candidly admitted that they were not prepared to accept that the yogi had voluntarily stopped his heart for five days and survived, but [that] they could offer no satisfactory explanation for the EKG record.

Well I really don't know if Prahlad Jani is genuine, or not. Having read some of the associated press coverage, I am suspicious about the doctor and the medical unit making the claim on his behalf. The same doctor has been researching this issue for some time, and according to the representative from 'The Indian Rationalists Association' has made bogus claims previously. It is obviously not possible according to science for a human to live without physical sustenance but according to legend, this has been known to occur.

But as I have said before, there have been documented cases of Indian yogis displaying inexplicable abilities, such as the ability to suspend their metabolic processes for days on end. One such case Irreducible Mind ed Kelly & Kelly, Pp177-179

Your quoted passage does not support the conclusion you stated above, namely, "there have been documented cases of Indian yogis displaying inexplicable abilities" my emphasis. How would one even show that something is inexplicable, which is a clever word for unexplainable, that is, impossible to explain.

According to legends, all kinds of things has been known to occur. What reason is there to trust legends (plural?) in this case? They have not been reliable predictors of what happened in many other cases. Especially with extraordinary claims. Think of Moses dividing the ocean, a scepter becoming a snake, a world wide flood and what not. None of these happened.

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.'

Of Miracles David Hume

It sounds to me like he unplugged the EKG and then plugged it back in. They should have put a video camera in there, but I guess his attendants wouldn't have approved that...

And that is certainly a less miraculous explanation than the suggested one.

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.'

Of Miracles David Hume

They ruled that explanation out. Whenever the machine is disconnected it displays a specific interference pattern which was absent. As the report said, the experimenters offered no explanation.

A disconnection of the leads by the Yogi, quite a likely explanation, ought to have given rise to a considerable electrical disturbance, but there was hardly any. Later on, we tried all sorts of manipulations with leads to stimulate what the Yogi could have done inside the pit (notwithstanding the total darkness and his ignorance of ECG technique), but in every case there was marked disturbance. Therefore, although it is obviously difficult to believe that the Yogi could have completely stopped his heart or decreased its electrical activity below a recordable level, we still had no satisfactory explanation for the ECG tracings before us.

Theoretically, it is believed that all visceral functions can be brought under voluntary control by prolonged yogic training, but perhaps their most fascinating claim has been the ability to stop the heart at will. However, in most instances where this has been investigated so far, it has turned out to be an exaggerated Valsalva manoeuvre in some form, which makes the pulse and heart sounds imperceptible while the heart continues to beat at a slow rate.

It was part of a series of studies which found unequivocable evidence that yogis can control what are normally regarded as autonomic functions including heart rate, respiration, and even body temperature.

He (Dawkins) then said that in a romantic spirit he himself would like to believe in telepathy, but there just wasn't any evidence for it. He dismissed all research on the subject out of hand. He compared the lack of acceptance of telepathy by scientists such as himself with the way in which the echo-location system had been discovered in bats, followed by its rapid acceptance within the scientific community in the 1940s. In fact, as I later discovered, Lazzaro Spallanzani had shown in 1793 that bats rely on hearing to find their way around, but sceptical opponents dismissed his experiments as flawed, and helped set back research for well over a century. However, Richard recognized that telepathy posed a more radical challenge than echo-location. He said that if it really occurred, it would "turn the laws of physics upside down," and added, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

"This depends on what you regard as extraordinary", I replied. "Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary. Where is the extraordinary evidence for that?"

He produced no evidence at all, apart from generic arguments about the fallibility of human judgment. He assumed that people want to believe in "the paranormal" because of wishful thinking.

We then agreed that controlled experiments were necessary. I said that this was why I had actually been doing such experiments, including tests to find out if people really could tell who was calling them on the telephone when the caller was selected at random. The results were far above the chance level.

The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.

Richard seemed uneasy and said, "I'm don't want to discuss evidence". "Why not?" I asked. "There isn't time. It's too complicated. And that's not what this programme is about." The camera stopped.

The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.

I said to Russell, "If you're treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it's not irrational to believe in it. I thought that's what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn't interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise."

Richard said, "It's not a low grade debunking exercise; it's a high grade debunking exercise."

In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.

Richard Dawkins has long proclaimed his conviction that "The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans". Enemies of Reason was intended to popularize this belief. But does his crusade really promote "the public understanding of science," of which he is the professor at Oxford? Should science be a vehicle of prejudice, a kind of fundamentalist belief-system? Or should it be a method of enquiry into the unknown?

there's a part of all of us that would love to believe such a human 'miracle' could be true.

After all, isn't a consultant neurologist staking his reputation on these tests being entirely watertight?


We may never know the truth, but until he is exposed as a fraud, perhaps we should enjoy suspending our disbelief and give Mr Jani the benefit of the doubt.

After all, wouldn't life be boring if everything was rational?

They ruled that explanation out. Whenever the machine is disconnected it displays a specific interference pattern which was absent. As the report said, the experimenters offered no explanation. It was part of a series of studies which found unequivocable evidence that yogis can control what are normally regarded as autonomic functions including heart rate, respiration, and even body temperature.

---------- Post added 05-13-2010 at 07:27 AM ----------



It is interesting that one will offer 17th century philosophy by way of rebuttal of actual physical evidence gathered by scientific instruments in controlled conditions.

It wasn't offered as a rebuttal, but what prevents a person from the 17th century debuking a kind of reasoning of which instances appear many hundred years later?

It wasn't offered as a rebuttal, but what prevents a person from the 17th century debuking a kind of reasoning of which instances appear many hundred years later? Nothing. The first teachings of logic were made some 2000 years ago, and they still refute certain kinds of reasoning, like four term syllogisms and stuff like that.

Maybe you should read Hume as quoted above. His reasoning obviously applies. What is more probable: Some doctors being wrong (deluded, mistaken, wishful thinking or other cause is not important) about about him not cheating, or a man contrary to all hitherto experience of humans and physiology that can live without food and water for whatever time period? The answer is obviously the first.
In words closer to Hume's: It is less remarkable that some doctors be wrong about a man they claim lived for 10 days without food or water, than it is for some man to live without food and water for 10 days.

It is not a matter of 'reasoning'. Both these cases, the Prahlad Jali case, and the yogi in the sealed container, are cases of scientific investigation and analysis of empirical data. I find it ironic in the extreme that Hume is cited as grounds for disputing the credibility of the experimenters in both cases a priori. Don't you see the irony here?

It wasn't offered as a rebuttal, but what prevents a person from the 17th century debuking a kind of reasoning of which instances appear many hundred years later? Nothing. The first teachings of logic were made some 2000 years ago, and they still refute certain kinds of reasoning, like four term syllogisms and stuff like that.

Maybe you should read Hume as quoted above. His reasoning obviously applies. What is more probable: Some doctors being wrong (deluded, mistaken, wishful thinking or other cause is not important) about about him not cheating, or a man contrary to all hitherto experience of humans and physiology that can live without food and water for whatever time period? The answer is obviously the first.
In words closer to Hume's: It is less remarkable that some doctors be wrong about a man they claim lived for 10 days without food or water, than it is for some man to live without food and water for 10 days.

Less probable doesn't mean impossible. Genetic anomalies are the only reason we exist as we do today. I'm not wholly impressed with ten days, anyway, if his body could actually reabsorb urine without any negative effects, then he would need much less water than the average person. It's also popular in his culture to fast; couple that with the poverty and lack of food, and you have a solid chance for odd adaptions.

Not only that, but Hume is far more modern in his thinking than millions of people alive today. Many have minds that are in the dark ages, who resist all attempts at bringing in the light of reason. What is even more remarkable is how so many of the ancient Greeks were more modern than millions of people alive today.

Hume argued that one ought to weigh the evidence pro and con, subtract the lessor evidential force from the greater, and believe in proportion to the evidence that remained. Many people don't like doing that, as it does not give them the results that they want. So they engage in wishful thinking instead. Which brings us back to something Clifford said:

"No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiassed; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty."

The Ethics of Belief

Many people want to believe ridiculous stories, and so they do, often with a slight pretense to evidential support. But as already remarked, in this case, there is no real evidential support. The story falls apart upon examination.