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The First Jersey “first” may or may not be true, but it’s an amazing story, and too good to pass up.According to another account:
One day in the 1820s, Col. Robert Gibbon Johnson strode up to the courthouse steps in Salem. With a confident smile at the huge crowd that had gathered around, Johnson reached down into a basket at his feet and picked up something everyone agreed was poisonous. As people in the audience watched in disbelief, Johnson proceeded to eat first one “poisonous” object, then a second, and, incredibly, even a third, and was still very much alive when he finished.
The crowd gasped in disbelief. How could Johnson have done it? How could he have eaten those things and survived? Finally, someone said aloud what was on everyone’s minds: “Colonel Johnson is the first person to eat a tomato and live!”
Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem, NJ, brought the tomato home to America from abroad in 1808. As the story is told, it was Johnson who, on September 26, 1820, once and for all proved tomatoes non-poisonous and safe for consumption. He stood on the steps of the Salem courthouse and bravely consumed an entire bushel of tomatoes without keeling over or suffering any ill effects whatsoever. His grandstanding attracted a crowd of over 2,000 people who were certain he was committing public suicide. This would have been the first reality TV show if they had had television back then. The local firemen’s band even played a mournful song, adding to the perceived morbid display of courage. Before consuming the bushel of tomatoes, Johnson said, “The time will come when this luscious, scarlet apple… will form the foundation of a great garden industry, and will be… eaten, and enjoyed as an edible food… and to help speed that enlightened day, to prove that it will not strike you dead — I am going to eat one right now!”In the case of tomatoes, at one point people believed they were poisonous and were afraid to eat them. This was something quite simple that people did not understand. In terms of the world around us, there are even more complex things that we do not understand. I am going to tell you a true story and it is something that I do not expect you to believe because it is so strange. However, the more I have thought about this incident, the more I am convinced that it is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the power that is available to us in the universe and out there–the power that is in fact part of everything there is. One of the strangest and most interesting things that very few people take the time to truly consider is the power that exists in the air around us, and I think we miss this power due to our own assumptions about the world. There is an incredible amount of power in the air that very few people realize and that, quite frankly, most of us take for granted.
Colonel Johnson’s physician, Dr. James Van Meter, supposedly warned that “The foolish colonel will foam and froth at the mouth and double over with appendicitis, and with all that oxalic acid, in one dose, he would be dead.”
Johnson’s grandstanding garnered a lot of attention, and North America’s love affair with the tomato was off and running. http://www.walkaboutmag.com/17unclepaul.html
Marconi dreamed of a system for harnessing the intangible forces of ether. Evidence that he did not dream in vain may be found in every wireless and radio in the world. Moreover, Marconi’s dream brought the humblest cabin and the most stately manor house side by side. It made the people of every nation on earth back-door neighbors. It gave the President of the United States a medium by which he may talk to all the people of America at one time, and on short notice. It may interest you to know that Marconi’s “friends” had him taken into custody, and examined in a psychopathic hospital, when he announced that he had discovered a principle through which he could send messages through the air, without the aid of wires, or other physical means of communication. The dreamers of today fare better.One of the most incredible things is that regardless of what we want to become or do, the opportunity to do that thing lies right before us. There are opportunities before us that we have not even been able to conceive of yet.
“Remember the four-minute mile? People had been trying to achieve it since the days of the ancient Greeks,” biographer Harvey Mackay writes. “In fact, folklore has it that the Greeks had lions chase the runners, thinking that would make them run faster. They also tried tigers’ milk– not the stuff you get down at the health-food store, but the real thing. Nothing worked. So they decided it was impossible. And for thousands of years everyone believed it. It was physiologically impossible for a human being to run a mile in four minutes. Our bone structure was all wrong. Wind resistance too great. Inadequate lung power. There were a million reasons.Everything we need and could possibly want is already around us. Our limits in terms of who we are and who we can become are largely products of our own mind. To take this one step further, if you believed you could magically levitate and really, truly believed this, then this might in fact be something you could do. One central and important idea behind Kabbalah is that there is power all around us that is available if we are not limited by our own minds.
Then one man, one single human being, proved that the doctors, the trainers, the athletes, and the millions and millions before him who tried and failed, were all wrong. And miracle of miracles, the year after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, thirty-seven other runners broke the four-minute mile, and the year after that three hundred runners broke the four-minute mile.
A few years ago, in New York, I stood at the finish line of the Fifth Avenue Mile and watched thirteen out of thirteen runners break the four-minute mile in a single race. In other words, the runner who finished dead last would have been regarded as having accomplished the impossible a few decades ago. What happened? There were no great breakthroughs in training. Human bone structure didn’t suddenly improve. But human attitudes did.
“Tell me, Mother, from your own lips–do you live without food?In the Bible, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all fasted without food or water for 40 days. Many people in India, like the woman above, claim to be able to go without food or water for years. One of many people in India who has allegedly done some long-term fasting is Sunyogi Umasankar:
“That is true . . . From the age of twelve years, four months down to my present age of sixty-eight–a period of over fifty-six years–I have not eaten food or taken liquids.”
“Are you tempted to eat?”
“If I felt a craving for food, I would have to eat.”
“But you do eat something!”
“Of course!. . . Nourishment is derived from the finer energies of the air and sunlight, and from the cosmic power that recharges your body through the medulla oblongata.”
“Mother, what is the use of your having been singled out to live without eating?”
“To prove man is Spirit. To demonstrate that by divine advancement he can gradually learn to live by the Eternal Light and not by food.” (Pages 536-37)
When I saw Sunyogi Umasankar, 39, the first thought that struck me was how totally at ease he seemed in a thin muslin dhoti on a chilly winter morning. I then came to know that he is totally immune to climatic conditions and had even gone to Kailash Mansarovar in the same attire. The most amazing fact is, of course, that he has had the capacity to subsist without food and water since 1996. Sunyogi does eat, but he can go for long stretches of time which adds up to weeks without material subsistence. Sunyogi says he become conscious of the fact that his body was absorbing the energies of the sun suddenly, while practicing sun meditation at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. After this, the first step was recognizing that his body now needed less food. He began skipping meals – eating only when hungry and not because it was ‘meal time’. Gradually, as the need for food reduced more and more – he realized that he was totally free of hunger.Others have allegedly lived without food. One well-known person who had allegedly gone without food is Hira Ratan Manek:
The technique itself seems ludicrously simple. To begin with, all that is involved is steady gazing at the early morning sun for around 20 minutes, while at the same time, remaining undisturbed by invading thoughts, without trying too hard to avoid them. A rhythmic breath pattern is recommended, though it is not essential. The trick is to gaze at the rim of the sun. However, it is extremely important to do this under the Sunyogi’s guidance. http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/Sun_Yoga/Living_on_the_Sun_and_Fresh_Air32006.asp
However, Dr. Andrew Newberg said that Hira stayed at the University of Pennsylvania only for brain scans on studies of meditation, not his ability to fast indefinitely. Newberg denied ever undertaking the 130-day study.
The paperpublished by Dr Sudhir Shah makes it clear that dozens of people had access to Hira Ratan Manek during the study and he went on at least one excursion: “Most surprisingly, he had himself climbed the famous Shatrunjay mountain (Palitana hill) on 4.4.01, on 401st day of his legendary fasting along with 500 fellowmen without anybody’s help, within 1.5 Hrs. only”. The paper reports that the subject lost 19 kg of weight during the study period. Neither the experiment, as described in the paper, nor the paper itself have been validated by any well-known Western scientific or medical journal.
Hira Ratan Manek (born September 12, 1937) claims that since June 18, 1995, he has lived exclusively on water, and occasional tea, coffee, and buttermilk. He says sunlight is the key to his health, citing the Jainist Tirthankara Mahavira, ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Native Americans as his inspiration.
According to his website, three extended periods of his fasting have been observed under control of scientific and medical teams: the first lasting 211 days in 1995-96 in Calicut, India, under the direction of Dr C. K. Ramachandran. During that period he is reported to have lost 41 kg.[25]
The second study lasted 411 days in 2000-2001 in Ahmedabad, India, under the direction of a 21 member team of medical doctors and scientists led by Dr Sudhir Shah and Dr K. K. Shah, a past President of the Indian Medical Association and current Chairman of the Jainist Doctors’ Federation. The latter group aims to “Promote scientific research and medical education based on principles of Jainism”[26]. Dr K. K. Shah said “Fasting is a method of curing the meditation of mind and body which has been proved by great jain monks, sanyasis and munis of ancient times. There is a need to propagate these methods during this age of increasing diseases of the body and mind due to overconsumptions and increasing with fasting would help maintain perfection.”[25]. Dr Sudhir Shah was also involved in the study of Prahlad Jani.[27] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InediaWhat is so incredible about these observations is that they are frequent enough that even if they are partially discredited, the odds are pretty good that there is some truth to them. The idea is that there is certainly some sort of substance and energy out there–whether it is from the sun or the air–that is available to us. In Africa and many parts of the world, people die by the thousands on a daily basis when they are going without food. What would happen, I wonder, if they had a different belief system and believed they could subsist without food or water? The possibilities for this seem pretty remarkable.
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