Question 6

QUESTIONER: TO FIND OUT IF THERE IS SOMETHING LIKE A SOUL IN MAN, SCIENTISTS HAVE CARRIED OUT EXPERIMENTS BY PLACING A DYING MAN IN A GLASS CASKET. PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS EXPERIMENT.

There have been many experiments like this, but none of them have yielded results. Scientists think -- and naturally they think in terms of matter -- that if there is something other than matter in man, then with the passing away of his life or soul there should be some reduction in his body weight. But is it imperative that the element that goes out of one's body at death have weight? It can be weightless as well. Or it can have so little weight that it cannot be measured by any instruments available to us at the moment.

For example, sun rays have a little weight, but there is no way to measure them. If all the sun rays spread over a square mile area are collected together, they will weigh roughly ten grams. But it is so difficult to work it out. Similarly, even if our souls have weight, it cannot be measured. So all glass casket experiments -- they were carried out at many places -- proved futile.

Apart from taking the weight of a dead body, the glass casket experiment has yet another objective to achieve. It was thought the soul of a dying person -- if he has one -- after leaving his body will break out of the sealed casket and thus leave some holes or cracks in the casket. But nothing of the kind happened; like sunshine a soul can pass through a wall of glass without breaking it. If x-rays can pass through a thick wall of bones and steel, why cannot a human soul pass through a glass casket? Logically speaking there is no difficulty.

And weight is a relative thing. What we call weight is really the pressure of gravitation on something. If your body weight is one hundred twenty pounds here, and you are flown to the moon, your weight will not remain the same; it will be eight times less than it is here. Your hundred twenty pounds will be reduced to a mere fifteen pounds. The gravitational pull of the moon is eight times less than that of the earth. For this reason, if you can jump five feet high here, you can jump forty feet high on the surface of the moon. In other words, weight is nothing but the gravitational pull of the earth, and it is possible the earth cannot pull a human soul to itself. Maybe, the law of gravitation does not apply to souls, and there fore souls have no weight whatsoever. If we can build a space which is free from gravitation, then every thing in that space will be without weight.

The first and the most frightening experience of those who first landed on the moon was one of weightlessness. As soon as man passes beyond the earth's gravitational field, which extends up to two hundred miles in space, he becomes absolutely weightless. Every astronaut in a spacecraft hurtling through space has to keep himself tied to his seat, otherwise he will fly like a balloon to the roof of the spacecraft.