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The Wonder-Working
Preacher of Ahimsa
the twenty miles to the airport and the other time when
he put on a pair of rubber sandals at the insistence of
officials at Honolulu airport.
The Muniji brushed aside the objections of his rigid
kinsmen by saying, "If our religion is for humankind
then we must make use of modern conveyance."
Muni Sushil Kumarji otherwise leads a frugal life,
observing all the austere tenets of Jainism rigorously.
He lives in a small room, sleeps on the floor even in the
US; does all his chores without the help of servants and
meditates at 4 a.m. daily. N o woman is allowed into his
presence after sundown and even when they do come
for darshan in the course of the day, he keeps his eyes
lowered. It is said there is a ritual in which he
periodically has his hair pulled out w h e n he is
meditating, just to prove that a Yogi in his sublime
trance-state feels no pain.
In Chicago, the Muniji astonished people with rare
psychic feats. In a private psychiatric hospital there, he
went into a semi-trance state and diagnosed the
emotional states of people from the colours of their
auras, which he declared he could perceive. T h e
symptoms he relayed were infallibly accurate.
A n o t h e r feat he demonstrated was varying the
temperature of different parts of his body at will. Yogis
who have advanced far in their meditative techniques,
as we have seen, are able to do this merely by
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