God Took
Him With The Body
by Ivo
Kalushev
”Nobody "verify" this kind of result in christian mystical tradition. When after death, they discover that the body is missing from the tomb after just couple of days, they just consider that "God took him with the body also", and they consider this as a sign of his great spiritual realization. That's it. You can find a lot of recordings of facts like this in some texts called "teachings of the olders". I remember a story which impressed me, from such a texts of "desert fathers", about a monk, who came suddenly at a monastery in Sinai, become a monk, practiced the contemplative hesychast tradition very seriously in his cell, without talking almost with anybody, and after some years died suddenly, and his body disappeared from the tomb after couple of days. Even the authors if this old texts asked themselves who was this man, what was his real name, what was his history before coming to the monastery.. But they all praised his high spiritual realization, his great humbleness... At the highest stage; the practitioner will experience "the Uncreated Light" continuously, without any break, even in sleep, and here they acquire all kinds of extraordinary power: levitation, extraordinary knowledge, etc. But the essential characteristics of this advanced practitioners/saints is the overwhelming love, and the extraordinary capacity to sacrifice themselves for anybody, (with great joy!), a deep humility, and (the essential aspect) the continuous experience of "Uncreated Light". There are hundreds of example like this in the history of orthodox Christianity. But what impressed me the most is the fact that in the texts which records this facts, there are also a lot of references at a strange phenomenon: sometimes when a great saint like this one died, his body was impossible to be found in the next days. This is a very known phenomenon, and it is considered a clear sign that the realization of that individual was so complete, that "God took him with the body" also.
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| Tibetan buddhist nun who attained small rainbow body in 2016. |
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| Tibetan buddhist nun who attained small rainbow body in 2016. |
In Bulgaria, where I come from, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition there are numerous instances of what appears to be the lesser rainbow body among the early isihast mystics. The body shrinking to the size of an infant is considered a very common sign of spiritual accomplishment and these remains are preserved in many, many monasteries throughout the land to this day. Anyone can go to the Rila Monastery to see one of the most famous remains of St. Ivan Rilski, but the same goes for many other places and for Greece too where many such remains are also kept. On Mt. Athos presumably the isihast practices are even still preserved and practiced, although generally not in the monasteries but only by the hermit community in the caves. The knowledge of these shrunken bodies was very common when I grew up. It was even taught in school as a normal part of the Orthodox tradition and everyone was very comfortable with the idea as everyone had seen these relics as they are all over our monasteries. I have seen them numerous times when I was a kid. Almost every major monastery has one - either a full body or a limb, or fingers, etc. They are all the size of an infant. The isihast tradition was very deep, they practiced only in caves, the teacher-disciple connection was of paramount importance and it was all oral transmission. From what I heard during my childhood they definitely had some thogal-like practices using postures and light."
See also: Bodily Dissolution in Dzogchen, https://openheartopenheart.blogspot.com/2019/10/bodily-dissolution-in-dzogchen-by-fr.html
