WILLIAM SHATNER: Ancient practices
used to ward off evil spirits.
A community celebration, in which the guests of honor
are all dead.
And an oppressive drought that was ended
by the power of prayer.
Throughout human history,
diverse cultures have all used sacred rituals
to express profound spiritual beliefs.
And while some ceremonial practices
may appear strange at times,
there are many rituals that are thought
to unlock incredible powers.
Is it possible that performing certain acts can, in fact,
connect us to a higher plane of existence?
Well, that is what we will try and find out.
♪
SHATNER: It is home to one of the world’s
largest religious structures, the Grand Mosque.
In the center courtyard of this immense edifice
stands a 43-foot-tall granite cube
known as the Kaaba, the House of God.
Five times a day, every day,
almost two billion Muslims across the world
turn and pray towards this striking black monument,
the holiest and most sacred site in all of Islam.
Why?
Because embedded in the eastern corner
of the shrine is perhaps the most sacred stone
in all the world,
the Black Stone of Mecca.
For the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims,
this stone is crucial.
When Muslims face in the direction of Mecca,
they face in the direction of that stone.
ANDREW COLLINS: This object, as simple as it might be,
is of incredible significance to the Muslim faith,
because it is said to have fallen from heaven
at the commands of Allah
at the time of Adam and Eve.
And it was said to have marked the position
of the first temple,
which obviously, becomes Mecca itself.
HUSSAIN: Then the story is that stone
gets lost during the flood,
because Muslims have the same flood story
that Jews do from the Hebrew Bible.
Then that stone for Muslims is rediscovered by Abraham.
So, Abraham, with his son Ishmael,
build in Mecca the first place of prayer.
That’s why Mecca is important to Muslims,
is this is the first place of prayer to the one God.
Over time, it gets worn away, the building gets rebuilt.
In 605, the prophet Muhammad himself
is the one that places that stone in its place.
That’s part of what gives it power.
SHATNER: Each year, millions of Muslims make a pilgrimage
or hajj, to the Kaaba.
Once there, visitors take part in a series of rituals
called Tawaf,
which includes circling the Kaaba seven times
in the belief that it will bring about true humility
by linking them with God.
The Black Stone
is, therefore, one of the focal points
of the Hajj ceremony
that every Muslim certainly tries to achieve
during their lifetime, and they will then enter
the central court of Mecca and, if possible,
try to kiss the Black Stone in emulation of Muhammad,
who was said to have set it up in this position
in the year 605 AD.
This is the most mystical encounter
with any material object
that a loyal Muslim can possibly have.
They’re in such a hypnotic state,
such a transcendent state,
and they use the corner of the building
to make sure it’s seven times,
to have the full effect of the ritual activity.
With Muslims in Mecca, the Black Stone has the power
to communicate with people.
I mean, literally talk with people.
There’s two million people nowadays
that make that pilgrimage.
You might get trampled, and unfortunately,
there have been people who have been trampled to death.
But that’s so important
that it connects you back to the historic past.
The Black Stone is a major material focus,
the most sacred object
in one of the world’s most major religions,
and it also was sacred to other people.
HUSSAIN: So, people who are outside the Islamic tradition
may risk their lives to travel to see this.
And if they’re found out, they may well be killed.
You have these accounts of people
like Captain Richard Francis Burton,
one of these famous explorers,
who disguises himself as a Muslim.
There’s a power there for him to see the ritual,
to see the stone, to handle this thing.
Richard Francis Burton goes in, sees this,
is able to come back out and writes about this.
So, you can see from him the importance of this place,
because the connection to the biblical prophets.
THOMPSON: Certainly, the stories
that have been built around it really pull people in.
And some people suggest that maybe it’s something
in the stone itself, uh, that pulls people in.
SHATNER: The stone itself pulling people in?
But how?
For the millions, if not billions of Muslims
who have made their pilgrimage to the Kaaba,
there’s no doubt that the Black Stone
has an inexorable power
that seems to draw them into its orbit.
And according to some experts,
that’s because the Black Stone is not of this world.
Muslims believe that this was sent down by God to Earth.
If we’re scientific, we may call that a meteorite.
If we’re not scientific, we may call that miraculous.
You know, here’s this stone that comes from the heavens.
AARON CELESTIAN: When a meteorite hits the Earth and somebody witnessed the fall
and-and they were to go to that location,
there’s a variety of things that they might be able to find.
If the stone falls in a sandy area, for example,
there might be a lot of heat associated with the meteorite
as it falls, and that could cause
a fusion of the sand to cause some kind of glass to form.
And so, when you walk up onto it, you might find
some interesting new features
that you probably wouldn’t have seen
in that particular part of the-the world before.
Meteorites arrive from outer space
being exposed to cosmic rays, they’re slightly radioactive.
To people not exposed to electromagnetic radiation,
they might have been able to even feel that buzz
from this rock, from the radiation.
Beta particles especially.
You know, whether you believe it was sent by God
or whether you believe it was a random act,
it has literally extraterrestrial origins.
And so, that creates a real power there.
SHATNER: Could the Black Stone of Mecca really have the power
to physically affect people who come near it?
Well, the truth is, we may never know for sure.
Because no one has ever been officially allowed
to inspect or analyze it.
So, there are a lot of exciting and interesting questions
about the Black Stone.
I think the first initial one is, is it actually a meteorite?
A lot of people propose that and there’s some evidence,
particularly from a local impact crater, that it came from there.
And is there some sort of radiation energy that it emits
or is coming from it that we just don’t understand yet?
So it would be really amazing to have the opportunity
to analyze the Black Stone.
There are obviously challenges,
both sort of social as well as scientific.
It’s in the Muslim world, it’s in a very sacred place,
it’s a very sacred stone.
So bringing in scientists and doing careful analyses
have those social challenges, and would be difficult.
HUSSAIN: Even if you don’t believe,
as a Muslim, that this comes from God,
and has this religious significance,
you understand the power of this object
that, for at least 1,400 years,
Muslims have been circling as they do their prayers.
There’s a tremendous power there.
We want to touch that.
It’s profound to see the massive crowds of people
walking around a mysterious stone
that they believe connects them to a higher power.
And for people of all faiths,
making contact with the spiritual world
is often achieved by using the simplest of rituals:
the practice of prayer.
SHATNER: Here, in what is known as the Holy Land,
the average temperature is almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit,
and water is a precious commodity.
But this is no average year.
It’s been almost five years
since more than a few drops of rain
fell upon Israel’s thirsty sands,
and the people are beginning to panic.
TZADOK: The spring season in the Middle East
is the time for the rains to come.
As such, if the rains are not there,
you don’t have your agriculture,
which is a life and death type of experience.
Even in modern times, with all of our modern technology,
rain makes the crops grow.
No crops, no food. No food, no life.
So, when we have a drought,
this creates crisis.
SHATNER: Israel is one of the wealthiest
and most technologically advanced countries in the world.
It is also one of the most religious.
So when facing its worst drought in close to 100 years,
with the fate of the entire country hanging in the balance,
what is their solution?
Prayer.
TZADOK: In our Judaic tradition,
we have had a long-standing history
that when there is drought, the chief rabbi of the country
can call the entire nation to prayer,
and you can have a gathering in Jerusalem
of literally thousands or tens of thousands of minds, souls,
that will come together and pour out their collective energy,
calling upon God in heaven to literally manipulate
the forces of nature and bring rain.
THOMPSON: In 2018, Israel was in a major drought.
And this was really beginning to cause problems.
At this point, uh, Chief Rabbi David Lau
organized a massive ritual,
put out a call for believers to come
to one of the most sacred sites in Judaism, the Wailing Wall.
They went to the Wailing Wall, and you had thousands of Jews
praying for rain to come.
(all praying)
TZADOK: When the individual Torah-observant Jewish man
wraps himself in his tallit prayer shawl
and puts on the boxes of the tefillin,
he creates for himself a psychic bubble of energy
which unites the individual mind and heart
with the collective power of the word of God,
literally materialized before him in the form
of the fringes of the prayer shawl,
and literally in the form of the scrolls
that are upon his arm next to his heart
and on his head close to his mind.
SHATNER: It is one thing for us to believe the ritual of prayer
has the ability to affect our world.
But can the act of praying
actually connect us to a higher power?
A ritual is a very predictable sequence of-of events.
The interesting thing is, if you have two things,
you have a boundary between them.
And prayer and prayer rituals might be a way
of influencing that boundary between the physical
and the non-physical, in a way that the non-physical
then interacts again with the physical world.
SHATNER: To those more secular and cynical-minded,
praying is a rather quaint if not irrelevant pastime.
There’s no reason it should work, right?
Except that in the case of ending Israel’s drought in 2018,
many believe it did.
(thunder rumbles)
HUSSAIN: You can say that it’s just simply correlation.
Yes, you prayed and yes, three days later,
there was rain, but the one thing didn’t cause the other.
I mean, that’s the scientific approach.
The religious approach is a little bit different to say,
"Well, maybe we did, maybe we did influence, uh, this.
Maybe God listened to these prayers."
TZADOK: In Judaism, there are rituals
that augment the power of the individual.
The passion, the desire, the thought, the idea.
Creating, if you will, a psychic field,
which combines to give great psychic spiritual energy
for the fulfillment of that which the individuals seek.
But when we come together as a collective,
we find that it does have the power to influence change.
They prayed for rain, and the prayers were answered.
Were the prayers of Israel answered by God?
Or was the rainfall simply a coincidence?
It would seem the answer is a matter of faith.
But not all sacred rituals
involve the fate of millions of people.
Some are thought to have an effect
on the life of a single person,
such as the ancient healing practice of voodoo.
SHATNER: 32-year-old author Julia Buckley
is writing in her office when she experiences a pain
unlike any she has ever felt before.
I was just at my desk one day at work, typing away,
um, reached out for a cup of coffee,
and suddenly, it was as if my right arm was on fire,
as if someone had laid out fireworks
all the way from my fingers up to my armpit,
and across to my neck.
I was really pretty disabled by the pain,
’cause it was getting worse day by day, week by week.
I couldn’t do anything with this right arm at all.
I saw three general doctors, I saw eight specialists.
I was doing everything that I was told to do.
So after two years, I was completely at my wit’s end.
So I was pretty desperate and in quite a dark place.
SHATNER: With her life virtually in shambles,
Julia was willing to try anything.
Turning away from conventional medicine,
she began to investigate alternatives,
and this led her down a, shall we say, unusual path.
Voodoo healing.
And I was reading a book about voodoo.
And reading it, I hadn’t seen anything like it
in any of the other research that I’d done.
I just got this impression that the voodoo priests
were probably the people who had the most kind of grasp
of the mind-body relationship.
And I just thought, if anyone’s gonna be able to help me,
it’s gonna be someone in Haiti.
SHATNER: Still fighting debilitating pain,
Julia Buckley flew to Haiti,
and, once there, arranged to meet with Richard Morse,
a voodoo practitioner.
BUCKLEY: I’d actually read interviews and knew
that he was a voodoo priest as well as a hotel owner,
and so I’d already thought, "Oh, I need to try and ask him
whether he can, he can do anything for me."
So, I checked in to the hotel, met him,
and then we started talking about voodoo
and its capacity for healing.
And so, I told him exactly why I was there,
and I just said, "Can you help me?"
I think he said, "Are you-- are you sure you want this?"
And I was like, "Absolutely."
MORSE: No one taught me how to do this.
I didn’t go to school to do this.
But I have a c-certain capacity
for something of this sort.
My mom was a voodoo priestess,
and my father’s family goes back to the Puritans.
I like to call my thing "puritan voodoo,"
because I’m a mix.
SHATNER: After learning about her symptoms,
Morse led her into a dark room,
one meant to summon spirits
and extract whatever was harming her.
BUCKLEY: There were candles and bottles all around the room.
There were strips of cloth,
different-colored cloths, that now I know represent
the different loa, all the spirits, all around the room.
There were these terra-cotta pots
that he said were filled with the souls of the dead.
And there were these little bottles
of what I found out afterwards were holy water
brought from shrines all over the rest of the world.
He went around me a couple of times.
Then he stopped at the back of my neck
and started feeling from the bottom of my skull
down to my neck.
Kind of pressing on it, almost like what a chiropractor
might do before they really start going for it.
I was scared, because that’s where all my problems were
and I didn’t want him to hurt me and I didn’t want my neck
to be cracked or anything like that.
I was terrified.
He told me that he had found
a demon in the shape of a black cat on my neck.
So when he had been dragging his fingers down my neck,
he was literally picking up
and detaching this black cat.
He said he didn’t know how I’d got it,
when I’d got it or how long it had been there,
but he said it was nasty and...
that he’d got rid of it.
It was only when I got to the airport,
decided I needed a cup of coffee
and jumped up the stairs to the coffee bar
carrying my little carry-on suitcase.
I was standing with the coffee,
and I kind of looked down and thought,
"Hang on, I can’t normally do that."
And I checked in with my body and I realized,
"Actually, nowhere is hurting right now.
This is really strange."
It was the first time in nearly three years
that I hadn’t been in pain.
SHATNER: As far as Julia Buckley was concerned,
voodoo had worked
after everything else had failed.
But how?
THOMPSON: Voodoo is a fabulously interesting tradition.
We see it in the Caribbean,
primarily, perhaps, in Haiti,
although certainly in other places
around the Caribbean as well.
It’s a part of a much larger assemblage
of religions with a shared sort of worldview.
This traces back to West Africa,
uh, and to several, uh, groups
and several different religions there.
The West African religious tradition, uh,
was brought over via the slave trade
to the Caribbean, to the Southern United States,
where it flourished and took on different forms
and blended somewhat easily with the Catholic faith.
You can call it God or you can call it, uh,
how you... how you want...
(singing)
SHATNER: Perhaps one of the reasons
voodoo’s followers believe in its incredible power
is because they know it not only can be used to heal
but also to harm.
We hear this phrase, uh, "voodoo death," you know,
that people may have cast a spell
or done some kind of ritual
that causes the death of other person.
And if we’re scientific, well, that’s ridiculous. That has
no causal relationship here.
But if we dig a little deeper,
there have been cases of voodoo deaths
where someone has said something or done something
that literally affects another person.
NICK HOBSON: Most scientists, doctors or researchers
would just call it an anomaly.
A physical or psychological anomaly
that we can’t quite explain
with the data or the information that are presented before us.
BUCKLEY: I think there’s a lot of value
in things being unexplained.
Something like voodoo,
you’re never gonna be able to have the proof of what happened.
I don’t know what happened in that room, and I was there.
♪
Can voodoo healing practices involving candles,
pieces of cloth and holy water
cure ailments that modern medicine can’t even diagnose?
It’s an intriguing idea.
And the truth is that, throughout history,
many seemingly ordinary objects
have been used in mystical rituals.
For instance, there’s a stone
that plays an important role
in the coronation of England’s kings and queens.
SHATNER: Here on Saint Andrew’s Day,
Scotland’s official national holiday,
a long-awaited ceremony is finally taking place.
The occasion will finally see the return,
after more than 700 years,
of one of Scotland’s most important artifacts--
a roughly two-by-one-foot sandstone block
weighing 335 pounds
called the Stone of Scone.
Or as it’s known according to legend,
the Stone of Destiny.
THOMPSON: The stone itself is just a stone,
uh, somewhat unremarkable-looking.
And yet the stories of that stone have been so powerful,
reflecting so many wars
and-and contests between nations for hundreds of years.
And another fascinating aspect of this is that we know
that this stone was religiously important.
The Stone of Scone has really interesting religious roots.
And this goes back to the biblical tradition.
The patriarch Jacob in the Book of Genesis
has this dream at this place called Beit El,
literally "the house of God."
He’s sleeping and he uses stones to rest his head on.
There’s a tradition that says Jeremiah, a later prophet,
takes this stone to Ireland.
The stone then finds its way to Scotland.
SHATNER: In 840 AD, a nobleman named Kenneth MacAlpin
brought the sandstone slab to the medieval town of Scone.
According to Scottish legend, it was the stone itself
that proclaimed him "Kenneth I,"
the original king of Scotland.
According to the stories, uh,
when the rightful ruler would place their foot on the stone,
the stone would speak out and proclaim them
as the rightful ruler of the land.
HUSSAIN: It’s used in Scottish rituals as a way of coronation.
It’s this stone that is really key,
and the idea here is that the monarch
isn’t just selected by the people--
God has chosen the monarch.
SHATNER: For centuries, the Stone of Destiny was considered
not only one of the greatest treasures in all of Scotland
but also a legitimate means
by which someone could rule the country.
Which is why, in 1296,
the English monarch Edward I wanted it
and the Scottish throne for himself.
In the 13th century, the English come in
-and conquer. -(horse neighs)
We always talk about conquerors taking out valuable objects,
and we think of gold, diamonds, jewels.
We don’t think about stones.
But what’s one of the first things that they take?
Well, they take this stone, the Stone of Destiny.
YOUNG: The reason Edward I took the stone
was to demoralize the Scots.
This was the treasure of Scotland.
This was the center of their power system.
And now he controlled it and had himself crowned on this stone
and then could declare that he was not only the king
of the English but the king of the Scots as well.
COLLINS: It was placed in Westminster Abbey
beneath a coronation chair known as Edward’s Seat.
And thereafter
it was used in the coronations of all English rulers.
HUSSAIN: Edward basically builds it into a chair.
Covers it over with-with wood
and it becomes a throne, essentially.
But the idea is that the power comes from this stone,
the Stone of Destiny.
SHATNER: Destiny--
the idea that the course of one’s entire life
has been predetermined by a power beyond our understanding.
Back in the Middle Ages,
it might make sense that people would think
that greatness could be bestowed upon someone by a divine force.
But what is it about this unremarkable slab of rock
that still holds such importance today?
We tend to think of these rituals
as somehow going back to older, superstitious people,
but the fact that the British in the 21st century
still will proclaim the monarch on the throne of this stone,
that becomes really important.
These are not ancient, archaic people
who don’t know anything about the world.
These are modern, 21st century Brits
who are still saying, you know,
that we still need to be able to show that our queen or our king
comes from this divine,
God has chosen this person.
SHATNER: Nearly every British king or queen since the 14th century
has been coronated on the Stone of Destiny.
It was last used in 1953,
during the coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II.
But-- as a growing number of Scottish people
have begun to speculate--
was Elizabeth’s coronation legitimate?
Because-- as many have come to believe--
the Stone of Destiny
may not be the real thing.
NEWSMAN: A Christmas Day sensation at Westminster Abbey.
The Stone of Destiny,
which had been there for some 600 years,
was stolen from the Coronation Chair.
COLLINS: In 1950,
a group of Scottish students
actually got into Westminster Abbey
and stole the Stone of Scone
and took it back to the altar
of Arbroath Abbey in Scotland
and thus giving it into the hands of the Church of Scotland.
The Church of Scotland then gave the stone back to England.
However, there is a strong rumor
that the original stone never reached Westminster
a-and that the one that is there was a fake.
However, whether this story is true or not, we may never know.
SHATNER: A fake Stone of Destiny?
It’s an interesting claim
but one that is not without its problems.
Because when the English returned the Stone of Destiny
to the Scots,
they did so on one condition.
HUSSAIN: In 1996, when the stone is returned back to Scotland,
there’s an agreement that, okay, you have it,
but we’ll use it the next time we coronate a monarch.
COLLINS: The point is that we believe in its power.
We believe in its potency.
The heritage,
the traditions,
the history of the stone gives it energy.
And that’s what’s important here.
If people believe strongly enough in an object,
that can create a reality.
♪
King Charles III is the latest English monarch to participate
in the coronation ceremony using the Stone of Destiny.
It’s a sacred rite that the royal family has honored
for over 700 years.
But half a world away,
the Malagasy people show reverence to their ancestors
in an entirely different ritual,
one that involves
digging up the dead.
SHATNER: On this large island in the Indian Ocean
some 250 miles off the eastern coast of Africa,
the indigenous Malagasy people gather every few years
for a multigenerational celebration known as Famadihana.
But this party is not a typical family get-together.
Because the Malagasy don’t just invite
their living relatives to this reunion--
they also invite
the dead ones.
STEAVU: Famadihana, or "the turning of the bones,"
is a ritual that is performed
usually once every five to seven years
in which a... the family or the relatives
of a deceased person will get together from all over
and celebrate the life of the deceased.
They exhume the body, they carefully lay it out,
they clean it and then change the death shrouds
on the basis of this idea that the living
can intervene on behalf of the dead
to improve their lots
or their level of comfort in the afterlife.
One part of the celebration also involves
basically shouldering the bones of the deceased,
and the turning of the bones will take place,
sometimes dancing with them.
(whooping)
Usually the ceremony concludes
when they re-entomb the remains of the deceased.
But they’re not cutting off the memory of this person
from their lives. They will keep them present in their lives
until the next time they see them,
which is periodically every five to seven years.
And this is a way to really...
reinforce the connection between the living and the dead.
YOUNG: People will come to honor
the lost ancestors, to be sure,
but also to work on coming to terms with death
that hovers around our lives.
Some cultures deal with it more directly than others.
And the value of this tradition
is that it’s a different way of thinking
about how death ends a life but it does not end a relationship.
So it is lovely, even though it’s a little eerie.
It reminds us the dead aren’t entirely gone.
There are many belief systems that suggest
the soul is attached to the body,
particularly the bones,
and that, as long as bones exist,
some trace presence of soul,
the soul of the person that lived in that body,
will still remain with the bones.
SHATNER: Could it be true that our souls
really remain in our bones after we die?
While that idea may sound far-fetched,
there are some people around the world who believe it’s true.
In fact, it’s often thought that our souls
lie within the most recognizable part of the human body,
the skull.
Each year, on November 8,
the indigenous Aymara people gather for an ancient custom--
a colorful procession
known as Día de las Ñatitas,
or the Festival of Skulls.
STEAVU: The Aymara indigenous people of Bolivia and Peru
keep skulls, uh, in shrines in the home.
They keep ’em in places of honor in the household
and make regular offerings to them.
The skulls are thought to bring harmony to the family.
They’re thought to protect people from illness and death.
And they also ask them for advice.
They ask them for support or for help.
-(ringing) -And once a year,
they will take out the skull
and parade them in this festival.
PAUL KOUDOUNARIS: You’ll get 20,000, 30,000 people down in the cemetery.
It’s really quite a spectacle,
’cause you’ll get people bringing
five or more skulls down in big boxes
and they dress them up.
If it’s cold in the morning, they’ll put on a hat.
They’ll put sunglasses on ’em.
And there are certain offerings that are pretty typical--
cigarettes,
alcohol,
little bits of money, coca leaves, things like that.
You know? And it’s kind of a thank you
to make sure the dead will continue
to assist the living.
STEAVU: These skulls are perceived
as a kind of portal
between the realm of the living and the dead,
a site where the spirit of the deceased can manifest.
And it’s through these skulls that the living
can communicate with the dead,
as if they are living and as if they are present,
there and then, in those skulls.
There’s something about the way that the skulls are presented
that you feel like these individuals are being venerated.
We’re a species that communicates with our face.
So it shouldn’t surprise us that we really fixate on the skull
as being a way to honor and communicate
with those ancestors.
Can ceremonies involving the bones of the deceased...
...actually bring us into contact
with the spirits of our loved ones?
And if so, is it possible that sacred rituals
can actually preserve the soul
for eternity?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining
a fascinating and strange practice
known as the art of self-mummification.
SHATNER: Just outside the Tsuruoka city limits
sits Churen-ji Temple.
Surrounded by 200-year-old cherry blossom trees,
Churen-ji is similar to many other rural temples
throughout the region,
with one notable exception.
The monk who presides here
has been seated in meditative prayer
for almost 200 years.
KEN JEREMIAH: Among the mummified monks
of Yamagata, Japan,
Sunada Tetsu is perhaps the most famous.
And his body is currently located at Churen Temple
in northern Yamagata Prefecture.
Sunada Tetsu is an 18th century Buddhist monk
who wasn’t a religious person at all.
He didn’t plan on entering religion.
However, he ended up killing two samurai.
♪
And at the time, 19th century Japan,
if you kill two samurai and you’re a commoner,
you’re gonna be killed.
But local temples were exempt from that law.
So he joined Churen Temple
and, over time, became a believer
and one of the most holy people in Japan,
traveling throughout the Japanese countryside,
repairing bridges,
doing anything he could to help people.
SHATNER: Sunada Tetsu was so dedicated to serving the Japanese people
that the one-time outlaw earned a reputation
as a miracle worker.
But as old age began approaching,
Sunada Tetsu realized that there was only one way
for him to continue his good works well into the future--
the ancient art of self-mummification,
known as sokushinbutsu.
In this particular tradition of, uh, Buddhism
that we find in Japan,
there’s this practice of sokushinbutsu,
which is basically a mummification practice
the practitioner undertakes when they’re still alive.
People who engaged in the process of self-mummification,
they wanted to preserve the flesh because they thought
there was a divine merit that could be of use
of people who are still alive.
SHATNER: In order for a monk’s soul
to shed his body in the proper manner,
the practitioners of sokushinbutsu
were required to undergo a very specific process,
a process which--
as one can imagine--
isn’t exactly pleasant.
JEREMIAH: The process of self-mummification
is to gradually decrease the amount of food you’re ingesting
and, in place,
start ingesting things that are preservative in nature.
And in the case of the self-mummified monks,
they were pine bark, pine resin
and urushi tea.
Urushi tea, which comes from the lacquer tree,
is considered to be extremely toxic
but also lacquers the body from inside out
and it removes moisture at the same time from the organs
and presents some kind of embalming faculties.
When the monks have completed their pre-mummification diet,
they would be placed into a box made of pinewood
and buried underground with a little bell.
(tinkling)
Once the bell stopped ringing,
the other monks would know that...
the self-mummifying practitioner
had, uh, deceased inside the box.
SHATNER: According to historical accounts,
Sunada Tetsu spent 3,000 days--
which is more than eight years--
starving himself in preparation for his living burial.
After his body was eventually unearthed,
it showed no decay whatsoever,
signifying that his spirit was indeed pure.
But as morbid as Sunada Tetsu’s tale may be,
he was not the first to attempt the extreme ritual
of sokushinbutsu,
nor the last.
The founder of Esoteric Buddhism in Japan
was believed to have, uh, studied in China
and, uh, learnt about this practice there
and subsequently brought it to Japan,
upon which some Japanese monks, the most intrepid amongst them,
would have picked it up and applied it.
But the self-mummification practice
was outlawed in the 19th century
because it was rarely successful.
JEREMIAH: They actually wanted to cause their own death
so they could be in meditative posture
so they could direct their soul
where they wanted it to go afterwards
and they’d be lucidly aware of the change
between life and death.
That’s why they’re considered living Buddha.
These mummies were still alive
because they are in between the realm of life and death
and perhaps they can influence the two of ’em.
♪
Could the slow process of turning yourself into a mummy
actually be the secret to living forever?
Well, if nothing else, these actions reinforce the belief
that human beings can be transformed
through the power of sacred rituals.
And while the practice of rituals
may be an intentional act that connects us to each other
and to a higher power,
the mystery of how they work remains...
unexplained.
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