Dancing on the coals! Tourists returning from Bulgaria talk excitedly about what they saw …
Night sky. Stars. A shimmering pile of red coals. Women in long white shirts, to the sound of a guide (an instrument resembling a bagpipe), with a detached gaze, as if half asleep, dancing on a fire that has barely stopped blazing with flames. How do dancers manage to remain unharmed and avoid burns? Literally everyone who has seen this amazing ritual or at least heard about it involuntarily arises such a question.
Firewalking: focus or?
For several centuries, scientists have been unable to unravel the mystery of walking on fire, a phenomenon that, according to ancient sources, was known in many parts of Central and South Asia as far back as the 5th century BC. Many researchers have witnessed this incredible ceremony with their own eyes. In 1901, in Tahiti, a professor at the Smithsonian Institution S. Langley was present when the priests walked on hot stones. When one such stone was rolled out of the brazier to check its "readiness", it turned out that it could boil water for more than 20 minutes. The professor estimated that the temperature of the stones that the priests walked on was about 1200 degrees Fahrenheit (this is almost 570 degrees Celsius).
In 1922, a firewalking ceremony in the Indian city of Mysore was observed by a French bishop. The action took place near the palace of the local maharajah. Most of all, the bishop was shocked that the fakir performing the ritual could transfer his immunity to fire to other people. In front of the Frenchman, the Maharajah's barefoot orchestra marched across the coals in a solemn column, without receiving any damage.
Scientists at the beginning of the last century tried to logically explain the phenomenon of firewalking. Some researchers believed that it represented a gymnastic trick: the soles of people never come in contact with fire long enough to get burned. Others were convinced that it was all about the sweat on the feet, which cools the skin, creating a protective layer between it and the surface on which a person walks. However, none of the scientists dared to test their theories in practice.
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"Inhuman" abilities
About 15-20 years ago, fans of firewalking appeared in Russia. I managed to talk to a person who took part in such an action, and not in Bulgaria, but near Moscow. Here is what he said: “We arrived in several cars outside the city. We made a fire, boiled it and drank tea. Then they made a circle of coals two or three meters in diameter. The coals were lightly sprinkled with ash, but so that flashing red lights could be seen through it.
None of us was the first to dare to step on the hot coals. Finally there was one brave girl. She took a step into the smoldering circle and retreated. Then, after a pause, she walked through the red-hot fireplace. All of us followed her - the rest of the participants in the “fire walk”. Each took three or four steps over the shimmering coals and … ended up on the other side of the circle. Everyone's feelings were different: some felt only warmth, some felt heat, and some felt nothing at all. But the main thing is that no one was hurt, as it sometimes happened in Bulgaria, when one of the spectators tried to join the fire dancers."
The story of my interlocutor turned out to be very everyday, devoid of any romance … We arrived, drank tea, walked over the coals and went home.
A few months later, I learned that behind this routine was a reluctance to "go into details" about the long and careful preparation for the "fiery walk." I was convinced of this by visiting the International Conference with a strange and long title “A Special State of Human Consciousness. Experimental and theoretical research in parapsychology”. Tatyana Berezina, an employee of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, made a presentation at the conference. She tried to figure out a very interesting problem - where do some people get such amazing, downright "inhuman" abilities? History has recorded many examples of their appearance in a person who has fallen into an emergency. For example, during the war, people managed to evade flying bullets, became invulnerable to cold weapons, lifted unthinkable weights,which in a normal state could not even budge, turned out to be completely immune to excessive cold and heat, fatal to humans.
By changing your mind, you can do everything
Similar abilities arose in people who, for a long time, with the help of special techniques, were engaged in improving their bodies, for example, among yogis and masters of some oriental martial arts.
But there is another opinion: such stories are just fiction, and the demonstration of stunning human capabilities is a cheap trick.
In order to remove the taint of mysticism from firewalking and other "improbabilities", Tatyana Berezina created a group and began to prepare it according to a special system. The psychologist suggested that the extraordinary abilities of a person are revealed in a certain state of his consciousness. They can be realized by plunging a person into a trance, and any person. It only remained to prove in practice that this was really so. Two groups were organized. The first group is made up of volunteers, supporters of the fact that after trance training, they will be able to do phenomenal things. The second group - the control group, which brought together people participating in various psychological trainings, but did not explain to them the essence of the upcoming tests, but simply said: “Since some can do this, why don't you try? Suddenly it will work out!"
For most of the members of the control group, only one type of experiment “tools” was enough: broken glass to lie on, coals to dance on, or bricks to be broken with the edge of the palm - as they refused to participate in the experiments.
Fear, disappear
The situation was different in the experimental group. Here, each participant was hypnotized into a trance. Gradually, after one or three sessions, the person developed the skill to introduce himself to the desired state. The disappearance of fear, the emergence of self-confidence and self-confidence became a sign of success. And people without harm to their health went through all the tests: they were lying on broken glass, dancing on hot coals, breaking bricks.
According to Tatyana Berezina, during the experiments, two participants in the experiment were injured, but, fortunately, easily. At the moment of entering the coals of one of them … was bitten by a mosquito. As a result, the person came out of trance and received a slight burn. Another participant failed to achieve the required state, and he … got scared. He was frightened to seem a coward and, overpowering himself, lay down on the glass. And he cut himself at once.
Thus, Tatyana Berezina summed up the results of her research, it is safe to say that stories about people who can become invulnerable to weapons, and the phenomenon of yogis are not fantasies or tricks, and such achievements are within the reach of most people who have entered the changed state of consciousness.
Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 01-02. Mikhail Burleshin