Is it to be believed? Lord Hanuman can make himself 100 time larger, if he sees necessary! Bhakta Prahalad prays to see Lord Vishnu and finds him next to him, a travel from Vaikunth (the heavens) to Bhooloak (earth)! Lord Krishna lifts Govardhan Parvat (a mountain with a 22 kilometers in circumference) on his little finger, for weeks, to shelter people from floods. Well, we don’t know about these stories, as we were not alive then.
But here is a small example of what happened in years ago and can be experienced even today.
About 20 kilometers from Pune, on the way to Satara, there is a durgah (Shrine) at a small town called Khed Shivapuri. The shrine is built over the grave of a revered religious figure Pir Qamar Ali Shah Darvesh. It can be identified by a huge tree outside which has hundreds of eagles hanging upside down.
Peculiarly, there is also a 250 kilogram stone in front of the shrine. This stone cannot be lifted or even be moved by any number of people, even the strongest of them. However, if an odd number of men like 7, 9, 11 come together, get their pointing finger below the stone, chant the name “Pir Qamar Ali Darvesh” while lifting it, the stone can be thrown up – as high as 8 feet or above. Louder the chant, the higher it goes. No strength need be applied. If the group is short of odd numbers, fakirs standing by are happy to join in.
The surprise element is if one tries with even number of men like 10 or 12, or with a woman in the group or withtout uttering his name, the rock won’t budge.
As always it was good to read the blog to come to know about something which is so close to the city I live in, Pune but didn’t know about till date.
After reading the blog I searched for “Pir Qamar Ali Shah Darvesh” in google to find out where this place is exactly and found many links including some from you tube where they have shown people lifting the stone on their own and in groups. One such link is below where one single person lifted the stone till his shoulder before letting it drop behind him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkqvbXeD9UA
Navin, I respect and at times get amazed your art of finding the facts,
What I had seen at this Dargah was that chanting any other words did not work. Even number of participants could not do it either. The lifters had not to apply force. Just a minimum effort to lift the finger. This may not be unique, but not common too.
I agree with you that the gurus used it to prove the power of faith. But every guru is not able to do it. If at all we say it is a miracle in present day, it is due to the fact that we have not been able to decipher that science or technology so far. This Dargah incident made me to realise that whatever miracles expressed in our Epics could as well be believed.
This also was a interesting read…….keep it up sir, you have an interesting way to share your experience
Indian Sceptic, “anti-Guru” B.Premanand who devoted his life to investigating various miraculous/paranormal claims all over India disproved this by showing that 4 people were able to lift the stone without chanting Qamar Ali Darvesh’s name.
This concept of lifting a heavy weight or a human being using just fingers of many people is not unique to Qamar Ali Darvesh’s dargah – it is used by various people all over the world for various purposes – Gurus use it to prove the power of faith, but boy scouts use this as an exercise to teach the children teamwork. All the people have to apply force at the exact same time, and that is what the chanting achieves. (The chanting can be replaced by counting, with the same results.)