The following is from the front and back sleeves…

In the oral and written histories of every culture, there are countless records of men and women who have displayed extraordinary physical, mental, and spiritual capacities. In modern times, those records have been supplemented by scientific studies of exceptional functioning.

Are metanormal attributes latent within everyone? What is the evidence that all humanity has unrealized capacities for selftrancendence, that the limits of human growth are not fixed? And are there specific practices that ordinary people can do to develop these abilities?

Michael Murphy has studied these questions for over thirty years. In The Future of the Body, he presents evidence for metanormal perception, cognition, movement, vitality, and spiritual development from more than 3,000 sources. Surveying ancient and modern records in medical science, sports, anthropology, the arts, psychical research, comparative religious studies, and dozens of other disciplines, Murphy has created an encyclopedia of exceptional functioning of body, mind, and spirit. He paints a broad and convincing picture of the possibilities of further evolutionary development of human attributes.

By studying metanormal abilities under a wide range of conditions, Murphy suggests that we can identify those activities that typically evoke these capacities and assemble them into a coherent program of transformative practice. Such practice, he believes, if embraced by enough people, would consitute a crucial next step in the world's evolutionary adventure.

MICHAEL MURPHY, co-founder of the Esalen Institute, the world's premiere human potential center, is the author of Golf in the Kingdom, Jacob Atabet, and An End to Ordinary History. He lives in San Rafael, California.

Here is an except of his book, page 502-505…

[22.4]

INEDIA

Long abstinence from food and drink, or inedia, is a principal Catholic charism and has been attributed to countless men and women since Christian antiquity. Saint Lidwina of Schiedam (d. 1433), it is alleged, ate nothing for 28 years; Venerable Domenica dal Paradiso (d. 1553) for 20 years; Blessed Nicholas Von Flue (d. 1487) for 19 years; Blessed Elizabeth von Reute (d.1420) for 15 years; and Louise Lateau (d. 1883) for 12 years. The historians Caroline Bynum and Rudolph Bell have documented such claims, as well as the intermittent bingeing, or bulimia, that typically accompanies heroic fasting. Bell, for example, traced the stages by which Saint Catherine of Sienna gave up normal sustenance. In her late teens she lived - intermittently - on bread, water, and raw vegetables. At about age 23 she gave up bread, surviving on Communion wafers, cold water, and bitter herbs that she either sucked and spit out or swallowed and vomited. In January 1380, when she was about 33 years old, she abstained from water for a month in expiation for a crisis of the church in Italy. Her biographers described her restless energy and sleeplessness, which increased as she ate less and less. According to Bynum, "One might interpret as binge-eating her pattern of long fasts followed by eating several times a day or her practice of forcing herself first to eat and then to vomit."

Bynum and Bell have described other "holy anorexics" who intermittently fasted and feasted. Inedia, it seems, has typically been punctuated by eating binges. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that many Catholic men and women have gone without food, and sometimes without drink as well, for long periods, sometimes without loss of energy. this fact has been established by several ecclesiastical and medical groups that have studied heroic fasting with care, sometimes submitting their subjects to around-the-clock observation and chemical analysis of their urine, blood, and vomit. Here I will describe three women who were studied in this manner.

Louise Lateau, the Belgian stigmatic described above, did manual labor for a few years after her stigmatization, but lost strength and appetite as her ecstatic states developed. According to her family and confessors, she could not digest anything without acute suffering after March 30, 1871, often vomiting when she was forced to eat. As we have seen, the Belgian Academy of Medicine had formed a commission to study her stigmata, but by 1876 it was also involved acrimonious debates about the reality of her fasting. The academy did not dispute claims that she went without food, however, as no evidence of fraud could be produced against her.

More recently, Theresa Neumann was alleged to have gone without food except for Communion bread for periods of several years, prompting doctors and priests to study her carefully and cross-examine her confidants. In 1927 the bishop of Regensburg appointed a commission to observe her. According to Thurston's account:

Four nursing sisters of Mallersdorf were chosen for the purpose, and a very strict code of regulations was drafted, to the observance of which they were required to bind themselves by oath. Relieving each other by pairs, two of the four were to be continually on duty night and day, never allowing the girl during the prescribed fortnight of observation to be out of their sight even for the shortest interval. Her weight, temperature, pulse, etc. were to be frequently taken. All excreta, whether in the process of natural relief, or by the flow of blood from the stigmata, or by vomiting, etc. were to be preserved, weighed, and subsequently submitted for analysis. Her room, clothes, bed, etc, were subjected to a thorough search, and she was always to be under close observation in her intercourse with her parents, family and all other persons. It cannot be questioned that these precautions were strictly necessary if any conclusion was to be reached which would be respected by those - mainly non-Catholics - who declared her to be a vulgar impostor.

The fortnight's observation of Theresa Neumann has proved to the satisfaction of all unprejudiced persons that she did not during that period take either food or drink. What is even more striking, the pronounced loss of weight which occurred during the Friday ecstasies was in each case made good during the two or three days which followed. On Wednesday, July 13, 1927, the day before the period of observation began, Theresa weighed 55 kilograms (=121 lbs.); on Saturday, July 16, she weighed 51 kilograms (=112 lbs.). On Wednesday, July 20, 54 kilograms (=119 lbs.) were recorded, but this again had fallen by the following Saturday to 52 kilograms (=115 lbs.), though on the Thursday, the final day, it stood once more at 55 kilograms, just as before the experiment. The extreme range of loss and gain was therefore about 8lbs. It is curious that on two occasions within the fortnight (the 15th and 22nd) there is record of natural relief to the amount of half a liter. There was also on the two Fridays some vomiting, not very considerable in amount, which seems to have been due to the blood from her eyes or forehead [of her stigmata] running into her mouth. No trace of food was discoverable in the matter thus ejected.

Alexandrina da Costa (1904-1955) lived in the town of Balasar near Oporto, Portugal. Crippled at 14 when she jumped from a window to escaped a sexual assault, she was bedridden for much of her life and developed passionate religious devotion. On Fridays she experience Christ's crucifixion in trance, often rising from bed to kneel or prostrate herself, overcoming her paralysis to some degree. As she grew older, her raptures, healing influence, and apparent sanctity attracted pilgrims from Europe and the Americas. According to her confidants and confessors, she ate and drank nothing but the bread and wine of daily Communion for the last 13 years of her life; and like Louise Lateau and Theresa Neumann, she was studied by skeptical ecclesiastical and medical groups. At the conclusion of one investigation, the directing physician, a Dr. Gomez de Araujo of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Madrid, issued a formal statement in which he said, "It is absolutely certain that during forty days of being bedridden in [our] hospital, the sick woman did not eat or drink." Nurses and attending physicians also testified to Alexandrina's total abstinence from food and drink. Dr. Araujo's medical report was accompanied by a certificate with this declaration.

We the undersigned, Dr. C. A. di Lima, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Oporto and Dr. E. A. D. de Azevedo, doctor graduate of the same Faculty, having examine Alexandrina Maria da Costa, aged 39, born and resident at Balasar, testify that the bedridden woman, from 10 June to 20 July 1943, remained in the sector for infantile paralysis at the Hospital of Foce del Duro, under the direction of Dr. Araujo and under the day and night surveillance by impartial persons desirous of discovering the truth of her fast. Her abstinence from solids and liquids was absolute during all that time. We testify also that she retained her weight; (that) her temperature, breathing, blood pressure, pulse and blood were normal while her mental faculties were constant and lucid; and she had not, during these forty days, any natural necessities.

The examination of the blood, made three weeks after her arrival in the hospital, is attached to this certificate and from it one sees how, considering the aforesaid abstinence from solids and liquids, science has no explanation. For the sake of truth, we have prepared this certificate which we sign. Oporto, 26 July, 1943.

Conceivably, the body has access to super ordinary energies that can be triggered by religious passion. Though most people who have fasted for long periods have been sedentary or bedridden, some have been physically active. Heroic fasting suggests that the body can reconstitute its elements in extraordinary ways, dramatically altering its habitual physiological activity.