At first, I scoffed at the story as it was told of people who attain such enlightenment that their body dissipates into the light, becoming a rainbow itself, only to leave behind the dead bodily components like hair and nails. Apparently, there are tales of individuals having achieved Rainbow Body throughout history, the most recent recorded case being Ayu Khandro in 1953.

Ayu was a life-long student of Buddhism. As a child she was drawn to the religion, but was forced into an arranged marriage by her family. An illness befell her just a few years after the wedding. Conveniently enough, a Buddhist teacher told her husband that if she wasn’t allowed to return to her spiritual study, Ayu would die. Thankfully, Ayu had an understanding husband, and Ayu was allowed to go back to her studies. Ayu Khandro survived her illness going on to study and teach for many years, and became well known as a living female Buddha. When she died she was 115 years old.

Ayu’s is a wonderful life story. However, a little digging finds that her corporeal body did not turn into light of all colors at the end of her life. Her body remained for two months before being cremated.

It may be debatable as to whether or not she reached a transcendent mental state. We can’t know what happened to her spirit at the point of her death. Some will say that she simply died. Others will believe that having lived a saint’s life, she went to heaven. Still others will believe that her consciousness transferred to an energetic essence.

Regardless of the belief, she did not physically disappear. In this case, it seems the symbolism of the Rainbow Body became concrete. Whether it was purposeful misrepresentation or a result of human interpretation, the result is that people now take the story literally.

I wonder how often this happens that philosophical symbolism, like this transition from life to leaving the body and joining the rainbow light of Nirvana, becomes real in peoples’ minds. How many stories in the bible or any other historical text are symbolic in nature when written or spoken, but turned to truth somewhere down the road?

We have no way of knowing what comes after death, what lies beyond our universe, or even where our universe came from. If stories like these are meant to give people hope that this life is not all there is, they can’t be all that bad. It’s when they are misrepresented and then mistaken for truth that they stop being as culturally useful.

I don’t necessarily subscribe to Buddhist or any other religious thinking, but I do appreciate the symbolism and the stories. The story of the Rainbow Body has a certain appeal. When you stop to think about it, who wouldn’t want to turn into a rainbow instead of heading off to heaven or hell at the end of life? I find it a particularly satisfying ending.

Hambo Lama Itigelov

Occasionally, when researching a new episode of my Skeptoid podcast, I get one of those rare “A-ha!” moments. This has happened on those rare few occasions where, as far as I can tell, my own research finds a connection that nobody else ever has before.

I had one such moment while reading up on my recent episode about incorruptibles, people whose bodies do not deteriorate after death. At a glance, the world is full of such examples. Upon deeper research, there are no such examples.

As part of my episode, I examined the ancient practice of self-mummification by a few Japanese Buddhist monks called sokushinbutsu. This 3000-day ritual called for a starvation diet and exercise to lose all body fat, then a slow self-poisoning with an arsenic rich diet, followed by an entombment and final starvation. The lack of body fat, the dehydration, and the high arsenic content actually did combine to make a reasonably good chance for mummification instead of decomposition, assuming fortuitously dry conditions in the tomb. Approximately 20 monks successfully became mummified in this way.

Then a listener wrote in to suggest I look into the case of Hambo Lama Itigelov, a Buddhist monk exhumed in 2002 in a remarkably good state of preservation. I did a huge amount of Internet searching, and found exactly zero critical reporting of the incident. YouTube has clips from a documentary and from news reports that uncritically repeat the claims that he looks like he’s been dead only 12 hours, that no evidence of chemical embalming has been found, and that his body remains flexible as if he’s merely asleep.

A Japanese monk who successfully practiced sokushinbutsu.

But I was luckily prepared with a good knowledge of sokushinbutsu, as Itigelov himself would have been. Right away, I saw the connection. Was Itigelov’s preservation a miracle unexplainable by science, or was it a modern case of sokushinbutsu?

More and more research turned up some facts about Itigelov’s life. Significantly, I discovered that he had a degree in medicine and had written a Buddhist encyclopedia on pharmacology. It turns out that a report from a pathologist present at the exhumation noted his body had a high level of bromine salts. And, in accordance with one of Itigelov’s final wishes, his body had been buried packed in salt, an obvious dessicant, used for millennia to preserve meat.

These bits of circumstantial evidence are certainly consistent with Itigelov performing sokushinbutsu. Armed with his medical knowledge and a desire to self-mummify according to tradition, he simply updated the ancient Japanese technique. By some undocumented and unknown process, he filled his body with bromine salts, which are available from a variety of naturally occurring sources. He gave instructions that his body be dessicated with salt at death. He gave instructions that he be exhumed. (He actually requested that he be exhumed after “a few years”, not the 75 years mentioned in some news reports. Due to religious restrictions in the Soviet Union, monks briefly exhumed him in secret in 1955 and again in 1973, but he was not finally exhumed until 2002.)

Much of what Itigelov did during his final days was undocumented and he certainly had ample opportunity to prepare himself in secret. What these preparations may have been is likely to remain unknown, as it’s improbable that today’s monks will allow any further testing to be done on Itigelov’s tissue. However, miracles aside, we already have ample evidence that Itigelov’s current “incorrupt” condition is perfectly consistent with an updated form of sokushinbutsu, performed by a clever medical scholar in accordance with tradition.