Many of Narang’s relatives were convinced that the first hospital, a reputed one, which had declared him dead couldn’t have been wrong and his spirit had actually left while only his body was kept “alive” on life support. One of the relatives made a seemingly peculiar comment: “We were lucky that in the twelve days his body was kept alive, some wandering spirit didn’t enter it. Recognising that it was somebody else’s spirit and getting rid of it would have compounded our tragedy”. But is it possible for a wandering spirit to enter a dead body so that the body comes to life again? Yes, it is.
Often, such a phenomenon is termed a “walk-in”. According to Wikipedia, “A walk-in is a new-age concept of a person whose original soul has departed his or her body and has been replaced with a new, generally more advanced, soul…Believers maintain that it is possible for the original soul of a human to leave a person’s body and for another soul to “walk in”. Souls are said to “walk-in” during a period of searing personal problems for the departing soul, or during or because of an accident or trauma. The “new” individual retains the memories of the original personality, but the personality and abilities change . Incarnating into a fully grown body allows a more advanced soul to carry out its mission without having to go through the two decades of maturation that humans need to reach adulthood…”
However, though described as “a new age concept”, numerous stories that I have heard over the years in remote areas unexposed to television or media of any kind have made it evident that its paranormal chronology is very old and its occurrence fairly widespread and well understood too. Even in relatively recent times, it was way back in 1941 that a film Here Comes Mr. Jordan wove its plot around a spirit entering a newly dead corpse. This film in turn was based on a play, Heaven Can Wait written in 1938. The 1978 film remake, Heaven Can Wait, also “portrayed one soul replacing a recently deceased man’s soul and reviving and inhabiting his body”. This theme featured in other notable movies, TV serials and novels and stories too such as the Death of Superman story cycle, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower novels, X-Files, Ghost Whisperer and others.
There are several types of walk-ins or soul exchanges. In her book, Walk-ins Among Us Open Your Personal Portal to Cosmic Awareness, Yvonne Perry has written about them. Sometimes, the walk-in soul enters into an agreement with the walk-out soul. “Rather than having a body die in order to release the soul from its incarnation, another soul steps in and picks up where the previous soul left off. A walk-in can also be a companion soul in spirit form walking along with an embodied soul. A walk-in can be a fragmented aspect of a soul coming home and reuniting with the soul essence in a body… Some walk-ins are a blend of soul essences or consciousnesses inhabiting one body simultaneously. These may rotate in and out of the ‘driver’s seat’ as needed to accomplish a task.”
It is said that after his death in 1990, the soul of Devraha Baba, often described as “an ageless yogi” and an “unusual hermit” who was popular amongst both common people and the most powerful people, would speak through the living body of his successor, Purushottamacharyaji, Devdasji (Bade Sarkar), Devraha Hans Baba. But not all cases of a departed soul entering a body are at an evolved, elevated level. Many years, near Doiwala, situated in Uttarakhand on the Dehra Dun- Rishikesh-Haridwar road, a man had gone for his daily dip in the river when a flash flood carried him downstream and he drowned. At that precise moment, a wandering spirit saw the opportunity and entered his body which, now occupied by a new spirit, emerged from the river and walked back to where his chappals and clothes were heaped on the river bank and wore them.
A part of the soul’s consciousness stays with the body for some time after death and using that, the “new soul man” walked back to his homestead and locked himself in a room. Family members were even more shocked when the ‘new soul man’ declared in a strange voice that from now on, food, etc, was to be left outside the door. They were even more alarmed when a few days later, whiffs of a foul smell began emanating from the room. A chance visit by a sadhu seeking alms led, after a struggle and great resistance from the spirit—“I won’t leave, I won’t leave,” he shouted, to the eviction of the new spirit. When the locked door was broken open, they discovered a decomposed body.
It isn’t only dead bodies that spirits or souls can enter. An exchange or entry of a spirit or soul into a living body can take place when the body is sleeping, or unconscious, or in a drugged state, when under anesthesia, or in emotional stress, a near-death experience, a suicide attempt and so on. Also, more than one spirit can enter a body . Spiritually-advanced souls can walk into adult bodies and bring new dimensions into play. In each case, there are clear indications that a new or different soul or a fragmented soul or a spiritually-advanced soul has entered a body—dead or alive, but that’ll be the subject of a column in the future.