[Oonie]

Originally Posted by yah ↗

Idiot. What's he gonna do when they have to amputate them?

He's gonna sit on a street corner in his little cart begging for alms. However I don't think he will last that long. Can you imagine the stench emanating from those legs? He should get a wife who is just as devoted as he is.

[kellyhound]

Originally Posted by AllegedlyHere ↗

“Volunteers must continuously sanitize his legs…”
Volunteers, wtf. You couldn’t pay me to do that.

And are the volunteers wiping him clean and emptying the bucket when he shits and pisses?

Yup. they do that in shifts. They have a regular job too. could be a shop owner or teacher etc.

On top of that they often also pay for the bandages, ointments etc. because they think they are partially involved in reaching some sort of divine vision

Fun fact: After 12 years most can never sit down again because the knee joints and hips are locked or calicified as their body adapted completely to the standing, upright position. Many extending the vow for the rest of their lives instead lol

Even more fun fact is that the ones that completed the 12 year devotion reported a state of absolute euphoria and a feeling of oneness with Lord Shiva, which they believe validates their sacrifice.

However medical scientists note that a person subjected to 12 years of chronic, agonizing physical pain, profound sleep deprivation, from sleeping upright on a swing, and a highly restricted diet will experience altered brain chemistry.

The brain under this level of long-term trauma naturally induces vivid, waking hallucinations, which perfectly align with the intense religious expectations they had.

This guy has University degree but he core religious belief is that human souls carry thousands of years of negative karma.

Ordinary people burn it off slowly over many lifetimes and by subjecting the body to intense, voluntary agony (like severe leg edema and ulcerations), he believes he is forcefully burning away lifetimes of bad karma in just 12 years.

It's the price he is willing to pay to force the universe to grant him enlightenment.

The 12-year timeline is not a random number as it is a precisely calculated cosmic matrix that connects time, a specific deity and the entire layout of the solar system.

Jupiter takes 11.86 Earth years to orbit the Sun, spending almost exactly one year in each of the 12 zodiac signs.

For the ascetic, time is not measured by a wristwatch or a paper calendar, but by watching Jupiter cross every single constellation in the sky. R

eaching year 12 means the celestial clock has completed one perfect, closed loop.

The vow is dedicated entirely to Lord Shiva, the ultimate deity of destruction, transformation and asceticism.

Shiva is traditionally depicted as the ultimate Yogi who sits in deep meditation, completely detached from the physical world.

By voluntarily destroying his own physical body through 12 years of agonizing standing, the monk is attempting to mimic Shiva's extreme detachment.

The pain is treated as a sacrifice to prove that the monk has conquered his own ego and physical flesh.

The creators of this system were the ancient Indian sages, astronomer-priests, and philosophers known as the Rishis, who compiled these rules between 1500 BCE and 500 BCE.

Sage Parashara is the primary author of the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, the ancient foundational textbook of Vedic astrology.

He is the person who formally wrote down the rules stating that Jupiter represents the divine soul, Mars represents pain, Venus and Mercurius pleasure and that human lives must be measured against their orbital timelines.

The authors of the Puranas were anonymous ancient priests who wrote the mythological holy books (like the Shiva Purana).

They created the stories of gods performing Tapasya (extreme penance) for exactly 12 years, setting a rigid cultural benchmark that modern ascetics like Dulal Giri Ji Maharaj feel forced to copy to be taken seriously.

In those ancient, superstitious times they needed a way to organize society and explain human psychology so, they mapped human traits onto the planets (Jupiter = wisdom, Mars = aggression, Saturn = suffering).

They institutionalized it by writing these astronomical observations into religious scripts, they turned a simple 12-year space orbit into a sacred, unbreakable psychological law.

The educated priests, kings, and sages realized that human beings are incredibly difficult to govern through raw physical force alone. It is far more efficient to control how people think.

So mass control and the consolidation of power are major reasons why these books were historically enforced and followed. Same with the Bible and Koran etc.

By writing these books and convincing the public that the rules came directly from a higher cosmic power (like Lord Shiva, Yahweh, or Allah), they achieved several massive political and social advantages.

If a king/pharao or whatever tells an uneducated peasant what to do, the peasant might rebel if the king's back is turned.

But if a holy book says an invisible, all-powerful God is watching their every thought and will torture their soul in hell or reincarnate them as a cockroach for disobeying the masses police themselves.

It creates a psychological prison where people willingly submit to authority out of sheer terror of the afterlife.

In ancient times, the vast majority of the population was illiterate and focused on daily survival. The clever elite kept the ability to read and write to themselves. Bit like what the Taliban is doing right now or Hamas leaders as they are living in wealth.

By holding the monopoly on these sacred books, the priestly class made themselves indispensable.

If you wanted to cure a disease, understand the weather, or know your destiny, you had to go to them and pay them. This secured them permanent wealth, tax exemptions and political influence right alongside kings etc.

In heavily developed, highly educated regions like Western Europe, Canada and parts of East Asia, overall religious affiliation has collapsed alongside rising education and economic security.

When the state provides reliable healthcare, education and financial safety nets, people rely less on religious institutions for survival.

While ancient priests used the fear of God and 12-year cosmic cycles to control what people believed, Roman Emperors used free food and violent entertainment to control how people behaved.

Both systems exist to achieve the exact same goal, keeping the masses quiet, distracted and obedient.

The Aztecs and the Incas were masters in both by the way.