Dr P V Vartak has been quietly and consistently studying the great scriptures and questions of spirituality for more than half a century, with amazing results to him and those who have been reading and following him. Last week, Carol Andrade travelled to Pune to talk to the man who says he saw Mars long before the Viking 1 did.
Last week I went to Pune to meet a man who has said repeatedly that he has gone to Mars, to Jupiter, to Saturn, and to yet another planet outside the solar system, where he had seen a man.
He is a scholarly man, a medical doctor by profession, who has lived all his life in Shaniwar Peth, in the Pune of the Peshwas. He lives above his clinic, itself accessible straight off the street, part of a building that once also housed the snuff factory the family owned. His two sons are a neurologist and an advocate, a daughter is a housewife. And the clinic a very basic one, like those belonging to the old-time GPs so beloved of families. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was not the man I found, Padmakar Vishnu Vartak, MBBS, FUWAI, Ph.D (Literature) from Washington.
Across the street, in the Vartak Ashram, a 120 year old building, is the small hall on the ground floor off a courtyard, from where Dr Vartak travelled astrally to Mars on August 10, 1975. He went and came back in 15 minutes, carefully noting down a list of 21 observations. The same year, he published the observations in two magazines, Dharmik and Santakrupa.
Fidgeting a little, I asked “So, do people think you are potty, making claims like this?” Dr Vartak laughs, gently, his whole personality exuding a tranquil confidence that seems to keep him permanently happy and smiling. “No,” he says simply, “They think I am very intelligent. You see, whatever I published, 20 of the 21 observations, were reported as true by the spaceship Viking almost a year later in July 1976. The 21st observation, about ancient water and moss on Mars, was corroborated by the Pathfinder in 1987.”
Placidly he waits for the next question about a life spent in the pursuit of the truth as he has found it in the ancient Indian scriptures. He reads, he researches and then he publishes, using his science background to delve into spiritualism, combining in himself the attributes of a historian, an astronomer, an astrologer, mathematician, counselor, philosopher, speaker and author.
A seeker after truth, excellence has been his watchword, making him excel in studies through school and college. And he has been interested in everything, from body building, swimming and wrestling, to writing and acting in dramas.
His interest in spirituality began almost as soon as he qualified as a doctor in 1956. Studying for a Masters in Surgery, dedicated to preserving life, he began to realize how little scientific knowledge there was about the phenomenon of death. At the time, his colleagues thought his ruminations were strange and shocking.
Sitting in his clinic, his eyes shining at being able to talk to an ‘outsider’ about his mission of search and discovery in life, Dr Vartak talked about prana, atma, jeeva, the koshas. “Have you ever wondered about what it is that leaves the body at the time of death? Is it life? Then why is it that transplants of heart, kidneys and cornea can be carried out hours after their removal from the original body? There is life in these cells, but the prana, which is needed to move them is gone. The Taittiriya Upanishads tell of the five koshas, annamaya kosha, pranamaya kosha, manomaya kosha, vijnanamaya kosha and anandamaya kosha, with most of us staying in the outermost layer for most of our lives.”
But to experience and know, we must go inward, Dr Vartak said, and this we do through meditation or dhyan and it takes much practice before one can even think in terms of sending the prana out on astral journeys. Of course, this is just the gist of what Dr Vartak said. He himself has written extensively in English and in Marathi, books and articles outlining the findings of his researches, all contained in India’s ancient body of scripture which has lessons for the whole world, if only we will look, he adds, a trifle bitterly.
Astral travel had always held great fascination for him and he practiced without much success. Then in 1973, while in San Francisco, missing his family, he entered a state of Samadhi.
Matter-of-factly he says, “It was Saturday evening in San Francisco, and when I came home to Pune, I thought everyone would be watching television. But one child was asleep, the other was at the washbasin because it was already Sunday morning here!”
In 1975, on August 10, after years of medical research and yogic practice, Dr Vartak went into a state of Samadhi in the little hall of his family ashram, and then sent his mind out to check out the circumstances on Mars. Satisfied that he could do it, he went to Jupiter on August 27, 1977 and made 18 distinct observations. Spaceship Voyager corroborated ten of these in 1979 and he is waiting for the rest to be similarly confirmed.
In 1980, he “travelled” to anther solar system where he saw a man in a room that was “well constructed. He was darker than me, much taller, with a face like ours but his head at the back was round, like a bird’s.” In the face of such details, can he be summarily dismissed?
And there are more details. The USA planned to launch a spaceship to Saturn in 2004 and this has still to be done, but Dr Vartak says he has “been” there much before, there are no landmarks because there is no land, just three types of heavy, revolving gases, and the famous ring of Saturn “is some material like slurry or mud along with floating rocks.” You can read abut it in his biography, Brahmarashichi Samarayatra.
In between his infrequent travel, there has been much to occupy Dr Vartak and each time, he has merely had to go back to the great books for his inspiration.
Every Sunday, around 40 people, young and old, men and women, faithfully come to the Vartak ashram, there to listen to his discourses and be guided by him in the art of dhyan or meditation. Does he do a lot of puja, we asked, and the answer was “No. That is all just a preparation for dhyan.”
And rigid research has helped him publish on a range of subjects, from the development of the foetus by Vedic rishis, the mention of animal and human cloning in the Rigveda and the Puranas, that the Big Bang theory postulated by Sir David M Lowell is the same as the Vedic version of the genesis of the Universe, that Newton and Einstein were foretold in Hindu holy books.
Any ‘siddhi’ or charisma in a human being fascinated him. Anand Bhate, who at five could sing like Bal Gandharva, performed for the first time at the Vartak ashram. Another five-year-old, Sanjeev Shamra from Mumbai, had the ability to recite verses from the Gita, if he was given a number, a chapter and the first word.
He could also translate into English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati, and could discourse with ease on a huge number of spiritual subjects. He also gave a public programme in Pune under the aegis of Dr Vartak. ‘Gode Baba,’ the ‘sweet man’ displayed his siddhi for an audience collected by Dr Vartak, laying down a surface of sweetness on anything he touched with proper controls in place.
Has he ever had a run-in with rationalists seeking to debunk his findings? It’s the only time one sees him irritated. “They know nothing. They have not studied the matters I talk about. They just refuse to believe. They are foolish people.”
“Look at the ancient treasure of knowledge we have and use it in the modern age. That way, we will receive peace, freedom from fear and become the biggest power in the world,” he says.