Paramahansa Yogananda - Claims of Bodily Incorruptibility

Claims of Bodily Incorruptibility

As reported in Time Magazine on August 4, 1952, Harry T. Rowe, Los Angeles Mortuary Director of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, where Yogananda's body was embalmed, wrote in a notarized letter

The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramhansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience... No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death... No indication of mold was visible on his skin, and no visible drying up took place in the bodily tissues. This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one... No odor of decay emanated from his body at any time...

Rowe also noted the appearance of a brown spot on Yogananda's nose after twenty days. Some have pointed out that this degree of preservation of an embalmed body is common. Rowe also said in the same sentence that there was no visible mold even on March 26. Rowe continues, "on March 27th there was no reason to say that his body had suffered any visible physical disintegration at all. For these reasons we state again that the case of Paramhansa Yogananda is unique in our experience."

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