This program discusses the possibility of breatharianism, or living without eating food, and is not a full instruction. For your safety, please do not attempt to cease eating without proper expert guidance. For your safety, please do not attempt to cease eating without proper expert guidance.

Today’s Between Master and Disciples – “Maria Furtner: The Water Drinker from Frasdorf” – will be presented in German with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech-Slovak, English, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

In scriptures, the human body is often referred to as the temple of God. Yet, it is quite an uncommon privilege for any soul to attain this sacred abode that houses the Divine, as it is truly a blessing to be reborn as a human being. On several occasions, Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken about the rarity of this phenomenon:

To be reincarnated in the human world is hard. You have to have enough Human Quality. You have to have affinity with the parents and with the society, with the people around which you are born. Very difficult. To be a human, you need some merit. You have done something good in the past in order to be able to pick a human birth.

As a living temple of God, the human body is fully equipped with miraculous wonders that can be awakened in those who are spiritually conscious and have complete faith in the Creator of all life. Inedia, Latin for “fasting,” is the human ability to live without food. Since time immemorial, there have always been individuals who can sustain themselves on prana, or the vital life force. Through the grace of the Providence, inediates, people who follow a food-free lifestyle, can draw the energy from nature to nourish themselves:

They live on the chi from the ground, or from the forest, and from the sun and from the air. They make use of all that. Or they live on love, on faith alone.

These individuals are known as breatharians(pranarians or inediates), solarians, or waterians, and they come from all walks of life, from different cultures, and all corners of the world.

Indeed, the possibilities and miracles in this life as our benevolent Creator has designed for us are endless; we only need to connect within to recognize our abounding largess as God’s children. Supreme Master Ching Hai has lovingly recommended a weekly series on Supreme Master Television to introduce those individuals of the past and present who have chosen to live food-free on Earth. May their spiritual stories enthrall you; may hearts be opened, and horizons be expanded. We now invite you to join us for the second and final part of our two-part program “Maria Furtner: The Water Drinker from Frasdorf” on Between Master and Disciples.

For 52 years, Maria Furtner of Bavaria lived food-free, her only apparent source of sustenance was water. After recovering from a series of illnesses, Maria lost her appetite for food at the age of 11. When she tried to eat afterward, she could not hold the food down. Elisabeth Soyer, wife of the baker of Frasdorf, recounted one incident when Maria was compelled to eat food to please others:

“The maid’s [Maria] godmother told my mother that she had told Maria: ‘I will only be your godmother if you will eat properly on the day of your confirmation.’ So, Maria had to eat but then it had terrible pain. She vomited until all the food had come out again. After that, she was in such a bad condition that we thought she was going to die. The godmother always said that all her life she repented to have forced Maria to eat.”

Astounded by her ability to live on water alone, Dr. Joseph Zetl in Rosenheim asked for Maria’s and her parents’ permission to place her under a 5-week observation in Munich. With their consent, the 23-year-old “water drinker from Frasdorf” was placed under the supervision of respected physicians such as Johann Nepomuk Ringseis and Franz Xaver von Gietl.

During her entire stay at the General Municipal Hospital, Maria was kept in an isolated room, cared for by the nuns of Merciful Sisters. At the end of the five weeks of observation, the attending physicians validated the claim that Maria did not need food to live. They observed that Maria had not taken any food except water and that she had had no bowel movement during the entire time that she was under observation. Though she was 1 kilogram lighter after the five weeks of being under observation, Maria was in good health, which was further demonstrated by her 77-kilometer trek home, which took her 2-3 days to accomplish on foot.

Maria’s food-free lifestyle became more publicly known. Privy Councilor Dr. von Walther, who was also the private physician of the king of Bavaria, published the study’s findings in the bulletin of the Bavarian Academy of Science. Professor Dr. Karl Emil von Schafhäutl, another member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, also published an article in 1885 about Maria:

“The girl lived for several years in this fashion, and half of the local community didn’t know that she didn’t eat.”

For those who knew Maria, her integrity was never questioned, an example of which can be seen in the following statement by Dean Joseph Lochner, priest in Frasdorf:

“The fact that Maria Furtner lived for most of her life solely on water and consumed no solid foods is very certain to me.” When Between Master and Disciples returns in just a moment, we’ll hear more from the people who knew Maria, as well as reports about some wondrous happenings which occurred after her passing. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Between Master and Disciples for our program on Maria Furtner, a 19th century German waterian who lived for 52 years without taking any food.

Maria was described being a person with deep religious piety. She never married and spent her day between attending church and immersing herself in quiet contemplation at home. Aside from being an avid reader, Maria also enjoyed knitting and embroidery. Currently, there still exist a few handiworks that Maria made, such as a tablecloth fashioned out of linen.

Maria was described as being a cheerful person and enjoyed talking to the villagers of Frasdorf. She was also acquainted with Duchess Adelgunde of Modena, who was the same age as her. During summertime, the Duchess resided in the nearby Wildenwart castle. Because of Maria, the humble village of Frasdorf was graced by the presence of the Duchess of Adelgunde, King Ludwig I, as well as by King Ludwig’s sons King Maximilian II and Prince Regent Luitpold during their visits to the water drinker of Frasdorf. Even though she was food-free, Maria still liked to cook for others. Her nephew, Andreas Furtner, recalled the memories he had of his waterian aunt:

“She often cooked... she simply watched how much salt, etc., that other people used and then she used exactly the same amount. In this manner, she cooked quite well. She never tasted anything. Then, when people came to eat, she went to her room and sat for an hour in contemplation.”

In 1933, 50 years after Maria Furtner’s passing, young Vicar Anton Huber came to Frasdorf to interview those who knew Maria. He also had the opportunity to interview Andreas and Elisabeth Furtner, her nephew and niece who were 12 and 11 years old, respectively, when Maria passed away. Andreas Furtner remembered his aunt:

“She never ate anything but she drank water every day. She went herself to fetch the water, usually from three springs – sometimes from one spring, and sometimes from another one…. She used to drink water three times a day. She didn’t drink exceptionally much, just about as much as other people. In summer when it was hot, she drank a little more, and in winter less.”

Elisabeth Soyer, the baker’s wife, fondly remembered Maria’s talent in connection to water: “She liked to walk to Kirchwald for pilgrimage. On the way, she took water from the springs in Grainbach and Kirchwald, but she didn’t like the water so much…. the girl knew where the best water can be found.”

Maria Furtner passed away on November 4, 1884, at the age of 63. During her life, she didn’t eat for a period of 52 years. Throughout the years, she was only seriously sick three times. As a child, she fell ill with the smallpox, and as consequence she gave up food; as a 20-year-old she had an Eryspelas infection due to the cold climate on her way to Munich; and the third time she fell ill was the sickness which led to her final passing. In 1901, 14 years after Maria’s death, her body was exhumed when Johann Furtner died and was buried in the family tomb. Mr. Johann Wollschlager and Mr. Kaspar Aichler who were the Furtners’ closest neighbours and thus had the task of shovelling the grave, reported that they saw something extraordinary when they exhumed

Maria Furtner’s remains: “The flesh had decomposed. It was just like other tombs. But suddenly we saw something which we had never seen before at any other tomb. On the skull, the hair was completely intact... And on top of the hair laid the virgin coronal which had been put into the tomb. It was also completely intact. We took the shovel and carefully took out the coronal. The wire was braided with wax-soaked green paper-leafs, and on its front, there were white blossoms and buttons. The coronal was as fresh as if it had been bought on the previous day. If the coronal had been put an hour before in the tomb – it couldn’t have been prettier and fresher.”

Other people who were present also saw the intact coronal and said they had never seen anything like that before. On Maria Furtner’s tombstone, it was written that she had not taken any food but water during 52 years of her life. In 1985, 100 years after Maria’s death, the Bavarian musician and folk song collector Wastl Fanderl, a native of Frasdorf, continued the work which Vicar Anton Huber had started 50 years earlier. He gathered all the reports which were available about Maria’s life and published them in a book titled “The Water Drinker of Frasdorf.” Thanks to the work of these two men, the memory of Maria Furtner’s extraordinary life is preserved for posterity.

Thank you, good-hearted viewers, for joining us today for this episode of Between Master and Disciples. Please stay tuned for Good People, Good Works, coming up right after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May each day of your life bring you an abundance of wisdom, harmony, and contentment.