Kochi: The premier US space agency NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), baffled by a new age guru, 66-year old Hira Rattan Manek's feat of living without solid food for substantial period, has invited him for tests so that it could possibly help them in their various programmes, Manek's family said.

Manek, who has not had any solid food for the past eight years, as claimed by his wife Vimlaben, has been surviving only on water and solar energy.

Manek, who is already in Orlando in the US giving series of lectures on solar energy, visited Kozhikode recently to participate in a felicitation function.

Vimblaben told reporters from Kozhikode that her husband required only two litres of water a day, had not taken a morsel of food since 1995, imbibing most of his energy from the Sun. Manek gazes at the sun only during "safe-periods" of an hour after sunrise and just before sunset.

It takes a person at least seven months to master this technique of gazing the Sun and imbibe energy through the eyes. As the body cells commence storing solar energy, gradually the hunger pangs vanish, Vimlaben claims.

Manek has fasted for 211 days at Kozhikode in 1995, 411 days at Ahmedabad from January 2001 to February 12, 2002. Last year in the US, he fasted for 130 days surviving only on water, she claims.

Vimlaben said at Orlando, Manek has been busy with his Solar Living Centre and New Era Spiritual centre and has been touring around the world showing the people the way to become free from mental and physical diseases and ways to control greed, desires and anger.

Manek is also penning a book "Braineuter", she said.

According information given by an Ahmedabad based Neurophysician Dr Sudhir V Shah in the internet, Manek had been subjected to test by the scientific community in Gujarat and the US including isolating him in a nursing home for more than a month and not allowing him to meet his relatives while on fast.

The medical specialists from India and the US, who had examined Manek from time to time, are unable to give a scientific explanation from their current clinical knowledge, though have declared the genuinity of his fast, he said.

Manek, his wife claimed, had researched ancient Jain and Hindu scriptures and experimented on himself under the strict guidance of medical scrutiny to "develop" a simple and scientific technique of harnessing Sun and Earth energy.

PTI