Part 17 (1/2)
A. _Manomaya Iddhi_.
354. Q. _Were the illusionary copies of the Arhat's person material?
Were they composed of substance and could they have been felt and handled by the messenger?_
A. No; they were pictures impressed by his thought and trained will-power upon the messenger's mind.
355. Q. _To what would you compare them?_
A. To a man's reflection in a mirror, being exactly like him yet without solidity.
356. Q. _To make such an illusion on the messenger's mind, what was necessary?_
A. That Chullapanthaka should clearly conceive in his own mind his exact appearance, and then impress that, with as many duplicates or repet.i.tions as he chose, upon the sensitive brain of the messenger.
357. Q. _What is this process now called?_
A. Hypnotic suggestion.
358. Q. _Could any third party have also seen these illusionary figures?_
A. That would depend on the will of the Arhat or hypnotiser.
359. Q. _What do you mean?_
A. Supposing that fifty or five hundred persons were there, instead of one, the Arhat could will that the illusion should be seen by all alike; or, if he chose, he could will that the messenger should be the only one to see them.
360. Q. _Is this branch of science well known in our day?_
A. Very well known; it is familiar to all students of mesmerism and hypnotism.
361. Q. _In what does our modern scientific belief support the theory of Karma, as taught in Buddhism?_
A. Modern scientists teach that every generation of men is heir to the consequences of the virtues and the vices of the preceding generation, not in the ma.s.s, as such, but in every individual case. Every one of us, according to Buddhism, gets a birth which represents the causes generated by him in an antecedent birth. This is the idea of Karma.
362. Q. _What say the Vasettha Sutta about the causation in Nature?_
A. It says: ”The world exists by cause; all things exist by cause, all beings are bound by cause.”
363. Q. _Does Buddhism teach the unchangeableness of the visible universe; our earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms?_
A. No. It teaches that all are constantly changing, and all must disappear in course of time.
364. Q. _Never to reappear?_
A. Not so: the principle of evolution, guided by Karma, individual and collective, will evolve another universe with its contents, as our universe was evolved out of the Akasha.
365. Q. _Does Buddhism admit that man has in his nature any latent powers for the production of phenomena commonly called ”miracles”?_
A. Yes; but they are natural, not supernatural. They may be developed by a certain system which is laid down in our sacred books, the Visuddhi Marga for instance.