Part 21 (2/2)

Sacred books ascribe to them the following gifts: foreseeing future events; understanding of all languages; the healing of all diseases; the art of reading other people's thoughts; witnessing at will everything that happens thousands of miles from them; understanding the language of animals and birds; Prakamya, or the power of keeping up youthful appearance during incredible periods of time; the power of abandoning their own bodies and entering other people's frames; Vas.h.i.+tva, or the gift to kill, and to tame wild animals with their eyes; and, lastly, the mesmeric power to subjugate any one, and to force any one to obey the unexpressed orders of the Raj-Yogi.

Dr. Paul has witnessed the few phenomena of Hatha-Yoga already described; there are many others about which he has heard, and which he neither believes nor disbelieves. But he guarantees that a Yogi can suspend his breath for forty-three minutes and twelve seconds.

Nevertheless, European scientific authorities maintain that no one can suspend the breath for more than two minutes. O science! Is it possible then that thy name is also vanitas vanitatum, like the other things of this world?

We are forced to suppose that, in Europe, nothing is known about the means which enabled the philosophers of India, from times immemorial, gradually to transform their human frames.

Here are a few deep words of Professor Boutleroff, a Russian scientist whom I, in common with all Russians, greatly respect: ”....All this belongs to knowledge; the increase of the ma.s.s of knowledge will only enrich and not abolish science. This must be accomplished on the strength of serious observation, of study, of experience, and under the guidance of positive scientific methods, by which people are taught to acknowledge every other phenomenon of nature. We do not call you blindly to accept hypotheses, after the example of bygone years, but to seek after knowledge; we do not invite you to give up science, but to enlarge her regions...”

This was said about spiritualist phenomena. As to the rest of our learned physiologists, this is, approximately, what they have the right to say: ”We know well certain phenomena of nature which we have personally studied and investigated, under certain conditions, which we call normal or abnormal, and we guarantee the accuracy of our conclusions.”

However, it would be very well if they added:

”But having no pretensions to a.s.sure the world that we are acquainted with all the forces of nature, known and unknown, we do not claim the right to hold back other people from bold investigations in regions which we have not reached as yet, owing to our great cautiousness and also to our moral timidity. Not being able to maintain that the human organism is utterly incapable of developing certain transcendental powers, which are rare, and observable only under certain conditions, unknown to science, we by no means wish to keep other explorers within the limits of our own scientific discoveries.”

By p.r.o.nouncing this n.o.ble, and, at the same time, modest speech, our physiologists would doubtless gain the undying grat.i.tude of posterity.

After this speech there would be no fear of mockery, no danger of losing one's reputation for veracity and sound reason; and the learned colleagues of these broad-minded physiologists would investigate every phenomenon of nature seriously and openly. The phenomena of spiritualism would then transmigrate from the region of materialized ”mothers-in-law” and half-witted fortune-telling to the regions of the psycho-physiological sciences. The celebrated ”spirits” would probably evaporate, but in their stead the living spirit, which ”belongeth not to this world,” would become better known and better realized by humanity, because humanity will comprehend the harmony of the whole only after learning how closely the visible world is bound to the world invisible.

After this speech, Haeckel at the head of the evolutionists, and Alfred Russel Wallace at the head of the spiritualists, would be relieved from many anxieties, and would shake hands in brotherhood.

Seriously speaking, what is there to prevent humanity from acknowledging two active forces within itself; one purely animal, the other purely divine?

It does not behove even the greatest amongst scientists to try to ”bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades,” even if they have chosen ”Arcturus with his sons” for their guides. Did it never occur to them to apply to their own intellectual pride the questions the ”voice out of the whirlwind” once asked of long-suffering Job: ”where were they when were laid the foundations of the earth? and have the gates of death been opened unto them?” If so, only then have they the right to maintain that here and not there is the abode of eternal light.

The End

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