The Way of Power, L. Adams Beck [beach books txt] 📗

to the Hindu faquirs I conceived them to be simple magicians yet I had heard a great deal of their marvelous skill and was anxious to see a specimen. I received him in one of the verandas. His face was thin and bony as that of an anchorite and his eyes, which seemed half dead, produced a sensation such as I once experienced when looking at the motionless orbs of a large shark. Bowing with his hands raised to his forehead he murmured:

“I greet you respectfully, sahib. May the immortals watch over your days. The guru (Master) said to me this morning, ‘Go and glean at random,’ and Ganesha the God of Travelers has led me to you. What do you want of me?”

“You are said to move inert bodies without contact. I wish to see.”

“I have no such power. I evoke spirits who lend their aid.”

“Evoke, and show me what they can do.”

He resumed his squatting position on the pavement, placing his seven-knotted stick between his crossed legs.

He then asked to have my man bring seven small flower-pots full of earth, seven thin sticks of wood and seven leaves taken from any tree.

Without touching them himself he had them placed in a horizontal line about six feet from his outstretched arm. He told my servant to put a stick in each pot and impale a leaf on each. This being done the leaves dropped down to the pots.

The faquir then pronounced an invocation, stretched out his hands in the direction of the pots and stood motionless in a sort of ecstasy.

Suddenly it seemed to me that my hair was moved by a slight current of air. This was repeated several times. At the end of about a quarter of an hour, the leaves began to move slowly upward along the sticks of wood, and then as slowly to descend. I passed and repassed several times between the Hindu and the pots but there was no interruption. I asked to examine his arrangements and he agreed without delay. I removed the leaves and sticks and emptied out the earth. I ordered fresh pots, earth and leaves, divided the bamboo stick myself into seven pieces and having thus rearranged everything placed it all at about four yards from the faquir, who looked on unconcernedly.

He extended his arms and five minutes had hardly elapsed when the leaves moved up and down the stick as before. Still I would not acknowledge defeat. I had seven holes bored in a plank in which I placed the sticks. The phenomena recurred as before. I repeated the experiment in twenty different ways but always with the same result. He said:

“Ask anything you will. The leaves will remain still if the leaves have nothing to say. Otherwise they will move up the sticks.”

I had a set of raised brass letters and figures upon a zinc block which I used to stamp my name and numbers upon the books in the library. I thought of a friend who had died some years before and extracted the letters and numbers one by one.

As I took out the letter A, the leaves began to move to the top of the sticks and fell again. The first letter of my friend’s name. Letter by letter and figure by figure I obtained the following words:

“Albain Brunier, died at Bourg-en-Bresse. (Ain) January 3, 1856.” What made my astonishment greater was that I was totally unprepared. I wanted to be alone and reflect. I dismissed the faquir and made him promise to return next day at the same hour. My excitement had disappeared but I was no nearer to a belief in the supernatural on the morrow. I repeated the phenomenon changing the spelling in my mind; dwelling strongly upon each letter. I got: “Halbin Pruniet, died,” etc., but could never change the remainder. I got such changes in the name that no one would have recognized it, but never in the name of the city. Hence I concluded that I could not sufficiently isolate my mind from the correct spelling of all the words in the sentence.

[Here I think we have an interesting case of mind-reading.]

In the last sitting the faquir gave, he lowered one balance of a pair of scales with a peacock’s feather while the other contained about 170 pounds. By the mere imposition of hands he made a crown of flowers float in the air, the atmosphere was filled with vague and indistinct sounds and a shadowy hand drew luminous figures in space. At the time I considered the two latter simply as phantasmagoria. I did not even give them the benefit of a doubt nor note them. But in regard to the purely material facts I applied the severest tests.

Such were my first observations at Pondicherry. My judicial duties and special studies concerning ancient India did not give me time to continue them. From this time forward I made notes of all the material phenomena by which the faquirs seek to prove the existence of the powers they claim. I am convinced there are in nature and in man, who is a part of nature, immense forces the laws of which are yet unknown to us. I think that one day man will discover these laws, that things we now regard as dreams will appear as realities, and that we shall witness phenomena of which we have no conception. Who knows whether this force of the ego, according to the Hindus, may not be shown to be one of the greatest forces in nature?

Among ourselves have we not seen scientific societies regard the telegraph as a toy fit only for sending messages from one room to another? In the open air the wire was not to be relied on! As I have been led to speak of my own views I will say that the conclusion I have drawn from what I have seen in India is that aside from the claptrap by which it is surrounded and of which the Hindus are very fond, there is in man a special force acting in an unknown direction and often intelligently, the laws of which require to be studied by unprejudiced and liberal-minded specialists.

I lost no opportunity of attentively observing any manifestations that bore any relation to the subject.

Leaving Chandernagore on 3rd January 1866 I arrived at Benares. I intended to remain there a couple of months. The Peishwa, a Mahratta Prince at Benares with whom I had become acquainted through the Rajah of Chandernagore, hearing of my arrival sent to offer me apartments in his magnificent seven-storied palace on the banks of the Ganges.

Here I met the most extraordinary faquir, perhaps, that I had ever encountered in India. He came from the extreme south of India and his mission was to take charge of the remains of a rich Malabar man. The Peishwa, who was in the habit of extending hospitality to pilgrims, had found lodgings for him in a small thatched cottage upon the very banks of the river in which he had to perform his ablutions for the next three weeks in honor of the dead. His name was Govindaswami.

I had him brought to my apartment one day at noon. The room in which I received him looked out upon the terrace which in turn overlooked the Ganges. In the middle of the terrace was a water-spout which fell in a fine shower into a marble basin.

I asked him to go out upon the terrace, which was much lighter than the room and where I could better watch him.

“Do you know whether any power is developed in you when you perform? Did you ever feel any change in your brain or muscles?”

“I am but an instrument. I invoke the ancestral spirits and it is they who manifest their power.”

The faquir was already in position with both hands extended towards an immense bronze vase full of water. Within five minutes it began to rock gently to and fro upon its base and to approach the faquir gently and with a regular motion. As the distance lessened metallic sounds escaped from it as if someone had struck it with a steel rod. I asked if I could give directions. He consented at once.

The vase advanced, receded, or stood still, according to my request. At one time at my command the blows changed into a continuous roll like that of a drum, at another they had the slowness and regularity of a ticking clock.

Upon the table of the drawing-room stood a musical box. I had it brought to the terrace by my servant and I asked the force to tune the blows struck upon the vase to accompany any air on the instrument.

I wound up the box and a whirlwind of notes was the result. Quick sharp strokes accompanied the time like the baton of a conductor.

All this was done without fuss, parade or mystery upon a terrace a few yards square. The vase could hardly, when empty, have been moved by two men. It received the falling jet of water from the fountain and was used for the morning ablutions. What was the force which moved this mass?

The faquir, who had not left his place, then rested the tips of his fingers for a short time upon the edge of the vase. It began to rock to and fro in regular time, gradually quickening its speed. But what surprised me most was to see that the water was stationary as if there were a strong pressure which prevented its regaining its equilibrium.

Three times during these oscillations the vase rose to a distance of seven to eight inches completely from the ground and when it fell to the pavement again it did so without perceptible shock. The performance lasted several hours during which I took copious and careful notes and also took the precaution of having each phenomenon repeated in a different manner. The faquir promised to return every day as long as he should remain at Benares. He was glad to have met me. I had lived for many years in the south of India and knew the beautiful language of the Tamils.

I should mention that the French in India appear to use the term faquir alike for the Hindu and Mohammedan ascetics. This man was of course a Hindu. His name indicates one who has a special reverence for the Divine in the aspect of Krishna.

He returned next day and resumed his experiments with the great vase.

He asked me to lend him a small stick. I handed him an unsharpened lead pencil. He placed it in the water and by the imposition of, his hands [upon the surface of the water] made it move in every direction like a magnet in contact with an iron bar. When he placed a finger quietly on the middle of the pencil so as not to affect its position on the water I saw it slowly sink beneath the surface until it had reached the bottom of the vase. I state the facts without further comment.

His third visit was short. At my request he consented to perform a phenomenon of levitation which I had already seen others successfully accomplish without taking any particular notice of how they did it.

Taking an ironwood cane which I had brought from Ceylon he leaned heavily on it, resting his right hand on the handle with his eyes fixed on the ground. He then uttered incantations.

Leaning upon the cane with one hand the faquir rose gradually about two feet from the ground. His legs were crossed beneath him very like a bronze statue of the Buddha.

For more than twenty minutes I tried to see how Govindaswami could thus fly in the face of all known laws of gravity.