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

The stick gave him no visible support and there was no apparent contact between that and his body except through his right hand.

On his next visit, at night, he resumed his performances.

Taking a small bamboo stool he sat upon it with his legs crossed and arms folded on his chest. The terrace was lighted like day. At the end of a few minutes the stool began to move noiselessly along the terrace by short jerks. The Hindu was motionless. The terrace was about seven yards long and as many wide. It took about ten minutes to traverse it. The faquir’s legs crossed beneath him were distant from the ground the whole height of the stool. Three vases of flowers so heavy that none but a strong man could have lifted them (and he only with an effort) stood at one end of the terrace. He touched the edge of one with his finger-tips. It began to move to and fro and left the floor. It appeared to me to be floating in the air, going from right to left at the will of the faquir. I have always regarded this as caused by an illusion of the senses.

On his next visit—

Taking a small stand of teak which I could lift with my thumb and forefinger I placed it in the middle of the terrace and asked the faquir if he could fix it there so that it could not be moved. He imposed both hands on it for a quarter of an hour at the end of which time I approached the table and took hold of it. It would not stir from the ground. I struggled harder, with the result that the fragile leaf came off in my hand. I then took hold of the legs, which were united by a cross brace, but the result was the same. A thought then crossed my mind. Suppose, I thought, that these phenomena are produced by the faquir’s charging objects with some kind of fluid and a natural force is thus developed the laws of which we do not know, the supply with which they are charged must gradually lose its efficiency unless renewed by the operator. I asked the faquir to go to the other end of the terrace, which he did. At the end of a few minutes I could handle the stool without trouble.

“The Pitris [ancestral spirits] have gone,” said the Hindu, “because their means of earthly communication was broken. They are coming back.”

He imposed his hands above an immense copper platter inlaid with silver and almost instantly came such a rapid and violent succession of blows and knocks that it might have been taken for hailstones on a metal roof, and I thought I saw a succession of phosphorescent lights pass to and fro across the platter in every direction.

Among the Peishwa’s possessions was a small harmoniflute. With a small cord tied round the square forming a portion of the bellows I hung it from one of the iron bars of the terrace so it swung about two feet from the ground. I asked the faquir if he could make it play without touching it. He seized the cord by which it was hung and stood motionless. Soon the harmoniflute began to be gently stirred, the bellows to contract and expand and it emitted sounds perfectly plain and distinct.

“Cannot you get a tune?”

“I will evoke the spirit of one of the old pagoda musicians.”

The instrument first played a series of notes; it then bravely attacked one of the most popular Malabar airs. He stood perfectly still. He merely held the cord by which he communicated with the harmoniflute.

I kneeled down to see the various movements of the instrument and I saw, unless misled by illusion, the up and down motion of the keys.

Another time:

He brought with him a small bag of sand, emptied it on the floor and leveled it with his hand. He asked me to sit opposite with paper and pencil. I gave him the handle of a penholder which he placed on the sand.

“I am about to evoke the Pitris. When you see the object you have just given me stand upright, one end only in contact with the ground, trace on the paper any figures you please and you will see a copy on the sand.” He then extended his hands and repeated the formula of evocation.

The wooden rod rose gradually, and at the same moment I moved my pencil, tracing the strangest figures at random. The piece of wood imitated every motion and I saw my figures appear successively in the sand, when I stopped the penholder stopped, when I went on it followed me.

Wishing to know if he could see from his position the movements of my pencil I left the table and placing myself in a similar position to his, satisfied myself that it was impossible for him to see what I was doing.

Having leveled the sand again he said:

“Think of a word in Sanskrit.”

He extended his hands as before. The magic pencil began to move and wrote the word:

“Purusha” (The Heavenly Generator).

That was the word I had thought of.

“Think of a phrase.”

The pencil wrote in Sanskrit:

“Vishnu sleeps upon Mount Aikonta.”

“Can the spirit give me the 243rd shloka of the book of Manu?” I asked.

The pencil wrote before my eyes (in Sanskrit): “The man, the end of all whose actions is virtue, all of whose sins are erased by acts of piety and sacrifice, reaches the heavenly mansions radiant with light and clothed with a spiritual form.”

As a last experiment, placing my hands on a closed book containing extracts from Vedic hymns I asked for the first word of the fifth line of the twenty-first page. The answer written was:

“Devadatta.” (Given by a God.)

Comparing, it was correct.

“Will you now put a mental question?” said the faquir. I moved my head and the following was written on the sand:

“The earth.”

I had asked: “Who is our common mother?”

I have no explanation or statement to make with regard to these facts. I only describe what I saw and assert that the circumstances are accurately described. Materially speaking I do not think any fraud could have been committed.

As he was about to leave me to go to his breakfast he stopped in the embrasure of the door leading from the terrace to the outside stairs and crossing his arms upon his chest lifted himself up gradually without any apparent support (in the air) to the height of about ten to twelve inches. I could determine the distance exactly. Behind his back was a silk hanging striped in gold and white bands of equal width. His feet were on a level with the sixth band. I had seized my chronometer: the entire time from the moment when he began to rise until he touched the ground again was more than eight minutes. I asked him if he could repeat this when he pleased.

“The faquir,” he answered emphatically, “can lift himself as high as the clouds.”

[Again Jacolliot gives a most interesting account of rapid growth.]

Among the claims advanced by the faquirs is that they can directly influence the growth of plants. I had already seen this done a number of times but regarded it as a successful fraud. On his arrival I told him what I intended.

“I am entirely at your service.”

“May I choose the earth, the vessel, and the seed which you are to make grow?” I asked.

“The vessel and the seed, yes. The earth must be taken from a nest of carias.”

These little ants, who build for shelter small hills, are very common in India and there was no difficulty. I told my servant to bring me a flower-pot and differing seeds. I took them and dismissed him. To the faquir I handed the flower-pot filled with a whitish earth which must have been saturated with that milky fluid which the ants secrete and deposit upon their building earth. I chose at random a pawpaw seed and asked him to allow me to mark it. I made a slight cut in its outer skin, and gave it to him with a few yards of mosquito cloth. [This of course is a kind of muslin.]

“I shall soon sleep the sleep of the spirits. You must promise you will neither touch me nor the pot.”

I promised.

He then planted the seed in the earth, now like liquid mud, thrusting his seven-knotted stick into a corner of the vessel, using it as a prop to hold up the piece of muslin. He sat down upon the floor, stretched both hands horizontally above him and fell into a deep cataleptic sleep.

At first I could not tell whether his sleep was real, but when at the end of half an hour he had not stirred I was forced to believe no man was able except in that condition to hold both his arms stretched horizontally before him. An hour passed by. He looked like a bronze statue of evocation.

At first I took my place opposite him but that soon became unendurable. His eyes seemed half dead but full of magnetic influences. Without losing sight of him I took a seat at the end of the terrace. I had been waiting for a couple of hours when a low sigh startled me.

He made signs for me to approach. Removing the muslin that hid the pot he pointed to a young stalk of pawpaw fresh and green and nearly eight inches high. He thrust his fingers into the ground and carefully taking up the plant he showed me upon one of the two cuticles still adhering to the roots the cut I had made two hours before.

Was it the same seed and the same cut? I noticed no substitution. He had not left the terrace. I had not lost sight of him. He could not conceal a plant in his clothes for he was almost entirely naked, and could not have told in advance that I should choose a pawpaw seed among thirty different kinds my servant had brought. He said:

“If I had continued my evocations longer the pawpaw tree would have borne flowers in eight days and fruit in fifteen.”

Bearing in mind the accounts of Huc the missionary [already quoted] and what I had myself witnessed in the Carnatic I said there were other performers who could accomplish this in two hours.

“You are mistaken. In the manifestations you speak of there is an apport of fruit trees by the spirits. What I have just shown you is really spontaneous vegetation, but the pure fluid under the direction of the Pitris was never able to produce the three phases of germination, flowering, and fruiting in one day.”

There is one fact I should not omit which may be of service. There are a multitude of kitchen plants which, put at dawn into moist soil and exposed to the influence of a sun which does wonders, appear above the ground by noon and at the close of day are nearly half an inch high, on the other hand I am bound to say at least fifteen days are necessary for the germination of a pawpaw seed.

The next sitting was devoted to apparitions.

He was entirely naked when he came in and his seven-knotted stick was fastened to a lock of his long hair.

“Nothing unholy,” he said, “should come in contact with the body of the evocator.”

My bedroom was on a level with the terrace. I set apart both for our experiment, and carefully shut and fastened all outside doors. In the center of each was a coco-oil lamp protected by a glass shade diffusing a light sufficiently intense