Conclusions And Illustrations – Chapter 12

Epimenides, the Orphikos, was renowned for his “sacred and marvellous nature,” and for the faculty his soul possessed of quitting its body ” as long and as often as it pleased.” The ancient philosophers who have testified to this ability may be reckoned by dozens. Apollonius left his body at a moment’s notice, but it must be remembered Apollonius was an adept — a “magician.” Had he been simply a medium, he could not have performed such feats at will. Empedocles of Agrigentum, the Pythagorean thaumaturgist, required no conditions to arrest a waterspout which had broken over the city. Neither did he need any to recall a woman to life, as he did. Apollonius used no darkened room in which to perform his aethrobatic feats. Vanishing suddenly in the air before the eyes of Domitian and a whole crowd of witnesses (many thousands), he appeared an hour after in the grotto of Puteoli. But investigation would have shown that his physical body having become invisible by the concentration of akasa about it, he could walk off unperceived to some secure retreat in the neighborhood, and an hour after his astral form appear at Puteoli to his friends, and seem to be the man himself.

No more did Simon Magus wait to be entranced to fly off in the air before the apostles and crowds of witnesses. “It requires no conjuration and ceremonies; circle-making and incensing are mere nonsense and juggling,” says Paracelsus. The human spirit “is so great a thing that no man can express it; as God Himself is eternal and unchangeable, so also

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is the mind of man. If we rightly understood its powers, nothing would be impossible to us on earth. The imagination is strengthened and developed through faith in our will. Faith must confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the will.”

A singular account of the personal interview of an English ambassador in 1783, with a reincarnated Buddha — barely mentioned in volume i. — an infant of eighteen months old at that time, is given in the Asiatic Journal from the narrative of an eye-witness himself, Mr. Turner, the author of The Embassy to Thibet. The cautious phraseology of a skeptic dreading public ridicule ill conceals the amazement of the witness, who, at the same time, desires to give facts as truthfully as possible. The infant lama received the ambassador and his suite with a dignity and decorum so natural and unconstrained that they remained in a perfect maze of wonder. The behavior of this infant, says the author, was that of an old philosopher, grave and sedate and exceedingly courteous. He contrived to make the young pontiff understand the inconsolable grief into which the Governor-General of Galagata (Calcutta) the City of Palaces and the people of India were plunged when he died, and the general rapture when they found that he had resurrected in a young and fresh body again; at which compliment the young lama regarded him and his suite with looks of singular complacency, and courteously treated them to confectionery from a golden cup. “The ambassador continued to express the Governor-General’s hope that the lama might long continue to illumine the world with his presence, and that the friendship which had heretofore subsisted between them might be yet more strongly cemented, for the benefit and advantage of the intelligent votaries of the lama . . . all which made the little creature look steadfastly at the speaker, and graciously bow and nod — and bow and nod — as if he understood and approved of every word that was uttered.”

As if he understood! If the infant behaved in the most natural and dignified way during the reception, and “when their cups were empty of tea became uneasy and throwing back his head and contracting the skin of his brow, continued making a noise till they were filled again,” why could he not understand as well what was said to him?

Years ago, a small party of travellers were painfully journeying from Kashmir to Leh, a city of Ladahk (Central Thibet). Among our guides we had a Tartar Shaman, a very mysterious personage, who spoke Russian a little and English not at all, and yet who managed, nevertheless, to converse with us, and proved of great service. Having learned that some of our party were Russians, he had imagined that our protec-

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