The Way of Power | Page 4

if I held their hands. A tingle seemed to run up my arm from theirs and then I knew to a large extent what was in their minds, and this applied also to things they had held for a while. This did not come off with everyone. There had to be some underlying connecting force, and one might find that in a stranger and miss it in people of one's own blood. It was interesting but I gave it up very soon, for physically it was wearying and I dislike playing about with forces I do not understand. At the entreaty of a friend now dead I attended one s��ance, saw what was considered an extremely fine program of materializations, voices and so forth, heard the usual explanations, recognized glimpses of the unknown force. But that approach I considered neither scientific nor spiritual. A good deal of it seemed grotesque. I never went to another. There were things I could not explain, but it carried no conviction whatever and the semi-religious flavor was unpleasant.
But still, behind all these changing scenes lay the belief in power, uncharted, misunderstood, played with, but--power! And such experiences brushed me here and there with passing wings as if on their own errands and left me startled but ignorant.
Then on a day very memorable for myself I stumbled on books relating to the thought of Asia, but especially India. But does one ever stumble? Is not everything that befalls a man the direct, inevitable result of his own deeds and thoughts? I read in astonishment, realizing that here was a nation which had made what we call "the other world" its chief and engrossing study. In other words, the wise and great among the Indian people moved with ease in the mysterious World behind the Looking Glass and found it so much more interesting than the Mirror of the Passing Show that they really concerned themselves very little with the latter and gave its prizes the go-by. They had for three thousand years and more devoted themselves to the study of the soul and its powers as, let us say, the Western nations have devoted themselves to the literature of love, and they had done this to the exclusion of the dreams and delights which tempt us in the West and engross us in that polished surface reflecting us and our doings in home and mart as the be-all and end-all, until we never dream that anything lies behind the Looking Glass which can interest or concern us. And that belief is the state of mind called by wise men Materialism, and when it possesses a nation it points straight down the road to national and individual ruin.
Then for the first time I began to see glimpses of light on the horizon, for I saw that these Indian people spoke of a law which could be tested and followed and that the "occult" like all the rest of the universe may have its being within the limits of law. Their books said:
"Yes, there are mighty forces at work all round us, and by obeying certain rules some of us know how to bend them and make them obedient. When you understand how to make the wheels go round, then these things are no more wonderful than telegraphy. As a matter of fact there is nothing supernatural. There are only things which don't happen commonly because the rules are not known."
Here was an astonishing thought to meet at large! I resolved to begin at the beginning and study some of their doings before I probed their reason. Fate threw in my way a connection by marriage, a naval man, who on board his ship at Bombay had had a visit from a wandering Hindu who offered to show a sight the sahibs could never have seen before. He agreed, and standing a great brass vessel of water on the deck the man stood off at a great distance and in the sight of many people beckoned, and the water rose snake-like in the jar and crept over the edge and slipped down the side a bright snake of water, and so along the deck until he halted it with a sign, released it with a beckon, and so on until it crept to his feet and there dissolved into a pool of common water, leaving the jar empty.
I asked, "How did you explain it?" and the captain answered, "I couldn't. It couldn't have happened, but all the same he made a lot of us see it."
"But that kind of mass-hypnotism could be almost as wonderful as the reality," I suggested. "A really terrible power for good or ill! And besides you saw the empty jar. What about that?"
He laughed and gave it up. But I pondered. What