The Way of Power | Page 5

was the law?
My own turn came to go to India, not credulous at all in the ordinary sense of the word--quite prepared to meet with fraud and the sleight-of-hand man, but still confident that behind the Looking Glass lies the world where things happen not at all according to our logic but on a very different logic of its own. You can see that in the brilliant "Through the Looking Glass." First comes the punishment, then the crime. The White Queen begins to scream and cuts her finger afterwards, and the part may be greater than the whole. I saw that our little maxims end with the Looking Glass and have no currency behind it; that it has its laws.
There was at one of the most sacred towns a man who was said to perform the mango trick extremely well, and we invited him to sit on the veranda of the little hotel and there, under my very eyes, to show his skill. He sat at my feet, he planted the mango stone in a pot at my feet, then sitting far off he returned and raised the covering at intervals, holding it at arm's length and touching neither pot nor plant, that I might see the growth.
Finally, when the plant had grown to a height of over two feet I picked two leaves from it and sent one to a friend at home. And the curious thing is that though I know I sent this and a friend standing beside me saw the whole incident, the man to whom I sent the leaf declares to this day he never received it. He returned all my letters in case I should wish to use them as a travel record and among them is the one in which I speak of the leaf, but he never saw it. Could it have dropped out and how? A mango leaf is not a small one. I do not know. I have seen that same performance several times since and done on obvious lines of juggling. The difference can be seen and felt very easily.
CHAPTER II
In India and Ceylon I had personal instances of this force which develops itself in powers that transcend the senses. In Benares a wandering fortune-teller came into the veranda of the little hotel where I had just arrived, unknown. Liking something about the man's face I consented that he should read my hand. It was a strange experience in more ways than one. He did not touch it; it lay, palm upward, on my knee, and he stooped and read it with unblinking black eyes.
"This mem-sahib writing."
I said: "All mem-sahibs write."
"Yes--knowing that. This mem-sahib write book."
I had never written a book in my life and had no more expectation of writing one than he had. Articles on health subjects had been my only contribution to the gaiety of nations. So I shook my head. He doggedly repeated the assertion, "This mem-sahib write book," and went on with the most singularly accurate description of the events of my past life. I do not mean the intimate thoughts but the events. One can scarcely imagine anything stranger than in a place so foreign (until one has grown to love it) to see the past unrolling before one, touched into life by the hand of a wandering fortune-teller. And again I thought, "How is it that they get in touch?" for by this time I knew very well that discounting all frauds and fakes and guesses there are persons who can undoubtedly read events quite otherwise than by the senses. At the time I was watching with some interest for the failure of a prediction made to me by a Western seer before I had left London on my journey to India. Its failure, because, though he had predicted it as a certainty, humanly speaking it was impossible it should take place. We had met on a business matter before I left London, and suddenly, sweeping beyond material matters as was his strange power occasionally, and fixed in gazing on the unseen, he said in that voice which seems to come from very far behind the Mirror of the Passing Show:
"Things will not be as you think in India. I see a very important change in your intentions. The event which will determine them will take place at Christmas time. I see the exact circumstances which will enable you to continue your explorations in the Orient for a very much longer time than you have arranged."
I said it was impossible. I asked for the description of the unknown events and it was given without hesitation. In my heart I set the whole matter down as one of those incalculable errors of the clear-sight which I had noted before, giving them the effect