The Way of Power | Page 5

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 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