Lives of Alcyone

Life XXXVII
Whenever he is not drawn elsewhere by absolute necessities
of service or of evolution, our hero here seems to gravitate naturally
towards the great motherland of India. It is there that we find him
reborn in 8775 B.C. at a place called Dorasamudra (now Halebida)
north of Hassan in Mysore. His father was Proteus and his mother
Mercury, a most saintly woman, of high reputation for wisdom. He
received what was considered at the time a good education, which
consisted chiefly in memorizing immense numbers of verses on any
and every subject religion, legendary history and folklore, law,
medicine, and even mathematics. His mother had a marvellous
knowledge of all these matters, and her influence was of the
greatest value to him in every way. There was a vast amount of
unnecessary ceremonial, but the mother took an eminently
common-sense view of all this, and constantly impressed upon him
that a virtuous life was more important than a thousand ceremonies,
and that truth, honour, and kindliness were the offerings must
pleasing to the deity.
His father taught him a number of priestly invocations, into
which he threw himself with great vigour, and was able to perform
them effectively, really succeeding in obtaining a response from the
various entities upon whom he called. His will-power as a boy was
remarkable, though not always wisely exercised; for instance, he
was once discovered in the act of tearing off a nail from one of his
fingers just to see if he could bear it. Once again, as in Peru, he