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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1352
Bells are rung, small objects are shifted in position, and the strings of musical
instruments are sounded, etc., although the fakir is bound and surrounded
by watchers. These manifestations are performed in a dim light, darkness not
being deemed necessary as in the cases in which the Astral manifestations
are performed. In the latter cases there are conditions manifested which
resemble the “materializations” of the Western spiritualists, and in which
in the dimly lighted room the form of the fakir is seen floating about, and
in which the other physical manifestations are shown. In many cases the
fakirs attribute the phenomena to “spirits” or disembodied entities, but
in many cases they frankly admit that they “go out of themselves” in some
way unknown to them, but which they produce by means of trance-states,
etc., and in which they find themselves able to move objects, etc., while
their physical body is tied in a chair, or while it reclines on the ground,
held by some of the spectators. These seances resemble in many ways
the spiritualistic seances of the West, and we shall not dwell upon them
as they are not distinctively Hindu. As a matter of interest, we would note
that many Western investigators now claim that much of the so-called
“spirit phenomena” of the West is really caused by the unconscious astral
projection of the medium, instead of by disembodied entities dwelling
on other planes of being. If such be the case the West has stumbled on
one of the methods of the Hindu fakirs, a fact which is most interesting and
instructive.
There is another class of phenomena manifested by these fakirs which is of
a very different type, and which perplexes the majority of investigators, but
which is thought to arise from the employment of Prana in some peculiar
way. We allude to the phenomenon of Levitation, whereby the body is
caused to “levitate” or become so buoyant that it floats in the air as the body
of the swimmer floats in the water. This phenomenon is not identical with a
similar one caused by “mental illusion,” in which the spectators are made to
imagine that they see the feat, but is an actual physical phenomenon duly
attested to by numerous Western people in India, and which has also been