Theos-Talk Archives (April 2002 Message tt00176)

Wednesday, April 03, 2002


Re: Psychic Phenomena described in ISIS UNVEILED


Dear Friends:

Some may be interested in the evidence that H P B gave in ISIS
UNVEILED on the subject of psychic phenomena and its laws.


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I U (Vol. I) -- On Psychic Phenomena




In 1877, in ISIS UNVEILED, Vol. I, pp. 466... on, H P B gives
us the basis for this article which was published after her death
(May 8th 1891) in August 1893 [ Courtesy of BLAVATSKY NET and
THEOSOPHICAL UNIVERSITY PRESS, Pasadena, CA. ] From the pages
of ISIS UNVEILED reproduced below, you will see how in some
places the text is very similar to the text of the article just
posted a few days ago.

Here are some pages from Vol. I of ISIS UNVEILED which speak for
themselves.

Among these will be found the official report to Queen Elizabeth
of England of a delegation she had sent to visit JEHANGHIR, THE
MOGUL EMPEROR OF INDIA IN 1615 -- some 400 years ago. (see p. 457
and p. 474)

---------------------------------

ISIS UNVEILED Vol. I


468


We were nine persons in all -- seven men and two women, one of
the latter a native. Besides us, there were in the room, the
young tiger, intensely occupied on a bone; a wanderoo, or
lion-monkey, which, with its black coat and snow-white goatee and
whiskers, and cunning, sparkling eyes, looked the personification
of mischief; and a beautiful golden oriole, quietly cleaning its
radiant-colored tail on a perch, placed near a large window of
the veranda. In India, "spiritual" seances are not held in the
dark, as in America; and no conditions, but perfect silence and
harmony, are required. It was in the full glare of daylight
streaming through the opened doors and windows, with a far-away
buzz of life from the neighboring forests, and jungles sending us
the echo of myriads of insects, birds, and animals. We sat in the
midst of a garden in which the house was built, and instead of
breathing the stifling

"We then examined the cobras. Paralyzed by magnetic influence,
they lay at full length on the ground. On taking them up we found
them stiff as sticks. They were in a state of complete catalepsy.
The fakir then awakened them, on which they returned and again
coiled themselves round his body. We inquired whether he could
make us feel his influence. He made a few passes over our legs,
and instantly we lost the use of these limbs; we could not leave
our seats. He released us a easily as he had paralyzed us.

"Chibh-Chondor closed his seance by experimenting upon inanimate
objects. By mere passes with his hands in the direction of the
object to be acted upon, and without leaving his seat, he paled
and extinguished lights in the furthest parts of the room, moved
the furniture, including the divans upon which we sat, opened and
closed doors. Catching sight of a Hindu who was drawing water
from a well in the garden, he made a pass in his direction, and
the rope suddenly stopped in its descent, resisting all the
efforts of the astonished gardener. With another pass the rope
again descended.

"I asked Chibh-Chondor: 'Do you employ the same means in acting
upon inanimate objects that you do upon living creatures?'

"He replied, 'I have only one means.'

" 'What is it?'

" 'The will. Man, who is the end of all intellectual and material
forces, must dominate over all. The Brahmans know nothing besides
this.' " ...


"There are certain men whom the Tartars honor above all in the
world," says Friar Ricold, "viz., the Baxitae, who are a kind of
idol-priests. These are men from India, persons of deep wisdom,
well-conducted and of the gravest morals. They are usually with
magic arts . . . they exhibit many illusions, and predict future
events. For instance, one of eminence among them was said to fly;
but the truth, however, was as it proved, that he did not fly,
but did walk close to the surface of the ground without touching
it; and would seem to sit down without having any substance to
support him.**

This last performance was witnessed by Ibn Batuta, at Delhi,"
adds Colonel Yule, who quotes the friar in the Book of Ser Marco
Polo, "in the presence of Sultan Mahomet Tughlak; and it was
professedly exhibited by a Brahman at Madras in the present
century, a descendant doubtless of those Brahmans whom Apollonius
saw walking two cubits from the ground. It is also described by
the worthy Francis Valentyn, as a performance known and practiced
in his own day in India. It is related, he says, that 'a man will
first go and sit on three sticks put together so as to form a
tripod; after which, first one stick, then a second, then a third
shall be removed from under him, and the man shall not fall but
shall still remain sitting in the air! Yet I have spoken with two
friends who had seen this at one and the same time; and one of
them, I may add, mistrusting his own eyes, had taken the trouble
to feel about with a long stick if there were nothing on which
the body rested; yet, as the gentleman told me, he could neither
feel nor see any such thing.' " We have stated elsewhere that the
same thing was accomplished last year, before the Prince of Wales
and his suite.

Such feats as the above are nothing in comparison to what is done
by professed jugglers; "feats," remarks the above-quoted author,
"which might be regarded as simply inventions if told by one
author only, but which seem to deserve prominent notice from
being recounted by a series of authors, certainly independent of
one another, and writing at long intervals of time and place. Our
first witness is Ibn Batuta, and


** Col. H. Yule: "The Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. i., p. 308.


473 THE ACME OF ILLUSION.

it will be necessary to quote him as well as the others in full,
in order to show how closely their evidence tallies. The Arab
traveller was present at a great entertainment at the court of
the Viceroy of Khansa. 'That same night a juggler, who was one of
the Khan's slaves, made his appearance, and the Amir said to him,
"Come and show us some of your marvels." Upon this he took a
wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs
were passed, and laying hold of one of these, slung it into the
air. It went so high that we lost sight of it altogether. . . .
(We were in the middle of the palace-court.) There now remained
only a little of the end of a thong in the conjurer's hand, and
he desired one of the boys who assisted him to lay hold of it and
mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and we lost sight of him
also! The conjurer then called to him three times, but, getting
no answer, he snatched up a knife as if in a great rage, laid
hold of the thong, and disappeared also! By and bye, he threw
down one of the boy's hands, then a foot, then the other hand,
and then the other foot, then the trunk, and last of all the
head! Then he came down himself, puffing and panting, and with
his clothes all bloody kissed the ground before the Amir, and
said something to him in Chinese. The Amir gave some order in
reply, and our friend then took the lad's limbs, laid them
together in their places, and gave a kick, when, presto! there
was the boy, who got up and stood before us! All this astonished
me beyond measure, and I had an attack of palpitation like that
which overcame me once before in the presence of the Sultan of
India, when he showed me something of the same kind. They gave me
a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kaji Afkharuddin
was next to me, and quoth he, "Wallah! 't is my opinion there has
been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring, nor
mending! 'T is all hocus-pocus!" ' "

And who doubts but that it is a "hocus-pocus," an illusion, or
Maya, as the Hindus express it? But when such an illusion can be
forced on, say, ten thousand people at the same time, as we have
seen it performed during a public festival, surely the means by
which such an astounding hallucination can be produced merits the
attention of science! When by such magic a man who stands before
you, in a room, the doors of which you have closed and of which
the keys are in your hand, suddenly disappears, vanishes like a
flash of light, and you see him nowhere but hear his voice from
different parts of the room addressing you and laughing at your
perplexity, surely such an art is not unworthy either of Mr.
Huxley or Dr. Carpenter. Is it not quite as well worth spending
time over, as the lesser mystery -- why barnyard cocks crow at
midnight?

What Ibn Batuta, the Moor, saw in China about the year 1348,
Colonel Yule shows Edward Melton, "an Anglo-Dutch traveller,"
witnessing


474 Magical Performances before Emperor Jehanghir [ 1615 A D]

in Batavia about the year 1670: "One of the same gang" (of
conjurers), says Melton,* "took a small ball of cord, and
grasping one end of the cord in his hand slung the other up into
the air with such force that its extremity was beyond reach of
our sight. He then climbed up the cord with indescribable
swiftness. . . . I stood full of astonishment, not conceiving
where he had disappeared; when lo! a leg came tumbling down out
of the air. A moment later a hand came down, etc. . . . In short,
all the members of the body came successively tumbling from the
air and were cast together by the attendant into the basket. The
last fragment of all was the head, and no sooner had that touched
the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them
in the basket, turned them all out again topsy turvy. Then
straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together
again, and, in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand
and go just as before without showing the least damage! . . .
Never in my life was I so astonished . . . and I doubted now no
longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil."


Jehanghir Performance


In the memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire, the performances of
seven jugglers from Bengal, who exhibited before him, are thus
described: "Ninth. They produced a man whom they divided limb
from limb, actually severing his head from the body. They
scattered these mutilated members along the ground, and in this
state they lay some time. They then extended a sheet over the
spot, and one of the men putting himself under the sheet, in a
few minutes came from below, followed by the individual supposed
to have been cut into joints, in perfect health and condition. .
. . Twenty-third. They produced a chain of fifty cubits in
length, and in my presence threw one end of it toward the sky,
where it remained as if fastened to something in the air. A dog
was then brought forward and being placed at the lower end of the
chain, immediately ran up, and reaching the other end,
immediately disappeared in the air. In the same manner a hog, a
panther, a lion, and a tiger were successively sent up the chain,
and all equally disappeared at the upper end of the chain. At
last they took down the chain, and put it into the bag, no one
ever discovering in what way the different animals were made to
vanish into the air in the mysterious manner above described."**

-----------------------------

I am inserting here a few paragraphs on this remarkable
performance taken from some earlier pages in ISIS UNVEILED, Vol.
I. pp. 457-8 which supplement this account.
-- DTB

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As we always like to strengthen our arguments by testimonies
other than our own, it may be well to present the opinion of a
daily paper, the Boston Herald, as to phenomena in general and
mediums in particular. Having encountered sad failures with some
dishonest persons, who may or may not be mediumistic, the writer
went to the trouble of ascertaining as to some wonders said to be
produced in India, and compares them with those of modern
thaumaturgy.

"The medium of the present day," he says, "bears a closer
resemblance, in methods and manipulations, to the well-known
conjurer of history, than any other representative of the magic
art. How far short he still remains of the performances of his
prototypes is illustrated below. In 1615 a delegation of
highly-educated and distinguished men from the English East India
Company visited the Emperor Jehangire.

While on their mission they witnessed many most wonderful
performances, almost causing them to discredit their senses, and
far beyond any hint even of solution. A party of Bengalese
conjurers and jugglers, showing their art before the emperor,
were desired to produce upon the spot, and from seed, ten
mulberry trees. They immediately planted ten seeds, which, in a
few minutes produced as many trees. The ground divided over the
spot where a seed was planted, tiny leaves appeared, at once
followed by slender shoots, which rapidly gained elevation,
putting out leaves and twigs and branches, finally spreading wide
in the air, budding, blossoming and yielding fruit, which matured
upon the spot, and was found to be excellent. And this before the
beholder had turned away his eyes. Fig, almond, mango, and walnut
trees were at the same time under like conditions produced,
yielding the fruit which belonged to each. Wonder succeeded
wonder. The branches were filled with birds of beautiful plumage
flitting about among the leaves and singing sweet notes. The
leaves turned to russet, fell from their places, branches and
twigs withered, and



458

finally the trees sank back into the earth, out of which they had
all sprung within the hour.
"Another had a bow and about fifty steel-pointed arrows. He shot
an arrow into the air, when, lo! the arrow became fixed in space
at a considerable height. Another and another arrow was sent off,
each fixing itself in the shaft of the preceding, until all
formed a chain of arrows in the air, excepting the last shot,
which, striking the chain, brought the whole to the ground in
detachments.

"They set up two common tents facing each other, and about a
bow-shot apart. These tents were critically examined by the
spectators, as are the cabinets of the mediums, and pronounced
empty. The tents were fastened to the ground all around. The
lookers-on were then invited to choose what animals or birds they
would have issue from these tents to engage in a battle.
Khaun-e-Jahaun incredulously asked to see a fight between
ostriches. In a few minutes an ostrich came out from each tent
rushed to combat with deadly earnestness, and from them the blood
soon began to stream; but they were so nearly matched that
neither could win the victory, and they were at last separated by
the conjurers and conveyed within the tents. After this the
varied demands of the spectators for birds and animals were
exactly complied with, always with the same results.

"A large cauldron was set, and into it a quantity of rice thrown.
Without the sign of fire this rice soon began to boil, and out
from the cauldron was taken more than one hundred platters of
cooked rice, with a stewed fowl at the top of each. This trick is
performed on a smaller scale by the most ordinary fakirs of the
present day.

"But space fails to give opportunity for illustrating, from the
records of the past, how the miserably tame performances -- by
comparison -- of the mediums of the present day were pale and
overshadowed by those of other days and more adroit peoples.
There is not a wonderful feature in any of the so-called
phenomena or manifestations which was not, nay, which is not now
more than duplicated by other skilful performers, whose
connection with earth, and earth alone, is too evident to be
doubted, even if the fact was not supported by their own
testimony."

End of insert DTB

----------------------------------------------------

** "Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire," pp. 99, 102.




Some of this is most interesting.

Best wishes,



Dallas