Blavatsky H.P. - Madame Blavatsky on Fakirs: Difference between revisions

I am surprised to find how little even the editors of your erudite contemporary, The World, are acquainted with Oriental metaphysics in general, and the trousers of Hindu fakirs in particular. It was bad enough to make those holy mendicants of the religion of Brahmâ graduate from the Buddhist Lamaseries of Tibet; but it is unpardonable to make them wear baggy breeches in the exercise of their religious functions. This is as bad as if a Hindu journalist had represented the Rev. Mr. Beecher entering his pulpit in the scant costume of the fakir—the dhoti, a cloth about the loins; “only that and nothing more.” To account, therefore, for the oft-witnessed, open-air levitations of the Svâmis and Gurus upon the theory of an iron frame concealed beneath the clothing, is as reasonable as Monsieur Babinet’s {{Page aside|245}} explanation of the table-tipping and tapping as “unconscious ventriloquism.”

You may object to the act of disembowelling, which I am compelled to affirm I have seen performed. It is, as you say, “remarkable”; but still not miraculous. Your suggestion that Dr. Hammond should go and see it is a good one. Science would be the gainer, and your humble correspondent be justified. Are you, however, in a position to guarantee that he would furnish the world of skeptics with an example of “veracious reporting,” if his observation should tend to overthrow the pet theories of what we loosely call science?

Yours very respectfully,