Furthermore it is clear that the possibility of acquiring supernatural faculties is not an idea confined to one country.
Old legends relate how Simon Magus made statues walk; how he flew in the air; how he lept into the fire, made bread of stones, changed his shape, assumed two faces, made the vessels in a house move of themselves (Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo, i. 306).
We are told that the phenomena of European spiritualism are to be kept distinct from those of Asiatic occultism. Modern spiritualism, it is said, requires the intervention of ‘mediums,’ who neither control nor understand the manifestations of which they are the passive instruments; whereas the phenomena of occultism are the ‘achievements of a conscious living operator,’ produced on himself by an effort of his own will. According to Mr. Sinnett, the important point ‘which occultism brings out is, that the soul of man, while something enormously subtler and more ethereal and more lasting than the body, is itself a material body. The ether that transmits light is held to be material by any one who holds it to exist at all; but there is a gulf of difference between it and the thinnest of gases.’ In another place he advances an opinion that the spirit is distinct from the soul. It is the soul of the soul.
And again: ‘The body is the prison of the soul for ordinary mortals. We can see merely what comes before its windows; we can take cognisance only of what is brought within its bars. But the adept has found the key of his prison, and can emerge from it at pleasure. It is no longer a prison for him—merely a dwelling. He can project his soul out of his body to any place he pleases with the rapidity of thought[111].’
It is perhaps worth noting that many believers in Asiatic occultism hold that a hitherto unsuspected force exists in nature called Odic force (is this to be connected with Psychic force?), and that it is by this that the levitation of entranced persons is effected.
Others, like the Yogīs, maintain that any one may lighten his body by swallowing large draughts of air, and by an effort of will forcing this air to diffuse itself through every part of the frame. It is alleged that this phenomenon has been actually witnessed.
The connexion, however, of similar phenomena with feats of conjuring is undeniable. In the Asiatic Monthly Journal (March, 1829), an account is given of a Brāhman who poised himself apparently in the air, about four feet from the ground, for forty minutes, in the presence of the Governor of Madras. Another juggler sat on three sticks put together to form a tripod. These were removed, one by one, and the man remained sitting in the air[112].
Long ago Friar Ricold related that ‘a man from India was said to fly. The truth was that he did walk close to the surface of the ground without touching it, and would seem to sit down without any substance to support him’ (Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo, i. 307).
On the other hand, it is contended, that ‘since we have attained, in the last half-century, the theory of evolution, the antiquity of man, the far greater antiquity of the world itself, the correlation of physical forces, the conservation of energy, spectrum analysis, photography, the locomotive engine, electric telegraph, spectroscope, electric light, and the telephone (to which we may now add the phonograph), who shall dare to fix a limit to the capacity of man[113]?’ Few will deny altogether the truth of such a contention, however much they may dissent from Colonel Olcott’s theosophical views.
There may be, of course, latent faculties in humanity which are at present quite unsuspected, and yet are capable of development in the future.