Maeterlinck's comments upon all this are of negligible value. He pays a fine tribute to the theory of reincarnation. "There was never a more beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and probable creed," he says: yet for all that, it is clear that he has not been at pains fully to inform himself of the Eastern teaching. Colonel de Rochas' success, and that of all other experimenters along these lines, is due to their unconscious following of the Eastern method. He himself says that he "avoided everything that should put the subject on a definite tack,"--that is, he refrained from voluntary suggestion. Having referred so frequently and so familiarly to the Eastern belief in reincarnation, and hinted at a more solid foundation for that belief than the single series of experiments above referred to, it would be unfair to the reader not to gratify his curiosity more fully in regard to these matters. In the light of our hypothesis they take on an importance which justifies their further consideration here. VIII THE EASTERN TEACHING ORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS Western physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the past hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena little short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of subjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who have made these matters the subject of study and experiment for thousands of years. The informed Hindu, rightly or wrongly, regards the Western practice of hypnotism, both in its methods and in its results, with mingled horror and contempt. To him it is not different from Black Magic, pernicious to operator and subject alike, since it involves an unwarrantable tyranny of the will on the part of the operator, and a dangerous submission to the obsession of an invading will on the part of the subject. Eastern hypnotism--at its highest and best--is profoundly different from Western, in that the sanctity of the individual is respected. Its aim is not to enslave the will, but temporarily to emancipate consciousness, under favorable circumstances, from its physical limitation. Eastern practical psychology and metaphysics can be understood only through a knowledge of Eastern physics. These we would call transcendental, since they recognize not one theatre of consciousness, but three: the gross, the subtle, and the pure. These correspond to the material, the etherial, and the empyreal worlds of Greek philosophy, and to the physical, astral, and mental planes of modern Theosophy. They may be thought of as universal substance in three different octaves of vibration. Upon this, the trained will of man is able to act directly, for the reason that--as claimed by Balzac--it is a _living_ force.