Telepathy, Genuine and FraudulentBaggally, W. W. (William Wortley)
Science
Telepathy, Genuine and Fraudulent
Baggally, W. W. (William Wortley)
Parapsychology -- Investigation; Telepathy
Yoga Rama then made a long speech about happiness depending on our own
selves and our being what we willed ourselves to be. He asserted that he
had overcome in himself the passion of anger. He laboured these points
so much and repeated himself so often that it became manifest he was
making the speech solely with the object of filling up the time.
The patience of the Acting Committee became exhausted, and one of the
members advanced to the front of the stage, interrupted Yoga Rama, and,
appealing to the audience, said he had no doubt but that he had their
support when he asserted that they had come to the theatre not to hear
speeches but to witness experiments. Yoga Rama brought his speech
abruptly to a close after saying he would now demonstrate the power he
had acquired of controlling the functions of his body and of rendering
it insensible to pain. To show the control over his body he asked two
members of the Committee to stand by his side and to look at their
watches and note the length of time he was able to cease from breathing.
To show his insensibility to pain he said he would stand barefooted on a
board studded with long nails, and also stand on broken glass.
I have given an account of the nature of the performance with which Yoga
Rama favoured us. I will now proceed to describe the experiments more in
detail and to comment upon them.
Mr. Marriott was the first person to sit on the chair in front of Yoga
Rama. He was told to hold his left hand in front of his face, to trace
the first letter of the name thought of on the palm of his left hand
with the forefinger of the right, and give the taps or make the
movements in the air with his right hand in the manner already
described. Mr. Marriott, instead of holding his left hand up, held his
right hand. Yoga Rama immediately said, "Not your right hand but your
left." This was a suspicious circumstance, as it indicated that Yoga
Rama could see notwithstanding he was blindfolded. Now conjurers know
that blindfolding in the manner above described is not a precaution
against seeing, as at the time of blindfolding what the conjurer does is
to shut his eyes tightly and bring his eyebrows well down. When the
blindfolding is finished, the conjurer opens his eyes and draws his
eyebrows up; the bandages will then be displaced and drawn up from their
original position and he will be able to see under the bandages through
the spaces between the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. This, in the
joint opinion of Mr. Zancig, Mr. Marriott, and myself, is what Yoga Rama
did, and our opinion was confirmed when we examined the bandages at the
time they were removed from the performer's eyes, as will be described
later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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