stelry. I
sincerely pity the real mediums, and do whatever is in my power to
help them. As to the charlatans, I despise them, and never lose an
opportunity of unmasking them."

The witch's den near the "dead city" suddenly flashed into my mind;
the fat Brahman, who played the oracle in the head of the Sivatherium,
caught and rolling down the hole; the witch herself suddenly taking to
her heels. And with this recollection also occurred to me what I had
never thought of before: Narayan had acted under the orders of the
Takur--doing his best to expose the witch and her ally.

"The unknown power which possesses the mediums (which the spiritualists
believe to be spirits of the dead, while the superstitious see in it the
devil, and the sceptics deceit and infamous tricks), true men of science
suspect to be a natural force, which has not as yet been discovered. It
is, in reality, a terrible power. Those possessed by it are generally
weak people, often women and children. Your beloved spiritualists, Miss
X----, only help the growth of dreadful psychic diseases, but people who
know better seek to save them from this force you know nothing whatever
about, and it is no use discussing this matter now. I shall only add one
word: the real living spirit of a human being is as free as Brahma;
and even more than this for us, for, according to our religion and our
philosophy, our spirit is Brahma himself, higher than whom there is only
the unknowable, the all-pervading, the omnipotent essence of Parabrahm.
The living spirit of man cannot be ordered about like the spirits of the
spiritualists, it cannot be made a slave of... However, it is getting so
late that we had better go to bed. Let us say good-bye for tonight."

Gulab-Lal-Sing would not talk any more that night, but I have gathered
from our previous conversations many a point without which the above
conversation would remain obscure. The Vedantins and the followers of
Shankaracharya's philosophy, in talking of themselves, often avoid using
the pronoun I, and say, "this body went," "this hand took," and so on,
in everything concerning the automatic actions of man. The personal
pronouns are only used concerning mental and moral processes, such as,
"I thought," "he desired." The body in their eyes is not the man, but
only a covering to the real man.

The real interior man possesses many bodies; each of them more subtle
and more pure than the preceding; and each of them bears a