he is in reality a cow in human form, and therefore must eat nothing
but grass and roots. A third I found sitting in nudity and arrogance
on his grass mat, and repeating sententiously time after time: "I
am God, I am God!" I remember a patient at Bethlem whose delusion
was that he was himself the superintendent of the asylum, the one
sane man among all the mad, and he went round the ward pointing out
to me each patient with the remark: "He is mad--quite mad. He, too,
he also is mad," and so on. But I was much surprised to meet the
same gentleman here. He was in the form of a Bengali Babu, a B.A. of
the Calcutta University, and had held high posts under Government;
but now, in later life, in dissatisfaction with the world at large,
had thrown it all up and sought in the garb of a Sanyasi recluse at
Rishikes for that peace which an office and Babudom can never afford.

Recognizing me as a novice, he took me by the arm, saying in
English (which in itself seemed strange and out of place amid these
surroundings): "Come along; I explain to you jolly well all the
show." We strolled in and out among the various groups of Sadhus,
and at each new form of Sadhuism he would deliver himself after
this manner: "See this man--he is a humbug, pure humbug. See that
man lying on all the sharp stones--he is a humbug. Look at these
here--humbugs! There, that man, reciting the mantras--he pure
humbug. All these humbugs!" and so on.

Here is the section for the study and practice of hypnotism. These
yogis maintain that by a knowledge of the spiritual states engendered
by various samadhs or contorted positions of the body and legs,
and by elaborate breathing exercises, they are able to subdue the
unruly and material currents of the bodily senses and the brain,
and tap that inner source of spiritual knowledge and divinity which
makes them ipso facto masters of all knowledge, able to commune at
will with the Deity Himself.

The contortions into which they are able to thrust their limbs, and the
length of time that they are able to sit impassive and imperturbable in
what appear to be the most painfully constrained postures, show that
years of practice, commenced when the joints and sinews are supple,
must be required for the attainment of this ecstatic state. There
can be no doubt, I think, that masters do exercise the power of
hypnotism on their chelas, and are thereby able to perform painful
operations on them (such as piercing various pa