ne fraction of the truth.
All is vibration. The universe consists of nothing else. Your Western
scientists are just beginning to discover that, but they are men groping
in the dark, who can feel but not see and understand. Throughout what
all nations have agreed to call the dark ages there have been men called
alchemists, whom other men have mocked because they sought to transmute
baser metals into gold. Do you think they sought what was impossible?
Nothing is impossible! They dimly discerned the possibility. And it may
be that their ears had caught the legend of what has been known in India
for countless ages.

"Gold is a system of vibrations, just as every other metal is, and the
one can be changed into the other. But if you knew how to do it, would
you dare? Can you conceive what would happen to the world if it were
common knowledge, or even if it were known to a few, how the
transmutation may be brought about? Now watch!"

What followed was convincing for the simple reason that there was
nothing covered up, and no complicated apparatus that might cause you to
suspect an ordinary conjuring trick. There were certainly strange
looking boxes with hinged lids arranged on a ledge along one side of the
chamber, but those were only brought into play when the funny little
ex-fat man selected a lump of metal from them. On another ledge on the
opposite side of the cell there were about a hundred rolls of very
ancient-looking manuscripts, but he did not make use of them in any way.

The floor was bare, smooth rock; there was nothing on it, not even a
mat. He laid a plain piece of wood on the floor and motioned us to be
seated in front of it; so we squatted in a line with our backs to the
door, King taking his place between the Mahatma and me. There was no
hocus-pocus or flummery; the whole proceeding was as simple as playing
dominoes.

Our host went to one of the peculiar looking boxes and selected a lump
of what looked like lead. It was a small piece, about the size of an
ordinary loaf of sugar and had no particular marks on it, except that it
looked as if it might have been cut from a larger piece with shears or
some such instrument. He dropped in into the middle of the slab of wood,
and squatted in front of it, facing us, to watch.

I daresay it took twenty minutes for that lump of lead to change into
what looked like gold before our eyes. It began by sizzling, and melting
in little pits and spots, but never once did th