Powers Of The Mind
POWERS OF THE MIND
(Delivered
at Los Angeles, California, January 8, 1900)
All
over the world there has been the belief in the supernatural throughout
the ages. All of us have heard of extraordinary happenings, and many of us
have had some personal experience of them. I would rather introduce the
subject by telling you certain facts which have come within my own
experience. I once heard of a man who, if anyone went to him with
questions in his mind, would answer them immediately; and I was also
informed that he foretold events. I was curious, and went to see him with
a few friends. We each had something in our minds to ask, and, to avoid
mistakes, we wrote down our questions and put them in our pockets. As soon
as the man saw one of us, he repeated our questions and gave answers to
them. Then he wrote something on paper, which he folded up, asked me to
sign on the back, and said, ‘Don’t look at it; put it in your pocket,
and keep it there till I ask for it again.’ And so on to each one of us.
He next told us about some events that would happen to us in the future.
Then he said, ‘Now, think of a word or sentence, from any language you
like.’ I thought of a long sentence from Sanskrit, a language of which
he was entirely ignorant. ‘Now take out the paper from your pocket,’
he said. The Sanskrit sentence was written, this man will think of this
sentence.’ It was correct. Another of us who had been given a similar
paper which he had signed and placed in his pocket, was also asked to
think of a sentence. He thought of a sentence in Arabic, which it was
still less possible for the man to know; it was some passage from the
Koran. And my friend found this written down on the paper.
