Our Magical World – Part Three

We are not bound by the so-called “laws” of science unless we choose to be. Nor are we bound by the idea that our bodies are subject to all the limitations that science imposes upon us. We are always free to discard them whenever we wish.

Evidence continues to accumulate that the mind is able to overcome the physical limitations of the body to a degree that is regarded as impossible, according to accepted scientific and medical opinion.

When Paul Brunton visited Egypt in his search for people with unusual talents, he happened to meet a man who offered to show him some strange feats of hypnotism.

When he expressed interest in seeing these powers, the hypnotist, who called himself Monsieur Ades, placed his female associate named Marguerite into a hypnotic trance. He then invited Brunton to blindfold the lady so that she would be unable to see through her eyes.

He obliged by fastening pieces of gummed tape across her eyebrows, eyelids and cheeks. On top of the tape, he tied a thick velvet bandage around her eyes and head, until he was satisfied that her vision was completely obscured.

Ades then invited Brunton to select at random any passage from any book of his choice and place it in front of Marguerite. He chose a scientific book published in French, marked a certain paragraph, and set it in front of her.

At the signal given by Ades, Marguerite picked up a pencil and began to write. As she did so the hypnotist stood silently by watching her. In a few minutes she completed the task. Brunton then asked her to underline certain words in the text, which she did.

When he scrutinised what the lady had written, Brunton found that his selected passage had been accurately transcribed, including the words that he had underlined, with the exception of the word statisticiens, which she had recorded as statistiques.

Following this test, Ades then asked Marguerite to write out the same passage, but this time using her left hand rather than her right. Brunton reported that she did so with ease, even though she later claimed in her awakened state that she was not ambidextrous. 38

This hypnotic feat is usually dismissed by western skeptics as just another example of contrived fraud, resulting from collaboration between a cunning magician and his trained accomplice. Yet what made Brunton’s evidence significant was that it was matched by a Pakistani by the name of Kuda Bux.

Bux was born in Kashmir in 1906. During the 1930’s he travelled to the west and gave stage performances under the pseudonym of Professor K. B. Duke. Bux claimed that he possessed a talent for eyeless sight and gave numerous demonstrations to support his claim.

In 1934 he entertained a group of distinguished scientists in London which included Edward Andrade, then professor of physics at London University. Bux permitted himself to be blindfolded to the satisfaction of all those present, and then asked for a book to read.

Before one was produced, professor Andrade suggested that they obtain one which none of those present had ever read, in order to eliminate the possibility of any telepathic liaison. Several books were sent for from a nearby bookstore and placed before the Kashmiri performer.

Bux then extended his hands over one of the volumes and began to read aloud in his characteristic melodious style. When he was halfway down the page, Andrade switched books and opened another at random. Bux hardly interrupted his flow of words before continuing to read aloud from the new volume. He continued reading page after page, regardless of how often the books were changed.

On another occasion, Bux permitted a physician to administer atropine to his eyes before conducting his demonstration. Although atropine produces a blurring of vision, this made no difference to the successful outcome. Another doctor insisted on putting a film of collodion over his eyes prior to applying the bandages, but this too had no effect on his ability to see.

Bux went on to display a series of sensational examples of his talent. On one occasion in a Manchester hospital, having been securely blindfolded by a physician, he walked down the corridor, stepped outside, mounted a bicycle and rode off into the afternoon traffic.

It was a feat that he later performed again in New York, when he rode a bicycle blindfolded through the traffic of Times Square. On this occasion his head was almost completely swathed in bandages. Again, in Liverpool in 1937, while heavily bandaged, Bux calmly walked along a narrow ledge on the edge of a building some two hundred feet above the ground. 44 

As amazing as the exploits of Kuda Bux were, they made little impression on the scientists of his time, and to this day he is still discounted as a fraud.

Critics have dismissed him as just another clever sleight-of-hand artist, who was able to see perfectly well with his physical eyes by the subtle manipulation of his bandages, in a way that would enable him to see via a “nose-peek”, a downward glance through the spaces alongside the nose.

Despite the vehemence of their views, however, these sceptics have displayed little enthusiasm for repeating his ventures into the New York traffic. Their intellectual stance remains an ironic reflection of the truth that there are none so blind as those who will not see.

In defence of this Pakistani, it is instructive to learn how Kudu Bux himself explained the nature of his powers. He claimed that his talent was self-taught, and that it was the result of many years of practice. Far from being unique, however, Bux claimed that anyone could do what he had done, if they were prepared to undertake the necessary mental discipline.

Based on the guidance he received from a guru in Hardwar in northern India, Bux learned to concentrate his mind to the point where he could focus his attention without the invasion of any distracting thoughts. This was merely a preliminary discipline, however, for he claimed that eyeless sight depended on the ability to visualise what the physical eyes could not see.

Bux began by memorising certain objects and then, after blindfolding himself, trying to recreate pictures of these objects in his mind. In due course, he found that he was able to establish a link between these physical objects and his mental visualisations. He learned to see these objects even when blindfolded. After starting with furniture, pictures, flowers and maps, he graduated to the printed page.

Finally, after eleven years of strenuous effort, he was able to read books at will. To those who claimed that he possessed X-ray vision he replied: “X-ray vision would imply that I can see through my blindfold. But I cannot see through anything. I see with something else other than my eyes. I see with the mind’s eye.” 45

As amazing as the claims of Kudu Bux were, they were dwarfed by experiments carried out by the French scientist Jules Romains.

In 1918, Romains theorised that human beings might actually be able to see without using their physical eyes. He therefore decided to conduct a series of experiments to test this possibility of eyeless sight. He began his experiments by hypnotising a man whom he had picked at random. He then proceeded in the following manner:

“I bandaged his eyes and warned him that he would be using a faculty which he possessed beyond doubt, although he had never had occasion to discover it. I explained to him briefly that I was going to place a newspaper in his hands and that he should try to “see” and “read” some, at least, of the largest letters.  

“I made it very clear that he was not to rely on sensations of touch; that he was to “see”, in the strict sense of the word, and furthermore that I was persuaded that he could do it.” 39

It is important to note that Romains planted the suggestion to the hypnotised man that he did, in fact, possess the ability to “see” without the use of his physical eyes, and that he, Romains, had absolute confidence in his ability to utilise this hitherto unused faculty.

Romains then produced a copy of a newspaper which the man had not previously seen and asked him to read the title. The man made an intense effort, as was demonstrated by his agitation and nervous gestures. After a silence of about two to three minutes, the subject began, hesitantly, to announce the title of the newspaper, which was printed in letters 30 millimetres (1.2 inches) in height.

The title conveyed by the subject was correct. Romains congratulated the man and then asked him to read out the title of an article printed in letters of five millimetres (.2 inches). He redoubled his efforts, and after a short while came up with a heading which, although not entirely correct was nevertheless a very close equivalent.

The effort to “see” these letters had so exhausted his subject that Romains was obliged to terminate his experiment at that point. In conducting this test, Romains noted that the man had not been forewarned before hypnosis about the nature of the material that would be presented to him.

He also stressed that at no time had this man held the newspaper in his hands while “reading” the contents. This experiment was conducted in broad daylight in the presence of two witnesses.

Stimulated by this initial success, Romains repeated this experiment with four other volunteers. These volunteers were not pre-selected for any special reasons. They merely happened to be the first four people who came along. Following the same procedure as before, he hypnotised each subject individually, and then asked him to “read” from a newspaper.

Although none of these volunteers had been told anything in advance about the nature of these experiments, all of them displayed a capacity to “see'” under hypnosis while blindfolded.

In the course of hundreds of subsequent tests, which were all successful and conducted in the presence of others, Romains took every precaution he could think of to eliminate the possibility of fraud. He placed the reading material under a glass cover so that the subject had no direct contact with the material itself.

The subjects were blindfolded in different ways suggested by those witnessing these experiments. To avoid the possibility of the volunteers gaining a glimpse of the material through a gap in the bandages, Romains constructed an articulated set of metal panels which he called a bouclier.

This simple arrangement prevented any direct line of sight between the eyes of the subject and the reading material, by allowing a metal panel to be placed beneath the jaw of the blindfolded person, which shielded the material which lay beneath.

Having now acquired convincing evidence of the ability of his subjects to “see” under hypnosis without the use of physical eyes, Romains wondered whether this faculty was a product of the hypnotic state alone, or whether it could be cultivated in the normal state of consciousness.

In order to investigate this possibility, he decided to use himself as a subject. He therefore began a series of experiments which involved thirty-one sittings, and which extended over a period of about one hundred and fifty hours.

During these experiments Romains securely blindfolded himself and took particular care to avoid any slivers of light penetrating along the sides of his nose, thus allowing him to see the material with his physical eyes. He also adopted a posture of extreme mental concentration, which he considered to be indispensable to any success he might achieve.

His attitude throughout these experiments was one of confident expectancy. He imbued himself with the conviction that he actually did possess the faculty he was seeking to express, and simply waited expectantly for signs of confirmatory evidence. As Romains noted at the time:

“We must act as if we had the power of entering into direct contact with the exterior things present, as if the surroundings and the objects of which they are made up came to us, declared themselves to us without intermediary.” 40

Romains’ first dozen sittings, which lasted for about five hours at a time, proved to be extremely exhausting and passed without the faintest sign of any inner vision. Despite his initial disappointment, he persisted in his efforts.

As the sittings progressed, Romains found that he began to make out vague shapes and colours. These initial glimpses were wavering and discontinuous at first and possessed no precise contours or definition. As he continued his efforts, however, he was able to identify large objects that were brightly illuminated.

By the end of his sittings, Romains had succeeded in seeing various objects that were located in the room around him. This awareness of internal vision was not just limited to those objects directly in line with his eyes, but also included those objects which were behind him. His acquired sense of vision was, in fact, spherical in nature, operating over the complete span of 360 degrees.

Realising that the extraordinary faculty which he had discovered could be of profound benefit to the blind, Romains then conducted a series of experiments with two people who had become completely blind and who no longer retained any retinal sensitivity.

These new experiments were undertaken in a normal state of consciousness, without recourse to any form of hypnosis. Romains’ first subject was a man called Michel who had lost his sight during combat. Although the initial experiments proved fruitless, Michel continued until he was finally able to identify the number 4, a figure of some eight centimetres (three inches) in height, which had been placed under glass in a developing frame.

A second blind subject, named Baudoin, soon gained similar success. Buoyed up by this breakthrough, the two blind subjects rapidly began to identify other numbers, and to recognise colours and other objects. Michel and Baudoin were jubilant that they had found a means of restoring their sight. They returned to the Centre de Nice (a local hostel for the blind) to tell the news of their amazing success. Their joy, alas, proved to be short-lived.

“Michel and Baudoin were convinced that their blindness would cease; and in spite of my distinct advice they announced to their comrades of the Centre (de Nice), and perhaps to others, these facts, the possibility of which they had not considered ten days earlier.  

“I did not see them again. My most urgent representations did not even secure me the privilege of meeting them. I encountered polite but evasive intermediaries who talked of “fatigue” and “passing indisposition”. 41

Believing that he had stumbled upon a discovery which held the utmost value for science and medicine, Romains tried for many months to gain the interest of the French Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Moral Sciences, and the Sorbonne.

Finally, at 7 o’clock one Thursday evening in October 1920, Romains was invited to give a demonstration of eyeless sight at the Sorbonne at 2 o’clock on the following day.

When he explained that it was hardly possible to prepare a subject at such short notice, he was informed: “If you are unable to show us anything tomorrow we shall of course come to no conclusion whatever against your work, and if on the other hand you show us the slightest thing, the least bit of anything, we will cry it from the housetops.” 42

By an amazing stroke of luck Romains was able to contact a person who had conducted two preliminary tests of half an ­hour each two years before. This man agreed to present himself at the Sorbonne at the prescribed time on the following afternoon.

When the dignitaries assembled at the appointed hour, Romains proceeded to blindfold and hypnotise his subject. Although he was doubtful that any positive result would be forthcoming at such short notice, and with so little preparation, the man successfully identified various objects that were placed in front of him.

When Romains later discussed the implications of this result with the professors who had witnessed it, they declared that “they no longer recalled anything clearly enough.” 43

On the following day, a report was issued to the effect that Romains had been revealed to be a fraud. He was accused of “trickery” and was said to have “broken down” at having been exposed, to the point where he had talked of tearing up the records of his work.

The scientific world was not ready then, nor is it ready now, to recognise a fact that was contrary to its accepted paradigm of thinking.

Yet, the astonishing truth is that vision is a function of the mind and is not dependent on the physical operation of the eyes. As such, sight does not require the possession of healthy eyes, and people who are blind can still learn to see.

Romains had provided the evidence, assembled in scrupulously scientific fashion, to prove the existence of the faculty of eyeless sight. What he had not done, and could not do, was to explain how such a “miraculous” process had actually come about.

But here again, it simply is not possible to “explain” a phenomenon that is expressly forbidden by a certain paradigm of thinking, within the context of that paradigm of thought.

Since Romains’ demonstration of eyeless sight clearly breached the boundaries of accepted scientific thinking, the response of the professors of the Sorbonne matched the attitude of the Holy Fathers of Rome who had confronted Galileo three centuries before.

Eyeless sight could not be real because the accepted scientific paradigm did not permit the manifestation of such a phenomenon. There was clearly no point in entertaining this anomalous fact, since all the known facts contradicted it.

Because his ideas offended the accepted theories of vision, Romains became yet another victim of the ages old crusade against the revelation of the true potential of the human mind. Just as it is not necessary to have physical eyes in order to see, so it is not necessary to have ears in order to hear.

When Napoleon Hill was an expectant father, pacing up and down outside the delivery room waiting to hear the results of his wife’s confinement, he saw two nurses emerge from the room. Instead of stopping to talk to him, however, they strode swiftly past. A few minutes later the attending physician appeared with a grave expression on his face, and motioned Hill aside.

“Before you go in,” the doctor cautioned him, “I must prepare you for a shock. It’s a boy and he was born without ears. He hasn’t the slightest sign of ears, and of course he will be deaf all his life.” 46

The average father would have heard this pronouncement with overwhelming gloom and would have resigned himself to his son’s inevitable handicap in life.

But Napoleon Hill was not an average father and did not accept the fact that his son would be obliged to spend his life in a cocoon of silence. He did not, however, resort to some form of technological or surgical relief. Instead, he tried something far more intuitive and revolutionary.

For the next nine years Hill adopted a programme of what might be called “creative visualisation”, in which he formulated in his mind the image of his son without any hearing disability.

He resolutely pursued this campaign of faith in the conviction that he could help his son through the power of focused thought. Some twenty-five years later, Hill’s son had an appointment with another physician. This time the specialist approached Hill smilingly.

“Miraculous”, he exclaimed, “I have X-rayed this young man’s head from every possible angle, and I see no evidence that he possesses any form of hearing equipment. Yet my tests show that he has sixty-five percent of his normal healing capacity!” 47 

The boy, who would otherwise have been condemned to a life of limited opportunity, was instead able to attend normal grade school, high school and college, all of which he passed with excellent grades. When confronted by this astonishing enigma the ear specialist could only concede:

“Without doubt the psychological directive the father gave through the child’s subconscious mind influenced nature to improvise some sort of nerve system which connected the brain with the inner walls of the skull and enabled the boy to hear by what is known as bone induction.” 47

Jesus observed that all things were possible to any person who truly believed. By contrast, the hardened realist of today’s materialistic age has become conditioned into thinking that only those things are possible which scientific law decrees.

But as has long been demonstrated by those simple souls who have possessed the necessary faith, the “laws of physics” and the “laws of nature” do not establish limits to what is possible in this world. The spirit of life which infuses every heart is, as Maharaj has indicated, “a manifestation or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free”. 48

There is literally no limit to what the unconditioned mind is able to achieve.

Science’s ability to preside over human experience is limited to those who have bound themselves within the purview of scientific thinking. Those who do not choose to be stayed by its commands, find that the rigid laws of science become transformed into gossamer strands of silk.

Not only are people able to see without eyes and hear without ears, but there is evidence to suggest that people are able to think and function normally without any sign of brains!

The English Mechanic, for example, published an account in 1914 of three cases which came to the attention of Dr. Etienne Destot, a radiological surgeon associated with the Tribunal of the Seine in Paris.

In the first case a boy of twelve fractured his skull on a gas-lamp as he was sliding down the balustrade of a staircase. The boy was examined by Dr. Daniel Moliere, a surgeon of the Dieu Hospital in Lyons. The doctor stated that the boy had lost a bowl of brains.

Although he remained in a coma for ten days, he subsequently regained consciousness and, to the utter amazement of the attending doctor, regained the use of all his faculties.

In another instance, a stonemason was severely injured when a large cornice stone, which he was mounting, gave way and fell on him. After lapsing into a coma for fifteen days, the mason also awakened to the full use of his former skills. Even though the left frontal bone and left frontal lobe of the brain had been torn away in the accident, his motivity, sensitivity and speech remained unimpaired.

Finally, an Arab was admitted to a hospital in Algiers, suffering from a wound to his skull, which had been caused by the blow of a hammer. For two months the man showed no sign of any disability. Then unexpectedly, he fell into a coma and died. A post-mortem examination of the Arab revealed that he did not have any trace of brains left in his skull.” 49

The disclaimer that these incidents were merely bizarre anecdotal reports drawn from unreliable sources in the distant past, can be discounted by the report which was published in Science in 1980.

This report announced some extraordinary findings regarding intelligence and the cerebral cortex which had been discovered by the British neurologist John Lorber, holder of a research chair in pediatrics at Sheffield University. In the course of conducting research into the nature of hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, Lorber did a series of brain scans on people who suffered from this malady.

One of these persons was a student at the University who had been referred to Lorber by his personal physician, when it was noticed that his head was slightly larger than normal. Lorber performed a brain scan on this student and was startled by the result.

“When we did a brain scan on him, we saw that instead of the normal 4.5-centimetre thickness of brain tissue between the ventricles and the cortical surface, there was just a thin layer of mantle measuring a millimetre or so. His cranium is filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid.” 50 

Not only was Lorber surprised to find that the student could function in a normal way, but he was later astonished to discover that the young man had an IQ of 126 and had gained a first-class honours degree in mathematics. Yet, as Lorber had found, he had virtually no brain.

Nor was this an isolated case, for as Patrick Wall, professor of anatomy at University College, London, has remarked:

“Scores of similar accounts litter the medical literature, and they go back a long way, but the important thing about Lorber is that he’s done a long series of systematic scanning, rather than just dealing with anecdotes. He has gathered a remarkable set of data and he challenges, “How do we explain it?” 50

Evidence continues to accumulate that certain individuals are able to lead fully productive and functional lives, but who do not have any grey matter in their skulls. Albert Einstein was fond of commenting that his brain was his “laboratory”, and when he died, he donated his brain for the advancement of science.

Researchers were amazed to discover that the brain of one of the greatest scientists the world has known, weighed almost a third less than that of the average human being.

Future historians of science may consider it fortunate that the young Einstein was never examined by a brain specialist who had been trained to equate the size of the brain with potential human achievement. Einstein might well have been told that he could never expect to take his place in normal society, or to complete his elementary education.

Science has determined man to be a creature of the earth, and a product of the long, slow march of time. Born out of the primeval slime of antiquity, he is believed to have emerged from the ancient seas, until he came to stalk the land.

Driven by the constant struggle for survival, he mutated through a kaleidoscope of forms, until he laboriously reached that pinnacle of physical expression in which he exists today. Man is believed to be the captive of his genes, which set strict limits to what he may and may not do.

The testimony of the Sages points to an altogether more ethereal source. Man, they say, is a creature of ancestral freedom. The apparent limits of his physical form are but the shadows of his mind. Loose the shackles of his thoughts, they claim, and he is free to explore the utmost limits of desire.

His only obstacle is the impediment of his own belief. Man’s ultimate destiny, and the end of all his striving, lies in the rediscovery of his one true source.

Continued in Part Four

References:

38 Paul Brunton, “A Search in Secret Egypt”, Dutton, New York, 1936, pp. 99-101.

39 Jules Romains, “Eyeless Sight”, translated by C. K. Ogden, Citadel, Secaucus, 1978, pp. 46-47.

40 Ibid, p. 136.

41 Ibid, pp. 194-195.

42 Ibid, pp. 186-197.

43 Ibid, p. 198.

44 John Godwin, “This Baffling World”, Hart, New York, 1968, pp. 392-395.

45 Ibid, p. 397.

46 Napoleon Hill, “You Can Work Your Own Miracles”, Fawcett, New York, 1971, p.15.

47 Ibid, p. 17.

48 “I Am That”, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book I, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, p. 10.

49 Anonymous, English Mechanic, 99:186-187, 1914.

50 Roger Lewin, “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?”, in Science, 210:1232-1234, 1980.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 7th, 2019 at 11:54 am and is filed under Our Magical World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.