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THE SCIENCE OF BREATHING
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on Mahatmas because I have never been in the place where they claim to live; but in India there are many persons who live among the people who have wonderful powers, but they have nothing to do with the socalled occult powers of the mediums or of the spiritualists. The phenomena of spiritualism in this country imply a certain condition, passive, without any force on the part of the medium. A passive, negative condition is the first condition, then, the individuality being lost or merged in something else, the nature of which we do not know. A certain result is produced in this way. With us the case is different; there is no comparison between the phenomena of spiritualism here and the phenomena produced in India. Here the medium does not know anything of what is going on; the médiuins have to be passive because nothing can come to thein otherwise. They speak in an inspirational state, a state where speech comes to them without any effort on their part, and therefore the Hindus would say it is no credit to them that they do these things. If by living the right kind of life, by passing through the right kind of discipline, I earn that power, it is my rightful possession. In India the way in which these powers are exercised is first of all, the person who exercises them is in a perfectly conscious, positive state; he is not controlled by anything but himself, retains his own nature and knows all the time what he is, what he is doing, and what other things are going on around him. This is the
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