They gradually lengthen
the intervals between their inspirations and expirations, until, in
three or four months, they succeed in making them an hour and a half.
This is not the ideal, for one of their sacred books says, in speaking
of a saint: "At the fourth month he no longer takes any food but air,
and that only every twelve days, and, master of his respiration he
embraces God in his thought. At the fifth he stands as still as a pole;
he no longer sees anything but Baghavat, and God touches his cheek to
bring him out of his ecstasy."
It will be conceived that by submitting themselves to such gymnastics
from infancy, certain men, already predisposed by atavism or a peculiar
conformation, might succeed in doing things that would seem impossible
to the common run of mortals. Do we not daily see acrobats remaining
head downward for a length of time that would suffice to kill 99 per
cent, of their spectators through congestion if they were to place
themselves in the same posture? Can the savage who laboriously learns
to spell, letter by letter, comprehend how many people get the general
sense of an entire page at a single glance?
There is no reason, then, _a priori_, for assigning to the domain of
legerdemain the astonishing facts that are told us by a large number of
witnesses, worthy of credence, regarding a young fakir who, forty years
ago, was accustomed to allow himself to be buried, and resuscitated
several months afterward.
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