The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (17 page)

" 'Conscious
mind?' I ask. 'Why do you say
conscious mind?'

" 'Because
each man has two minds, the conscious
and the sub-conscious. The sub-conscious mind is highly concentrated, but the
conscious mind, the one everyone uses, is a scattered,
unconcentrated
thing. It is concerning itself with thousands of different items, the things
you are seeing around you and the things you are thinking about. So you must
learn to concentrate it in such a way that you can visualize at will
one item,
one item only, and absolutely
nothing else. If you work hard at this, you should be able to concentrate your
mind, your conscious mind, upon any one object you select for at least three
and a half minutes. But that will take about fifteen years.'

" 'Fifteen
years!' I cry.

" 'It
may take longer,' he says. 'Fifteen years
is the usual time.'

" 'But
I will be an old man by then!'

" 'Do
not despair,' the yogi says. 'The time
varies with different people. Some take ten years, a few can take less, and on
extremely rare occasions a special person comes along who is able to develop
the power in only one or two years. But that is one in a million.'

" 'Who
are these special people?' I ask. 'Do they
look different from other people?'

" 'They
look the same,' he says. 'A special
person might be a humble
roadsweeper
or a factory
worker. Or he might be a rajah. There is no way of telling until the training
begins.'

" 'Is
it really so difficult,' I ask, 'to
concentrate the mind upon a single object for three and a half minutes?'

" 'It
is almost impossible,' he answers. 'Try it
and see. Shut your eyes and think of something. Think of just one object.
Visualize it. See it before you. And in a few seconds your mind will start
wandering. Other little thoughts will creep in. Other visions will come to you.
It is a very difficult thing.'

"Thus spoke the yogi of
Hardwar
.

"And so my real exercises begin. Each evening, I sit down and close my
eyes and visualize the face of the person I love best, which is my brother. I
concentrate upon visualizing his face. But the instant my mind begins to
wander, I stop the exercise and rest for some minutes. Then I try again.

"After three years of daily practice, I am able to concentrate absolutely
upon my brother's face for one and a half minutes. I am making progress. But an
interesting thing happens. In doing these exercises, I lose my sense of smell
absolutely. And never to this day does it come back to me.

"Then the necessity for earning my living to buy food forces me to leave
Hardwar
. I go to Calcutta where there are greater
opportunities, and there I soon begin to make quite good money by giving
conjuring performances. But always I continue with the exercises. Every
evening, wherever I am, I settle myself down in a quiet corner and
practise
the concentrating of the mind upon my brother's
face. Occasionally, I choose something not so personal, like for example an
orange or a pair of spectacles, and that makes it even more difficult.

"One day, I travel from Calcutta to Dacca in East Bengal to give a
conjuring show at a college there, and while in Dacca, I happen to be present
at a demonstration of walking on fire. There are many people watching. There is
a big trench dug at the bottom of a sloping lawn. The spectators are sitting in
their hundreds upon the slopes of the lawn looking down upon the trench.

"The trench is about twenty-five feet long. It has been filled with logs
and firewood and charcoal, and a lot of paraffin has been poured on it. The
paraffin has been lit, and after a while the whole trench has become a
smouldering
red-hot furnace. It is so hot that the men who
are stoking it are obliged to wear goggles. There is a high wind and the wind
fans the charcoal almost to white heat.

"The Indian fire-walker then comes forward. He is naked except for a small
loincloth, and his feet are bare. The crowd becomes silent. The fire-walker
enters the trench and walks the whole length of it, over the white-hot
charcoal. He doesn't stop. Nor does he hurry. He simply walks over the
white-hot coals and comes out at the other end, and his feet are not even
singed. He shows the soles of his feet to the crowd. The crowd stares in
amazement.

"Then the fire-walker walks the trench once more. This time he goes even
slower, and as he does it, I can see on his face a look of pure and absolute
concentration. This man, I tell myself, has
practised
yoga. He is a yogi.

"After the performance, the fire-walker calls out to the crowd, asking if
there is anyone brave enough to come down and walk on the fire. There is a hush
in the crowd. I feel a sudden surge of excitement in my chest. This is my
chance. I must take it. I must have faith and courage. I must have a go. I have
been doing my concentration exercises for over three years now and the time has
come to give myself a severe test.

"While I am standing there thinking these thoughts, a volunteer comes
forward from the crowd. It is a young Indian man. He announces that he would
like to try the fire-walk. This decides me, and I also step forward and make my
announcement. The crowd gives us both a cheer.

"Now the real fire-walker becomes the supervisor. He tells the other man
he will go first. He makes him remove his dhoti, otherwise, he says, the hem
will catch fire from the heat. And the sandals must be taken off.

"The young Indian does what he is told. But now that he is close to the
trench and can feel the terrible heat coming from it, he begins to look
frightened. He steps back a few paces, shielding his eyes from the heat with
his hands.

" 'You
don't have to do it if you don't want to,'
the real fire-walker says.

"The crowd waits and watches, sensing a drama.

"The young man, though scared out of his wits, wishes to prove how brave
he is, and he says, 'Of course I'll do it.'

"With that, he runs towards the trench. He steps into it with one foot,
then the other. He gives a fearful scream and leaps out again and falls to the
ground. The poor man lies there screaming in pain. The soles of his feet are
badly burned and some of the skin has come right away. Two friends of his run
forward and carry him off.

" 'Now
it is your turn,' says the fire-walker.
'Are you ready?'

" 'I
am ready,' I say. 'But please be silent
while I prepare myself.'

"A great hush has come over the crowd. They have seen one man get badly
burned. Is the second one going to be mad enough to do the same thing?

"Someone in the crowd shouts, '
Don't
do it! You
must be mad!' Others take up the shout, all telling me to give up. I turn and
face them and raise my hands for silence. They stop shouting and stare at me.
Every eye in that place is upon me now.

"I feel extraordinarily calm.

"I pull my dhoti off over my head. I take off my sandals. I stand there
naked except for my underpants. I stand very still and close my eyes. I begin
to concentrate my mind. I concentrate on the fire. I see nothing but white-hot
coals and I concentrate on them being not hot but cold. The coals are cold, I
tell myself. They cannot burn me. It is impossible for them to burn me because
there is no heat in them. I allow half a minute to go by. I know that I must
not wait too long because I am only able to concentrate absolutely upon any one
thing for a minute and a half.

"I keep concentrating. I concentrate so hard that I go into a sort of
trance. I step out on to the coals. I walk fairly fast the whole length of the
trench. And behold, I am not burned!

'The crowd goes mad. They yell and cheer. The original fire-walker rushes up to
me and examines the soles of my feet. He can't believe what he sees. There is
not a burn mark on them.

" '
Ayee
!' he cries.
'What is this? Are you a yogi?'

" 'I
am on the way, sir,' I answer proudly. 'I am
well on the way.'

"After that, I dress and leave quickly, avoiding the crowd.

"Of course I am excited
. '
It is coming to me,' I
say. 'Now at last the power is beginning to come.' And all the time I am
remembering something else. I am remembering a thing that the old yogi of
Hardwar
said to me. He said, 'Certain holy people have been
known to develop so great a concentration that they could see without using
their eyes.' I keep remembering that saying and I keep longing for the power to
do likewise myself. And after my success with the fire-walking, I decided that
I will concentrate everything upon this single aim -- to see without the
eyes."

For only the second time so far,
Imhrat
Khan broke
off his story. He took another sip of water,
then
he
leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

"I am trying to get everything in the correct order," he said.
"I don't want to miss anything out."

"You're doing fine," I told him. "Carry on."

"Very well," he said. "So I am still in Calcutta and I have just
had success with fire-walking. And now I have decided to concentrate all my
energy on this one thing, which is to see without the eyes.

"The time has come, therefore, to make a slight change in the exercises.
Each night now I light a candle and I begin by staring at the flame. A
candle-flame, you know, has three separate parts, the yellow at the top, the
mauve lower down, and the black right inside. I place the candle sixteen inches
away from my face. The flame is absolutely level with my eyes. It must not be
above or below. It must be dead level because then I do not have to make even
the tiniest little adjustment of the eye muscles by looking up or down. I
settle myself comfortably and I begin to stare at the black part of the flame,
right in the centre. All this is merely to concentrate my conscious mind, to
empty it of everything around me. So I stare at the black spot in the flame
until everything around me has disappeared and I can see nothing else. Then
slowly I shut my eyes and begin to concentrate as usual upon one single object
of my choice, which as you know is usually my brother's face.

"I do this every night before bed and by 1929, when I am twenty-four years
old, I can concentrate upon an object for three minutes without any wandering
of my mind. So it is now, at this time, when I am twenty-four, that I begin to
become aware of a slight ability to see an object with my eyes closed. It is a
very slight ability, just a queer little feeling that when I close my eyes and
look at something hard, with fierce concentration, then I can see the outline
of the object I am looking at.

"Slowly I am beginning to develop my
inner
sense of sight.

"You ask me what I mean by that. I will explain it to you exactly as the
yogi of
Hardwar
explained it to me.

"All of us, you see, have two senses of sight, just as we have two senses
of smell and taste and hearing. There is the outer sense, the highly developed
one which we all use, and there is the
inner
one also. If only we could develop these inner senses of ours, then we
could smell without our noses, taste without our tongues, hear without our ears
and see without our eyes. Do you not understand? Do you not see that our noses
and tongues and ears and eyes are
only.
. . how shall
I say it?. . . are only instruments which assist in conveying the sensation
itself to the brain.

"And so it is that I am all the time striving to develop my inner senses
of sight. Each night now I perform my usual exercises with the candle-flame and
my brother's face. After that I rest a little while. I drink a cup of coffee.
Then I blindfold myself and sit in my chair trying to visualize, trying to see,
not just to imagine, but actually to
see
without
my eyes every object in the room.

"And gradually success begins to come.

"Soon I am working with a pack of cards. I take a card from the top of the
pack and hold it before me, back to front, trying to see through it. Then, with
a pencil in my hand, I write down what I think it is. I take another card and
do the same again. I go through the whole of the pack like that and when it is
over I check what I have written down against the pile of cards beside me.
Almost at once I have a sixty to seventy per cent success.

"I do other things. I buy maps and complicated navigating charts and pin
them up all around my room. I spend hours looking at them blindfold, trying to
see them, trying to read the small lettering of the place-names and the rivers.
Every evening for the next four years, I proceed with this kind of practice.

"By the year 1933 -- that is only last year -- when I am twenty-eight
years old, I can read a book. I can cover my eyes completely and I can read a
book right through.

"So now at last I have it, this power. For certain I have it now, and at
once, because I cannot wait with impatience, I include the blindfold act in my
ordinary conjuring performance.