NERVE-CONTROL IN EAST AND WEST
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In your last issue there is an article headed as above by Mr. Yeats-Brown, full of interest and suggestion. He professes to narrate events which can only happen in the East, being closely bound up with Hindu views as to extreme asceticism, the help of a guru, the complete supersession of the senses, and even the adoption of particular attitudes of the body.
Into these difficult questions I cannot enter : but as to one of his Indian stories I would ask for fuller information. It is the tale of a highly intellectual man, a great mathematician, who, after losing his young and dearly-loved wife, was very near to insanity ; but was able, after going through various cere- monies under the guidance of an expert, to find his wife beside him, more real than his daily experiences. Afterwards he could " summon her at will from the perspectives of memory, and bring her to him, near and real and living." Many of your readers will regret that the tale is but half told.
What has been said above is quite in line with thousands of experiences recorded in history. But one would like further to know whether the man conversed with his wife, whether she told him things which he did not know, whether she showed in all intercourse the particular personality which was so dear to him. Was it a hallucination of sense (or indeed of the absence of the senses), or was it a strictly spiritual experi- ence ? Had the converse relation only to the past, " the perspectives of memory," or did it bring conviction in regard to the present ? Or had it no relation to time ? One wants to
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