THE PLANE OF ETHER 29 



THE PLANE OF ETHER 



(Being Further Extracts fko^i the Records of the Astral 

 Camera Club of Alcalde) 



By President DAVID STARR JORDAN 



STANFORD UNIVERSITY 



A T the December meeting of the Astral Camera Club, through the 

 •*-- *- courtesy of Madame Yda Hhatch, of San Diego, vice-president of 

 the American Chirological Society, the club received a rare treat, direct 

 from the fountains of the Orient. 



Madame Hhatch is an adept in the science of palmistry and therefore 

 a person of wealth and culture. She is pleased to exercise her gracious 

 prerogative of patronage to scholars of all lands and of all beliefs. 

 By her kindly interest the club was favored with an address by the 

 Swami Earn Telang, of Bombay, from the Congress of Religions in 

 Chicago, the substance of which, omitting the Hindu words I can not 

 understand, I shall try to transfer to these records. 



The Swami Ram Telang is a slender, dark-skinned Brahmin, with 

 a delicate moustache and a complexion of varnished leather. His 

 finely cut mouth bears an impress of sweet patience, while his dark 

 soulful eyes have a deep inward expression, as though earthly matters 

 were but a veil, half hiding the light of the inner vision. He wore a 

 white turban after the manner of his class, and his white and purple 

 robes were very becoming to his gentle but manly figure. Madame 

 Hhatch impressed upon us the importance of refraining from all con- 

 tact with these robes, for a profane touch would soil his aura, besides 

 impressing the severest pain upon his sensitive Xirvanic nature. For 

 like reason he must be sheltered from the odor of cooked meat, while 

 even the slightest approach to a butcher's shop on the street caused him 

 the nausea and shudders. As he himself confessed, the perfection of 

 being which he had attained was not an unmixed blessing, for the' 

 proofs of sorrow and suffering were ever in his sight. " Why hast thou 

 cast Ram," he said sometimes to his Lords of Karma, " into the time of 

 the ever-blind to proclaim thine oracles with the opened sense?" But 

 he was very kind withal and very patient and accepted with kindness 

 our offerings of adulation. 



In this, my report, I can do but scant justice to his spoken words, 

 for though I am not without literary taste and facility (though I say 

 this, who should not) there was something in the lofty ideas and perfect 



