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Mysticism and Asceticism. 
[November, 
word “ Om,” the Hindoo name of the great abstraction of 
universal life — a being more transcendental than that of 
Hegel. The devotee takes occasional walks, but is very 
slow in his movements, so as to lessen the rapidity of the 
respiration. He repeats his “ Om” sometimes 10,000 times 
a day, and has other syllables among which are “ Bam,” 
“Ham,” “Lam,” “Ram,” “ Soham,” “Yam,” of which 
he performs endless series of repetitions, arranging them in 
every order of which they are susceptible, and rigidly follow- 
ing a prescribed order for a given number of repetitions. 
He trains himself to sit squatted for hours together in a 
certain peculiar attitude (the siddhasana), which consists in 
doubling the left leg under the body, so as to rest upon the 
heel of the left foot, while the right leg is extended forward. 
In this position, with the right arm advanced, he holds the 
big toe of the right foot in his right hand, and with the left 
arm flexed under the body, grasps the big toe of the left foot. 
This brings the lower part of the face to rest on the breast 
bone. In this awkward and difficult attitude the fakir sits 
for hours together ; that is, when he is not standing upon 
his head or training himself to take a deep inspiration and 
expel it slowly — taking twelve seconds to breathe it and 
twenty-four to breathe out the cubic feet of atmosphere that 
the lungs can contain. Besides these exercises, his tongue 
has to be cut twenty-four times, so as to sever all the liga- 
tures one by one, and enable him to flex it backward and 
close the throat with its tip.” 
Dr. W . . . . does not, indeed, advise a similar way of 
life for those who are aspiring after the “ Christian adept- 
ship of the West.” But his recommendations plainly tend 
0 an intensification of that phase of our being which 
concerns itself with moral good and moral evil. In the 
modern savant as met with in Europe and America this 
phase is comparatively less prominent than in ordinary men 
of the world. He must, indeed, possess in an eminent degree 
the virtues of industry, patience, and perseverance, and his 
truthfulness must be beyond suspicion. Nor can he indulge 
in sensual excesses of any kind without traversing his own 
career. But his mind is mainly set and most intently fixed 
on matters which are neither good nor evil. This peculiarity 
was perhaps most clearly manifested in Henry Cavendish, a 
man incapable of love or hatred, of fear or hope, and simply 
absorbed in the study of certain classes of physical pheno- 
mena. There is probably no other known case of a complete 
atrophy of man’s emotional nature. Still we may learn from 
this extreme instance^ that the savant and the theosophic 
