I could name many other peculiarities of their mode of studying
natural phenomena, which displays a much more minute subdivision and
classification of results than you are accustomed to. But beside all
this they consider that the senses of the normal man are susceptible of
infinite refinement, and that upon a greater or less degree of acquired
acuteness of perception the value of his results must depend. To attain
this high degree of sensitiveness, necessary to the perception of very
subtle phenomena, the adepts find it necessary to train their faculties,
bodily and mental, by a life of rigid abstention from all pleasures or
indulgences not indispensable in maintaining the relation between the
physical and intellectual powers."
"The common _fakir_ aims at the same thing," I remarked.
"But he does not attain it. The common _fakir_ is an idiot. He may, by
fasting and self-torture, of a kind no adept would approve, sharpen his
senses till he can hear and see some sounds and sights inaudible and
invisible to you and me. But his whole system lacks any intellectual
basis: he regards knowledge as something instantaneously attainable when
it comes at last; he believes he will have a vision, and that everything
will be revealed to him. His devotion to his object is admirable, when
he is a genuine ascetic and not, as is generally the case, a
good-for-nothing who makes his piety pay for his subsistence; but it is
devotion of a very low intellectual order.
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