THE POWERS OF THE MIND-1.

(Delivered at Los Angeles, California, January 8, 1900)
1.

All over the world there has been the belief in the supernatural throughout the ages.
All of us have heard of extraordinary happenings, and many of us have had some personal experience of them.

I would rather introduce the subject by telling you certain facts which have come within my own experience.

I once heard of a man who, if any one went to him with questions in his mind, would answer them immediately; and I was also informed that he foretold events.

I was curious and went to see him with a few friends.

We each had something in our minds to ask, and, to avoid mistakes, we wrote down our questions and put them in our pockets.

As soon as the man saw one of us, he repeated our questions and gave the answers to them.


Then he wrote something on paper, which he folded up, asked me to sign on the back, and said, "Don't look at it; put it in your pocket and keep it there till I ask for it again."

And so on to each one of us. He next told us about some events that would happen to us in the future. Then he said, "Now, think of a word or a sentence, from any language you like."

I thought of a long sentence from Sanskrit, a language of which he was entirely ignorant. "Now, take out the paper from your pocket," he said. The Sanskrit sentence was written there!

He had written it an hour before with the remark, "In confirmation of what I have written, this man will think of this sentence." It was correct.

Swami Vivekananda
To be continued  ....