This fakir was not merely a clever juggler like those I saw in Ceylon, although he was undoubtedly a “professional.” I had been told that, in the court of the Aurangzeb Mosque on the bank of the Ganges, there was a fakir lying on a bed studded with iron nails. This sounded very mysterious and terrifying. But when I arrived the bed with iron nails alone was there, without the fakir; the fakir, I was told, had gone to fetch the cow. The second time I went the fakir was there. He was not lying on his bed and, so far as I could understand, he only got on it when spectators came. But for a rupee he showed me all his skill. He really did lie almost entirely naked on the bed which was covered with long rather sharp iron nails. And, although he evidently took care not to make any quick movements, he turned round on the nails, lay upon them on his back, his sides, his stomach, and obviously they neither pricked nor scratched him. I took two photographs of him but I could give myself no explanation of the meaning of this phenomenon. The fakir did not produce the impression of being either an intelligent or a religious man. His face wore a dull, bored, and indifferent expression, and there was nothing in him that spoke of aspirations toward SELF-SACRIFICE or self-torture. Fragments: Three

“Exteriorly man’s being has many different sides: activity or passivity; truthfulness or a tendency to lie; sincerity or insincerity; courage, cowardice; self­control, profligacy; irritability, egoism, readiness for SELF-SACRIFICE, pride, vanity, conceit, industry, laziness, morality, depravity; all these and much more besides make up the being of man. Fragments: Four

“Exteriorly man’s being has many different sides: activity or passivity; truthfulness or a tendency to lie; sincerity or insincerity; courage, cowardice; self-control, profligacy; irritability, egoism, readiness for SELF-SACRIFICE, pride, vanity, conceit, industry, laziness, morality, depravity; all these and much more besides make up the being of man. Fragments: Four