“There is another question that interests me very much,” I said. “There are substances which YOGIS take to induce certain states. Might these not be, in certain cases, narcotics? I have myself carried out a number of experiments in this direction and everything I have read about magic proves to me quite clearly that all schools at all times and in all countries have made a very wide use of narcotics for the creation of those states which make ‘magic’ possible.” Fragments: One

“But where there are schools of fakirs there are also schools of YOGIS. Yogis generally keep an eye on fakirs. If a fakir attains what he has aspired to before he is too old, they take him into a yogi school, where first they heal him and restore his power of movement, and then begin to teach him. A fakir has to learn to walk and to speak like a baby. But he now possesses a will which has overcome incredible difficulties on his way and this will may help him to overcome the difficulties on the second part of the way, the difficulties, namely, of developing the intellectual and emotional functions. Fragments: Two

“In addition to these, other people become fakirs simply from being struck by some fakir they have seen. Near every fakir in the temples people can be seen who imitate him, who sit or stand in the same posture. Not for long of course, but still occasionally for several hours. And sometimes it happens that a man who went into the temple accidentally on a feast day, and began to imitate some fakir who particularly struck him, does not return home any more but joins the crowd of that fakir’s disciples and later, in the course of time, becomes a fakir himself. You must understand that I take the word ‘fakir’ in quotation marks. In Persia fakir simply means a beggar; and in India a great many jugglers call themselves fakirs. And Europeans, particularly learned Europeans, very often give the name of fakir to YOGIS, as well as to monks of various wandering orders. Fragments: Two

“As a rule it is hard for man to reconcile himself to this thought; it seems to him exaggerated, unjust, and absurd. He has a poor understanding of the meaning of the word ‘possibility.’ He fancies that if he has any possibilities in himself they must be developed and that there must be means for their development in his environment. From a total refusal to acknowledge in himself any possibilities whatever, man generally proceeds forthwith to demand the imperative and inevitable development of these possibilities. It is difficult for him to accept the thought that his possibilities may remain altogether undeveloped and disappear, and that their development, on the other hand, requires of him tremendous effort and endurance. As a matter of fact, if we take all the people who are neither fakirs, monks, nor YOGIS, and of whom we may say with confidence that they never will be either fakirs, monks, or YOGIS, then we may say with undoubted certainty that their possibilities cannot be developed and will not be developed. This must be clearly understood in order to grasp all that follows. Fragments: Two

“The fundamental difference between the first three ways, that is, the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi, and the fourth way consists in the fact that they are tied to permanent forms which have existed throughout long periods of history almost without change. At the basis of these institutions is religion. Where schools of YOGIS exist they differ little outwardly from religious schools. And in dif-ferent periods of history various societies or orders of fakirs have existed in different countries and they still exist. These three traditional ways are permanent ways within the limits of our historical period. Fragments: Fifteen