Note[1]
ON August 4th, 1896, the International Congress of Psychologists assembled at Munich, on which occasion an Indian Yogi, Mr. Bheema Sena Pratapa, gave representations of his self-induced yoga sleep exclusively to the members of that Congress, creating thereby a great deal of interest, although the phenomenon, as might have been expected, was understood by only comparatively few of the learned professors, who, naturally enough, were seeking for its cause in some diseased condition of the body, but which could not be found, because there was none. An account of the proceedings will undoubtedly be interesting to the readers, and I will therefore begin at the beginning.
THE EXPOSURE AT PESTH.
Some time ago there was a great sensation at the Millennial Exposition at Budapest. An Indian fakir (Mr. Pratapa) went into a death-like sleep at Pressburg, and in that condition he was taken in a glass coffin by a special train to Budapest and exhibited publicly. No amount of pinching, tickling, sticking with needles, applying electricity, and even burning with cigars, could awaken him from his sleep, in which he remained for a whole week, and, as was claimed by the manager of the exhibition, without any nutriment. Then came the great “exposure.” The papers reported that some people, having become suspicious, gained at night admission into the room where the fakir was sleeping, and there they found him and his two comrades fully awake and amusing themselves. Subsequent reports in the papers added that the three fakirs had been playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and eating cakes, and on the next day these statements were exaggerated to such an extent as to claim that these fakirs had been celebrating orgies with women, drinking cognac and champagne and doing all such wicked things, while the credulous public believed at least one of them to be soundly asleep.
Whether or not there was a grain of truth in these evidently highly ornamented accounts we did not know, but the fact is that Mr. Pratapa and his two companions discontinued their exhibitions at Budapest, and upon invitation Mr. Pratapa came to Hallein, where we had ample opportunity to test his powers and satisfy ourselves of their genuineness. The result was that we (Dr. Chs. Kellner, Mr. L. Deichard, and myself) resolved to take him for examination to the International Congress of Psychologists at Munich, so that the members of that body might themselves investigate the case and deal with the fakir as they would think proper. No -conditions for their investigations were to be prescribed at all.
THE YOGI—MR. PRATAPA.
But before proceeding further, the reader will undoubtedly be anxious to know who Mr. Pratapa is and what was at the bottom of the so-called “exposure.”
Mr. B. S. Pratapa is a good-looking Hindu of the Chattriga caste,[2] twenty-five years of age, and from a family of mystics, his father having become a Sangassi[3] (Saint) and retired from the world at fifty years of age. He is a well-to-do and well-educated gentleman, the proprietor of a considerable estate in the Punjab and a student of the University of Lahore and member of the R. A. S. He speaks several languages, is, as a matter of course, a strict vegetarian, never smokes and never tastes alcoholic drinks. He is of a profoundly religious turn of mind, and a minute’s acquaintance with him will be sufficient to dispel all suspicions of his being in impostor, while, on the other hand, he is too childlike and too little versed in the ways of modem civilization, a circumstance that renders him liable to be easily imposed on, and makes it necessary for him to have somebody to supervise and protect him. His motives in coming to Europe for the purpose of exhibiting his Yoga sleep were of an entirely religious nature. He wanted to call the attention of the European public to Yoga and induce them to study the Yoga philosophy. For his exhibitions he never claimed nor received any money besides his actual expenses. Mr. Pratapa thus had a mission, and this mission could have been fulfilled even if his sleep had been merely imitated; because, for the purpose of calling attention to a truth, it is not necessary that the representation should be an actual fact, as otherwise, in a tragedy upon the stage, it would always be necessary to kill the actor representing the villain and to marry the actress who plays the part of the heroine. Nevertheless, Mr. Pratapa’s exhibition was genuine, for it was not merely a representation of the Yoga sleep, but the Yoga sleep itself, of which fact the members of the International Congress had ample opportunity for convincing themselves.
THE INNOCENT AND HIS MANAGER.
What then about the “exposure” at Budapest? There was what may be called an imposture, but Mr. Pratapa was not the perpetrator, but the victim of it. He was not giving exhibitions in starving himself, like Professor Succi, and although he is able to remain in the Yoga sleep for eight days, and, if necessary, a fortnight, without receiving any food, nevertheless, for the purpose of avoiding great physical exhaustion after awakening, it was advisable to feed him with milk, either by means of a tube, or by awakening him for that purpose. I have not been able to ascertain positively which of the two methods was adopted at Budapest, but it appears that Mr. Pratapa received some milk, and that this fact was kept secret by the manager of the exhibition, for the purpose of increasing the effect; nor can the manager, therefore, be blamed, as the matter was not intended to serve for a scientific investigation, but for a show, it also appears that this was arranged without the consent of Mr. Pratapa, who could not know what the manager was doing, as he himself understands neither the German nor the Hungarian language.
HIS EXHIBITION AT MUNICH.
At the Congress Mr. Pratapa offered to sleep for one week under the strict surveillance, by day and night, of a committee of physicians; but of this offer the members of the Congress did not avail themselves, as the meeting only lasted three days, and they were more interested in seeing the Yogi go to sleep and see how he could be awakened. Therefore, Mr. Pratapa, instead of sleeping continually, went to sleep daily from ίο A.M. to 6 P.M., going to sleep and awakening in the presence of a great many spectators, among whom there were many well-known authorities from this and from foreign countries, such as Dr. H. Baraduc of Paris, Dr. Wetterstrand of Stockholm, Dr. L. Tuckey of London, Mr. Saint George Lane-Fox of London, and perhaps some three hundred others, whose names I do not remember.
HOW YOGA SLEEP IS INDUCED AND BANISHED.
The way in which Mr. Pratapa went to sleep was as follows. He first sat down in oriental fashion, and repeated, at a hardly audible voice, the well-known Yogatri verse, which is an evocation of the divine sun of wisdom that illumines the heart of mankind. After that he laid down upon the lounge, and in fifteen minutes he was beyond the power of being awakened by any ordinary means. The re-awakening, which took place also in the presence of a large audience, was done by myself, according to the directions received by Pratapa, by rubbing the top of his head vigorously for about a quarter of an hour.
What appeared to be most strange to the scientists assembled was, that there was no symptom of any bodily disease discoverable. There was no sign of any cataleptic conditions, nor could the sleeping person be made to act upon any hypnotic suggestion. There was one professor who attempted a hypnotic experiment upon Pratapa, by putting him to sleep with his consent; but there is nothing to show that the professor’s presence had anything to do with the Yogi’s going to sleep, as Pratapa’s willingness to sleep was sufficient to put himself to sleep, with or without anybody’s presence. Certain it is, that the professor could not awaken him, and had to apply to me for that purpose. To me that sleep appeared like that of any other sleeping person, and natural sleep, only with this exception, that the body remained entirely insensible to pain, except with such signs of reaction as may also be observed in sensitive plants, or in the muscles of animals recently killed.
CUI BONO?
Now what was the value of these experiments? Evidently nothing; because the cause of the phenomenon was not understood by anyone unacquainted with the Yoga philosophy; only for those who understood that philosophy the demonstration of the phenomena could be of interest. But thus it will always be, whenever material science seeks to investigate phenomena due to spiritual causes, by material means, while it refuses to acknowledge these spiritual causes which it is unable to perceive. We cannot judge about the qualities of the wine contained in a bottle by merely examining the qualities of the bottle itself. Phenomena as such prove nothing, when the laws upon which they are based are not known. The spirit is the energy, the body the vehicle, by merely examining the vehicle we can know nothing about the qualities of the spirit, especially if we deny the existence of spirit, or consider it unworthy of our attention. The Yoga sleep is induced by attaining full control over one’s own thinking faculties, as is taught by Patanjali; that is to say, by the souls retiring within its own consciousness, to that extent where all thought and corporeal sensations cease to exist. It is the opposite to obsession; for in obsession the individual goes, so to say, out of himself, and his body becomes possessed by a foreign power, while Yoga is a concentration within one’s self, not due to excitement, but to an entering into perfect peace.
THE “ILLUSION” OF INDIVIDUALITY.
I have frequently been asked the question: “Where is Pratapa’s soul while his body is asleep?” To this I would suggest the following answer: The soul of the world is one and the individuals therein are only temporary forms. All beings, as taught by the Vedanta philosophy, are one in essence and only differing in their manifestations as individual forms. Thus we may compare the soul of the world to an ocean, the personalities to icicles swimming therein. The icicles are essentially water, they are distinguished from each other only by the difference of the forms and qualities which they nave assumed by their frozen state. By the influence of heat they will return to their natural condition. Each icicle will then appear as water again and each will constitute, not a separate part of the ocean, but together with the rest the ocean itself.
In a similar way the true Self (God) is essentially only one; but by the delusion of separatedness individualities and individual human beings come into existence. By the influence of divine love, which means the recognition of the oneness of God in all things, the hard crust of selfishness and self-conceit becomes dissolved, and when the delusion of self ceases, the soul returns to its natural spiritual state in God. With the reawakening of the physical senses the illusion of self enters again into existence. Of course, a great deal more might be said in regard to this subject, but the above is not intended to be an exhaustive treatise on the Yoga philosophy, but merely a hint thrown out to serve as material for thought.
A SHAM TRANCE TESTED BY TORTURE.
The New York Herald of August 16th devoted a whole page to a detailed description of an attempt made by a body of medical men, to ascertain by torture whether or not a young man named McPherson was shamming. The challenge emanated from the man himself.
He proposed to put himself, by what is known as self-suggestion, into the condition of hypnosis and to sleep for exactly twenty-four hours. The challenge was to any and all doctors or other experts to examine him as he slept, and to submit him to any tests they chose. At the end of the twenty-four hours they were to decide whether or not the hypnosis was genuine. He defied them by any torture they could conceive to wake him oat of his sleep.
He was to wear no clothes during the experiment, and the possibility of smuggling to him any object was rigidly excluded.
As to the nature of the tests, nothing was barred short of permanent mutilation of the body. Fire, the knife, the electric battery—anything that would leave him, at the end of the experiment, all that he was at the beginning—were allowed.
The doctors went on at him without mercy, but they could not wake him up.
The dropping of ice water slowly upon the closed eyelids, drop by drop, at irregular intervals, was the most effective test, and the dilatation of the sphencler {sphincter} the most painful. He stood the latter well, but McPherson took very unkindly to the dropping of water. The test is one of the severest conceivable. Not only is the actual pain and irritation excruciating in normal conditions, but the uncertainty due to the irregular intervals between the drops occasions the highest nervous strain. As it was, though he flinched perceptibly and showed signs of acute distress, he otherwise maintained the outward appearance of slumber.
McPherson continued to sleep through all the tests until the twenty-four hours had passed. Then he confessed that he had been awake all the time. He said—
“I am a fake, and this sleep was all a fake. I would have stood anything before I would nave opened my eyes and grim up. That’s my trade. I simply say to myself, ‘Here, these doctors can’t best me,’ and so I stick it out.”
Notes:
[1] A Yogi in Europe. An Exhibition of Yoga Sleep. F. Hartmann, M.D. Borderland, vol. 3, no. 4 (Oct. 1896), 461-462. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
[2] {Kshatriya (Sanskrit: क्षत्रिय}
[3] {Sanskrit: Sanyāsin}