Francis Worcester Doughty

“ Afterward I came to know that ten souls were all those walls encompassed, but on that morning when the young lama conducted the Doctor and myself back across the court and into the temple, all was mystery, and I felt that the unknown lay before us. Since then, though years have passed, I can truthfully say that the happenings in the lamasery of Psam-dagong are enveloped in a veil of mystery still. But to return.
Through the low stone door way, above and about which wound a trailing dragon, carved in bold relief; through a dark and narrow passage, paved and musty smelling ”

“ It is sufficient for you to know that you earth dwellers alone of all mankind are ignorant on this subject. On no planet in our solar system to which a spirit thus freed might project itself, are such transmigrations not of common occurrence. The spirit is guided by God’s loving forethought, incarnated or disincarnated. A receptacle will be provided for it; once at its destination it will walk that earth in a body precisely similar to the one it left behind—made so, in fact, by its own will. ”

“ Padma pulled the next handle above, returning the unfortunate Mercurian to his place.
I looked again. Maurice, who still held my arm, displayed the most intense eagerness as the coffin came out.
“I saw all this last night, George,” he whispered. “Ain’t it wonderful? What is there that man cannot accomplish after this?”
“What indeed?” I thought. “If man can wipe out the vast distances of interplanetary space, who is to say that his ambition shall pause even there? That it shall not aspire to a similar extinction of the stupendous breaks between our solar system and its neighbors. ”

“ Mr. Wylde you now stand face to face with the workings of just such a force. It is an invisible, imponderable gas; as elementary as oxygen, but utterly unknown outside of adept lore. This gas is generated under certain natural conditions within the earth itself, and is of such rare occurrence on this particular planet that the knowledge of its existence has hitherto been confined to the few. In fact it occurs in two places only, so far as is known, the cavern within which we are now standing being one.
This aroused the Doctor whose dazed condition had scarcely changed. ”

“ Our adept saw it also and began in English immediately.
“Listen Mr. Wylde, and you too, Doctor;” he said, “the time has now come when we must have a definite understanding. We are at what you may justly consider the most remote corner of the earth. We are here for a distinct purpose. I need not tell you what that purpose is.”
“We are here because we are fools——” the Doctor began, when he was suddenly checked by that same mysterious influence which Mr. Mirrikh seemed to possess the power to exert by the mere raising of his hand. ”

“ They are not alive nor are they dead. They are the bodies of lamas who have inhaled the gas during the centuries the lamasery has been consecrated to this lofty purpose. The souls which left them to seek other planets have long since passed beyond the realm of matter into the realm of spirit—they will never return. Since then most of these bodies have many times been animated by other souls. One may be thus animated at any moment and spend years on this earth, subject to all natural laws, you understand ”

“ As toward myself, truth compels me to say that the man never appeared different than the calm philosopher of the Nagkon Wat, nor did he outwardly toward Maurice. And, although God alone can read in their entirety the intentions of any man; although I may wrong the adept most grievously, I believed then, and I believe it still, that his was the will which drove Maurice forward to his fate. ”

“ We are in a country governed by a religious hierarchy of the most tyrannical description. Intelligent as these lamas are in some things, they are still but half savages. Let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that Mirrikh really possesses some occult knowledge of which the world is ignorant. ”

“ The spirit then seeks the point upon which its mind was last fixed, but it can return at will after a few hours have passed, for in that time the fumes of the gas lose their full effect; or, on the other hand, it can remain absent for years and still return. All rests with the will. The body will not decay unless the gas is either recombined or expelled. Does this open your eyes?”
“It opens a train of thought simply incomprehensible. But suppose the spirit wills to go to Mars, for instance, what——”
“What will it do for a body there?” ”

“ And while speaking of the temple I want to say that I never met with the slightest opposition on the part of the lamas to my penetrating any part of the shrine. If there exists any holy of holies at Psam-dagong I never discovered it. Though firmly set in their own belief, I invariably found the lamas most charitable toward the belief of others. They knew perfectly well what and who I was—there was never any secret made about it. I know that as a race the Thibetans have no wish to be exclusive ”

“ They are a fierce and vicious people. The last that occupied this body wrought so much evil that our gracious lord, the Tale Lama, sent imperative orders that they should in future be prohibited from taking on the earthly form. ”

“ The good Abbe heard of it, but by the common people its peculiar properties are quite unknown. Whoever ventures near that valley dies to all appearance. In truth the unfortunate is in the same condition as those bodies we have just seen. ”