Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1894 — ESOTERIC BUDDHISM [ARTICLE]

ESOTERIC BUDDHISM

Dr. Heinrich Hensoldt, of New York, a traveler of renown, so said, has been entertaining Indianapolis people with his observations of the Far East during his residence of eleven years in India, Thibet, Biirmah and Ceylon. The Doctor claims that he is the solitary white man who has been able to penetrate to the celebrated Lhase —the inaccessible city of Thibet since lgf?s. Lhase is the center of the Buddhist faith, and all attempts to reach it by foreigners of late years have failed; Dr. Hensoldt’s tales border on the incredible and marvelous. We do not vouch for their truth, but give a brief resume of the more startling statements. The doctor prefaced his remarks with the statement that he is not a Theosophist, although he claims that esoteric Buddhism has furnished the basis for the present fad that is designated by that term. Dr. Hensoldt knew Mme. Blavatsky, and states that she was a remarkable woman, but her claims to supernatural power were mostly fraudulent, although he says that she really could hold almost any light object to the ground by the force of her will so that the strongest man could not lift it, and that she was capable of performing several other remarkable feats. But the feats performed by the Buddhist adepts, which Dr. Hensoldt says he witnessed himself, discount the wildest tales of imagination. These 'adepts for the most part live a life of seclusion, occasionally appearing ip the cities to perform miracles and preach their faith. They suddenly appear in the street, wave their hands a few times, and in three minutes a large tree will grow right before the eyes of all. Dr. Hensoldt has seen this done several times, and climbed the tree in order to test its reality. Then the tree will disappear as mysteriously as it came. Then the adept would deliver a sermon, after which he would throw the end of a rope into the air, where it, would hang. Up this rope the adept would climb and disappear. Dr. Hensoldt claims to have seen this performance four different times, and believes that it is accomnlished by a species of hypnotism, although several thdusand people were present in each case and saw the same things. The Doctor claims, too, that the Hindoos are possessed of a telepathic potfer which would knock out the Western Union Telegraph Company if it should become epidemic in this country, as by its aid they acquire intelligence of events transpiring at a great distance at once. It took six weeks for the news of the burning of Moscow to reach Paris by courier, yet the event is claimed to have been known throughout India in two hours. The Doctor thinks ou£ boasted civiliza-

tion Is a good deal of a fraud—that we are in darkness, in comparison with the Hindoo, in all the higher attributes of the mind and soul. There is, in fact, nothing real, he says, but mind itself —all dutward objects being mere visions. The Doctor is fully convinced, from what lie has seen abroad, of the immortality of the soul, or Ego, as he terms it — a fact which he was inclined to doubt previous to his investigations in Lhase and the East.