By Swami Yogananda
East-West, Sept.-Oct. 1927
I met Hamid Bey, with his good friend, Dr. Hereward Carrington, in Buffalo recently. I was quite impressed with the beautiful spiritual gleam in Mr. Bey’s eyes. I sang the song, “O God Beautiful!” for him. Ever since then he has been singing it.
Hamid Bey is an Egyptian from the Soudan, famous land of sheiks. He was reared under an austere mystical training, and the feats he performs are a part of the religious rites of his sect.
Mr. Bey showed me that by touching anyone’s wrist he could divine his thoughts. Each thought has a certain vibration and by contact with the pulse of the person thinking the thought. Mr. Bey receives the same vibration and consequently thinks the same thought. Later, he demonstrated to me his method of physical trance, in which he fell into my hands, breathless and almost lifeless. The stethoscope revealed that his heart-beat, at first fast, slowed down to an intermittent beat, and then got very slow.
Mr. Bey can remain underground, buried for twenty-four hours, sealed in an air-tight casket, and can hold a thousand pounds on his chest. He controls his pulse at will–its beats appeared and completely disappeared at his will. He also pierces his body with long needles without bloodshed. The marks, almost instantaneously disappeared after the needles were withdrawn. He thrusts these needles into his throat, cheeks, and tongue without pain. He can produce blood from one puncture and withhold blood from another. Most of these things he performed right in front of me. In the various cities where he visits he often gives demonstrations before gatherings of eminent physicians and surgeons. In New York City he submitted to burial for three hours. On this occasion his body was sealed in a casket and placed six feet underground. The doctors who were present admitted that they could not explain the feat other than by Hamid Bey’s declaration that by self-imposed catalepsy, he renders his body almost lifeless.
Passing needles through his cheeks and certain other of Mr. Bey’s feats are performed, after long practice, by manipulating glands of the throat and by pressing certain nerves on the head. These are very interesting physiological phenomena showing that man can control the functions of the heart and all other organs of involuntary action. This is known to Hindu Yogis and Swamis who practice Yoga as well as to mystics of other sects.
Of course, it must be remembered that without love of God and without wisdom, such control and feats are just physiological jugglery and a detriment to spiritual realization. But Hamid Bey loves God, and he tells me he loves Him more and more since he heard the song, “O God Beautiful.”
He has a good wife. “I often wake up in the night, sit upright, rebuke sleep away, and talk to Him,” he told me. “At first my wife did not understand to whom I talked. But now she does, and we both love ‘God Beautiful.'” O, how I love to hear him say that! I told him to tell everyone wherever he goes, that prayer without love of God is meaningless, and that people should talk to God every night when no one is watching or listening. That is a sure way to know God easily. Otherwise, a thousand shows of prayer will fail to accomplish any spiritual result.
I told Mr. Bey to produce trance by love of God, rather than merely by glandular pressure, as results produced by devotion are safer and greater. Generally, it takes another person to arouse Mr. Bey from his trance. But, in the conscious trance of devotion, or Yoga, one never loses consciousness, but transcends the material consciousness and comes back to consciousness of matter at will again. That is the conscious communion with God that Yogoda aspires to teach.
Mr. Bey can put small animals and sometimes certain types of men into the cataleptic state. Medical science as well as metaphysical science should investigate the results and possibilities for usefulness of such phenomena.