The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and 6 More by Dahl Roald

Author:Dahl, Roald [Dahl, Roald]
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-01-29T22:38:11+00:00

Imhrat Khan paused and asked me if he might have a glass of water. I fetched it for him. He took a long slow drink, then he went on with his story:

"This is in 1922 and I am nearly seventeen years old. So I go to Hardwar. And there I find the yogi, and be­cause I have a letter from the great Banerjee, he con­sents to give me instruction.

"Now what is this instruction?

"It is, of course, the critical part of the whole thing. It is what I have been yearning for and searching for, so you can be sure I am an eager pupil.

"The first instruction, the most elementary part, con­sists of having to practise the most difficult physical exercises, all of them concerned with muscle control and breathing. But after some weeks of this, even the eager pupil becomes impatient. I tell the yogi it is my mental powers I wish to develop, not my physical ones.

"He replies, 'If you will develop control of your body, then the control of your mind will be an automatic thing.' But I want both at once, and I keep asking him, and in the end he says, 'Very well, I will give you some exercises to help you to concentrate the conscious mind.'

" 'Conscious mind?' I ask. 'Why do you say con­scious mind?'

" 'Because each man has two minds, the conscious and the sub-conscious. The sub-conscious mind is highly concentrated, but the conscious mind, the one everyone uses, is a scattered, unconcentrated thing. It is concern­ing itself with thousands of different items, the things you are seeing around you and the things you are think­ing about. So you must learn to concentrate it in such a way that you can visualize at will one item, one item only, and absolutely nothing else. If you work hard at this, you should be able to concentrate your mind, your conscious mind, upon any one object you select for at least three and a half minutes. But that will take about fifteen years.'

" 'Fifteen years!' I cry.

" 'It may take longer,' he says. 'Fifteen years is the usual time.'

" 'But I will be an old man by then!'

" 'Do not despair,' the yogi says. 'The time varies with different people. Some take ten years, a few can take less, and on extremely rare occasions a special per­son comes along who is able to develop the power in only one or two years. But that is one in a million.'

" 'Who are these special people?' I ask. 'Do they look different from other people?'

" 'They look the same,' he says. 'A special person might be a humble roadsweeper or a factory worker. Or he might be a rajah. There is no way of telling until the training begins.'

" 'Is it really so difficult,' I ask, 'to concentrate the mind upon a single object for three and a half min­utes?'

" 'It is almost impossible,' he answers. 'Try it and see. Shut your eyes and think of something. Think of just one object.

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