Death by Effort of Will.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2917, 6 June 1888, Page 2

Death by Effort of Will.

There seems to be some confusiH? of thought in the communications about voluntary death. I remember reading an American tale in which one of the actors comes to the conclusion that he deserves to die, while another asserts that she could not survive him, and the other parties find them dead the next morning. The point of the tale was that no one need live who willed to die—that is, really " dying by an effort of will," which, I take it, is a mere idle tale. But what the various writers have referred to is not dying at all, but a voluntary , passing into catalepsy. Ido not see the least reason to doubt the possibility, though not prepared to maintain the truth of various well-attested instances of apparent voluntary death and revival among Hindoo fakirs. It is an undeniable fact that the sect of Yogos do cultivate those mystic powers and conditions oi which we in Europe know a little under the nameljß||. mesmerism to a degree which well be incredible to those who have not seen it as J have. They undergo calmly what to others would be torture, and evidently do not really suffor. They will vow and fulfil it, a lifelong fixing of limbs in a fixed posture; they will take up a position and never leave it, living solely on what the charity or piety of their co-religionists absolutely puts into their mouths, never speaking or taking any interest in ordinary life. I have myself seen one who had held an object in his stretclied-out hand till his fingernails had grown over it and passed right through his hand. From what I know of natural and artificial catalepsy (that state in which many have liarrowly escaped burial, and many have undoubtedly been buried), I fully believe that it could be voluntarily assumed by those who have cultivated the state of absorption and mystic meditation under this influence of fanaticism; but how long they could maintain it and live I have no dataj|» form an opinion about.—Sigma, w World of Science.