AMAZING TESTS.

Franklin Times, Volume 14, Issue 192, 16 October 1925, Page 6

AMAZING TESTS.

MAN WHO DIES AT WILL.

DEATH AND BURIAL FOR TWENTY MINUTES.

The experiments of the Kakir. Tahra Bey, are at present the talk of Paris (writes a special correspondent), and his demonstrations in the little Salle Adzar have drawn a crowd of fashionable people* eager for the latest sensation, and also a number of scientific men who have followed the results with critical observation, and yet have acknowledged themselves astonished.

Tahra Bey, though a Fakir, is not I an Indian, but an Egyptian and a ! Christian of the sect of Copts. He i is a young man of good but rather ! extraordinary physique, while his well- [ cut regular features, short dark j beard, large glowing eyes, give him ; an air of great distinction. He is ; an educated and highly intelligent I man.

He does not profess to exercise super-natural powers; he says simply that having followed a method handed down to him by his ancestors he has, by incessant practice, acquired a control over his body far beyond anything ever attained by western people.

Drastic Tests.

He says "all this calmly, but with a certain impressiveness, and then without mechanical aids and in the full view of his audience he proceeds to put himself into' a cataleptic state. He joins his hands together and falls into an attitude of deep meditation. The colour leaves his face, his expression becomes fixed, his movements slow and mechanical. Then he slowly undresses, and soon he is ready for the tests. These are drastic enough for anything. A man chosen at hazard from the. audience advances, lashes the shoulders of the Fakir with a whip, smites him with a club on the abdomen; the Fakir gives no more response than a log of wood. Then another of the audience, taking a large needle, runs it through his cheeks, and his tonsils. He drives a lance iiito his throat; the Fakir gives no sign of pain or even of feeling.

Then he is placed on a "hurdle," such as was formerly used for dragging criminals;.to execution. The hurdle is furnished with sharp teeth, and the Fakir undergoes torture, but he takes no notice and gives no sign of injury. •

"In other experiments the blood is actually drawn from what look like ghastly wounds, but immediately afterwards Tahra Bey, by the use of his system, closes up the wounds and the cicatrisation appears to be brought about immediately.

Buried for Twenty Minutes. Two noted Parisian doctors, Jaworski and Viachon, amongst other scientists, watched these tests, but although they declared the facts'to be as stated, they said they were completely disconcerted in searching • for an explanation. ■ ' A still more spectacular experiment was in store. Tahra Bey stopped the action of his heart, his; pulse was gone, his br'eathing ceased, he had the appearance of a dead man. In this condition he was put in a coffin and buried and covered up with sand. He remained under the earth for twenty minutes, and then having been exhumed soon came rOuhd to his normal condition. He said he was willing for the experiment to be prolonged to three hours.

' As to explanations, the following is offered by the psychiologists: The body is controlled by two sets of nerves, one under the control of the will. These nerves serve to move the muscles, for example, of the arms or legs. The muscles of the heart, and of the viscera work automatically under the influence of the other set of nerves—the sympathetic system. Tahra Bey has, by training, acquired control over the sympathetic nerves.