Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 6.4.7

6.4.7

It is pretended, and one of the favoured saints himself assured me, that their souls are often rapt in an ecstasy of several hours' duration; that their external senses lose their functions; that the Jauguis are blessed with a sight of God, who appears as a light ineffably white and vivid, and that they experience transports of holy joy, and a contempt of temporal concerns which defy every power of description. My saintly informant added that he could at pleasure fall into such a trance as he described, and not one of the individuals who are in the habit of visiting the Jauguis doubts the reality of these vaunted ecstasies. It is possible that the imagination, distempered by continued fasts and uninterrupted solitude, may be brought into these illusions, or that the rapturous dreams of the Fakires may resemble the natural ecstasies into which Cardan tells us he could fall whenever he pleased, especially as the Fakires practise some art in what they do, prescribing to themselves certain rules for the binding up of their senses by slow degrees. For example, they say that after having fasted several days upon bread and water, it is necessary to be alone in a sequestered spot, to fix the eyes most steadily toward heaven, and when they have been so riveted for some time, to lower them gradually, and then point them both in such a manner that they shall look at one and the same time upon the tip of the nose, both sides of that feature being equally seen;