mind.  He then passes to the sphere where the infinity of thought only is present and thence to the sphere in which he thinks “nothing at all exists[699],” though it would seem that the consciousness of his own mental processes is undiminished.  The teaching of Alara Kalama, the Buddha’s first teacher, made the attainment of this state its goal.  It is succeeded by the state in which neither any idea nor the absence of any idea is specially present to the mind[700].  This was the goal of Uddaka Ramaputta, his second teacher, and is illustrated by the simile of a bowl which has been smeared with oil inside.  That is to say, consciousness is reduced to a minimum.  Beyond these four stages is yet another[701], in which a complete cessation of perception and feeling is attained[702].  This state differs from death only in the fact that heat and physical life are not extinct and while it lasts there is no consciousness.  It is stated that it could continue during seven days but not longer.  Such hypnotic trances have always inspired respect in India but the Buddha rejected as unsatisfying the teaching of his masters which made them the final goal.

But let us return to his account of Jhana and its results.  The first of these is a correct knowledge of the body and of the connection of consciousness with the body.  Next comes the power to call up out of the body a mental image which is apparently the earliest form of what has become known in later times as the astral body.  In the account of the conversion of Angulimala the brigand[703] it is related that the Buddha caused to appear an image of himself which Angulimala could not overtake although he ran with all his might and the Buddha was walking quietly.

The five states or faculties which follow in the enumeration are often called (though not in the earliest texts) abhinna, or transcendental knowledge.  They are iddhi, or the wondrous gift:  the heavenly ear which hears heavenly music[704]:  the knowledge of others’ thoughts:  the power of remembering one’s own previous births:  the divine eye, which sees the previous births of others[705].  It would appear that the order of these states is not important and that they do not depend on one another.  Iddhi, like the power of evoking a mental image, seems to be connected with hypnotic phenomena.  It means literally power, but is used in the special sense of magical or supernatural gifts such as ability to walk on water, fly in the air, or pass through a wall[706].  Some of these sensations are familiar in dreams and are probably easily attainable as subjective results in trances.  I am inclined to attribute accounts implying their objective reality to the practice of hypnotism and to suppose that a disciple in a hypnotic state would on the assurance of his teacher believe that he saw the teacher himself, or some person pointed out by the teacher, actually performing such feats.  Of iddhi we are told that a monk can practise it, just