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Show lllSSIlii . lilHlliiiiB 7 iS- ETHI I, son of Ra- flpV meseB 1 ot Egypt, father of Rameses Sfjf- "" ' u ei Great, a n J Sua jf 0s founder of the "1 4t nineteenth dynasty, 1$ nas come to lite 0 again and is living in a dilapidated old houseboat on the Thames, near Staines, England. He comes to London Lon-don every week and expounds the mysteries of Hindoo occultism to a large audience. At his feet, drinking in every word of his somewhat unintelligible unin-telligible lectures, sit titled women, and a small sprinkling of titled men, representative of that intellectual society so-ciety of England which is ever ready to lend an attentive ear to the new, the weird, or the mysterious. Sethi I, in his reincarnated state, is thoroughly modern. He calls himself him-self plain Frederick Thurston. For ten years he has lived alone in the Thames houseboat, delving deep into the secrets of the Hindoos. And all the while he had looked forward to the time when he can return to Egypt, not in the guise of his former for-mer incarceration, but as the founder of a psychic city on the Alexandrian coast. "To this city," he said to the writer, "people could come from all parts of the world for mental and physical invigoration. People would live the simple life simple food, early to bed and early to rise, simple speech, dancing and singing. There would be daily lessons, lectures in mystical and occult subjects, and everything ev-erything would tend to develop the psychic qualities in the inhabitants and the visitors." But if Thurston cannot found this city at the moment he is losing no time in carrying on the work which it would do. He believes that the afternoons are wasted by the English intellectuals. The mornings are given over to sleep, the evenings to entertainment enter-tainment and pleasure; it is only in the afternoons that kindred souls can be gathered from the far ends of the great city and the higher planes of intellectualism be developed, believes Thurston. And he has entered upon ! that work of development. In a little lit-tle room in Regent street, not 50 ! paces from Piccadilly Circus, Thurston Thurs-ton sits one afternoon a week and answers an-swers the eager questions of the men and women who thirst for the knowledge knowl-edge of the Hindoo philosophers. The new Sethi I is a remarkable-looking remarkable-looking man. Just above the average aver-age height, he has an enormous head crowned with an immense dome of a forehead. Across his temples and the shining expanse of his half-bald head run great protruding veins. But the strangest thing about this most extraordinary man is his uncanny facial resemblance to the Egyptian ruler of whom he claims to be a reincarnation. re-incarnation. Compare his profile with that of the mummy of Sethi I and it is difficult to put your finger on a point of difference. There is thp same sweep of' the full forehead, the same long nose, the same repressive lips and. allowing for the sinking of the chin with age. the same formation of the lower jaw The resemblance of the ears and the back of the head is even more exact. The process of reincarnation, while reproducing the outward form of the original, has plaved an odd trick In other respects. It has put the soul of thii famous Egyptian ruler in the body of a Thames-side recluse, who ', far from believing and practicing the religion of the original, is deep in the mysticism of the Hindoos; who is steeped in, practices and preaches the beliefs of a secret cult of Indians the adepts of the Goathan temple hidden hid-den away in the soaring Himalayas, 16,000 feet above the level of the sea, where no white man has even penetrated. pene-trated. This religion is neither Buddhism, Theosophy, nor New Thought, but a strange, mixture of all three. Its greatest vogue was reached forty centuries cen-turies ago when the shrine of the Gosainthan, nestling in the snow of the Himalayas, the highest temple in the world, was known and revered throughout the length and breadth of India. The adepts of this religion, almost unknown to the scientists of the present day, have developed to an extraordinary extent the study of the mind in the spirit realm, which is just beginning to take a firm hold upon the, imaginations of thinking people all over the world. In the system sys-tem of these Hindoo scholars there is a marked distinction between what is known as metempsychosis, or a mere passing of the soul, and reincarnation, rein-carnation, meaning' the passing of the soul through flesh, as in the case of Thurston and the soul of Sethi I. Gosainthan is the chapel royal of the fabulously rich Maharajah of Napal, a semi-independent Indian ruler rul-er who is in treaty alliance with England. He, however, pays nu tribute to the British, but every five years sent offerings of fruit and flowers flow-ers to the emperor of China up to the time of. that ruler's abdication Although Thurston has never penetrated pene-trated the sacred precincts of this Himalayan temple, he probably knows more about it than any other white man. For some years he acted as tutor and coach to a number of Indian In-dian princes at Eton and from them he gathered many of the secrets of the strange cult. But. quite aside from that, he has traveled in the east, studying the wisdom which was of so much earlier perfection than our own. He climbed many of the Himalayan peaks, talked with Hindoos Hin-doos of all degrees, many of whom had never seen a white man before, and made his way in disguise Into the wilds of Thibet. Thurston is really a poet of rare power and at Cambridge he captured the chancellor's gold medal, following in the footsteps of Tennyson and Byron. "At that time," he said to me, "I intended to devote my life to poetry. But later I decided that it was more important to live poetry than to write it. I have been living it ever since. I live the year around on my houseboat on the Thames. I am up every morning at six o'clock and take a plunge In the river no matter what the temperature. Then I am ready for a couple of hours' exercise. ex-ercise. This takes the form chiefly of dancing. Breakfast out of the way, I am ready for a morning of study and meditation, for the knowledge of the mystics is inexhaustible and can never be wholly mastered." Meanwhile the peculiar form of mysticism which Thurston ladles out to thirsty souls once a week In the room in Regent street is spreading rapidly among the upper class of English society. A full list of the 700 men and women who have already fallen under his spell would include most of the intelectual aristocracy. But while Thurston takes an extraordinary ex-traordinary interest in the progress of all these disciples, his star pupil lives at Staines, not far from his houleboat. She Is none other than Cora Urquhart Potter, the famous American actress. Mrs. Brown Potter has become so saturated with the Hindoo lore that she is now recognizer recog-nizer as an expert, and recently gave a lecture on the subject at the Ritz hotel. She first became Interested in the subject during a tour in India and searched long but vainly there for a guide to the Becrets which are so jealously guarded by the natives. It was not until she returned to England Eng-land and accidentally met Thurston that her greatest wish was satisfied. In the Staines recluse Dhe found the mentor she had so long sought. |