Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

Chapter.Page

Bambini

 

32 Hypnotism

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“As the abbot Pedrini himself alone could not unravel this phenomenon, he turned for help to his acquaintance, a certain ‘Doctor Bambini.’

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“Well, when the abbot Pedrini told everything in detail to the doctor Bambini, the latter also became very much interested, and from then on they both began to occupy themselves with the elucidation of it all.

32.575

“They first made various elucidating experiments upon the nun Ephrosinia herself, and after several what are there called ‘seances’ they noticed that this nun invariably fell into such a peculiar state of hers only when her gaze rested rather a long time on one of the brilliant colored stones, on what is called a ‘Persian turquoise,’ which was among the adornments of the frame of this portrait.

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“But later when with this same Persian turquoise they continued to make their elucidating experiments upon others, they then soon became categorically convinced, firstly, that in almost any one of the three-brained beings without distinction of sex who gazes for a long time at shining and brilliant objects of a certain kind, there begins to proceed a state similar to the one which proceeded with the first subject of their experiments; and secondly, they noticed further that the form of manifestation of the subject during the state varies and is found to be dependent on the former being-experiences which chanced to be predominant and on the shining objects with which a connection was accidentally established during such experiences of theirs.

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“It is lucky that they still do not know—and it must be hoped that they never will know—other methods besides the one first discovered by the beings of the community Italy, the abbot Pedrini and the doctor Bambini, namely, the gazing at a shining brilliant object, by means of which method, as I have already told you, certain of them can indeed be brought into such a mentioned ‘concentrated state.’”