Before he took Binu’s diary and went back home, Krishna-dada gave Harbart a hundred rupees. That was what Harbart used to start his business. Even Krishna-dada, despite his reluctance and deep opposition, had come to believe, been forced to believe, in Harbart’s dream. To tell the truth, Harbart had completely forgotten that Binu had spoken those words to him in the hospital. When Binu was dying, then when Binu was burning, all those policemen, policevans, policeguns—all that had scared the living daylights out of Harbart, wiped his memory clean.

*

A perusal of Mrinal Kanti Ghosh Bhaktibhushan’s Accounts of the Afterlife will result not only in strengthening one’s belief in spiritualism and the existence of the soul but also in revealing ways in which one may speak with or even glimpse one’s departed loved ones.

Judged from a spiritualist perspective, the techniques employed by Harbart for communicating and conversing with the dead were, at best, a hodgepodge.

The technique of contacting dead souls by raps on the table, adopted by the Fox sisters of America—making them world-famous—that technique of “rapping” cast no shadow over Harbart’s conversations with the dead.

The technique of invisible writing on a slate or a sheet of paper rumored to have been displayed by Eglinton-shaheb in 1881 in Calcutta, that too was never done—or rather, could not be done—by Harbart.

In one sense, perhaps one could call Harbart a sort of medium.

On this matter of mediums, Harbart had learned from Accounts of the Afterlife:

Over and above these methods of conversing and communicating with the dead are others that require the presence of an intercessor. Such an intercessor is referred to in English as a medium. One cannot say for certain if all men possess the strength to be a medium. But that not all mediums possess the same strength—that has been proven beyond all doubt. It has been observed that despite their lack of learning and letters, some persons are born with such an ability or somehow attain it during their childhood years. Yet many others have, despite their every effort, failed at such attainment. There are those who believe that persons who are Libran by birth and peaceable by nature, persons who are strong enough to restrain their emotions, these are the people best suited to be mediums. Or, in other words, they are the ones who may most easily be made to surrender to the will of the dead soul. Such reasons account for the great number of women mediums.

Suddenly, in a dream—Harbart’s attainment of the ability to commune with the hereafter—such instances are rare in the world of spiritualists.

Harbart had never tried the planchette technique. It could be said, however, that he had, to some degree, put to use the technique of automatic writing. Of course, if one compared the samples of Harbart’s occasional and haphazard use of this technique with those in the collected volumes of William Stead’s Borderland magazine (especially the writings by Miss Julia’s spirit) or with those accomplished by W. Stainton Moses, then one would surely be reduced to laughter.