Mircea Eliade: "Science, idealism and paranormal phenomena"

Paranormal powers are not encountered exclusively with primitives, but also with yogis, fakiri, saints of all kinds, belonging to all sorts of civilizations. The necessities of the historicist argument forced de Martino to limit his comparisons to the paranormal powers of primitives and those of modern mediums. But the authenticity of the yogis' powers, for example, raises another problem: that of the lucid and rational conquest of these paranormal powers. It is therefore not necessary to consider only a "historical magical world" (the primitives) and a spontaneous but historically inauthentic regression in this world (the mediums): it is necessary to consider another world accessible, in principle, to everyone and at any historical moment.