Part 4, Tricks and Treats Summary and Analysis

1 - The author wonders how America, which she portrays as being a culture grounded in independence of thought, let itself be so taken over by the promise of eastern enlightenment.

2 - The author refers to an archaeological school of thought that suggests that in the time Jesus is, in effect, missing from the Bible ("between the ages of twelve and thirty"), he was in India studying and learning to perform miracles such as levitation.

3 - The author describes an incident in which a revered guru completely misinterpreted the presence of a group of Western diplomats, assuming they were there to gain wisdom when they were actually there to see him perform a miracle.

4 - An American disciple of that same guru, the author writes, saw the guru raise a man from the dead, but jokes...