Wonders Of Bilocation

( Originally Published 1919 )

Villasenor's Report—The Spanish Nun—Case of Bilocation—An "Ecstatica"—Was She Transported to America 1 —The Indian Tribe Visited by Her—The "Demon Priests" —Benavide's Experience—His Statements—Declaration of the Nun—Signs and Wonders—Meaning of the Word Bilocation—Examples from Holy Writ—Angelic Apparitions.

The late Professor Cooke Taylor, in his work on "Occult Power," contends that there are many examples in the history of occultism in favor of the belief which was held by many of the early Spanish missionaries to America, and by learned men at Madrid, that the white and bearded patriarch deified by the aborigines of Mexico as the "Fair God" who preached Christianity to the natives in pre-Columbian times, was Saint Thomas the Apostle. From a tradition coming down from the ages and still lingering with the Latin races, the description and appearance of Saint Thomas corresponded with the outward form and personality of the "Fair God" of the Mexicans. And did not the Saviour include this land when, after He rose from the tomb, He said to His Apostles : "You shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the uttermost parts of the earth" ? Moreover, Saint Thomas was a twin, and, in the Nahual language, the last syllable in the name of the "Fair God" meant one of two born of the same mother and at the same time. Again the sixteenth century was closing the long period known as the "Ages of Faith," when alchemy, miracles, prodigies, and legends yet held their own with the march of the human intellect. Nor from the authenticated cases with which theologians and students of occult subjects were, in those days, familiar, cases of bilocation, bicorporeity, and aerial transportation, was there anything incredible in the living body being apparently in two places at the same time. They were familiar with the eighth chapter of the "Acts of the Apostles," telling of the aerial transportation of Philip from the road to Gaza to Azotus, and with the fourteenth chapter of Daniel recording the aerial and instantaneous flight of the prophet Habacuc from Judea to Babylon and from Babylon to Judea.

"But how," you may ask, "was it possible for these men of learning and common sense to believe an absurdity, even an impossibility?"

But is bilocation—that is, the same person, at the same instant of time, appearing in two places, no matter how near or how remote—absurd, contradictory, and impossible? Well, let as appeal to history and then each one of us may form his own opinion.

A word as to the historian. I know of no man who, in his day, stood higher in America for historical research, accuracy of citations, and incorruptible honesty than John Gilmary Shea. Dr. Shea's many and varied accomplishments, his knowledge of languages, both ancient and modern, his diligence in prosecuting his investigations, his antiquarian lore, his careful discrimination in arranging and collecting the results of his investigations, his power of analysis and marvelous ability to enter upon the right path and thread his way through labyrinths of confused statements and separate truth from falsehood, were recognized by European and American scholars long before his death, in 1892. Now, when a man of his scholarship and historical honesty, after the most careful examination, lends his name to the support of that which appears to be incredible, this fact, to use the words of one of Shakespeare's characters, at least "must give us pause." In Shea's "History of Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States" (Dunigan, Ed. 1854) there is a very interesting chapter on the labors of the early Spanish missionary fathers in Arizona and New Mexico. Writing of the wonderful labors and success of the missionaries with the tribes of New Mexico, Dr. Shea says : "Among those who contributed to bring about so happy a result are included the names of Fathers Benavides, Lopez and Salas at Tumanas, Father Ortego, and, we may add, the venerable Maria de Jesus d'Agreda (Spain), whose mysterious connection with the New Mexican mission, whether now believed or not, certainly drew great attention to it at the time, and gave it an extraordinary impetus. Benavides met a tribe which no missionary had as yet reached, and found them to his amazement instructed in the doctrines of Christianity. On inquiring, he learned that they had been taught by a lady whose form and dress they described. This account he (Benavides) gave in his work published in 1630. Subsequently, Father Bernardine de Siena told him that the nun Maria d'Agreda had, eight years before, related to him apparitions of a similar character. Benavides then (on his return to Spain) visited her and was at once struck with her resemblance to the lady described by the Indians, and still more so by her account of the country and the labors of the missionaries, of which she related many remarkable incidents."

The full history of this extraordinary case of bilocation is given by the scholarly Benedictine, Dom Gueranger. I deem the subject of such importance in association with the possibility of St. Thomas or St. Brendan teaching Christianity to the Maya tribes of pre-Columbian Yucatan, that I will condense it from the French work.

Remember, however, that I do not adopt the opinion that St. Thomas, the Apostle, did visit America I merely contend that the Spanish friars and Spanish writers had plausible reasons, supported by the sworn testimony of unimpeachable witnesses in analogous cases, for believing that Quetzalcoatle, the "Fair God," was the Apostle, St. Thomas.

I opened this chapter with St. Luke's account of the Ascension of our Lord in order to show that human bodies and a human language were given by God to the Angels who "stood by them (the Apostles) in white garments." This example will be interesting when I come to treat of the singular case of Maria d'Agreda, the Franciscan nun.

When Frederico Villasenor returned from his expedition, in 1748, he included in his "Teatro Americano" a brief but illuminating report of the Indians then living in New Mexico. "The natives," he tells us, "are comfortably clothed in garments woven by themselves ; they are an industrious and contented people. The churches, built under the direction of the Franciscan Fathers, are as fine and imposing as those in the rural districts of Southern Europe, and the services for the Indians as grand and as scrupulously carried out as in Spain. There are twenty-seven parishes established, averaging one hundred families to a mission."

Included among the names of the zealous missionaries who accomplished these results is, strange to say, that of a Spanish nun, whom the Fathers had never seen. She was known in her community as Maria de Jesus, and was one of that privileged class of souls in whom the effects of original sin or the first transgression seemed to be almost effaced, and who are admitted, while still in the flesh, to that intimate union with God which the elect enjoy only in the beatific state.

In the lives of the Saints we perceive that each one of them, when he or she was, by sublimity and intensity of prayer and meditation, admitted into privileged union with God, was distinguished for what is called by ascetical writers a "particular devotion." Maria de Jesus, or, as she is at times referred to by her contemporaries, Maria d'Agreda, was, during the waning years of her conventual life, offering to God her prayers, mortifications, and sufferings for the conversion of the American tribes.

The conversion of the Indians of New Mexico was a particular object of her private devotions.

One morning, while in intimate union with her Saviour, she received a revelation that God would soon confer upon the missionaries and Indians of New Mexico a special favor. Then it was that this holy nun experienced for the first time in her pious life these visitations, or, as Dom Garanger writes, "phenomena of grace," which entitle her to be ranked among the apostles of these idolatrous lands. She became an "Ecstatica" and, while under miraculous influence, experienced sensations like unto one carried on an aerial journey to unkown and distant regions. The climate of the country to which she was transported was not unlike that of her own Castile, but she was surrounded by men, women, and children the like of whom she had never looked upon.

The vegetation was unfamiliar, and there were no cities, towns, great buildings or bridges. Impelled by a mysterious inner voice or influence, she began to teach the strange people the doctrines of Christianity, and though she expounded the mysteries of religion in Spanish, her audience listened attentively and seemed to understand her speech. Many times she relapsed into the ecstatic state, and on each occasion was transported across a great waste of water into a region where dwelt the people to whom she was commissioned to preach. She, at last, succeeded in winning to Christianity all the members of the tribe, including the chiefs and shamans or "demon priests," as she called them. While among these Indians she saw, afar off, the Franciscan missionaries reaping a harvest of souls like unto those she was instructing. She counseled her converts to dispatch messengers to these missionaries and ask for a priest to return with them.

It was in the year 1622 that Maria de Jesus, in ecstasy, experienced the sensations of aerial instructed transportation and in the same year instructed the tribe. "Before this time," writes Dom Gueranger, "the Franciscans laboring among the Indians of New Mexico had not reaped a harvest of souls commensurate with their zeal and their expectations." One morning, as one of the Fathers, on the mission of San Augustin de Isleta, was coming out of his adobe church, he was met by five Indians whom he had never before seen. Their speech was that of his own mission tribe, with dialectic variations. They claimed to have come from beyond the Rio Pecos, said they came as messengers sent by their chief who asked for a priest to live among them, and concluded by requesting to be baptised. The missionary inquired the name of their tribe, in what direction their country lay and what river flowed through it. He added he could not accede to their request for baptism until they were instructed in the faith. They replied that they and the members of their tribe were already instructed; that a woman strangely dressed had visited their people and made known to them the life and doctrines of Jesus Christ; that her visits to them were many, and that it was she who had told them to come to the missionaries. Where she lived and how she came they did not know.

The missionary—Father Alonzo de Benavides—examined the messengers in the doctrines of Christianity and found them well instructed. He pressed them for a description of the mysterious woman, but the Indians after describing her dress and appearance, could only repeat that they had never seen any one like her. Benavides, with a companion, started that afternoon with the Indians for their distant village. When, after three days' travel, he entered their village, he was received with the most lively manifestations of joy and, to his amazement, found that all the adult members of the tribe were well instructed in Christian doctrines.

"But," I almost hear you exclaim, "this is incredible if not absurd." Well, read on. Father Alonzo de Benavides was satisfied from the description he received that the lady was a Spanish nun. In 1630 he was in Seville on business of his community in New Mexico, and took advantage of his visit to discover, if possible, the personality and the dwelling of the mysterious woman. He made known to the Superior Gen eral of the Franciscan Order in Spain—the Very Rev. Bernadine de Sienna—the history of the miraculous conversion of the Indians and his desire to trace the identity of the nun. The Superior had already made the acquaintance of Maria de Jesus and had heard of her ecstasies.

It occurred to him that, possibly, this saintly nun might be the privileged soul referred to by Father Benavides. He furnished him with letters to the superior of the convent and to Maria de Jesus herself, in which he begged her to give to the missionary any information in her possession bearing on the subject of his quest.

Soon after Benavides entered the city of Agreda he obtained an interview with the "Ecstatica." As she was a member of a cloistered community, he was granted this privilege through the influence of the Provincial of the Franciscans, Sebastian Marzilla, and of Francis de la Torre, confessor to the nun. When Benavides was ushered into the presence of Maria, he handed her a letter from the Superior General of her order, commanding her by her vow of obedience to answer Benavides' questions, and to reveal what she knew having any bearing on the purport of his visit.

The example, or fact, which I am now about to record is of, apparently, the double presence of one personality; that is, the same person appearing in different places at the same time, as in the instances recorded in the lives of Saints Francis Xavier and Alphonsus Liguori. This phenomenon carries us at one stride into the subject of bilocation or bicorporeity. "But is not this an absurdity, an impossibility?" I answer : "Undoubtedly it is, if the word be accepted in its narrowest and rigorous sense.

But bending the meaning of the word a little, bilocation takes its place with admissible possibilities and, leaving the regions of the absurd, enters the exalted circle of thaumaturgy or the sphere of the marvelous.

Every discussion about any subject will best proceed from an examination of its name or of that by which it is generally known. In the name we have the true declaration of the inner most nature of anything; we have a witness to that which the universal sense of men, finding _expression in language, has ever felt to lie at its heart. If we would learn to know anything in- timately, we must begin by finding the name which it bears. Thus, what we commonly term miracles, are in Sacred Scripture called "wonders," sometimes "signs," often "powers," or simply "works," or "mighty works." An example drawn from one of our Divine Lord's acts a kindness may help to illustrate how a "miracle" may at once include all the above terms. The healing of the man "sick of the palsy" (Mark I, 3), for example, was a wonder, for they who beheld it "were all amazed"; it was a "power," for the man, hearing the words of Christ, "arose, took up his bed and went his way in the sight of them all"; it was a "sign," for it proved that One greater than men thought him to be, was among them ; it stood in connection with a higher personality, of whom the " sign," and the seal, and the cure was wrought that those who witnessed it might "know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."

Now, the meaning of the word bilocation, according to masters of ascetic theology, is that an apparition, which is visible to one or to many individuals, of a person known to be living hundreds of miles distant from where the apparition appears, is that of a good or evil angel which assumes a body like unto that of the living person and clothes the same as those worn by that person.

Bilocation, then, may mean the same body apparently occupying two spaces; or it may mean two bodies identically the same, which is called bi-corporeity ; or, again, the same body, as in the case of the prophet Ezekiel (XI, 24; XXVII, 1; XL, 1, 2) and of Habacuc XIV, 32), may be transported with such intense velocity from place to place as to lead to a conviction of a "replicatio corporis" or a double body. If at any time you have read Charles F. Lummis' book, "In the Land of Poco Tiempo," or the "Occult World," by E. T. Sennett, or, better still, "Les Hauts Phenomenes," by Gougnet Des Mousseaux, you must be familiar with authenticated examples of aerial transportation.

And now having, in a measure, "blazed the trail," let us give ear to the wonderful narrative from the lips of Maria de Jesus.

With becoming diffidence, yet with the utmost candor, the nun unfolded the story of her ecstasies, beginning with the first visitation she experienced and recording, as she advanced, a remarkable series of ecstatic experiences.

She frankly confessed that she was unable to explain the process—" el modo"—by which her spirit appeared and was able to exert influence at so great a distance.

After having been privileged with her confidence Benavides began to question her in detail on the distant regions of New Mexico,—with which he was intimately familiar. He examined her on the topography of the country, the landmarks of the locality she claimed to have visited, the dress and habits of the tribe she converted and on minute particulars of the land and its people, with which only one who had lived for some time in the country could be at all familiar. To his astonishment he found her as well acquainted as himself with everything concerning the particular village and its people. She was not only familiar with the topography of the country, but told him the names of the Indian tribes and the names of the towns and rivers which could only be known to one who had lived with the tribes. She stated, moreover, that she had many times seen the priest and his companions, corroborating her statements by furnishing the names of places he had visited on certain days, and supplying minute details of the missionary's life.

Benavides, intending to reduce to writing not only the strange history of the miraculously converted tribe, but also his interview with Maria d'Agreda, ventured to question her critically on the means "el modo "—by which she was able to visit the Indians. He put a straight question to her by asking if she was there physically or in person. In answer to this inquiry she showed apparent diffidence and reserve, but later in a declaration which she made and wrote out she expressed her opinion in the words of St. Paul when recounting for the Corinthians his wonderful experience : "I know a man in Christ, whether in the body, I know not, or out of the body, I know not. . . . caught up into Paradise, and heard secret words, which it is not granted to man to utter." (2 Cor., XII, 2-4). She concluded her statement as follows :

"That which appears to me to be more certain as regards the manner by which these occurrences took place, is that an angel from heaven appeared among these people under my figure, preached to and instructed them and that I saw here, while in the ecstatic state, all that there happened in the country so far away."

I deem this remarkable case of such importance in association with the Mexican tradition of the "Fair God," or white patriarch, who, in pre-Columbian times preached Christianity in Mexico and Yucatan, that I feel warranted in introducing additional authorities in support of the contentions of Gilmary Shea and Dom Gueranger. In the life of that beloved Franciscan priest, Junipero Serra, the Apostle of California, by Palacio, there is published a letter of Benavides recording the miraculous conversion and also a. letter from Maria d 'Agreda Benavides' "Memorial" was printed in Madrid, 1630. The whole history of the case is told in "La Mistica Ciudad de Dios." The title of Dom Gueranger's book is: "Maria d'Agreda et la Cite Mystique de Dieu."

When Benavides' Memorial appeared, several eminent writers attacked, whereas others defended the reality of the apparition. The discussion filled many volumes, but Rome has given no decision, and we are free to believe or not believe the history, just as we are the writings of Plutarch or the younger Pliny. To me it appears to be an established case of clairvoyant trance, and in a process of canonization would not, I am of the opinion, have a place with the " dona supernaturalia," nor among proved miracles.

The possibility of an angel appearing in human form and instructing the tribe is not open to contradiction. The Scriptures record many instances of such angelic apparitions. We have a notable example in the case of the angel who accompanied young Tobias to Rages, the City of the Medes.