Dual Personality

( Originally Published 1919 )

Does Bilocation Involve a Contradiction 1—The Voice of History—Apparition of Ananias—Saul of Tarsus—Case of St. Alphonsus Liguori—His Double Presence—Authorities. Supporting its Reality—Statement of Eliphas Levi, the Spiritist—Acts of the Canonization of Saints—Extract from the Roman Breviary—St. Francis Xavier—A Wonderful Case of Bilocation—Testimony of Eye-WitnessesRemarks.

That bilocation contradicts all the properties of matter, so far as our understanding has reached, and is physically impossible, is the unanimous conclusion of all scientific materialists. Whether or not it is absolutely, or meta-physically impossible (and by this I mean whether it involves an intrinsic contradiction, so that by no exercise of power, even omnipotent power, could the same body be, at the same instant of time, in two places) is a subject too abstruse to be discussed in these pages.

The distinguished philosophic writer, Father Dalgairns, in his treatise on "Holy Communion," where he deals with the extension of matter, contends for the possibility of absolute bilocation and, if you take an interest in the subject, I advise you to read his book. Just now; however, it will be of more interest for us to consult history for authentic examples of the phenomenon, leaving the philosophy of the mysterious and occult for theologians and metaphysi-I regard the apparition of Ananias recorded in the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles as a very remarkable instance in the history of bilocation and the first of its kind to be found in Holy Writ.

Saul of Tarsus,—canonized as St. Paul, the Apostle,—retired by the command of the "Lord Jesus who appeared to me on the way," to the house of a disciple named Judas in the " street that is called Strait." While alone in his room, Saul " saw a man named Ananias coming in and laying his hands upon him that he might receive his sight." Saul, after our Lord Jesus Christ appeared and spoke to him on the way, "rose from the ground and, his eyes being open, he saw nothing," that is to say, he was blind. Now at the time when this occurred Ananias was in another part of the city and did not for three days after Saul saw him "coming and laying his hands upon him," actually in person enter the room and say to Saul: "Saul, brother, the Lord Jesus hath sent me . . . that thou mayest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost."

This scriptural case I regard as a true example of bilocation, that is a living man filling space in a certain place and his simulacrum or other self actually appearing, at the same time, in another. Now let us take an instance or two from the lives of the Saints.

Early one morning St. Alphonsus Liguori, bishop and founder of the Redemptorists, or, to be precise, the "Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer," entered his chapel, as was his daily wont, to say mass. Suddenly, as he was preparing to vest for the Holy Sacrifice, he was overcome with weakness and his face took on a look of sadness and wonder. In silence he walked to his chair and sat down. At once his head fell forward and rested on his breast.

There was no movement of the lips in prayer, there was no rising or falling of the bosom; the eyes of the venerable man closed as if in sleep, and the diverse functions of life were, to all outward seeming, suspended.

He remained in this state of immobility for hours, and no one ventured to trouble his repose. When he regained consciousness, he rang his chair bell and rose to robe for mass. When the brother who usually served his mass entered the chapel he told Alphonsus he was too ill to offer up the Sacrifice. At once the chapel was filled with the priests and domestics of the house, who had watched with anxiety the end of the cataleptic sleep. When Alphonsus, in surprise, asked a reason for their presence, he was told that for many hours he was as a dead man. "Ah! yes indeed," he answered, "but I have come from the bedside of the Pope, who is now dead." Those who heard him deemed this to be the hallucination of a sick man; but when the report of the death of Pope Clement came to the bishop 's city of St. Agatha, it corresponded exactly with the day and the hour, September 22, 1774, when Alphonsus had returned to himself.

Novaes, in his "History of the Popes," recording this phenomenon, writes : " Clement XIV expired on September 22 at the thirteenth hour (7 A. M.) . There were present at his death the superiors general of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Observantines and Conventuals ; and with them, in their midst, was the saintly Alphonsus de' Liguori, who, though his body was elsewhere, was miraculously in the chamber of death. The presence of Alphonsus was cited at the judicial process for his canonization and was accepted and approved by the Holy Congregation of Rites" (St. Liguori, Vererdier, 1833, p. 318).

To the weight of the authority of the Congregation of Rites allow me to add this declaration of the spiritist, Eliphas Levi, who apostatized from the Church and entered the ranks of her enemies : "There is no fact of history," he writes, "more incontestable or more effectually proved than the fact of the real and visible presence of Father Alphonsus de' Liguori at the bedside of the Pope when in his last agony, while the same Alphonsus was in ecstasy and in prayer in a remote district of Italy." ("Ritual of Spiritism," Vol. I, p. 206.)

I am here this morning in the Mexican town of Tlaxcala. It is exactly 9 :15 A.M. July 8.

Let us suppose for the sake of elucidation that at precisely the same hour and day I entered your office, sat down, and spoke to you, then disappeared bidding you good-bye. Would you not be ready to testify on oath that at 9:15, July 8, I was in your office and that you held conversation with me ? But the proprietor of the little fonda where I now am, will swear that at that hour, day, and date I was in his hostelry. To be in a given place at a particular time and an exact duplicate or simulacrum of the same person to be in another place many miles away at exactly the same time to be not only the double of the same person, but the identification to be made by many persons and the apparition to be distinctly and sensibly present, this is what appears to me is what is meant by bilocation in its rigorous sense. It is, as it were, the ghost of a living person seen abroad while the same person is in his own house.

In those rigorously accurate and severe compilations known under the title of "Acts of the Canonization of Saints," are found incontrovertible examples of bilocation. The great and imperishable Catholic Church is wisdom itself, visible to us under a sensible form, and here are her words addressed to us in the Roman Breviary for the Feast of St. Francis Xavier :

"He had the gift of bilocation, he wrought wonderful miracles while living, and in death his body triumphed over putrefaction."

The fact I am now about to record is to be found in the "Vie de Saint Francois Xavier," by Pere Bouhours (Avignon, 1817, Vol. II). Let me introduce this wonderful example of bilocation by a statement made by the author in his preface to this very readable volume. He writes : "No miracles were ever examined with greater care, or were subjected to a more crucial test, than those presented for the canonization of Saint Francis."

Early in November, 1551, the ship on which the saintly missionary was sailing from Japan to India entered the Straits of Korea. Early one morning the vessel rode into one of those fierce and prolonged storms which carry fear to the hearts of seasoned mariners. A hurricane swept the decks, carried away the sails, tore out the masts, and threatened destruction to the ship and all on board. Then Francis fell upon his knees in prayer, when presently the sea went down and the ship, water-logged, floated helplessly. The crew got out the boat and began to tow the ship to the nearest land.

While they were rowing the storm again rose, the tow-line was snapped and the oarsmen and their boat swept out to sea. The tempest grew to a tornado, when the holy man Francis retired to his room and invoking the Holy Name, besought Jesus Christ by the five wounds inflicted on Him when nailed to the cross to save them. As he prayed, the storm passed beyond them. The sailors on the ship were now overwhelmed with sorrow for the fate of their companions driven out to sea. Then Francis said to them: "Be of good cheer, my friends, for before the expiration of the third day the daughter that is lost will return to her mother."

Their water-logged wreck rose and sank with the waves, and yet no boat returned. In vain they scanned the horizon and saw no sign of a boat. They were giving up all hope, when again Francis cheered their drooping spirits :

"Have courage, my children," he pleaded, "I tell you they are returning to us." Then he retired to his berth and, once again, fell upon his knees in prayer. Presently the "lookout" shouted, "They are coming," and every eye took in the rowing men. A cry of joy greeted the saved men, who, reaching the side of the ship, mounted and were embraced by their companions. When the hand-shakings and congratulations were over, the quartermaster gave orders to have the returned boat brought on deck.

"Wait, wait," cried one of the rescued men,

"Father Francis, where is he ? He has not come aboard." The sailors who remained on the ship, hearing the man and his companions thus express themselves, said one to the other :

" The poor fellows are out of their minds from long suffering and starvation." But in vain they tried to disabuse the minds of the returned men by pointing to the empty boat, and by assuring them that Father Francis was now on board and had, at no time, left the ship. To the amazement of every one the saved men persisted in asserting that from morning till night and from night till morning, Francis was with them for three days. "No, No," they exclaimed,

"we had no fear of being lost or of perishing, for the holy man was with us and told us we would be saved."

This is the case as recorded in the Life of St. Francis Xavier by Pere Bouhours,—and in the Lives of the Saint by Massei and the learned English Jesuit, Henry James Coleridge. It was proved by the sworn declarations of the captain and crew of the vessel and the rescued men, and was accepted as a fact in the process for the canonization of Francis Xavier.

After proving that bilocation was miraculous the "Relatio" of canonization goes on to say:

"Many of the witnesses say that Xavier appeared to those who were in the boat tossed about by the waves, and that when they were taken up into the ship Xavier had been all the time with them in the boat, and that they were filled with astonishment when they found that at the same time he had been on the ship."

It remains now to reconcile this incontestable fact with our reason and with human experience. And we do so by acknowledging that, as in the case of Ananias, an angel from heaven, for three days, assumed the voice, form, and dress of Francis, and so complete and perfect was the personification that it was impossible for human eye or ear to distinguish between the Saint and the spirit. Francis, by whose holiness of life and fervent prayer the miracle was accomplished, was not at the same time on the ship and on the long boat. It is possible that when in his first ecstatic prayer in his cabin on the ship, he saw clairvoyantly the angel (his duplicated self) on the boat among the drifting men, and was assured by an inward voice that the men would be saved. When he went on deck he carried with him the divine assurance that all would be well, and with this certitude he fearlessly announced to the ship's crew their own safety and the return of those they thought lost.

Allow me, even though I may weary you, to enlarge somewhat on the phenomenon of bilocation. I know that for those unfamiliar with mystic literature, prodigies of this order are as opposed to their established opinions and as puzzling to the mind as are the intricacies of differential calculus to the uneducated, or the action of electric forces, the instantaneous change wrought on certain liquids by the infusion of a reactive, the Plutonian theory of the imperceptible rising of mountains, or the incandescence of the globe to the undeveloped mind of the sheep-herder.

I am convinced that in this age when Satanism assumes a most alluring and seductive guise, it is well for those who have the time, the means, and the opportunity to devote some study to the strange manifestations of occult science as presented to us early in the morning of the twentieth century.