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Show BILOCATION. Three Divisions of the Phenomena First Borne With Incredible Impetuosity Second Borne in Spirit Liduine's Mystic Voyage Third Person Spoken of in One and Seen Elsewhere Joseph of Coperiino Remarkable Case at Sea Captain's Father Visits Ship. (Foreign Cor. of The Interrnountain Catholic.) As I am persuaded that we c-annot in this age reflect too much light on the ramifications of spiritism spirit-ism or on the preternatural (I do no say supernatural) super-natural) occurrences which are happening in certain circles of occult belief, known as theosophy, I submit sub-mit for your correspondent Lydia White and for your readers a few extracts from Gorrcs. the distin- . j guished author of that wonderful compilaiion, "La , Mystique." . The phenomena of bilocation. bicorporeity and aerial transportation may be classified, he tell3 ua under three heads. 1. The individual may be borne with incredible impetuosity to a distant "place, and it is then tho ; , "system moteur." the motive power concurs in an j especial manner to the production of facts of this ! order. "We record then." writes Gorres. as an ex- j ample of this first class, the aerial flight of Rita of j Cassia, who enjoyed the privilege of passing . through closed doors." This holy woman, desiring j after the death of her husband to become an Au-gustinian Au-gustinian nun. was refused admission to the order. She then besought Cod in prayer and behold! While she prayed she was transported through the air, and presently she found herself in the convent in the midst of the nuns. Great was the astonishment of the nuns when she appeared among them for they , knew all entrances were closed. When she made r known the means by which she had come from her home and entered the convent, she was received as i a member of the community. By the same "motive power" St. Peter Regala was for three hours, in the sight of a multitude of people, suspended in the air and surrounded by such a luminous halo of glory that those who saw him thought his body was on fire. It is also recorded in his life that while: he was wrapt in prayer in his own church at Aquil- ; t era he was seen at precisely the same time praying before the miraculous image of Tribulo. FACTS OF THE SECOND ORDER. 2. In the study of the second class, writes Gorres, Gor-res, we find : "That the individual, confined to a given locality, is in spirit carried to another place and there accomplishes what God demands of him, and when he returns he is able to record what has happened and the topography or local marks of the place his spirit has visited." A touching and beautiful beau-tiful example of this second order of phenomena are the mystic voyages of the Blessed Liduine, who in her aerial flights was often accompanied by her guardian angel. But one day while her spirit was flying from church to church in the city of Rome it was suddenly embarrassed by aerial thorns. Xow though her body remained in her own room and did not accompany her. IX HER FLIGHT. She felt a sensation of pain as of a thorn entering enter-ing her finger. The next day returning to her natural nat-ural self her finger pained her very much and the prick of the thorn was quite visible. ; 11 3. Among the facts of the third class we find that the "individual is in a particular place and is seen and spoken to by others and at the same time he is seen elsewhere and aets as if he were actually present. This, for example, was the experienc of St. Joseph of Coperfino, who resided in the village of Assisia. Italy. When his mother lay at death's door in Copcrtino she bewailed the absence of her son, and in the intensity- of her sorrow exclaimed aloud: "O. my son. my son! Will I never again ' meet you on earth f At once the room where she lay dying blazed with singular illumination and seeing see-ing the saint approaching her bed through the flaming flam-ing light, she ciied aloud: "Joseph! O, my son!" Xow at this particular time there were those in Assisia As-sisia who saw Joseph leave his house hurriedly and r enter the neighboring church to pray. Alarmed at j his appearance one of his friejds followed him and asked: "Is there anything the matter i" -s. J "Yes. yes." he replied, "my poor mother is dy- ' f ing." This apparition of the living man was cer- 1 titled to by l.ters which soon after the death of tho I mother came from Copcrtino and was corroborated I by the sworn testimony of those who saw the holy . man by the bedside of his mother. - I Let is be understood, however, that.according to i the learned Pope Benedict XIV. and many eminent (Continued on page 5.) ! i i i ' i " B1L0CATI0N. (Continued from page 1.) theologians, these prodigies, like many others mentioned men-tioned in ecclesiastical history and in the lives of the saints, are. not to be ranked with the miracles so intimately associated in the New eytament with the establishment of Christianity. We may or may not accept them as realities. But if the evidence has legal strength, if the Avitnesses testifying to a - fact are known to be men of good common sense, of accredited honesty among their neighbors and can have no reason for misrepresenting what they saw or heard, then jury of their countrymen will believe them; and why not we? Take, for example, this case critically examined into by the Count Des Mousseau, author of that remarkable work "La Magic," and accepted by him as an actual occurrence occur-rence which happened in his own lifetime. DID Tins SOUL LEAVE ITS BODY? "Early in 1S64," writes the count, "I met in Paris the Rev. Pere Palgrave, formerly a cavalry officer in the French service, who resigned his command com-mand and became a Jesuit missionary in India. Among the passengers who sailed on the eame ship with Pere Palgrave, when he was returning from India in 1857, was an English officer who was sailing sail-ing for England on furlough or military leave of absence. After they had been at sea some fifteen days the officer said to the captain in the hearing of Pere Palgrave: "Captain, who is this stranger whom you are hiding from us ?" "You're joking," answered the captain. "No, on my honor, I saw him yesterday for the first time, but he hasn't appeared today." "Why, what do you mean, are you serious, if so explain yourself?" "Well, be it so," spoke the officer, "last night when I was thinking of turning in, I saw a strange man enter the salon, make the rounds of the ship, open doors and close them, and shake his head as if to say, 'What I am looking for is not here.' He then came toward me, looked me over and retired with an apologetic air." "And what," asked the captain laughingly, "might be the appearance, the dress, the age of this man?" The officer described the stranger even to the minutest detail of dress. "Good God!" exclaimed the captain, "if what you say be true, then that man is my father, it cannot be another." When the ship arrived in Liverpool the captain learned that his father was dead, and that it was after the apparition was seen' at sea that he had died; but that on the evening when the French officer of-ficer saw him, he was for a time delirious, then became be-came apparently unconscious. Returning to himself him-self the sick man said to those by his , bedside : "Where do you think I have been since I fell asleep? I crossed much of the sea, visited my son's ship, searched high and low for him, but didn't see him." Assuming this relation to be true, we are free to ask, "Did the soul of the sick man depart from its body?" We answer with St. Thomas, "No the will to act which belongs to the soul is shut up in the body to which it is united. Where the body is at any one time, the will is with it." But I am fatigueing.your readers. Let us leave it fn- mother time. Tlaxcala, Mexico. |