The fact below is reported by a London medical journal and reproduced by the Journal de Rouen, on December 22
nd, 1868:
"Last week, Mr. Samuel W..., one of the bank's principal employees, had to leave early an evening to which he had been invited with his wife, because he was not feeling well. He returned home with a high fever. They sent for the doctor, but he had been called to a nearby town, and he was not to return until very late at night.Mrs. Samuel decided to wait for the doctor by her husband's bedside. Although plagued by a burning fever, the patient slept quietly. Mrs. Samuel, a little tranquilized and seeing that her husband was not suffering, did not fight against it but fell asleep.At about three o'clock, she heard the front doorbell ringing. She left her chair swiftly, took a candle holder and went down to the living room.She expected to see the doctor come in there. The door to the living room opened, but instead of the doctor she saw her son Edward, a twelve-year-old boy, who was studying in a college near Windsor. He was very pale and had his head surrounded by a wide white headband."You were waiting for the doctor for Dad, weren't you?" he said, kissing his mother. But Dad is better, it's nothing even; he will be up tomorrow. I am the one who needs a good doctor. Have him called right away, because the one in college does not know much about it…Paralyzed in fear, Mrs. Samuel had the strength to ring the bell. The bedroom maid arrived. She found her lady in the middle of the living room, motionless, candle holder in hand. The sound of her voice woke Mrs. Samuel. She had been taken by a vision, a dream, call it as you will. She remembered everything and repeated to her housekeeper what she thought she had heard. Then she said crying: "A disgrace must have befallen my son!"The long-awaited doctor arrived. He examined Mr. Samuel. The fever was almost gone; he claimed that it had been a simple nervous fever, that followed its course and would end in a few hours. The mother, after these reassuring words, told the doctor what had happened to her an hour earlier. The professional, perhaps out of disbelief or wishing to go and get some rest, advised Mrs. Samuel not to give any importance to those ghosts. However, he had to give in to the mother's prayers and anxieties and follow her to Windsor.They arrived at the college as the day broke. Mrs. Samuel asked for news of her son; she was told that he had been in the infirmary since the day before. The poor mother's heart tightened; the doctor became concerned.They promptly visited the child. He had suffered a large injury to his forehead while playing in the garden. He had been given first aid, but he had been badly bandaged. There was nothing dangerous about the injury, though.This is the fact in all its details; we learned it from trustworthy persons. Double sight or dream, it should nevertheless be considered an unusual fact.”As we can see, the idea of the double sight is gaining ground; it is accredited outside of Spiritism, such as the plurality of existences, the perispirit, etc.; so much so that Spiritism arrives by a thousand paths, and is implanted in all kinds of forms, even by the very care of those who do not want it.
The possibility of the above fact is obvious, and it would be superfluous to discuss it. Is it a dream or the effect of a double sight? Mrs. Samuel was asleep, and when she woke up, she remembered what she saw; so, it was a dream; but a dream that brings the image of such accurate news, and that is verified almost immediately, is not a product of imagination: it is a very real vision. There is, at the same time, double vision, or spiritual vision, because it is quite certain that it was not with the eyes of the body that the mother saw her son. There has been detachment of the soul on both sides; was it the soul of the mother that went to the son, or that of the son that came to the mother? The circumstances make the latter case the most likely, because in the other case the mother would have seen her son in the infirmary.
Someone who only knows Spiritism very superficially, but perfectly admits the possibility of certain manifestations, asked us how come the son, who was in his bed, had been able to present himself to his mother, with his clothes. "
I conceive," he said, "
the appearance by the fact of the release of the soul; but I would not understand if purely material objects, such as clothing, had the property of carrying away a quintessential part of their substance, which would presuppose a will.”
We replied that the clothes, as well as the material body of the young man, remained in their place. After a
short explanation about the phenomenon of fluidic creations, we added: The Spirit of the young man presented himself to his mother with his fluidic or perispiritual body. Without having had the premeditated plan to dress up in his clothes, without going through this reasoning: "
My clothes are there; I cannot put them on; it is therefore necessary to make me fluidic clothes that will have the appearance of that"; it was enough for him to think of his usual clothing, of the one he would have taken in ordinary circumstances, so that his thought gave his perispirit the appearances of that same costume; for the same reason, he could have presented himself in his pajamas, if that had been his thought. Such appearance would have turned into a kind of reality; he only had an imperfect awareness of his fluidic state, and just as some Spirits still believe to be of this world, he believed he was coming to his mother's house in the flesh, since he kissed her as usual.
The external forms of the Spirits that make themselves visible are therefore true fluidic creations, often unconscious; the clothes, the specific signs, the wounds, the defects of the body, the objects they make use of, are the reflection of their own thought onto the perispiritual envelope."
But then," said our interlocutor, "
it is a whole order of new ideas; there is a whole world there, and this world is in our midst; many things can be explained; the relationship between the dead and the living are understandable.
Certainly, and it is to the knowledge of this world, that interests us in so many ways, that Spiritism leads. This world is revealed by a multitude of facts that are neglected for a lack of understanding of their cause.
