The ability of a person to simultaneously be in two places has been repeatedly used in the stories of famous science fiction writers. However, history knows cases when this happened in reality.
One of the more striking examples of this bifurcation, known as bilocation (bifurcation), is associated with the Spanish nun Maria Coronel de Agreda (1602-1665).
Sister Maria from the monastery of Agreda almost went to the stake.
In the period from 1620 to 1631, she regularly informed the monastery canons about her trips (flights) to Central America. The nun claimed to have made over five hundred such journeys. However, the facts indicated that she spent her entire life in the monastery walls of Agreda, not leaving the monastery for a single day.
For the stories about her flights and the bold statement that the Earth has the shape of a ball that revolves around its own axis, the nun was severely punished by the monastic authorities, because in those days all this was considered heresy. The Catholic authorities, who had repeatedly encountered similar fantastic visions of religious fanatics before, of course, could not believe Sister Mary and tried to force her to renounce her mystical claims.
The unfortunate nun was threatened with a fire, but soon her stories about "transatlantic flights" were fully confirmed.
In the 1720s, the Spanish Catholic Church expanded its missionary activities in North and Central America. Many missionaries, travelers and conquistadors who visited those parts began to talk about the young preacher Mary. In 1622, the official representative of the pope, missionary Alonso de Benavides, arrived in Mexico, whose task was to preach Catholicism among the Jumlano and Yuma Indians.
Imagine his amazement when he discovered that the Indians were already familiar with Christianity. Pater was amazed and at the same time puzzled by how zealously and consciously the Indians of New Mexico performed Christian rituals. They told him that the "woman in blue" had taught them the new faith. It usually appeared during daylight and disappeared with the onset of night.
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A European nun left them crosses, rosaries and chalices, which they used during the Mass. The Indians also said that the "woman in blue" handed them crucifixes, cups, wreaths of roses. Later, a surprising fact was established: the chalice belonged to the monastery in Agreda. How he ended up with the Indians of New Mexico remains a mystery to this day.
In 1622, Father Alonso de Benavides wrote a letter to the Pope and King Philip IV of Spain, in which he complained that some "woman in blue" was preaching among the Jumlano and Yuma Indians. But neither the Pope nor the King have ever heard of a nun who is engaged in missionary work in Mexico.
Only in 1630, when he returned to Spain, Father Benavides learned about the mysterious phenomena occurring with the young nun in Agreda. Taking an interest in this, he received permission to visit the monastery and talk with Sister Maria.
Sister Mary among the Indians
The priest spoke to her for a long time and in detail, after which he did not have the slightest doubt that the nun had really visited the Indians. She had an accurate idea of the customs and life of the Jumlano and Yuma tribes, described in detail their life in the villages, knew the names of cities and villages.
It turned out that Sister Maria kept a diary. In it, she described in detail her "flights", during which she saw the planet - in the form of a ball. Father Benavides ordered to destroy the diary, and to keep an eye on the nun herself. Most surprising of all, the cups that Sister Mary gave to the Indians disappeared without a trace from the monastery. Father Benavides wrote about all this in 1634 in his book "The Supplemented Chronicle".
Contemporaries of the described events did not always perceive them as a miracle sent from above. But if in antiquity many laughed at the legends about the super-rapid movement of people and objects, then in the Middle Ages no one doubted the existence of occult forces. At the same time, many allegations appeared about the alleged cases of controlled teleportation and magical flights.
Bilocation was one of the many miracles performed by the Italian Saint Anthony of Padua (1295-1231). Ancient texts tell of how he once preached a sermon in France in the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Querois in Limotte.
Suddenly the saint remembered that he had to conduct a service in a monastery on the other side of the city. In front of his flock, he knelt down and began to pray. At the same time in the monastery they saw him reading passages from Holy Scripture, and then disappeared into the twilight of the chapel.
Another saint, Martin de Porres (1579-1639), was famous for the ability to simultaneously stay in two places. In 1742, the Roman Church issued a document confirming that it had been shown "in an incredible way" in China and Japan. They saw a "dark monk" very much like Saint Martin.
Bilocation is not limited to Christendom. It is found in other religions as well. It is believed that the ability to split can be bestowed on a person for piety. And the teaching of yoga speaks of an ethereal double that lives in the material shell of a person and can leave it.
Teleportation is the instant transfer of material objects from one point to another without the visible use or participation of physical force. The existence of such a phenomenon in nature has long been considered the lot of all kinds of mystics. Until recently, modern science also ignored it, although gradually in the scientific world they began to talk in an undertone about the possibility of teleportation. This issue was especially often discussed among nuclear physicists.
But facts are stubborn things. There is abundant evidence of large-scale instantaneous movements. A classic example of this is the so-called "case with a soldier." The first to discover and describe this truly mystical incident was researcher M. K. Jessup. He found information about him in Spanish … legal sources.
On October 25, 1593, a soldier suddenly appeared in the Spanish city of Mexico City. His regiment at this time was stationed in the Philippines, which is ten thousand miles from Mexico City. The soldier was captured and turned over to the court of the Inquisition. From his testimony it became clear that he was on guard duty at the governor's palace in Manila (capital of the Philippines). How he found himself in Mexico City, the soldier could not explain. He told the court that before his eyes the governor was treacherously killed.
A few months later, a ship sailed from the Philippines, and people who arrived on it confirmed that the governor had been killed. Other details from the soldier's story also left no doubt that he was telling the truth. Only how he himself appeared in Spain, no one could understand.
In France, there is a very mysterious place dubbed the Marseilles hole. It was accidentally discovered by the Belgian Bernadette Laurel. Once, walking around Marseille, she decided to take a break in an old park on the outskirts of the city. Behind the lush crowns of centuries-old trees, the tiled roof of a small church was visible.
The woman was surprised that she had not paid any attention to her before. She went to the church and found herself in an old grassed cemetery (the church stood right in the middle of it). From behind the large wooden doors came the words of a prayer for the dead in Latin.
Suddenly the doors of the church opened, and a very strange procession came out of it. The coffin was carried by four people dressed in coarse linen shirts and some kind of baggy pants. The procession was closed by a young crying woman with children.
The Belgian woman was struck by the poverty of the people. At the same time, an incomprehensible, unaccountable fear gripped her. She hurriedly ran away from the church. How Laurel jumped out onto the neat, sandy paths, she could not remember. The woman gradually calmed down, but was surprised to find that the cemetery, the church, and the strange funeral procession had disappeared. In her subsequent visits to Marseille, the Belgian has repeatedly visited this park, while she did not leave the feeling of insecurity and fear.
Shocked by all this, Bernadette turned to the city archives. Imagine her amazement when documents were found in it, which puzzled her even more. They said that there was actually a cemetery on the site of the current park.
There was also a small church where the poor were buried. But all these buildings ceased to exist long before the Great French Revolution. At the end of the 19th century, a city garden was laid out on this site. Who and how moved Bernadette Laurel to the distant past of Marseille remains a mystery.
An equally unique case took place in Russia. There is documentary evidence of the movement of a six-year-old girl, Anna. Parents decided to send her to visit her grandmother. The old woman lived not far from them and had to meet the child at the bus stop. An acquaintance of the passenger was asked to look after Annushka. However, the trip almost ended tragically.
On a steep incline, the driver lost control and the bus turned over. Fortunately, none of the passengers died, but the girl mysteriously disappeared. Having learned about the incident, the frightened parents ran to the scene of the accident. Then they were surprised to learn that their daughter was nowhere to be found. The passenger accompanying the girl could not really explain anything. He said that an instant before the accident, Annushka disappeared from the bus. Everyone considered it to be the delirium of a person in a state of shock.
Someone put forward a version that during the accident, the child simply fell out of the bus. The search lasted until dark, but did not yield any results. The ending of this story puzzled many. In the house of distraught parents, the phone rang. It was their relatives who called from the village. They found a girl standing calmly by the side of the road. How Annushka got there and where she was all this time, no one can explain.
Thousands of people disappear around the world every year. Perhaps many of them do not become victims of violence at all, as their relatives believe, but find themselves in the labyrinths of time. Some of them manage to extricate themselves from the web of time, others remain in the unknown, while others wonderfully manage this process themselves.
In world folklore and literature, there are many descriptions of movement in time and space: flying in a whirlwind, on a genie, on a flying carpet. Blacksmith Vakula, the hero of "The Night Before Christmas", for example, used a trait to fly to St. Petersburg. Of course, this can only be regarded as an artistic invention of the writer. And yet it is worth asking a question: maybe N. V. Gogol knew much more than he wrote?
Returning to the "flights" of Sister Mary, it should be noted that today scientists do not exclude the possibility of such a phenomenon, although they still cannot fully explain it. James A. Carrico, author of The Life of the Venerable Mary of Agreda, writes about this:
“The fact that Sister Maria really visited America many times is confirmed by the documents of the Spanish conquistadors, French researchers and the absolutely identical stories of various Indian tribes living at a distance of many thousands of miles. In any fundamental book on the history of the southwestern United States, you can find mention of this mystical phenomenon, unprecedented in the history of the world."