Madame Schwabenhaus. Ecstatic Lethargy.

— According to the Courrier des États-Unis, several newspapers reported the fact that we present below, and which seemed to us to furnish matter for an interesting study: “The Courrier des États-Unis says that a German family of Baltimore has just been vividly moved by a singular case of apparent death. Mrs. Schwabenhaus, long ill, seemed to have breathed her last on the night from Monday to Tuesday. The persons who cared for her were able to observe all the symptoms of death: the body was icy cold and her limbs became rigid. After having rendered to the corpse the last duties, and when everything in the mortuary chamber was ready for the burial, the attendants went to rest. Exhausted with fatigue, Mr. Schwabenhaus soon followed them. He was plunged into an agitated sleep when, about six o’clock in the morning, the voice of his wife struck his ear. At first he thought himself the victim of a dream; but his name, repeated several times, left him no further doubt, and he rushed immediately to his wife’s room. She who had been taken for dead was sitting up in bed, seeming to enjoy all her faculties and stronger than ever, since the beginning of the illness. “Mrs. Schwabenhaus asked for water and then wished to take tea and wine. She begged her husband to put to sleep the child who was crying in a neighboring room. But he was too moved for that and ran to wake the other people of the house. Smiling, the patient welcomed the friends and servants who, trembling, approached her bed. She did not seem surprised at the funeral apparatus that struck her gaze. “I know that you believed me dead, she said; however, I was only asleep. During that time my soul was carried to the celestial regions; an angel came to fetch me and in a few instants we crossed space. The angel who was leading me was the little daughter we lost last year… Oh! Soon I will go to be reunited with her… Now that I have experienced the joys of Heaven, I would no longer wish to live on Earth. I asked the angel to come, once more, to embrace my husband and my children; but soon it will return to fetch me. “At eight o’clock, after having tenderly bidden farewell to her husband, her children, and a multitude of people who surrounded her, this time Mrs. Schwabenhaus truly expired, as was verified by the physicians, in such a way as to leave no doubt subsisting in that regard. “This scene deeply impressed the inhabitants of Baltimore.”

— Having been evoked on April 27 last, in a session of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, the Spirit of Mrs. Schwabenhaus held the following conversation:

With a view to our instruction, we would like to ask some questions related to your death; would you consent to answer them?

Answer. – Why not, now of all times, when I am beginning to glimpse the eternal truths, and aware of the need that you likewise feel to know them too?

Do you remember the particular circumstance that preceded your death?

Answer. – Yes; it was the happiest moment of my existence on Earth.

During your apparent death, did you hear what was happening around you and did you perceive the preparations for the funeral?

Answer. – My soul was very much occupied with the happiness that was drawing near.

Observation. – It is known, in general, that lethargic persons see and hear what happens around them, retaining the remembrance upon awakening. The fact to which we refer offers the particularity that the lethargic sleep was accompanied by ecstasy, a circumstance that explains why the patient’s attention was diverted.

Were you conscious of not being dead?

Answer. – Yes; but that was even more painful to me.

Could you state the difference you make between natural sleep and lethargic sleep?

Answer. – Natural sleep is the repose of the body; lethargic sleep, the exaltation of the soul.

Did you suffer during the lethargy?

Answer. – No.

How did your return to life take place?

Answer. – God permitted me to return to console the afflicted hearts that surrounded me.

We would like a more material explanation.

Answer. – What you call the perispirit still animated my earthly envelope.

How was it possible that you were not surprised at the sight of the preparations they were making for the burial?

Answer. – I knew that I was to die; all that mattered little to me, since I had glimpsed the happiness of the elect.

Recovering consciousness, were you glad to return to life?

Answer. – Yes, to console.

Where were you during the lethargic sleep?

Answer. – I cannot describe all the happiness that I was experiencing: human language is incapable of expressing these things.

Did you still feel yourself on Earth or in space?

Answer. – In the spaces.

You said, when you came to yourself, that the little daughter you had lost the previous year had come to fetch you. Is it true?

Answer. – Yes; she is a pure Spirit.

Observation. – In the answers of this mother, everything announces that this is an elevated Spirit; there is nothing, then, astonishing that a still more elevated Spirit should have united itself to hers by sympathy. However, we must not take literally the qualification of pure Spirit, which Spirits sometimes give one another. By this expression we must understand the Spirits of a more elevated order who, finding themselves completely dematerialized and purified, are no longer subject to reincarnation: they are the angels who enjoy eternal life. Now, those who have not attained a sufficient degree do not yet comprehend this supreme state; they may, then, employ the term pure Spirit to designate a relative, but not absolute, superiority. Of this we have numerous examples, and it seems to us that Mrs. Schwabenhaus is in this case. Sometimes the mocking Spirits also attribute to themselves the quality of pure Spirits, in order to inspire more confidence in those whom they wish to deceive, and who do not have sufficient perspicacity to judge them by their language, by which they always betray themselves on account of their inferiority.

How old was this child when she died?

Answer. – Seven years.

How did you recognize her?

Answer. – Superior Spirits recognize one another more quickly.

Did you recognize her under some form?

Answer. – I saw her only as a Spirit.

What did she say to you?

Answer. – “Come; follow me toward the Eternal.”

Did you see other Spirits, besides that of your daughter?

Answer. – I saw a great many other Spirits, but the voice of my daughter and the happiness I sensed were my only preoccupations.

On the occasion of your return to life, you said that soon you would go to find your daughter again; were you, then, conscious of your near death? Answer. – For me it was a happy hope.

How did you know it?

Answer. – Who does not know that one must die? My illness told me so well enough.

What was the cause of your infirmity?

Answer. – Sorrows.

How old were you?

Answer. – Forty-eight years.

Leaving life definitively, did you immediately have a clear and lucid consciousness of the new situation?

Answer. – I had it at the moment of the lethargy.

Did you experience the disturbance that ordinarily accompanies the return to spirit life?

Answer. – No; I was dazzled, but not disturbed.

Observation. – It is known that the disturbance that follows death is the lesser and less lasting the more the Spirit has purified itself during life. The ecstasy that preceded this woman’s death was, moreover, a first detachment of the soul from its earthly bonds.

Since you have been dead have you seen your daughter again?

Answer. – I am frequently with her.

Are you reunited to her for all eternity?

Answer. – No. I know, however, that after my last incarnations I will be in paradise, where the pure Spirits dwell.

Then your trials are not finished?

Answer. – No, but, henceforth, they will be happier. They leave me only to hope and hope is already almost happiness.

Had your daughter lived in other bodies before the one through which she was your daughter?

Answer. – Yes; in many others.

Under what form do you find yourself among us?

Answer. – Under my last form as a woman.

Do you perceive us as distinctly as you would when alive?

Answer. – Yes.

Since you are here under the form you had on Earth, is it by the eyes that you see us?

Answer. – Of course not, the Spirit has no eyes. I find myself under my last form solely to satisfy the laws that govern the Spirits, when evoked and obliged to resume that which you call the perispirit.

Can you read our thoughts?

Answer. – Yes, I can; I will read them if they are good.

We thank you for the explanations you have been so good as to give us; by the wisdom of your answers we recognize that you are an elevated Spirit and we hope that you may enjoy the happiness that you deserve. Answer. – I feel happy to contribute to your work; to die is a joy, when we can aid progress, as I do now.