(2) I give here a case which suggests such knowledge as may be learnt in ecstasy;—as though a message had been communicated to a sleeper during some brief excursion into the spiritual world,—which message was remembered for a few moments, in symbolic form, and then rapidly forgotten, as the sleeper returned fully into the normal waking state. What is to be noted is that the personality of sleep, to which I attribute the spiritual excursion, seems at first to have been "controlling" the awakened organism. In other words, Professor Thoulet was partially entranced or possessed by his own spirit or subliminal self.

I quote from Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xi. pp. 503-5, a translation of the original account of the case in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques (September-October, 1891).

Professor Thoulet writes to Professor Richet as follows:—

April 17th, 1891.

...During the summer of 1867, I was officially the assistant, but in reality the friend, in spite of difference in age, of M. F., a former officer in the navy, who had gone into business. We were trying to set on foot again the exploitation of an old sulphur mine at Rivanazzaro, near Voghera, in Piedmont, which had been long abandoned on account of a falling in.

We occupied the same rooms, and our relations were those of father and son, or of elder and younger brother....

I knew that Madame F., who lived at Toulon, and with whom I was slightly acquainted, would soon be confined. I cannot say I was indifferent about this fact, for it concerned M. F.; but it certainly caused me no profound emotion; it was a second child, all was going well, and M. F. was not anxious. I myself was well and calm. It is true that a few days before, in Burgundy, my mother had fallen out of a carriage; but the fall had no bad consequences, and the letter which informed me of it also told me there was no harm done.

M. F. and I slept in adjoining rooms, and as it was hot we left the door between them open. One morning I sprang suddenly out of bed, crossed my room, entered that of M. F., and awakened him by crying out, "You have just got a little girl; the telegram says ..." Upon this I began to read the telegram. M. F. sat up and listened; but all at once I understood that I had been asleep, and that consequently my telegram was only a dream, not to be believed; and then, at the same time, this telegram, which was somehow in my hand and of which I had read about three lines aloud, word for word, seemed to withdraw from my eyes as if some one were carrying it off open; the words disappeared, though their image still remained; those which I had pronounced remained in my memory, while the rest of the telegram was only a form.

I stammered something; M. F. got up and led me into the dining-room, and made me write down the words I had pronounced; when I came to the lines which, though they had disappeared from my memory, still remained pictured in my eye, I replaced them by dots, making a sort of drawing of them. Remark that the telegram was not written in common terms; there were about six lines of it, and I had read more than two of them. Then, becoming aware of our rather incorrect costume, M. F. and I began to laugh, and went back to our beds.

Two or three days after I left for Torée; I tried in vain to remember the rest of the telegram; I went on to Turin, and eight or ten days after my dream I received the following telegram from M. F., "Come directly, you were right."