Observations placeholder

Charles Quartier, editor of the Revue Métapsychique, recounts the following event that happened to him:

"In September 1918, as I was very weakened by the so-called Spanish flu, and the body completely debilitated by the long malnutrition following the war, I frequently fainted during my convalescence, quite unexpectedly. One afternoon, I was lying on the couch in a corner of my room and resting. Meanwhile, my mother was talking in the hallway with visitors who had just arrived, when suddenly I saw myself as if I had fallen off the couch, with my head and chest on the ground, but my legs still on the seat.

I then felt three kinds of feelings, without being able to say if they were simultaneous or successive.

A very pleasant and almost impossible to describe feeling of expansion, fullness, universality, extreme lightness, in a word, of an incredible euphoria, such as I have never felt since then to the same degree.

Then also an irrational feeling of terror, almost panic, that was generated by the unusual scene and the awareness of finding myself in front of a normally impossible fact: to see myself outside the intermediary of a mirror. However, in this room, there wasn't a shadow of a mirror.

Finally, the idea or feeling that if I remained upside down like that, it could be very dangerous, and that I had to be "picked up" at all costs, which I tried to do, - at least I had the impression - always from the outside, so to speak, as if it had been a matter of picking up a stranger's body and putting it in its place, naturally without any result.

Then it seemed to me that I was in the hallway, wanting to attract the attention of my mother who was talking with her visitors, and who suddenly said:

"Wait a moment for me. I have to go see what happens to my son. It seems to me he called me." Then my mind lost its memory, until I woke up normally lying on the couch, my mother with me, giving me prompt care, the usual care in the case of a fainting spell.

This is the brief account of my apparent duplication, as I can remember it now. The facts, unfortunately, were not recorded at the very moment, which should always be done, but we do not think about them.... One thing is certain: I saw myself in a dangerous position - or at least I had the absolute illusion of it... And what is also striking is the feeling of absolute and ineffable euphoria that characterized this state, and the fact that, when it seemed to me that I was in the hallway to attract my mother's attention, she felt a feeling of anxiety (even if I thought I called her), which pushed her to come to me, although she sat quietly on the sofa.

Asked to share her memories of this fact, Charles Quartier's mother replied as follows:

«... Do I remember this event? But, in the familiar expression, as if it were yesterday! It was quite striking!

My son had a terrible flu that almost took him away. He was convalescing, and dared to get up for a short while to regain his strength.

One afternoon while he was resting on the sofa, after a short time in the room, I had to go out to receive visitors: a lady and her two children. We had barely exchanged a few words when I exclaimed:

- 'Excuse me, I think my son is calling me'.

- 'But we didn't hear anything'.

- 'Yes, yes, I'm sure'.

I went into the room and found my weak convalescing son fallen off the couch, only his feet still resting on the sofa.

As soon as he regained consciousness - and it was a long time - he told me about his "doubling", a story that impressed me to the fullest extent, as we both think, and we have often spoken again since then about this singular event.

My son was quite heavy, so my "visitors" came to help me to lift him up and put him back on the sofa. You don't forget a fact like that."
(Undersigned: E. Quartier Tissot - May 12, 1930).