termed a flash of divine
enlightenment. Though insight regained seemingly in an instant is a
most encouraging symptom, power to reason normally on all subjects
cannot, of course, be so promptly recovered. My new power to reason
correctly on some subjects simply marked the transition from
depression, one phase of my disorder, to elation, another phase of it.
Medically speaking, I was as mentally disordered as before--yet I was
happy!

My memory during depression may be likened to a photographic film,
seven hundred and ninety-eight days long. Each impression seems to have
been made in a negative way and then, in a fraction of a second,
miraculously developed and made positive. Of hundreds of impressions
made during that depressed period I had not before been conscious, but
from the moment my mind, if not my full reason, found itself, they
stood out vividly. Not only so, but other impressions registered during
earlier years became clearer. Since that August 30th, which I regard as
my second birthday (my first was on the 30th of another month), my mind
has exhibited qualities which, prior to that time, were so latent as to
be scarcely distinguishable. As a result, I find myself able to do
desirable things I never before dreamed of doing--the writing of this
book is one of them.

Yet had I failed to convince myself on August 30th, when my brother
came to see me, that he was no spy, I am almost sure that I should have
compassed my own destruction within the following ten days, for the
next month, I believed, was the fatal one of opening courts. You will
recall that it was death by drowning that impended. I liken my
salvation itself to a prolonged process of drowning. Thousands of
minutes of the seven hundred and ninety-eight days--and there were over
one million of them, during which I had been borne down by intolerably
burdensome delusions--were, I imagine, much like the last minutes of
consciousness experienced by persons who drown. Many who have narrowly
escaped that fate can testify to the vividness with which good and bad
impressions of their entire life rush through their confused minds, and
hold them in a grip of terror until a kind unconsciousness envelops
them. Such had been many of my moments. But the only unconsciousness
which had deadened my sensibilities during these two despondent years
was that of sleep itself. Though I slept fairly well most of the time,
mine was seldom a dreamless sleep. Many of my dreams w