I am just stating my
own belief, Mr. Baxter. You can make what comments you like
afterwards. The one kind of dream is entirely unimportant; it is
merely a hash, a _rechauffee_, of our own thoughts, in which little
things that we have experienced reappear in a hopeless sort of
confusion. It is the kind of dream that we forget altogether,
generally, five minutes after waking, if not before. But there is
another kind of dream that we do not forget. It leaves as vivid an
impression upon us as if it were a waking experience--an actual
incident. And that is exactly what it is."

"I don't understand."

"Have you ever heard of the subliminal consciousness, Mr. Baxter?"

"No."

The medium smiled.

"That is fortunate," he said. "It's being run to death just
now.... Well, I'll put it in an untechnical way. There is a part of
us, is there not, that lies below our ordinary waking thoughts--that
part of us in which our dreams reside, our habits take shape, our
instincts, intuitions, and all the rest, are generated. Well, in
ordinary dreams, when we are asleep, it is this part that is active.
The pot boils, so to speak, all by itself, uncontrolled by reason. A
madman is a man in whom this part is supreme in his waking life as
well. Well, it is through this part of us that we communicate with the
spiritual world. There are, let us say, two doors in it--that which
leads up to our senses, through which come down our waking experiences
to be stored up; and--and the other door...."

"Yes?"

The medium hesitated.

"Well," he said, "in some natures--yours, for instance, Mr.
Baxter--this door opens rather easily. It was through that door that
you went, I think, in what you call your 'dream.' You yourself said it
was quite unlike ordinary dreams."

"Yes."

"And I am the more sure that this is so, since your experience is
exactly that of so many others under the same circumstances."

Laurie moved uncomfortably in his chair.

"I don't quite understand," he said sharply. "You mean it was not a
dream?"

"Certainly not. At least, not a dream in the ordinary sense. It was an
actual experience."

"But--but I was asleep."

"Certainly. That is one of the usual conditions--an almost
indispensable condition, in fact. The objective self--I mean the
ordinary workaday faculties--was lulled; and your subjective
self--call it what you like--but it is your real self, the essential
self that survives death--this self, simply went through