But surely it makes no difference whether it was a dream or not since it did reveal the Truth to me? Because if you have come to know it once and to see it, you will know it is the Truth and that there is not, there cannot be any other, whether you are dreaming or living. Very well, it was a dream – let it be a dream, but the fact remains that I was going to snuff out the life which you all extol so, whereas my dream, my dream – oh, my dream revealed to me another life, a life revived, magnificent and potent.
Listen then.
III
I said that I fell asleep without knowing it and even continuing with my musings on the same matters when no longer awake, as it were. A dream came to me that I picked up my revolver and, still keeping my chair, pressed it to my heart – my heart and not my head, whereas I had definitely decided to shoot myself through the head, and the right temple it had to be. With the revolver pressed to my heart I waited a moment or two, and suddenly my candle, the table and the wall in front of me all began to rock and sway. I quickly pulled the trigger.
In dreams you sometimes fall from a great height or you are stabbed or beaten, but you never feel the pain unless you jerk and actually hurt yourself against the bedpost; you do feel the pain then, and it is almost certain to wake you up.
It was the same in my dream: I felt no pain but with the sound of the report my whole being seemed to be shaken up and suddenly everything was extinguished and there was a horrible blackness all around me. I seemed to have gone blind and mute, I was lying on something very hard, stretched out on my back, seeing nothing and unable to make the slightest movement.
Voices shouted and feet tramped all about me; there was the captain’s low rumble and the landlady’s shrill screech – and suddenly there was a blank again, and now they were carrying me in a coffin with the lid nailed down. I could feel the coffin swaying and I was reflecting upon it, when all of a sudden the thought struck me for the first time: I was dead, quite dead. I knew it without a doubt, I could neither see nor move, and yet I could feel and reason. But soon I reconciled myself to this and, as usual in dreams, accepted the fact without demur.
And now they were piling earth over my grave. Everyone left, I was alone, utterly alone. I did not stir. Whenever I used to imagine what it would be like to be buried, I generally associated but one sensation with the grave: the feeling of damp and cold. And now too I felt very cold, the tips of my toes were the worst, and that was all the sensation I had.
I lay there and, strangely, expected nothing, resigning myself to the fact that the dead have nothing to expect. But it was damp. I do not know how long I lay there – whether it was an hour, or a day, or many days.
All of a sudden a drop of water, which had seeped through the lid of the coffin, fell on my left closed eye; a minute later there was another drop, a minute more and there was a third, and so on, drops falling at regular one-minute intervals. Indignation mounted in my heart, and suddenly I felt a physical pain in it. ‘It’s my wound,’ I thought. ‘My shot, the bullet’s there . . .’ And the water kept dripping, a drop a minute, straight down on my closed eye.
I suddenly invoked, not with my voice for I lay inert, but with the whole of my being, the Ruler of all that was befalling me: ‘Whoever Thou may be, but if Thou art and if there does exist any wisdom greater than the present, suffer it to descend upon this too. But if Thou art imposing vengeance upon me for my unwise suicide, with all the ugliness and incongruity of the life to come, then know Thee that no tortures I could ever be made to suffer could compare with the contempt I shall always feel in silence, be it through millions of years of martyrdom!’
I invoked and fell silent. Deep silence reigned for almost a full minute, and one more drop fell, but I knew with infinite and profound faith, that all would be different now. And suddenly my grave was rent open. That is, I do not know if it was dug open, but a dark and strange being picked me up and bore me away into space. I suddenly recovered sight. It was deep night, and never, never had there been such darkness yet!
We were flying through space, the earth was already far behind us. I asked the one that bore me nothing at all, I waited, I was proud. I made myself believe I was not afraid, and my breath caught with admiration at the thought that I was not afraid. I do not remember how long we flew nor can I venture a guess: everything was happening the way it usually happens in dreams when you leap over space and time, over all laws of life and reason, and only pause where your heart’s desire bids you pause. I remember I suddenly saw a tiny star in the darkness. ‘Is it Sirius?’ I could not hold back the question, although I did not want to ask anything at all. ‘No, that is the star you saw between the clouds on your way home,’ replied the one that bore me away. I knew the being was somewhat human in likeness. Strangely enough, I had no love for that being, I rather felt a deep aversion for it.
I had expected complete non-existence and with that thought I had shot myself. And now I was in the hands of a being, not a human being of course, but a being nonetheless that was, that existed. ‘It just shows that there is life hereafter,’ I thought with the peculiar flippancy of dreams, but the essence of my spirit remained with me intact. ‘If I must be again,’ I thought, ‘and again live by someone’s inescapable will, I do not want to be beaten and humiliated!’ ‘You know that I am afraid of you, and for this you despise me,’ I suddenly said, unable to hold back my cringing words which held an admission, and feeling the pin-prick of humiliation in my heart.
There was no reply, but all at once I knew that I was not being despised; I was not being laughed at nor even pitied; I knew that our flight through space had a purpose, mysterious and strange, concerning me alone. Fear mounted in my heart. Something was being mutely but painfully transmitted to me by my silent companion, piercing me through as it were. We flew through dark and unfamiliar space. I no longer saw the constellations my eyes were used to seeing. I knew that there were certain stars in the vastness of the sky whose rays took thousands and millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we were already flying through those regions.
I waited for I knew not what, my tormented heart gripped with a terrible anguish. And suddenly I was shaken with a feeling that was familiar and so stirring: I saw our sun! I knew it could not be our sun which had begotten our earth, and also that we were infinitely far away from our sun, but my whole being told me that this was a sun exactly like our own, a duplicate of it, its twin. My soul rang with sweet and stirring ecstasy: this familiar source of light, the same light that had given me life, evoked an echo in my heart and resurrected it, and for the first time since my burial I sensed life, the same life as before.
‘But if this is the sun, if this is a sun exactly like ours, then where is the earth?’ I cried. And my companion pointed to a star sparkling in the darkness like emerald. We were flying straight towards it.
‘Are such duplications really possible in the universe, is this really the law of nature? And if that star is an earth, can it be an earth like ours . . . exactly like ours, wretched and poor but dear and ever beloved, inspiring even in its most ungrateful children a love as poignant for it as our own earth inspires?’ I cried out, trembling with rapturous, boundless love for that dear, old earth I had deserted. A vision of the poor little girl I had hurt flashed past me.
‘You shall see everything,’ my companion said, and I sensed a peculiar sorrow in his words. But now we were quickly nearing the planet. It grew as we approached, I could already distinguish the oceans, the outline of Europe, and suddenly my heart was ablaze with a great and holy
