After confused and troubled dreams of terror and bewilderment, enacted
in blind passages and stifling glooms, with crowds of unknown figures
passing rapidly to and fro, I seemed to grow suddenly light-hearted and
joyful. I next appeared to myself to be sitting or reclining on the
grassy top of a cliff, in bright sunlight. The ground fell
precipitously in front of me, and I saw to left and right the sharp
crags and horns of the rock-face below me; behind me was a wide space
of grassy down, with a fresh wind racing over it. The sky was
cloudless. Far below I could see yellow sands, on which a blue sea
broke in crisp waves. To the left a river flowed through a little
hamlet, clustered round a church; I looked down on the roofs of the
small houses, and saw people passing to and fro, like ants. The river
spread itself out in shallow shining channels over the sand, to join
the sea. Further to the left rose shadowy headland after headland, and
to the right lay a broad well-watered plain, full of trees and
villages, bounded by a range of blue hills. On the sea moved ships,
the wind filling their sails, and the sun shining on them with a
peculiar brightness. The only sound in my ears was that of the whisper
of the wind in the grass and stone crags.
But I soon became aware with a shock of pleasant surprise that my
perception of the whole scene was of a different quality to any
perception I had before experienced. I have spoken of seeing and
hearing: but I became aware that I was doing neither; the perceptions,
so to speak, both of seeing and hearing were not distinct, but the
same. I was aware, for instance, at the same moment, of the _whole_
scene, both of what was behind me and what was in front of me. I have
described what I saw successively, because there is no other way of
describing it; but it was all present at once in my mind, and I had no
need to turn my attention to one point or another, but everything was
there before me, in a unity at which I cannot even hint in words. I
then became aware too, that, though I have spoken of myself as seated
or reclined, I had no body, but was merely, as it were, a sentient
point. In a moment I became aware that to transfer that sentience to
another point was merely an act of will. I was able to test this; in
an instant I was close above the village, which a moment before was far
below me, and I perceived the houses, the very faces of the people
close at hand; at another moment I was buried deep in the cliff, and
felt the rock with its fissures all about me; at another moment,
following my wish, I was beneath the sea, and saw the untrodden sands
about me, with the blue sunlit water over my head. I saw the fish dart
and poise above me, the ribbons of sea-weed floating up, just swayed by
the currents, shells crawling like great snails on the ooze, crabs
hurrying about among piles of boulders. But something drew me back to
my first station, I know not why; and there I poised, as a bird might
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