Last night I dreamt that my soul had left my body, and that I was travelling through immense spaces with the rapidity of thought. I was first transported into the midst of a wild village. I witnessed a fierce combat, without being in any danger, for I was invisible and invulnerable. From time to time I turned my gaze towards myself, that is to say, towards the place where my body would have been if I had had one, and made sure that I had none.

The idea occurred to me to visit the moon, and I found myself there at once. I saw a volcanic soil, extinct craters and other features, an evident reproduction of readings I had made or engravings I had seen, singularly amplified, and animated, however, by my imagination.

I felt that I was dreaming, but I was not convinced that this dream was absolutely false. The admirable precision of all I beheld inspired me with the thought that perhaps my soul had momentarily left its earthly prison, which would be no more marvellous than so many other mysteries of creation. Some opinions of ancient authors on this subject came to my mind, and then this passage from Cicero:

I immediately wished to return to earth; I found myself in my room. For a moment I had the strange illusion that I was looking at my sleeping body, before I regained possession of it.

Soon I thought I was up, with my pen in my hand, taking careful note of all I had seen.

At last I awoke, and a thousand details which I had just seen with great distinctness, were almost instantly effaced from my memory.

Source: Dreams and how to direct them, 2022, p.198; Daniel Bernardo's translation of Les reves et les moyens de les diriger by Hervey de Saint-Denys, 1867. Title added.

EDITOR'S NOTES

It's amusing to see a hard-headed dream researcher report a classic out-of-body shamanic dream like this. Shamanic? Certainly. He rises out of his body, faces violent scary spirits but finds he's invulnerable, goes to the sky-realm and makes discoveries, is convinced this soul-travel may be real, returns to his body and attempts to record the details of his trip for the good of his (small, research-oriented) tribe. A classic shamanic trip.

Though he sounds frustrated by losing so much detail. I doubt it's the fault of that false-waking scene. I too have had major dreams followed by a scene where I "wake", write notes, but wake again to a blank notepad I have to refill. Such false waking needn't be a prank or delusion: it's frustrating, but I generally recall more by being forced to outline the dream twice! I suspect it's intentional, a trick the dreaming brain uses to help with recall.

By the way--Saint-Denys is right that his visit to the moon is based on what he's read and illustrations he's seen. Volcanic rocks? At the time it was assumed all those craters were volcanic. Volcanoes were familiar; impacts weren't.

And if this truly were a bodiless, clairvoyant moon-trip, surely he'd have noted that unexpected thing the real astronauts all remarked on? That huge, multicolored opal in the sky...

Chris Wayan

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