WAKING UP

After [attending a concert by a celebrated string quartet]...I remember going to bed with mind peacefully composed and full of a quiet joy. The dream during the night that followed was at the beginning quite irrational, though perhaps more keenly followed than usual. I seemed to move smoothly through a region of space where, presently, a vivid sense of cold flowed in on me and held my attention with a strange interest.

I believe that at that moment the dream became lucid. Then suddenly... all that up to now had been wrapped in confusion instantly passed away, and a new space burst forth in vivid presence and utter reality, with perception free and pinpointed as never before; the darkness itself seemed alive. The thought that was then borne in upon me with inescapable conviction was this: 'I have never been awake before.'