Proceeding, next, more directly to the examination of the dreaming and other abnormal states of consciousness, we note, as a basic parallel, that the projection of images during sleep is exactly equivalent to perception in the waking state, both placing objectively something we perceive subjectively. A tree, for example, is not seen actually where it is; nor is its size nor color nor any of its attributes perceived externally. The perception is entirely internal; the location and definition of the object externally is an after operation belonging to experience and judgment. A blind man, suddenly restored to sight, as has been done by operation, is at first utterly unable to estimate the distance, perspective, and other qualities of objects, except as the result of painfully acquired experience, in which perception plays no further part than to furnish the primary data. Therefore, there is, ipso facto, nothing in dreams which excludes their phenomena from the domain of actual perception. As continuously occurs in waking life, these perceptions may be wrongly interpreted; but they are none the less true perceptions, and have their psycho-physiology, our ignorance of which is no warrant for its non - existence.

Waking consciousness is the result of an almost infinite number of physical stimuli reaching perception and recognition by means of the sense organs. In dream, the soul responds to stimuli from inner and more spiritual planes. The senselessness of most remembered dreams is due to a mixing of the waking and dreaming states, when objective stimuli are partly dramatized on the subjective plane, and vice versa. In ordinary dreams all stimuli are dramatized; thus resembling somewhat a play where the actors are limited to pantomime for the expression of their ideas. And the causes of the dramatization not being perceived, the judgment necessarily rests on false premises. The waking state is partly objective and partly subjective; dream is the same - only between the two states the threshold of consciousness is greatly displaced. In the waking condition the consciousness is engrossed by the stronger stimuli of physical life, and the subjective threshold recedes accordingly. In dream the objective threshold recedes, and the consciousness responds to an entirely different class of stimuli, of a subjective nature. It is not claimed that these minor stimuli are not present in the waking condition. They are; but are crowded out of the attention, or displaced by the stronger.

They resemble a feeble chord i nmusic so lost in louder and more highly pitched ones that we are unaware it is being sounded. It is only as objective stimuli fade or are suppressed that we can become conscious on subjective planes. In both sleeping and waking states it is, of course, the same consciousness, but responding to different stimuli.

If, then, the physiology of dreams carries perception and consciousness to the dream state, the importance of studying this and its allied unconscious (so called) conditions cannot be overestimated. For once we show that ordinary dream and the higher dream states, such as somnambulism and trance, are merely gradations of the same consciousness responding to new stimuli, we not only establish the fact of another consciousness than the waking, but we also prove that this consciousness is very greatly superior to the waking, in knowledge, functions, and power. In other words, we prove an inner Ego, or soul.

In demonstration of this connection, if we pass but a single step above the ordinary dream, and admit significant dreams as possible - and who does not? - we are in contact with a consciousness which is capable of forewarning or prophecy - powers far surpassing its waking capacities. Again, sleep-walking is but the dreamer acting out the dramatization of his own dreams, as the writer, who was in youth a somnambulist, can personally testify. Many, if not all, the phases of natural somnambulism are so plainly identical with those of induced somnambulism, or the hypnotic states, that we are enabled to connect these conditions beyond any doubt. And in hypnotic or induced somnambulism, whether self-induced or due to the will of another, we forge the last and strongest link which binds the waking consciousness to one almost infinitely higher than itself, which is yet truly its own self, only functioning above and beyond the limitations of its material sense organs.

In studying dream, as the very lowest yet most universal of these states, we note the entrance of a most important factor, or the use by the dreaming consciousness of entirely new concepts of time and space. It is a well-known and admitted physiological fact that dreams which in the waking state would require years of time for their enactment find in the dreaming condition that even a moment is sufficient for the dreaming consciousness to appreciate them in their most minute details. Thus De Quincey had one dream which apparently extended over some sixty years, but which actually occupied scarcely as many moments. Uxhill, also, on three successive nights, not only saw his whole life pass in review, but appreciated its moral bearing.*

Now, the fact that the relation of the thinking Ego to time conceptions is changed in dream is one whose importance cannot be overestimated. The exact speed at which objective stimuli are transmitted from the periphery to the brain centers is well known. In like manner, the time required by the consciousness to record visual perceptions is also subject to accurate measurement, as has been pointed out by Helmholtz, Fechner, and others. Since it is the same "I" which perceives both in the waking state and in dreams, and since perception, in the waking state, can only proceed at a definite, measurable rate of speed, if we find in dream this same "I" recording perceptions at a rate a million times greater than that which its physical organ, or brain, is capable of registering, it follows that it can not be using this physical organ, and is therefore not limited to the latter for its manifestations of consciousness. This alone proves that we possess a consciousness independent of the body, and, therefore, a soul, beyond all cavil or dispute.

* Du Prel, Philosophic der Mystic.