Daily Moon Phases

Friday, January 27, 2012

Beyond the Wall of Sleep

The Complete Works of Lovecraft Now in PDF
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Beyond the Wall of Sleep
by H.P. Lovecraft

"I have frequently wondered whether the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the
occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong.

Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and
fantastic reflections of our waking experiences--Freud to the contrary with his puerile
symbolism—  There are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character
permits of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect
suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than
physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier.

From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness,

is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we
know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From
those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess
that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily
constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them.

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence
on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon."


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