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
have poised, and lost myself in a blissful dream. Then it darted into
my mind that I was what I had been accustomed to call dead. So this
was what lay on the other side of the dark passage, this lightness,
this perfect freedom, this undreamed-of peace! I had not a single care
or anxiety. It seemed as if nothing could trouble my repose and
happiness. I could only think with a deep compassion of those who were
still pent in uneasy bodies, under strait and sad conditions, anxious,
sad, troubled, and blind, not knowing that the shadow of death which
encompassed them was but the cloud which veiled the gate of perfect and
unutterable happiness.

I felt rising in my mind a sense of all that lay before me, of all the
mysteries that I would penetrate, all the unvisited places that I would
see. But at present I was too full of peace and quiet happiness to do
anything but stay in an infinite content where I was. All sense of
_ennui_ or restlessness had left me