flying or floating, but this time it is
the real thing. It has certainly proved to me that we may free ourselves
from the law of gravitation." Now, if you wake abruptly from this dream,
you can analyze it without difficulty, if you undertake it immediately.
You will see that you feel very clearly that your feet are not touching
the earth. And, nevertheless, not believing yourself asleep, you have
lost sight of the fact that you are lying down. Therefore, since you are
not lying down and yet your feet do not feel the resistance of the
ground, the conclusion is natural that you are floating in space. Notice
this also: when levitation accompanies the flight, it is on one side
only that you make an effort to fly. And if you woke at that moment you
would find that this side is the one on which you are lying, and that
the sensation of effort for flight coincides with the real sensation
given you by the pressure of your body against the bed. This sensation
of pressure, dissociated from its cause, becomes a pure and simple
sensation of effort and, joined to the illusion of floating in space, is
sufficient to produce the dream.

It is interesting to see that these sensations of pressure, mounting, so
to speak, to the level of our visual field and taking advantage of the
luminous dust which fills it, effect its transformation into forms and
colors. M. Max Simon tells of having a strange and somewhat painful
dream. He dreamt that he was confronted by two piles of golden coins,
side by side and of unequal height, which for some reason or other he
had to equalize. But he could not accomplish it. This produced a feeling
of extreme anguish. This feeling, growing moment by moment, finally
awakened him. He then perceived that one of his legs was caught by the
folds of the bedclothes in such a way that his two feet were on
different levels and it was impossible for him to bring them together.
From this the sensation of inequality, making an irruption into the
visual field and there encountering (such at least is the hypothesis
which I propose) one or more yellow spots, expressed itself visually by
the inequality of the two piles of gold pieces. There is, then, immanent
in the tactile sensations during sleep, a tendency to visualize
themselves and enter in this form into the dream.

More important still than the tactile sensations, properly speaking, are
the sensations which pertain to what is sometimes called internal touch,
deep-seated