his own
personal experience, and to tell of a recent dream as well as what was
accomplished on coming out of the dream.

Now the dreamer dreamed that he was speaking before an assembly, that he
was making a political speech before a political assembly. Then in the
midst of the auditorium a murmur rose. The murmur augmented; it became a
muttering. Then it became a roar, a frightful tumult, and finally there
resounded from all parts timed to a uniform rhythm the cries, "Out!
Out!" At that moment he wakened. A dog was baying in a neighboring
garden, and with each one of his "Wow-wows" one of the cries of "Out!
Out!" seemed to be identical. Well, here was the infinitesimal moment
which it is necessary to seize.

The waking ego, just reappearing, should turn to the dreaming ego, which
is still there, and, during some instants at least, hold it without
letting it go. "I have caught you at it! You thought it was a crowd
shouting and it was a dog barking. Now, I shall not let go of you until
you tell me just what you were doing!" To which the dreaming ego would
answer, "I was doing nothing; and this is just where you and I differ
from one another. You imagine that in order to hear a dog barking, and
to know that it is a dog that barks, you have nothing to do. That is a
great mistake. You accomplish, without suspecting it, a considerable
effort. You take your entire memory, all your accumulated experience,
and you bring this formidable mass of memories to converge upon a
single point, in such a way as to insert exactly in the sounds you heard
that one of your memories which is the most capable of being adapted to
it. Nay, you must obtain a perfect adherence, for between the memory
that you evoke and the crude sensation that you perceive there must not
be the least discrepancy; otherwise you would be just dreaming. This
adjustment you can only obtain by an effort of the memory and an effort
of the perception, just as the tailor who is trying on a new coat pulls
together the pieces of cloth that he adjusts to the shape of your body
in order to pin them. You exert, then, continually, every moment of the
day, an enormous effort. Your life in a waking state is a life of labor,
even when you think you are doing nothing, for at every minute you have
to choose and every minute exclude. You choose among your sensations,
since you reject from your consciousness a thousand subjective
sensations which come back in the night when you sleep