A New Model of the Universe by P. D. Ouspensky

Author:P. D. Ouspensky
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486123486
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

I remember a curious case of this category of pseudo-authorship. It must have been about thirty years ago.

I awoke with a clear memory of a long and, as it seemed to me, very interesting story, which I thought I had written in my dreams. I remembered it in every detail and decided to write it down at the first free moment, first as a specimen of “ creative” dreams, second, thinking that I might use the theme some day, although the story had nothing in common with my usual writings and entirely differed from them in type and character. But about two hours later, when I began to write down the story, I noticed in it something very familiar and suddenly, to my great amazement, I saw that it was a story by Paul Bourget, which I had read not long before. The story was altered in a curious way. The action which in Bourget’s book unfolded from one end, started in my dream from the other end. The action took place in Russia, all the characters had Russian names, and a new person was added introducing a definitely Russian atmosphere. I rather regret now that I did not write down the story at the time as I constructed it in my dream. It undoubtedly contained much of interest. First of all there was the extraordinary quickness of the work. In normal conditions, when awake, such a turning inside out of somebody else’s story of similar length, transplanting the action into another country and adding a new person who appears in almost every scene, would require, according to my estimate, at least a week’s work. In sleep, however, it was done without any expenditure of time, simply in the course of the progress of the action.

This extraordinary speed of mental work in sleep has many times attracted the attention of investigators, and their observations have given rise to many wrong deductions.

There is a well-known dream described by Maury in his book Sleep and Dreams, which in his opinion establishes that one moment is sufficient for a very long dream.

I was slightly indisposed and was lying in my room; my mother was near my bed. I am dreaming of the Terror. I am present at scenes of massacre; I appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal ; I see Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, all the most villainous figures of this terrible epoch; I argue with them ; at last, after many events which I remember only vaguely, I am judged, condemned to death, taken in a cart, amidst an enormous crowd, to the square of the Revolution; I ascend the scaffold; the executioner binds me to the fatal board, he pushes it, the knife falls ; I feel my head being severed from the body; I awake seized by the most violent terror, and I feel on my neck the rod of my bed which had become suddenly detached and had fallen on my neck as would the knife of the guillotine. This happened

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