The Necromancers

"I don't understand."

"Have you ever heard of the subliminal consciousness, Mr. Baxter?"

"No."

The medium smiled.

"That is fortunate," he said. "It's being run to death just now.... Well, I'll put it in an untechnical way. There is a part of us, is there not, that lies below our ordinary waking thoughts--that part of us in which our dreams reside, our habits take shape, our instincts, intuitions, and all the rest, are generated. Well, in ordinary dreams, when we are asleep, it is this part that is active. The pot boils, so to speak, all by itself, uncontrolled by reason. A madman is a man in whom this part is supreme in his waking life as well. Well, it is through this part of us that we communicate with the spiritual world. There are, let us say, two doors in it--that which leads up to our senses, through which come down our waking experiences to be stored up; and--and the other door...."

"Yes?"

The medium hesitated.

"Well," he said, "in some natures--yours, for instance, Mr. Baxter--this door opens rather easily. It was through that door that you went, I think, in what you call your 'dream.' You yourself said it was quite unlike ordinary dreams."

"Yes."

"And I am the more sure that this is so, since your experience is exactly that of so many others under the same circumstances."

Laurie moved uncomfortably in his chair.

"I don't quite understand," he said sharply. "You mean it was not a dream?"

"Certainly not. At least, not a dream in the ordinary sense. It was an actual experience."

"But--but I was asleep."

"Certainly. That is one of the usual conditions--an almost indispensable condition, in fact. The objective self--I mean the ordinary workaday faculties--was lulled; and your subjective self--call it what you like--but it is your real self, the essential self that survives death--this self, simply went through the inner door, and--and saw what was to be seen."

Laurie looked at him intently. But there was a touch of apprehension in his face, too.

"You mean," he said slowly, "that--that all I saw--the limitations of space, and so forth--that these were facts and not fancies?"

"Certainly. Doesn't your theology hint at something of the kind?"

Laurie was silent. He had no idea of what his theology told him on the point.

"But why should I--I of all people--have such an experience?" he asked suddenly.