The Gap in the Curtain Read Online Free PDF

included in a larger field and, to the observer in the latter, future events were visible as well as past and present.
    In sleep, he went on, where the attention was not absorbed, as it was in waking life, with the smaller field of phenomena, the larger field might come inside the pale of consciousness. People had often been correctly forewarned in dreams. We all now and then were amazed at the familiarity with which we regarded a novel experience, as if we recognized it as something which had happened before. The universe was extended in time, and the dreamer, with nothing to rivet his attention to the narrow waking field, ranged about, and might light on images which belonged to the future as well as to the past. The sleeper was constantly crossing the arbitrary frontier which our mortal limitations had erected.
    At this point I began to see light. I was prepared to assent to the conclusion that in dreams we occasionally dip into the future, though I was unable to follow most of the professor’s proofs. But now came the real question. Was it possible to attain to this form of prevision otherwise than in sleep? Could the observer in the narrow world turn himself by any effort of will into the profounder observer in the world of ampler dimensions? Could the anticipating power of the dreamer be systematized and controlled, and be made available to man in his waking life?
    It could, said the professor. Such was the result of the researches to which he had dedicated the last ten years of his life. It was as a crowning proof that he wished an experiment at Flambard.
    I think that he realized how little I had grasped of his exposition of the fundamentals of his theory. He undertook it, I fancy, out of his scrupulous honesty; he felt bound to put me in possession of the whole argument, whether I understood it or not. But, now that he had got down to something concrete which I could follow, his manner became feverishly earnest. He patted my knee with a large lean hand, and kept thrusting his gaunt face close to mine. His writing pad fell into the lily pond, but he did not notice it.
    He needed several people for his experiment—the more the better, for he wanted a variety of temperaments, and he said something, too, about the advantage of a communal psychical effort . . . But they must be the right kind of people—people with highly developed nervous systems—not men too deeply sunk in matter. (I thought of Evelyn and the Lamingtons and old Folliot.) He deprecated exuberant physical health or abounding vitality, since such endowments meant that their possessors would be padlocked to the narrower sensory world. He ran over his selection again, dwelling on each, summing each up with what seemed to me astounding shrewdness, considering that he had met them for the first time two days before. He wanted the hungry and the forward-looking. Tavanger and Mayot. “They will never be content,” he said, “and their hunger is of the spirit, though maybe an earthy spirit . . .” Myself. He turned his hollow eyes on me, but was too polite to particularize what my kind of hunger might be . . . Charles Ottery. “He is unhappy, and that means that his hold on the present is loose . . .” Sally Flambard. “That gracious lady lives always
sur la branche
—is it not so? She is like a bird, and has no heavy flesh to clog her. Assuredly she must be one.” Rather to my surprise he added Reggie Daker. Reggie’s recent concussion, for some reason which I did not follow, made him a suitable object . . . Above all, there was Goodeve. He repeated his name with satisfaction, but offered no comment.
    I asked him what form his experiment would take.
    â€œA little training. No more. A little ascesis, partly of the body, but mainly of the mind. It must be disciplined to see what it shall see.”
    Then, speaking very slowly, and drawing words apparently from as deep a cavern as that from which he drew his