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The Timeless Moment – Herbert Warner Allen

This is what I dreamed during the night. I was in an hotel in a lounge with columns. On my left was the door of a sitting-room and on the right double doors opening into a dining-room. I knew that the hotel was full and that I was to sleep on a sofa-bed made up for me in the dining-room just beyond the folding doors.

My recollection of the dream started with a telephone conversation in which I arranged an important business appointment and was pleased and surprised to have been able to fix it for the next day. Then I undressed, turned out the light and got into bed in the dark, behind the double doors.

I fell asleep at once, as it were passing from my first sleep into a second, and dreamed a dream, the dream within the dream, though I did not recognize it as such. It was singularly peaceful and refreshing, though it consisted of nothing more than the contemplation of a motionless mathematical figure outlined in red. At least as such I remember it.

I woke suddenly and with a violent shock as if from the very depths of slumber. I had no idea that I was only passing back from my second dream into the first. I jumped out of that dream sofa-bed in a state of consternation. I was sure that I had overslept and missed my appointment. Everything was dark and I had lost all sense of direction as one often does after an abrupt awakening. Bemused with sleep, I stumbled about the lounge looking for the light switch which I knew was on one of the columns.

After an age of anxiety, I caught sight, with untold relief of a line of light under the door of the sitting-room, opening on the lounge, and heard voices. Thank heavens! People were still up. It was not so late as I thought. After all, I had not missed that appointment. The dream appointment had been made for the next day, but at this stage I seemed to have forgotten that: my time-sense was as muddled as my sense of direction. Footsteps sounded behind me and I knew it must be a waiter.

Not wishing to be found wandering about a public lounge in my pyjamas, I plunged back into the sofa-bed. With a click the light was turned on and everything was bright for an instant. Then, with another violent shock, I woke up again to find myself in darkness and awake in the bed which I do not regard as a dream but as part of waking reality.

Throughout these two dreams, the one within the other, I had had no idea that they were actually dreams.  I got up at once and wrote down all I could remember about them.

Before I went to bed that night I had had a telephone conversation with my publisher very much as I dreamed it, with the essential difference that to my chagrin the appointment had had to be indefinitely postponed.

As the appointment was off I had decided not to go to my office next morning, but the dream made such an impression upon me that I changed my mind and called there on chance, as any communication about a change in arrangements would have been sent there. I found a telegram waiting for me. It cancelled the telephone conversation and made the appointment. To anyone collecting examples of dream prevision it was interesting and suggestive, but not conclusive. It might very well be a coincidence, though without the dream I should certainly have missed that appointment.