I am fully conscious that this is a dream. There is a small room, on one side of which is a kind of lunch bar with several people at it, myself included. Significantly, I understand that it is a "middle room"—that there are two other rooms that it leads into and out of, as there are doors on either side of the room. Near the door is an object which I understand is an old-fashioned sewing machine. It is made of brown walnut, with the case covered with a number of bumps and knobs. I concentrate on this machine, resolving to register its contours exactly so that I can draw a picture of it afterwards. This I find I cannot do, since I cannot bring it into clear focus. Each time I try to see what any one shape is, it becomes any shape I have preconceived it to be! Thus it appears in a continuous state of flux. I resolve now to relate this experience to John (my Catholic friend) when I see him again. I try another experiment. This time I try moving the machine—it looks to be very heavy—into a corner of the room. I try to levitate it over an end table that is in the way, but I can’t manage it. However, when I look away from the corner of the room, which is the goal point of the experiment, I find that the sewing machine has snuggled up against the end table, having moved a distance of about six feet during the time that my attention was off it!

This "middle" room, I understood, symbolized the state of the soul immediately after death, showing both the advantages and limitations of the soul’s new expression of will. The symbolism indicated that it is an inter-between condition (two doors) and that the souls are fed (instructed) here before going on. The objects in the room were concepts abandoned by the soul’s passing through. The symbolism is, of course, my own.

I had another "assignment" dream, perhaps designed to show that the dream state and the inter-between are one and the same. It is dated January 16, 1954.

I walk between two cottages, built on a hilltop, that are tied to each other by a porch looking down on a wooded slope. The trees are in full color. I say to myself: "Ah, it’s fall—and it is my favorite season. It’s fall because I willed it to be so." Down the slope is a very lovely and solidly built house about which a number of people are standing or moving. I decide  to go down  and