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Dunne, J. W. - An Experiment with Time – Exploring past perceptions – history in the making
Identifier
025881
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME BY J. W. DUNNE [SECOND EDITION]
In January, 1901, I was at Alassio, on the Italian Riviera, having been invalided home from the Boer War. I dreamed, one night, that I was at a place which I took to be Fashoda, a little way up the Nile from Khartoum. The dream was a perfectly ordinary one, and by no means vivid, except in one particular. This was the sudden appearance of three men coming from the South. They were marvellously ragged, dressed in khaki faded to the colour of sackcloth; and their faces under their dusty sun-helmets were burned almost black. They looked, in fact, exactly like soldiers of the column with which I had lately been trekking in South Africa, and such I took them to be. I was puzzled as to why they should have travelled all the way from that country to the Soudan, and I questioned them on that point. They assured me, however, that this was precisely what they had done. "We have come right through from the Cape” said one. Another added : " I've had an awful time. I nearly died of yellow fever."
The remainder of the dream was unimportant.
At that time we were receiving the Daily Telegraph regularly from England. On opening this paper at breakfast, the morning after the dream, my eye was caught by the following flaring headlines :
THE GAPE TO CAIRO "DAILY TELEGRAPH"
EXPEDITION AT KHARTOUM
From our special correspondent.
Khartoum, Thursday (5 p.m.).
The " Daily Telegraph " expedition has arrived at Khartoum after a magnificent journey, etc., etc.
A note in another part of the paper stated that the expedition was led by M. Lionel Decle. I heard or read subsequently that one of the three white men of the party had died en route; not, however, of yellow fever, but of enteric. Whether this was true, or whether there were three white leaders, I do not know.
One or two remarks may be made here.
I had heard, some years previously, that M. Lionel Decle was contemplating some such transcontinental journey; but I did not know that anything had come of the scheme. Certainly I had no idea that the expedition had started.
The expedition arrived at Khartoum the day before the news was published in London, and thus long before I had the dream, as that issue of the paper had to get from London to Alassio, and the dream did not occur till the night before its arrival.
This put any " astral-wandering" business completely out of the question.
I attempted no explanation.