339. It is by means of its physical body that it becomes possible for the I to perceive the reactions of its body's contact with the physical world. This reaction is its "day-consciousness", in other words the individual's awake, physical consciousness. But as it can also experience reactions, like the ones referred to above, in an equally realistic state without the physical body being in function, then it becomes obvious that these reactions (dream-experiences) must be the result of the I's contact with something other than the physical world.
      What is this different something? The usual answer to this is that these reactions, or experiences, are "dream-visions", "feverish fantasies", "hallucinations" or "imagination". But none of these terms gives any kind of scientific answer to the question. On the contrary, they express merely a culmination of total ignorance and naïvity in this particular field. Of course everyone knows that these experiences are "dream-visions". The fact that they appear during a fever is no more of an explanation than their appearance during any other disturbance or interruption of normal sleep. It is even more difficult to substantiate the explanation that they are "hallucinations", for there are cases where dreams have been a genuine guidance for awake day-consciousness, and have predicted things to come in the fate of an individual which later on are actually fulfilled. Nor can they be "hallucinations" in a situation where the individual is able, through a dream, to describe things he has never seen before, or even heard of, and in such precise detail that it is in complete agreement with actual fact. Neither can it be brought into accordance with logic to disprove such a psychic experience by saying it is the result of "imagination". And so the question still remains unanswered. But the fact is that in his dream-state the individual "sees", "hears", "smells", "tastes" and "senses" even though all the physical organs for these functions are in a state of rest. And this experience, while it lasts, is just as real as a conscious physical one – indeed, the individual in question does not even know that he is "dreaming", but finds himself in a form of experiencing just as realistic as when he is awake; what is more, this form of experiencing sometimes even exceeds the latter state in that the "scenes" or "events" have taken place thousands of miles from the place where the individual's physical body is sleeping during the experience. Therefore a serious investigator cannot dismiss the dream state as something unreal. On the contrary, to him the dream state will constitute the first proof that there is another "awake state" besides the physical one in which the individual may be fully conscious, in other words mentally active, even though the physical body is quite out of function. In whatever way one might attempt to explain the problem, the fact remains that among human beings the dream-state sometimes shows itself to be identical with the experience of "predictions", "clairvoyance", "out-of-body experiences", "astral travel" and "encountering things or circumstances of which the individuals in question have not had the smallest knowledge when physically awake".
      It is very possible that the dream-state relates identically to these kind of conditions to only a very small degree. However, this does not alter its identity as proof that there is another realistic "awake existence" besides the physical, even if there happens to be only a single case that can be proved to be identical with the above-mentioned phenomena. This single case will more than sufficiently express or prove the existence of a higher, more liberated form of experience than the physical one; an "awake existence" in which one can have experiences which are impossible in the physical "awake existence". And consequently the fact now emerges quite plainly that, as mentioned before, the individual exists in two worlds.
      So, in certain cases, dreams are an expression for a real form of positive day-consciousness or "awake existence", even though this may be of quite another nature than that of physical day-consciousness. One of these forms is an "awake state" based upon the physical body and its nervous system; the other is an "awake state" with "sight", "smell", "taste" and "touch" entirely independent of physical sense-organs.