I’m convinced that I’m involved in work of the utmost importance. I’m also aware that my attitude has all the earmarks of egomania, or a good deal of them. But I’m not suffering from any kind of Messiah complex. For one thing, I’m tired of examining myself for signs of schizophrenia, particularly since I’ve discovered that what I used to regard as my normal state of consciousness represents only the surface ripples of my identity. For another thing, I’m using my own personality as a psychological guinea pig in my adventures, and part of my work necessitates playing around with different states of awareness.

I hereby admit to those anticipated criticisms that my colleagues will make against me: that I’m not maintaining suitable objectivity or conforming to the “scientific method.” I’m even turning my back on the electroencephalograph and the now respectable “dream laboratories,” as they’re called, though they have their place. Where I go, I must go utterly alone. No one can tell me what methods are useful or dangerous. The ordinary assumptions of daily life serve me not at all. Yet I will not turn back. The hope of great personal accomplishment—and knowledge—far outweighs the hazards, those that I have discovered and those that may still wait.

So after this lengthy introduction—psychologists are notoriously longwinded—I’ll record the events that led me to this pass. The first episode seems so insignificant, by contrast with my later activities, that my initial astonishment now seems almost amusing. Yet the first hole in physical reality opened for me that night. The first crack appeared in the ordinary existence that I’d always known.

I was living in one of the wild stacks of modern apartments connected with the state university in a town in upstate New York. Each cube dwelling had its own entrance. The buildings had just been completed, and each terrace looked out on piles of rocks, dirt, and mudholes. The apartment itself reminded me of a Skinner box, complete with artificial environment, air conditioners, soundproofing, humidifiers; everything to make life sanitary and dull.

I couldn’t get to sleep that night, so I got out of bed and went into the living room. For a few moments I stood on the terrace. There were no stairs connecting it to the ground, and I was on the seventh floor. Across the way identical terraces stuck out, hanging flimsily out over the snow-covered debris below.