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present, and we possess all the necessary keys to live within the secret of the soul of the world. But we have forgotten the ways of truth. We have eyes yet see not, ears yet hear not.
    I, Dalí, have discovered the pathways of revelation and joy, the dazzle of happiness shown only to lucid eyes. My whole being participates in the great cosmic pulse. My reason becomes a mere instrument to decipher the nature of things and detect my delirium the better to appreciate it.
    Only a long search led me, in spite of everything, to allow the true language of life to speak within me. I remember, in earliest childhood, playing at Little Father Patufet – the Tom-Thumblike Catalan hero who, to protect himself from the storm, let himself one day be swallowed by a bull because in his belly there would be neither snow nor rain. I used to get down on all fours and swing my head left and right until it was gorged with blood and I became dizzy.
    With eyes wide open, I could see a world that was solid black, suddenly spotted by bright circles that gradually turned into eggs fried “sunnyside down”. I was able to see a pair of eggs in this condition, which my attention followed, as if in hallucination. Then the eggs became innumerable and turned into a kind of soft white easy-to-handle substance, that I shaped somewhat as a baker would knead his dough. I felt that I was at the source of power, in the cave of great secrets.
    I was back in a kind of warm protective paradise, the essence of raw sensual enjoyment. The feeling I had merged with the dizzying memory I still retained of my mother’s womb, before I was born: two huge phosphorescent eggs like the cold expressionless eyes of a gigantic animal with a slightly bluish white of the eyeball. I long took pleasure in deliberately re-creating the apparition of these phosphenes, pressing against my closed eyelids to go back in this way to the precious images of my embryo, and even now I can, at will, though without the magic of the moment, propel myself back into that world of angels so similar to a divine aura.
    With my sister and friends, we also played at grottoes: this meant squeezing as hard as we could into a closet or other opening so as to fit as many of us as possible into the least conceivable space. For instance, into the dining-room window alcove, deep as the thickness of the wall, between the outer and inner shutters, we might get half-a-dozen of us, crushed right into each other. I let myself be grasped by this feeling of crushing, pressure, constraint, that was almost exquisite, while my eyes kept following the paths of the sun’s rays through the slats of the shutters.
    All I need do in sleep is to assume the fetal position, knees up under my chin, arms between my thighs, and hands on my face, fingers and thumb squeezed together and intertwined, the sheet enveloping me like a sac; then, if two added conditions are obtain ed – my upper lip sucking the pillow and my little toe being slightly out of line – I can let the divine weight of sleep invade my head, my body acting as nothing more than a crutch. I am back in my original shell, the paradise from which I was expelled.
    Mr. Truiter’s optical lantern, with the dazzling suddenness of its images, had been an overwhelming magic to me, imparting al most human shapes to my hypnagogic feelings. It acted as developer to the photographic plate of my memory, and gave meaning to my quest. The appearance of the little girl became realer than she herself, and at the same time allowed me to eradicate, to erase the true life setting, giving absolute all-powerfulness to her image. I fell in love with a dream, but it seemed normal to me that her physical consistency, her incarnation should be as possible, as evident and probable in her flesh as were color and light, the presence of her image. Perhaps I needed only to look for her. I did not yet know that I had to think and believe for my hallucination to become reality.
     
    Dalí