oneiric* space

No sooner do we start to fall asleep than space relaxes and falls asleep, too -- doing so a little ahead of us, losing its struts and fibers, losing its structural forces and its geometric coherence. The space in which we shall spend our nocturnal hours has no perspective, no distance. It is the immediate synthesis of things and ourselves. If we dream of an object, we enter into that object as into a shell. Our oneiric space always has this central coefficient. Sometimes in flying dreams we think we are very high up, but we are no more then than a little bit of flying matter. And the skies we soar through are wholly interior -- skies of desire or hope or pride. We are too astonished at our extraordinary journey to make of it an occasion for spectacle. We ourselves remain the center of our oneiric experience. If a star shines, it is with the sleeper's radiance: a tiny flash on the sleeping retina evokes an ephemeral constellation, conjuring confused memories of a starry night.

-- Gaston Bachelard The Right to Dream
Translated by J.A. Underwood

*oneiric: Of or relating to or suggestive of dreams