Neville describes waking one night, four years before this 1963 telling, inside what he calls 'the sepulcher of his skull' -- realizing the tomb he had lain in was his own head, after having slept, he says, for 6,000 years. He frames this awakening as the first act of 'the great Advent,' and recalls the dreams he had while still asleep: being shot as a president, given an elaborate funeral, reduced to poverty, and alternately honored and dishonored -- all cast as dreams within the larger sleep that ended on waking.