A quote from the novel Mars in Aries by Alexander Lernet-Holenia (Austria, 1897-1976):

He did not have the impression of losing consciousness; but rather, before he came around again, he dreamed for a while, and the dream continued exactly where consciousness had stopped. Perhaps something had gone on in him between the cessation of consciousness and the beginning of the dream. But what happened there took place in a realm from which we, although we enter it now and then, are not able to bring back any knowledge – as little as from a former life or to a next one. There is no complete unconsciousness – when we become unconscious, we merely pass (as in death) from one realm into another, but these realms entertain no messengers, and only now and then – very seldom – do particles tear themselves loose from the other realm and, like driftwood from unknown continents, become stranded on the shores of our perception; or, like birds lost in flight, now and then departed souls and lost angels or gods descend on us.

(Translated from the original German by Johannes Beilharz)

Mars im Widder was originally published in 1941 in the magazine Die Dame, but the publication of the book was prohibited by the Nazi censorship.

The book cover above is of the English Translation of the novel published in 2003 (translation by Elisabeth Littell Frech). This English translation is NOT known to the translator of the above quote.