Book Snip: The War of the Worlds and the War Within

For the first time since elementary school I'm reading H.G. Wells' classic 1898 science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. On page 32 of the Signet Classics edition, I stopped in my tracks after processing a certain thought by the book's unnamed narrator. While he speaks of his feelings after witnessing the shock and horror of the first Martian war machine's initial flaming attacks, it could mean something more to the reader if he or she were to think in personal existential terms.

I stopped my read momentarily, just long enough to transcribe the passage....

"Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of  detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the tragedy and stress of it all. This feeling was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream."

What have I witnessed? And what could it all mean? I'm going back....