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		Q - Is a flying dream an out-of-body experience? A - Sometimes. There are floating or flying sensations in many states of consciousness, from full physical awareness to deep trance. At times, you can seem to be completely ensconced within your physical body. Other times, the sensations range from being slightly "out of phase" to being at a great distance away.	Drawings by Suzanna Hart

Echoes and Contained Sleep

Some flying dreams are "echoes" of such sensations felt during the day. You went for an elevator ride, your emotions surged with joy or you felt light-headed at the onset of influenza. Whatever the source, any impact that has not dissipated by bedtime is available to form a dream. The event that triggered the sensation may reverberate throughout the dream or only launch a flight, after which the piloting is taken over by the sleeping mind as it heads into new territory. A dream can also illustrate a story completely made up by the jabbering mind asleep. Whether you are aware of the process or not, you can literally talk your way into forming a flying dream. Try it next time you become lucid. "Once upon a time, I was flying" It's rather like imagining yourself into the air, but with a sound track added. Another verbal variation is singing your way upward.

These are examples of stimuli prior to sleep or within a self-contained sleep state that's oblivious to any external influence. Under such circumstances, it's quite possible to dream-imagine that you are having an out-of-body experience (OBE) rather than actually have one. But can a dream respond to and reflect what's currently happening in another state of consciousness? Can it flow or flip into that state?

Concurrent States

A dream can certainly picture an event happening in the material world as you sleep. The most common example is a dream in which you seem to be lying in your bed. The imagery will be drawn from memory, but if you are in light sleep, you may have a vague tactile sense of how your physical body is arranged. Body placement can be portrayed accurately when subtle sensory information is available at the time the dream is occurring.

Now, suppose instead of the physical body, your dreaming mind becomes aware of the position of a body in another discrete state of consciousness. If the dream mimes that information, both bodies would be horizontal, vertical, standing or seated in a lotus position, levitating. A shared sense of movement could result in both bodies proceeding at the same rate, from high speed to complete stop; backwards, forwards, somersaulting or upside down.

When a dream portrays a literal clone of an alternate event, the picture of the body and its surrounding scenery can be correct in every detail. But since the environment is being witnessed through the lens of another state, perception is subject to state-specific quirks. Mental clarity, the "realness" of the scene, the thickness of the atmosphere, the type and intensity of sensations and the dimension and depth of the field of vision can differ from one state to another. Thus, it's possible to have a legitimate dream picture of an out-of-body locale, although the two states of consciousness won't necessarily feel the same. An exact clone is a rarity, however.

A dream is more likely to take vague sensations and weave them into its ongoing story line. The most prominent sensations during an astral projection are weightlessness, plus the motion of rising and falling. The dream can picture these sensory feelings using its own creative palette of moving imagery. Thus, while the astral body is floating slowly towards the bedroom ceiling in its mundane environment, the dreaming body can be streaking though a fantasy landscape.

Because a dream is far more flexible when displaying its creative variations of flight, it's been assumed that the dream is less "real" than a more stable event that occurs elsewhere. Go back to sleep, it's just a dream. Oh, darn, this isn't my real bedroom; it's just a dream. That presumption may be a hasty conclusion, however. An alternate explanation considers the more stable option as but one choice in a multiverse of possible perceptions of reality, including those that dip below the obvious. From that viewpoint, the surface selection would be the more limited one. So I make no judgments about which body, which event, or which state of consciousness is the more existentially "real." I prefer to think of such alternate events as episodes in parallel realities, each with its own native behavior.

For events that occur on the same night, there are at least 4 ways they can be contrasted or compared.

1. Same Events: Some events on the borderland of sleep leading to or returning from a dream or OBE can be similar or identical.

If you use the WILD method, and hold onto lucidity from the waking state into sleep, the route to an astral projection or a lucid dream can be similar, up to a point. Twirling and constant falling sensations, the hypnic jerk, sleep paralysis and the feeling of lightness that accompanies loss of awareness of the physical body can occur on your way to either an astral projection or a dream. Such sensations can be used to launch flight in an altered state: you concentrate on them and take them with you as you begin your body-separation or dream-entry process. This is especially true if you discourage the formation of visual imagery (you imagine your eyes are closed) and concentrate on tactile impressions instead. When you "open" your eyes, what do you see? Your bedroom or a fantasy landscape?

2. Sequential Events: You are in one state, followed by another. The comparison becomes even more obvious if you can switch from one to another and back again.

At the edge of sleep it is possible for one type of consciousness to meld so seamlessly with another that a distinction will not be noticed. For instance, you might claim, "I was awake" when sleep laboratory equipment would indicate you were already asleep. On the way out of sleep, a false awakening produces the same incorrect presumption.

You may be able to detect the change while it is in progress, or appreciate it only in retrospect. Sometimes there are obvious visual clues, such as when the street outside your home morphs into a river. Most often, the change is recognized when consciousness shifts abruptly, making the difference in feeling tones readily discernible.

An OBE can lapse into a dream at any time, beginning, middle or end. You might complete an astral separation sequence in a replica of your bedroom, then drift down the hall and discover that your house has new rooms and missing walls. Or you may pass through a clone doorway into a fantasy landscape. I have experienced a type of OBE in which I find myself returning from a trip across outer space that shifts into a lucid dream as I approach home base.

For a dream to OBE conversion, you may have to wake up briefly, and then proceed with the astral separation sequence. Or you may remain asleep and try to wipe out the scenery, feel the position of your physical body or direct your attention to the sensations associated with such a sequence, like roaring sounds and vibrations. These are all deliberate attempts to replace dream imagery with out-of-body vision. But the shift can also happen spontaneously.

I once had a series of dreams in which I'd fly a rectangular route through the sky. Initially, each dream was the product of day residue. As a neophyte pilot, I continually practiced "flying the pattern." This involves taking off, directing the plane to turn course four times while circling the field, touching down on the runway briefly, then immediately taking off for another go-round. In the dream version, there was no plane, just me wending my way through the blue. One night, as I was "flying the pattern" in a brightly lit lucid dreamscape, my state of consciousness suddenly shifted and I found myself still aloft, but circumscribing the rectangular shape of my very dark bedroom. This is one of the differences I experience between dreams and OBEs. In a lucid dream, my bedroom is bright, vivid and colorful, as if somebody turned on a spotlight. The illumination in an OBE conforms more to lighting in the physical world so, if it's nighttime, it's always dimly lit, with little color to be perceived.

This was one of several experiences that led me to surmise that a dream and an OBE could be occurring at the same time, just at different levels of consciousness. Of course, physical reality was also happening, but that body wasn't in motion. Nevertheless, the waking state had an important role to play. It produced its own version of flight, which then became the master template for flight in altered states. In forming the dream, the contribution from the waking state was the echo of a real event. It wasn't a story invented from scratch.

It's also possible for a dream to echo an astral projection, in which case the dream isn't "making up" a fictional narrative, but producing a report on a past event in an alternate state. Of course, the dream will use its own native palette to paint the portrait. This is one of the little-appreciated advantages of dreams: not being so stuck in the here-now of astral projection, but able to retrieve the past for present use, whatever that may be. Perhaps the dream is even able to range ahead in space-time to produce its precognitive version of an OBE yet to come. In any case, the dream version is not to be dismissed lightly. At the very least, it provides the perfect practice arena for an OBE. As an altered sleep state already, the dream supplies a rendition much closer, much more true-to-form than waking visualization.

3. Overlapping Events: You see and/or feel more than one event happening at the same time. The distinction is especially noticeable if they are occurring with different background environments.

Besides the sequential occurrence of events, a dual perception of episodes occurring in both waking and dream states may sometimes be observed. If you wake while passing through hypnopompia, the dream imagery can be so intense that, even with physical eyes wide open, the dream remains visible for some time before it fades. This duality is readily discernible if the events are divergent. But if they are parallel, it can be hard to tell if a dream prop or character emerges from physical reality or not.

Within the astral state, a common duality is feeling your body lying on the bed while you view the room from a vantage point on the ceiling. The felt body might be the physical one, but is more likely to be one native to the OBE. As you are attempting to exchange the lucid dream scene for your bedroom environment, a dream-OBE duality can occur. The astral body may still be situated in bed or be out and about. I have perceived my dream body aloft in a lucid dreamscape while at the same time perceiving my astral body hovering in front of my closet doors.

4. Shared Events: You co-dream with a partner, but your sleep experiences occur in different states of consciousness which you can compare after you wake.

Although the most frequently shared activity in a mutual dreaming project is flying, dream partners may not see the same environment or perceive the same event because they experience different states of consciousness. Nonlucid dream, lucid dream, OBE, hypnogogia and hypnopompia, false awakening and sleep paralysis: these are discrete states recognized as relating to sleep. But there are many more.

Lucid dreamers know of the range between deep entrancement and sharp awareness. The mutual dreaming projects highlighted other ranges, most importantly, the range in sociality. A person sensitive to the presence of other people might see her partner in a dream, but if the partner is habitually wrapped up in his own thoughts, he may never perceive other people around. Both could be lucid and flying, but focused in different directions. Furthermore, it has been discovered that one person's lucidity is not necessarily the same as another's.

Even in waking life, we aren't always in the same state of consciousness. Comparison of dream reports not only reveals the recognized discrete differences but also the subtle states that we ignore in waking life, as we drift from being fully present to the situation to a daydream and back again. In which state is our physical body actually in motion? In which state does our physical body feel like it is in motion? In which state do we imagine it's in motion?

So, is a flying dream an out-of-body experience? Which body? Where? And when?

Go on to Out-of-Body in Bird Form

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