The World of Dreams

by Havelock Ellis

No dreams, indeed, are so vivid and so convincing as dreams of flying; none leave behind them so strong a sense of the reality of the experience. Raffaelli, the eminent French painter, who is subject to the dreaming experience of floating in the air, confesses that it is so convincing that he has jumped out of bed on awaking and attempted to repeat it. 'I need not tell you,' he adds, 'that I have never been able to succeed.'[102] Herbert Spencer mentions that in a company of a dozen persons, three testified that in early life they had had such vivid dreams of flying downstairs, and were so strongly impressed by the reality of the experience, that they actually made the attempt, one of them suffering in consequence from an injured ankle.[103] The case is recorded of an old French lady who always maintained that on one occasion she actually had succeeded for a few instants in supporting herself on the air.[104] No one who is familiar with these dreaming experiences will be inclined to laugh at that old lady. It was during one of these dreams of levitation, in which one finds oneself leaping into the air and able to stay there, that it occurred to me that I would write a paper on the subject, for I thought in my dream that this power I found myself possessed of was probably much more widespread than was commonly supposed, and that in any case it ought to be generally known.

People who dabble in the occult have been so impressed by such dreams that they have sometimes believed that these flights represented a real excursion of the 'astral body.' This is the belief of Colonel de Rochas.[105] César de Vesme, the editor of the French edition of the Annals of Psychical Research, has thought it worth while to investigate the matter; and after summarising the results of a questionnaire concerning dreams of flying, he comes to the conclusion that 'the sensation of aerial flight in dreams is simply a hallucinatory phenomenon of an exclusively physiological [he means 'psychological'] kind,' and not evidence of the existence of the 'astral body.'[106] The fact, nevertheless, that so many people are found who believe such dreams to possess some kind of reality, clearly indicates the powerful impression they make.

All my life, it seems to me, certainly from an early age, until recently, I have at intervals had dreams in which I imagined myself rhythmically bounding into the air, and supported on the air, remaining there for a perceptible interval; at other times I have felt myself gliding downstairs, but not supported by the stairs. In my case the experience is nearly always agreeable, involving a certain sense of power, and it usually evokes no marked surprise, occurring as a familiar and accustomed pleasure. On awaking I do not usually remember these dreams immediately, which seems to indicate that they are not due to causes specially operative at the end of sleep, or liable to bring sleep to a conclusion. But they leave behind them a vague yet profound sense of belief in their reality and reasonableness.

Dream-flight, it is necessary to note, is not usually the sustained flight of a bird or an insect, and the dreamer rarely or never imagines that he is borne high into the air. Hutchinson states that of all those whom he has asked about the matter 'hardly one has ever known himself to make any high flights in his dreams. One almost always flies low, with a skimming manner, slightly, but only slightly, above the heads of pedestrians.'[107]

Beaunis, from his own experience, describes what I should consider a typical kind of dream-flight as a series of light bounds, at one or two yards above the earth, each bound clearing from ten to twenty yards, the dream being accompanied by a delicious sensation of easy movement, as well as a lively satisfaction at being able to solve the problem of aerial locomotion by virtue of superior organisation alone.[108] Lafcadio Hearn, somewhat similarly, describes, in his Shadowings, a typical and frequent dream of his own as a series of bounds in long parabolic curves, rising to a height of some twenty-five feet, and always accompanied by the sense that a new power had been revealed which for the future would be a permanent possession.

The attempt to explain dreams of flying has led to some bold hypotheses. Freud characteristically affirms that the dream of flying is the bridge to a concealed wish.[109] I have already mentioned the notion that dreams of flight are excursions of the 'astral body.' Professor Stanley Hall, who has himself, from childhood, had dreams of flying, argues, with scarcely less boldness, that we have here 'some faint reminiscent atavistic echo from the primeval sea'; and that such dreams are really survivals—psychic vestigial remains comparable to the rudimentary gill-slits not uncommonly found in man and other mammals—taking us back to the far past when man's ancestors needed no feet to swim or float.[110] Such a theory may accord with the profound conviction of reality that accompanies these dreams, though that may be more easily accounted for; but it has the very serious weakness that it offers an explanation which will not fit the facts. Our dreams are of flying, not of swimming; but the ancestors of the mammals probably lived in the water, not in the air. In preference to so hazardous a theory, it seems infinitely more reasonable to regard these dreams as an interpretation—a misinterpretation from the standpoint of waking life—of actual internal sensations. If we can find the adequate explanation of a psychic state in conditions actually existing within the organism itself at the time, it is needless to seek an explanation in conditions that ceased to exist untold millenniums ago.

My own explanation was immediately suggested by the following dream. I dreamed that I was watching a girl acrobat, in appropriate costume, who was rhythmically rising to a great height in the air and then falling, without touching the floor, though each time she approached quite close to it. At last she ceased, exhausted and perspiring, and I had to lead her away. Her movements were not controlled by mechanism, and apparently I did not regard mechanism as necessary. It was a vivid dream, and I awoke with a distinct sensation of oppression in the chest. In trying to account for this dream, which was not founded on any memory, it occurred to me that probably I had here the key to a great group of dreams. The rhythmic rising and falling of the acrobat was simply the objectivation of the rhythmic rising and falling of my own respiratory muscles—in some dreams, perhaps, of the systole and diastole of the heart's muscles—under the influence of some slight and unknown physical oppression, and this oppression was further translated into a condition of perspiring exhaustion in the girl, just as men with heart disease may dream of sweating and panting horses climbing uphill, in accordance with that tendency to magnification which marks dreams generally.[111] We may recall also the curious sensation as of the body being transformed into a vast bellows or steam engine, which is often the last sensation felt before the unconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide gas.[112] When we are lying down there is a real rhythmic rising and falling of the chest and abdomen, centring in the diaphragm, a series of oscillations which at both extremes are only limited by the air. Moreover, in this position we have to recognise that the circulatory, nervous, and other systems of the whole internal organism, are differently balanced from what they are in the upright position, and that a disturbance of internal equilibrium always accompanies falling.

It is also noteworthy (as, indeed, Wundt has briefly remarked) that the modifications produced by sleep in the respiratory process itself tend to facilitate its interpretation as a process of flying. Mosso showed that respiration in sleep is more thoracic than when awake, that it is lengthened, and that the respiratory pause is less marked.[113] That is to say that both the aerial element and the actual rhythmic movement of the ribs become accentuated during sleep.

That the respiratory element is the chief factor in dreams of flying is clearly indicated by the fact that many persons subject to such dreams are conscious on awaking from them of a sense of respiratory or cardiac disturbance. I am acquainted with a psychologist who, though not a frequent dreamer, is subject to dreams of flying, which do not affect him disagreeably, but on awaking from them he always perceives a slight flutter of the heart. Any such sensation is by no means constant with me, but I have occasionally noted it down in exactly the same words after this kind of dream.[114] It is worth while to observe, in this connection, how large a number of people, and especially very young people, associate their dreams of flying with staircases. The most frequent cause of cardiac and respiratory stimulation, especially in children, who constantly run up and down them, is furnished by staircases, and though in health this fact may not be obvious, it is undoubtedly registered unconsciously, and may thus be utilised by dreaming intelligence.

There is, however, another element entering into the problem of nocturnal aviation: the state of the skin sensations. Respiratory activity alone would scarcely suffice to produce the imagery of flight if sensations of tactile pressure remained to suggest contact with the earth. In dreams, however, the sense of movement suggested by respiratory activity is unaccompanied by the tactile pressure produced by boots or the contact of the ground with the soles of the feet. In addition, also, there is probably, as Bergson also has suggested, a numbness due to pressure on the parts supporting the weight of the body. Sleep is not a constant and uniform state of consciousness; a heightened consciousness of respiration may easily co-exist with a diminished consciousness of tactile pressure due to anaesthesia of the skin.[115] In normal sleep it may, indeed, be said that the conditions are probably often favourable to the production of this combination, and any slight thoracic disturbance even in healthy persons, arising from heart or stomach, and acting on the respiration, serves to bring these conditions to sleeping consciousness and to determine the dream of flying.