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Mrs H. O. Arnold Forster – Studies in Dreams

Flying or gliding dreams, in whatever shape they occur, bring with them a keen sense of pleasure. Thinking about these dreams has certainly enabled me to dream them. When I had discovered the method by which bad dreams could be got rid of, I tried to find out how far I could consciously control dreaming by inducing a particular dream to recur. I found that if I steadily thought about such a dream as the flying dream it would soon come back. It will not, indeed, come exactly to order, but it will come after a short interval. I have never been able exactly to measure this interval; it may be of two or three nights, or it may be longer, varying very much according to the definiteness with which the waking mind has been concentrated upon the idea. Especially after talking about flying I find that I am certain very soon to dream of it.

I have tried also to see how far, by thinking of the dream, I could accomplish some definite result in it ; how far, for instance, I could perform some new and difficult act of flight. It was a long time before I could fly higher than five or six feet from the ground, and it was only after watching and thinking about the flight of birds, the soaring of the larks above the Wiltshire Downs, the hovering of a kestrel, the action of the rooks strong Avings, and the glancing flights of swallows, that I began to achieve in my dreams some of the same bird-like flights. After I had thought long and often about flying over high trees and buildings, I found that I was getting the power to rise to these heights with ever lessening difficulty and effort.