Observations placeholder
Greenwood, Frederick - Imagination in dreams
Identifier
002001
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Another observation that appears to indicate a great similarity between some kinds of dreams and out of body experiences. Greenwood here may well be describing a lucid dream given the clarity with which he is able to recall it.
A description of the experience
Frederick Greenwood - Imagination in Dreams
If there are wildly extravagant dreams without sense or order, others take a course as natural and consistent as an episode in real life. The theory that dreams are always occasioned by mental disorder seems to require that they should always be disorderly too, but they are not. Many are not.
I cannot suppose that my experience differs from thousands of others ; and not rarely, but commonly, I have dreams which are throughout as consistent in scene and circumstance as any story. Sometimes they are romantic and surprising; but none the less they move from point to point on a perfectly rational course. The little drama proceeds quite naturally, with no incursions of the grotesque, no lapse into extravagance, but often with slight Defoe-touches; such as the novelist thinks himself happy in contriving to heighten the similitude of his story. . . . Contrivance is the word that would most certainly apply to the whole structure of such dreams were they the written work of the working day. . . . Another noteworthy characteristic of these dreams is that they seem to take easily from a store of invention distinct from that which we draw upon with more or less effort in our waking hours. '