I sing the praise of dreams. Daily will I give thanks to the Highest for the freeing of the spirit of man from the labour and sorrows that are his by day. For dreams, the delight of the world, I will give praise.

Besides the formula which was given in the last chapter, which conveys to the dream mind the message that the dream is only a dream which can be altered or ended at our pleasure, there is another which I have also found to be successful in getting rid of dream fears. This method is described in the following notes on flying dreams which are taken from the notes that I have made and kept for many years.

Flying dreams form only one variety of the many happy dreams that have added so much pleasure to my life. I have chosen this class of dreams to speak of more particularly because they furnish the examples that I can most easily quote of the process of dream control, and of the use of a formula in obtaining that control. They show also that by an act of will, and by some concentration of thought upon them, they may be cultivated, with the result that greatly heightened dream powers, such as the perfected faculty of dream flight, may be acquired without any serious difficulty, and with great advantage to ourselves.

My first recollections of flying dreams go back to when I was a very little child, when we were living in London. The flying dream, when it first came, was connected with the sensation of fear. Half-way up the dimly lighted staircase that led to our nursery a landing opened on to a conservatory. The conservatory by day was a sunny place full of the pleasant-est associations, but with the coming of darkness its character changed altogether. In the night-time anything might be imagined to lurk in its unlighted corners; decidedly it was safest always to hurry past that landing, and even past the other landings which, though they did not open on to any such dark spots, were not places where a child cared to linger alone. In some of the first dreams that I can remember I was on that staircase, fearful of something which I was especially anxious never to have to see. It was then that the blessed discovery was made, and that I found that it was just as easy to fly downstairs as to walk; that directly my feet left the ground the fear ceased - I was quite safe; and this discovery has altered the nature of my dreams ever since. At first I only flew down one particular flight of steps, and always downwards; but very soon I began to fly more actively.

If anything began to alarm me in my dreams, I used to try to rise in the air, but for some years I was unable to rise to any great height, or to fly with real ease. It was only gradually that the flying dream ceased to be connected with the sensation of fear and escape. For a long time it was often an effort to fly; every year, however, made it easier and more sure. By degrees "bad dreams" left me. When once I realised that I could always escape by flight, the sense of the something unknown, to be escaped from, became a thing of the past; but the power of flying grew and has steadily improved all my life.

The actual process by which I fly in my dreams has always been the same since the earliest days when I first fluttered down the nursery staircase. From what others have told me, there seems to be a good deal of variety in the maimer in which different people fly. By giving a slight push or spring with my feet I leave the ground and fly without further effort, by a simple act of volition. A slight paddling motion by my hands increases the pace of the flight, and is used either to enable me to reach a greater height, or else for the purpose of steering, especially through any narrow place, such as through a doorway or window. If I am at all fatigued by a long flight, this motion of the hands is of great assistance and gives confidence and increased power.

Differing slightly from the flying dream is the gliding dream, which is also a very common and widely shared experience. In this dream the feet are not used and do not move at all; I glide a few inches above the ground, as though I were walking in the ordinary way, but without any effort.

Flying or gliding dreams, in whatever shape they occur, bring with them a keen sense of pleasure.

Even when such a dream is full of varied incident or adventure, it is always restful and refreshing. I awake reluctantly from it with a sense of regret that it should be over. Its outlines are generally very clear-cut and easily recalled to memory, and it is hardly ever inconsequent, as some dreams are. I have no doubt that the increased power of flight which I now enjoy, and which has been a matter of steady growth, is to be attributed to the system that I have described. 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 wings, 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.