Even though I have had 372 of these lucid out of body dreams, I am completely stunned every time I experience one. Everything physically feels too real, looks too real, and emotionally… well… it’s just too real!

When these dreams of clarity steal my soul away into another universe the experience often causes me to question my basic sense of reality. More than once while standing in a desert dreamscape or in a crowded dreamed airport, a feeling uncoils in my gut that this is all just too damn real. This can’t be a dream! What am I doing here? I then start wondering could I have died and not remember? Could this be the place we go between lives? Once this dread is out of the bottle it can’t be poured back in no matter what I do. Often as if to taunt me the dream becomes even more convincing and surreal as my doubts grow. The power of all this can be unnerving. After all who want’s to be dead? Who wants to be a ghost? Sometimes I remember to ask the obvious life or death question out loud in my dream. When I do I always receive an answer and the reassurance it brings feels like the sweetness of a lover’s kiss. The “being” answering me is often invisible with godlike omnipresence—though more than once the answer has come from a person or guide standing next to me who turns and speaks words of blessed relief as casually as if remarking on the weather. The answer so far has been, “You are dreaming.” I suspect one day the answer will be, “You are dead.” What will I feel when I hear those words? Will I be terrified or relieved? Will I feel like I am leaving things undone or content? Will I believe those words or doubt them? After all it is only a dream!