I've never even seen Wall-E. I've just always had my head up in the air. Here's a dream I had twenty years ago (notice the double-spacing after each period; my pre-computer style of typing):
Spoiler:
I dreamed I was flying. Getting started was not too much trouble. I began simply by leaping into the air. With each bounce I felt myself less and less constrained by Earth’s gravity. Then suddenly I was doing it — I was airborne!
The feeling was exhilarating. Higher and higher into the air I went with each jump. The thought occurred to me that if I really pushed hard, I could shoot off right into space. I did so, and in the next moment I was tumbling wildly, not sure which way was up or down.
I struggled to find the ground, my only point of reference. There it was — off to one side over my head. I twisted to best orientate myself to the world as I had always known it. Although I worked quickly, by the time I completed my maneuvering, the curvature of the Earth’s horizon was plainly evident. Then equally as abruptly the entire globe came into view. With amazing rapidity the entire planet shrunk from view until I could no longer discern its place among the stars.
The sky looked black beyond imagination. I was now tumbling wildly through an intergalactic vortex at incredible speed. Entire stars were flying past me like snowflakes in a blizzard.
I began to feel a certain amount of apprehension. How would I ever find my way back? Space is a huge place, and even if I could find my own sun, what were the odds that, by going off into any one direction, I could hope to run into even one of its major planets, much less Earth? Yet, I felt at the same time that the real secret to finding my way back was simply to want it badly enough.
But did I want it? There was a certain feeling; was it curiosity? I don’t really know. I felt a strange longing to continue my odyssey — a certain and unfathomable sense of serenity about the whole affair — a mysterious feeling that whatever lay on the other side of this strange journey was at the least equally or even more desirable than my life on Earth. But this journey was for another day. I opened my eyes. I was back home. For now.
“This just had to be a near-death experience. What else could it be?”
I pondered the meaning of this strange dream. I knew that once I related it to people, many would have very diverse opinions. Some would ask me if I had put too much red pepper on the previous night’s pizza. Others would be sure that I had undergone an out-of-body experience (some would wonder if an out-of-mind experience was more likely). Others still would wonder if it had been a dream at all, but maybe something more. Like a near-death experience, perhaps.
Hmmm… Flying through space without some form of environmental controls — i.e., a space suit — normally would be a major concern for most people, and yet the hostile surroundings of interstellar space seemed to have no effect. How else could I account for that startling detail except to say that I must have been in my “astral body?” The dark vortex through which I traveled; what was that if not a “tunnel?” The sense that something good awaited at the end of my ride; was that not the “light at the end of the tunnel?” This just had to be a near death experience. What else could it be? Something had, beyond doubt, happened to me during the night, and I had, for a brief period during those nocturnal hours, “crossed over” to the other side.
But should I tell anyone? I realize that a few skeptics have other ideas about what causes people to undergo near death experiences. There are some scientists, for example, who believe that at the point of death, certain chemicals are released into the brain — similar to LSD — producing powerful hallucinations that survivors of such events interpret in spiritual terminology.
Dr. Carl Sagan has another hypothesis. He believes that, since dying is unlike anything else we experience in its emotional intensity, our minds, in their never-ending struggle to find connections between seemingly isolated phenomena, relate this experience to the only other thing in life to rival dying in its emotional impact: birth. Consider, he says, how that both experiences involve an occurrence of being ripped away from the world we know — traveling down a dark tunnel — beholding light at the end of the tunnel — finally, sensing a welcoming presence on the other side of the journey.
Upon reflection, however, I have come to consider one other possible explanation for the events of that night. Earlier that evening, on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” I had watched as Dr. Julian Bashir, the resident physician on board the space station, had (to put it discreetly) joined the “Zero-G Club,” and, well…
Have you ever incorporated elements of a television show into your dreams?