This morning I looked down towards my bed and was very startled
to see a guy lying on my bed asleep. An estimated fraction of a second later
I realized to my relief that I was the guy asleep on my bed.
As if to verify my location or presence I looked in a mirror
adjacent to where I was standing and saw myself or my image
smiling slightly in recognition. Then I either awakened
or the dream immediately ended. The mirror actually exists in that location
in the consensual spacetime world.

At first after awakening I was sure I understood the dream
as "just a non-lucid dream that I had a lucid dream."
I was asleep and dreamed that I was asleep
and while asleep in my dream, I experienced
a lucid dream within my ordinary non-lucid dream,
i.e., a dream in which I realized that I was asleep and dreaming.

The more I analyzed it the less certain I became about it.
Had I literally dreamed a dream within a dream,
a meta-dream in which the second order dream was a lucid dream?
This is the only dream I can recall having in which there were two copies of me,
not counting the image of me in the dream mirror.

I've had ordinary lucid dreams in which by definition the dreamer is aware
that he is dreaming, while remaining asleep.
In one I was being pursued and felt in danger.
Suddenly, although still asleep, I realized I was only dreaming.
The ‘I’ within the dream thought that this experience is only a dream,
so you can easily escape the danger by just flying away!
Upon awakening I distinctly remembered having thought within my dream
that I wasn't sure that I really could fly away,
because the scenery of hills, grass, trees and sky around me looked so real.
But I simply leaped into the air and once aloft effortlessly flew away.
Even while flying I remember thinking, " … but the world looked so real,
as if I were awake."

But in all previous lucid dreams or "out of paradigm experiences"
there was only one dream copy of me and I‘ve never before looked down to see myself lying asleep and dreaming upon the bed,
and then had the ‘awake’ copy of me in the dream verify its identity
in a dream mirror, corresponding in location perfectly to a real mirror.

This is an unembellished description of my experience as I remember it. Apparently even my dreams are convoluted sometimes.
Perhaps I experienced a so-called “out of body experience”, an OOBE,
while asleep. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition calls this developing a dream body. But maybe I only dreamed that I had an OOBE.
As Chuong-Tzu wrote, "Am I a butterfly dreaming
that I'm a man or a man dreaming that I'm a butterfly?"

May-Tzu