Okay, what the heck happened here? :)

[MrDoom]

Hello! First post! I'm a new LDer (or at least, I'm attempting to become one!), and I've been keeping a journal for about a week now. My dream recall has skyrocketed and I reliably remember at least one (mostly whole) dream per sleep session. I -think- I've had two lucid dreams so far, though both have ended before anything interesting became of them. Anyways, I want to ask about a strange dream I had just this last night, particularly if anyone else has had a similar dream pattern occur. Before I talk about the dream, here's a bit of necessary background: I take a keen interest in (and will be studying when I go to university) computer science, logic, programming, cybernetics/system theory, information science, artificial intelligence, those sorts of things. A few days ago I began reading a book by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It's about recursion, self-reference, and metalogic, and how these relate to intelligence. In between chapters are written humorous little dialogues styled after those of Lewis Carroll which introduce the ideas present within the next chapter. One dialogue in particular introduces the notion of recursion, self-reference, and hierarchal levels of abstraction: the story (written in a physical book, no less) contains a book in which the characters read a story about themselves, in which a painting exists which the characters travel into, in which exists another book containing a story about the characters within the painting. All along the whole work cross references itself in between the stories-within-stories. Needless to say, it's a hypnotic read. You get lost in it, forget where the protagonists are, and really don't know where they're going. Ironically, Hofstadter ends the entire thing while the story is still in it's second "layer": the tale you originally began reading is intentionally never resolved. Another part of the book deals with Propositional Calculus, and introduces a simple formal system which encapsulates the ideas expressed therein. The boring and irrelevant (unless you're like me ) issues aside, a derivation constructed from the rules of this formal system itself has logical boundries within itself, that can also be nested within one another, like a story within a story. Furthermore, theorems derived at a higher level within this architecture can be pulled down into deeper, nested level and have application; however the reverse is not true: nested theorems cannot be applied at a more global level within the system. This is nothing I didn't already know informally, but it did solidify and crystallize my notion. Ok, the boring part is over now. Now to get philosophical. I read these parts of the book yesterday, and I was rather amused at the thought of how this applies to dreams (as I am making an effort towards lucidity, after all). I was rather intrigued and amused at the notion of falling asleep within a dream, and having a dream inside of that one; or even, falling asleep and dreaming inside of a dream that is inside the "main" dream. However, due to the inherent instability and internal inconsistency of dreams, I doubt such a hierarchy could be maintained for very long, or for very many nested levels of hierarchy. The mind can easily forget where it is at within such a nested structure, and it is likely that the structure would melt away and one would never wake back up into a previous dream, or the person would wake up (for real) inside of a deeper, more nested dream, leaving all the higher ones essentially resolved (like the end of the story I mentioned above!). Furthermore, no inherent rule exists within the world of dreams (if it can be said any rules exist at all!) which really enforces hierarchal structure and separation of that structure into discrete layers. What happens in one layer of abstraction should be able to potentially effect all others. If one becomes lucid in a sub-dream, one should be naturally lucid at all levels of the dream hierarchy. Or perhaps one could dream of the illusion of lucidity, perhaps, and not really be lucid..? This is probably just a complex way of stating the already obvious: that dreams are indeed strange and do not require internal logical consistency. I tend to do that a lot. In any case, it was an interesting notion to toy with. I am still learning about lucid dreaming, too, so I still have a ways to go. I was reading the aforementioned book last night before I went to bed. I had trouble sleeping, as I kept tossing and turning and never really finding a comfortable position. I wanted to sleep, of course, as it might have been a breakthrough in my lucidity efforts. I used to not like going to sleep, viewing it as idle time wasted, but I've come to look forward to it. I was almost, paradoxically, attempting to will myself into sleep. I used my memnonics to lull myself and recall a dream. Eventually, I succeeded, and fell asleep. No doubt that the book, my musings on meta-dreams, and my touble going to sleep affected my dream, because the dream was about going to sleep. In my dream, however, I fell asleep, and dreamt another dream, within that dream, in the same phenomena that I had reflected upon earlier that day. In THAT (sub)dream, I became aware through dreamsigns that I was in fact dreaming. The surroundings faded away to black, and I found myself in the once-before-aquainted Big Black Void. Well, it wasn't -quite- a void, for I, or at least my consciousness, was in there. And there were dark grey words in various English scripts which I could not make out. I squinted to try to read them. I am not sure whether it was a lack of focus in my vision, or perhaps the letters themselves were unstable. I had read that many people use verbal commands to control their dreams. I decided to increase vividness, and thus said aloud, "Increase Lucidity one million percent!" My hope what that an increased awareness would help me see the letters better. Instead I got something which I can only describe as "earsparks". Imagine a lit sparkler (the sparkle itself) inside each of your ear canals, without the heat or burning, with the sparks beating against your eardrums. It was a rather painful "noise" that I felt inside of my head. I tried to take back the million-percent lucidity increase and said, "Normalize Ludicity now!" No effect. I then said, "Void now!", perhaps to clean the slate and make the earsparks go away with the words. No effect. The pain is a sound, perhaps..? "Silence now!" Still nothing. I woke up from my dream-within-a-dream back into the plain dream in my dream-bed, and still had the earsparks. By then I had lost lucidity. I put my fingers into my ears, trying to make the earsparks go out. I woke up (for real) not long after. Lesson learned: don't increase lucidity by ludicrous levels. My question is, has anyone else had a similar dream, of dreams within dreams? Have they ever become lucid at some particular level, and then have the lucidity transfer between levels (or maybe the level hierarchy just melts away and becomes irrelevant)? And does anyone else get negative effects from messing with the dream's "control panel" too arbitrarily?