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?

[The Narrator]

Wow that's a strange concept.. it completely goes against what I've read about lucid dreams being painless. In my opinion it would be down to you the effects of increasing lucidity. When you issued the command you were most probably expecting it to be painful, or maybe wondering whether it would hurt or worrying that it would be too extreme and thus: It was. The more you believe something in a lucid dream, the more real it becomes (but I don't know this for definite as I've never had a lucid dream, but that's what I've read of it).

[MrDoom]

Wow that's a strange concept.. it completely goes against what I've read about lucid dreams being painless. That's the mystery. I'm not sure if the lucidity in the lower dream was itself an illusion of the upper dream or not... Or if there was even a division of 'dream levels' to begin with. I certainly will not be reading THAT book before bed anymore! Recursive philosophy = metalogic = metadreams = earsparks = A Bad Thing. In my opinion it would be down to you the effects of increasing lucidity. When you issued the command you were most probably expecting it to be painful, or maybe wondering whether it would hurt or worrying that it would be too extreme and thus: It was. The more you believe something in a lucid dream, the more real it becomes (but I don't know this for definite as I've never had a lucid dream, but that's what I've read of it). Maybe. My only other dream which I remember thinking "I'm dreaming" had the same fade-to-void effect, but I woke up immediately afterwards. I'm still not used to the feeling. The fact that I spent some time in the Big Black Void shows improvement in that regard. I'm also not -too- clear about exactly what the upper-level dream was completely about. I just know that I fell asleep in it and dreamt. I don't think it was about anything else, though. It was peculiar, to say the least.

[psychology student]

I remember that I was once in a dream and tried to WILD. Suddenly the process took of and I started spinning and felt the force of motion. It turned out that I was actually in the process of waking up. I also read somewhere on lucidity.com that experienced luciders go to sleep to exit lucid dreams. But your question is a puzzling one?

[Bonsay]

I don't believe in dream levels, subdreams, dreams within dreams etc. Simply because once you are inside a dream reality is destroyed. You do not acquire a new brain with which you can dream a new dream... there is always only one brain and therefore one dream. Everything else is a result of false awakenings or going to sleep inside a dream. But sure, you can describe the dream by saying "dream inside a dream". Experiences like yours are just something we'll have to live with if we want to experiment with it dreams. Strange things happen, sometimes more uncomfortable then others. I don't know how you really felt, but once my jaw broke off and liters of blood started flowing out. I could taste it and it was even warm. Scary stuff.

[MrDoom]

Yes, I agree; and the basic notions of entropy in physics and information science agree as well; a computer for example could in theory reserve a portion of its memory towards simulating an identical computer, itself able to use its memory to simulate further computers. For any computer (real or simulated), the memory of all sub-computers are in fact a subset of its own memory. The 'real' computer ultimately holds all data at all lower levels. At some point memory constraints would become an issue and the system would not be able to continue. And in no instance would a simulation have memory greater than that of the simulator. A person can potentially preserve within their memory the structure of a few "embedded" dreams and hence create the illusion of metadreams, but if a person kept at it they'd eventually forget where they've come from and not wake back up to some particular "level" specifically. If one were LDing in this context, you could write yourself a map, I suppose, though the writing might spontaneously change and foil that. It'd get awfully confusing, too, if false awakenings were to happen in such a state. Looking around at some older threads, this isn't entirely uncommon amongst newer LDers. It is funny that it happened to me in the context that it did, however.