Thread: Dream Recusrion and Quasi-Recursion

As I have been documenting my dreams in an offline journal away from dream views (and most of them having been inappropriate for discussion in a public online environment) I have come across some phenomenon and some dream themes that either emerged into my dream recently or only came to my awareness recently.

I have discovered that I have a lot of dreams that recurse. (For those who are unfamiliar with the term; Recursion is a term used in computer programming in where a method (a block of code) calls itself into action. It's difficult to explain unless you at least know basic programming but the important thing you need to know is that it's when something comes back to itself.) I call it this because I have a lot of dreams that seem to repeat with minor variations. Sometimes I might be lucid or semi lucid when the dream happens or the dream may simply proceed slightly differently. I might be offered a chance to try different actions or slightly different characters or events may be present.

One recent instance; and a good example is a dream I had not too long ago was a dream in where I had difficulty controlling my car and was repeatedly crashing into stuff, but by pressing the radio button on the dashboard I could rewind the dream by about a minute or so and prevent the instance of crashing my car. It was somewhat strange as the method of recursion was actually built into the dream itself and that does not have to be the case.

I have also discovered a phenomenon that I just call Quasi-Recursion but I'm looking for a better name for it. This is when you have a dream, then have a false awakening from that dream and begin to either tell a dream character about the dream or go about journaling the dream you just woke up from. (Though this is probably just a sign that I need to do more false awakening checks.)

So has anyone experienced either of these phenomenons and have any thoughts on the matter? Do you think recursion is an appropriate term for this?

I've definitely done the dream journalling and telling people about my dream after a false awakening gone unchecked.... My thoughts on it is pretty much just that it's frustrating as hell.

As for the car, is it really recursion if you don't crash the second time? I dont know programming so maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean by it. My first thought was that you were talking about recurring dreams... but that doesn't seem to be it?

I don't get recurring dreams much, I did when I was a kid. But now it's just similar places and scenarios but not similar enough to call recurring. Are WILDs starting with me getting out of bed and jumping out the window recurring?

No, I'm not talking about recurring dreams like a dream you have 4 out of 7 nights of the week you dream in some form of being late to school or whathaveyou. I'm talking about where a dream, or part of a dream repeats multiple times, in the same night, oftentimes with little-no variation.

Originally Posted by JadeGreen

No, I'm not talking about recurring dreams like a dream you have 4 out of 7 nights of the week you dream in some form of being late to school or whathaveyou. I'm talking about where a dream, or part of a dream repeats multiple times, in the same night, oftentimes with little-no variation.

Reminds me of a phenomenon that can occur when taking psychedelics, where you wind up in inescapable thought loops. Let me quote an article, "A subject with heightened excitation along these pathways would experience very complex and disturbing changes in reality, such as visual frame-skipping; memory loss; memory gaps; temporal distortion; time lags; obsessive thought loops; logic traps; the inability to match words to objects; the inability to maintain a train of thought over a few seconds long before it repeats itself; the simultaneous “filling up” or overload of all senses; and the overwhelming urge to shut-down, hide, or recede from reality."

Makes me wonder how related your experience is to these, and provided the fundamental brain mechanism is the same, and the extent of the differences one might expect from experiencing these effects while dreaming as opposed to while tripping.

I do something like that sometimes. The dream is following a certain track, and at some point I decide I'd rather have it a different way, so the dream rewinds to a logical point and start over with my intended change.

For example: I dreamt the other night that I was the best friend of a modern princess who where getting married off. When we rode into a town, modern and in cars, I decided that I'd rather it was a medieval setting. So the dream rewinded and we rode into a medieval town on horseback. This happened several times during the dream. I'm not really lucid in these dreams, I just have some sense of control, like if it is a story I'm telling my self in my head. Maybe its similar to what you descibe.

I also do the false awakening and journaling thing. It is very annoying

I think the first kind of dream has to do with the fact that I read a lot and also daydream very often. So I'm used to be able to change my mind about events in stories. My dreams are often like stories. So I think that's why I retain a little control and the ability to manipulate the dream and rewind, when I'm not happy with how things turn out.

I've quite frequently had “rewound” dreams, though I wouldn't quite call it recursion (perhaps more like looping, if anything). I mean, I may return to an “earlier” point in time, but I don't necessarily have a mental “stack” where I remember every state prior to “rewinding” and then jump back to it again to continue where I left off afterward. It's more like a browser history where you go back a few steps and then go on a new path, abandoning the old. Or maybe I missed or misunderstood something in the OP? But anyway, I often have dreams (nonlucid ones especially, oddly enough) where I'll somehow decide I have the ability to “rewind time” to either see something again or try to approach what just happened in a different way.

And I have had plenty of false awakenings of waking up and referring back on the previous dream, though this isn't what I would call recursion either. It's just a case of our remembering and referring back on something that happened to us earlier, which is something we regularly do in waking life.

No, you seem to be describing my experiences pretty well, and I did fail to elaborate on the mental "Stack" where I remember the state of the previous dreams. It's understandable that people would probably not experience this phenomenon in quite the same way that I do. I suppose another way to describe it is dying in a video game and respawning so you can try the section of the level again. I was just curious if anyone had any dreams that repeated multiple times in the same night.

So Here's another talking point; is this some level of lucidity? If you're in a dream that repeats or where you can go back are you on some level lucid. Time travel is not a part of our waking life and our subconscious should be aware of that. It seems all the more like a low level of lucidity if you can remember previous repeats of the same event and are aware of the phenomenon of recursion.

I went through a period with a lot of what I cal "re-dreaming". I believe it was because I was training my recall at the time. I went so far as to use mantras telling myself to remember my dreams, even the early ones in the night. As a result, I would either have another dream later of telling the earlier dream to someone, or I would just dream it again but with differences.

As with pulling up any memory, it actually gets changed with the recalling, because of any emotions or associations that new get attached to it - along with whatever new random elements get attached. This is actually known about memory - it isn't just a simple matter of 'remembering' something exactly as it happened, but it's distorted because your memory isn't perfect, and it gets mixed in with any new content that's strong on your mind at the time of recalling. In other words each time you remember something you subtlely change it. Sometimes not so subtly. Just as if you "do the same thing" every day after some time it will have changed somewhat, maybe without your even realizing it.

Often I find that the re-dreamed versions get more cartoonish or messed up, and they make it really hard to remember the earlier versions. Ive occasionally dreamed something 3 or maybe 4 times in a night. And understandably, they all get mixed up together and hard to untangle.

Recently though it happened again and I suspect in this case the re-dreaming was actually a better clarification of the themes of the original dream. Possibly because now I'm making a good effort to interpret and understand the meaning of my dreams.

It's all very interesting. As I said earlier, I've had dreams in which I've decided to “rewind” reality and try things differently. I've also often had dreams in which it felt like I had gone through the same experience (or a series of very similar experiences) more than once in a row. I also used to quite commonly (especially in childhood) wake up from an intriguing dream feeling a strong sense of deja vu, as if I had had that dream before. In the latter two cases, though, it's always impossible for me to tell for sure whether the experience really happened more than once, and I can never tell for sure how many times it occurred. That part always seems very fuzzy and shrouded in ambiguity, and there never seems to be a clear timeline for the events.

Interestingly, despite all this, I have yet to encounter any confirmed cases of literally have the same dream more than once. Even during my heaviest periods of dream journaling, the closest I've ever seen to this is having a dream later that alluded to events of a previous dream, but the dreams were still very different in content (with the latter dream being more like a sequel to the previous dream's plot).

As for whether “rewinding” dreams counts as a form of lucidity, I think it depends. I have quite a few “rewind” dreams that I consider nonlucid. I may have believed I had that ability (for some reason), but the usual evidence of even low-level lucidity just didn't seem to be there. Although “time travel” isn't a part of everyday waking life, it is quite commonly portrayed in fiction, so it's not surprising to me to see the concept crop up in nonlucid dreams, just as other devices of fiction and storytelling frequently do. Some of my nonlucid dreams seem to behave similarly to daydreams I have in waking life, where I'll tend to jump around or back up and repeat scenarios several times, exploring different possible variations and outcomes each time. It could be that some of my “time loop” dreams are simply a reflection of this nonlinear form of thought.

I've had this happen to myself a number of times.

I have had many dreams where I would play out some series of events, then suddenly find myself at some point in time that had occurred earlier in the dream. I would fully remember the series of events that were to occur, and I would either accept that they would inevitably happen and would go along with them, or I would actively try to carry out an alternative path. I don't think that I ever "rewound" more than once or twice.

I haven't had one of these dreams recently, so I don't have any examples to give, but I used to get these dreams every so often.

I also don't know how accurate the term recursion is to describe this.
If it is simple that the events of the dream are repeating, then "loop" would be a more apt term, if you want to base the terminology off of computer science. Recursion would imply that you have another instance of the dream nestled within the dream or something.

I have a few places in my dreams that recur. Or a few feelings or themes. Oddly they seem to be the parts I can never recall beyond "I was at that underground concert thing again" or "I was at that top secret class thing" (which is what they are).

Last night I had a dream where I went through the same scenario 3 times. It happened twice. Once in a while the same thing happens a few times in a row, or with slight variations in my own actions within the scenario (non lucid)

If I dream chain I will pop back into the location of a previous part of the dream chain, unintentionally

Some nights I have multiple dreams in the same place or along the same plot but it doesn't repeat into the next night

I think it would be nice if it were more consistent. My dreams seem very all over the place. The idea of "persistent realms" has sounded cool to me, but maybe thats much later in my dreaming career.

I have heard of some people getting recurring dreams very often and felt left out