All Lucid and Non-Lucid Dreams are Multi-Layered.

Since long time I wanted to post this, but was doing more research to bring up more details.

I think that we never experience 1 dream at a time. When we dream we always have other dreams running in background. I counted that in average we experience at least 2-3 dreams at once. Meaning that in every dream or lucid dream there must be other dreams playing in background. All dreams are multi-layered.
I think that sometimes we experience up to 5 dreams, but I might be wrong with "5", because it is a complicated process to watch and it is pretty hard to interpret all of them at once, so I might be wrong with "5".

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It looks and feels like layers, but they have no borders, full-screen layers. Instead of simply switching between them, they are getting transparent when you switch. For example if you are having LD on 1st layer and you want to move to another layer, your 1st layer LD will fade away and will get kind of transparent, at the same time, dream in the background will start moving on top, replacing the old 1st layer LD, getting less and less transparent, while old 1st layer LD will completely fade to background. You can do it slowly or you can do it fast, it is a very easy process once you learn how to control it. You can switch really fast between layers with no stress at all, it is a very simple process. For example if you are having 3 layers, you can switch between them around 5-10 times per second if you wish to, but that makes it hard to interpret and understand them all at once. Once I tried to observe them all at once and I ended up with a pretty mixed and not logical recall.

It might be different for everybody, depends on level of awareness and experience in Lucid Dreaming. Since all my dreams are lucid, It was a big mystery for me, how those dreams are playing on the background?
I was looking for those answers and this is what I found. For example I am having around 3 layers, I am having my main, 1st layer LD, I know that in background I have others playing. I slowly try to focus on other dreams that are somewhere at the back, my main LD fades away, my new dream is arising. I observed how my other dream, that was always there in the background, is having its own scenario, its own flow. I tried not to interrupt it, it was a completely different dream, I was not even thinking of what is going there, I did not order that kind of scenario. So that dream was going on Autopilot, however when I completely switched to it, it became lucid. Things stopped going by its own way and I noticed how things started to change in that dream when I took control of it.
So I can assume that whenever we are having a Lucid Dream we are also having a Non-Lucid dream somewhere in the background, you might not call it Non-Lucid, it is more like on Autopilot. It is going its own way, naturally. Well maybe controlled by our subconscious mind, meaning that our subconscious mind can multi-task easy? Or not, maybe our subconscious mind is getting confused when controlling all those layers, that is why it looks so weird for us. Imagine your self doing 3 tasks at once, at some point you might get confused and do/say something stupid.

That is not all, we always have our old memories playing in REM dream. We are having our main, 1st layer dream/lucid dream, at the same time we are experiencing another dream on the background and at the same time we experience our past memories, mostly memories that are important, those that happened during last waking day, mixed with old memories from past days, old important memories. This layer improves our important memories and makes it stronger. You can also switch to it, you can observe it or you can turn it into another Lucid Dream if you wish to. From here we get those LD's/Dreams that remind us of past memories. You might not recall it, but when you are experiencing Lucid Dream that looks like some situation from your waking life, you most probably switched to this layer and modified it as soon as it became lucid. Or you may simply observe it like any other layer if you can, for me it is hard to hold my self from taking control of it.

That's it for now.

Can somebody please move this thread to - General Lucid Discussion

Thx.

This is very interesting - thanks for posting!

I think you may have hit upon something here that is little well known. I personally have not encountered this multi layering of dreams - but, it makes sense to me for a number of reasons:

- when you meditate in the day or just phase out/daydream you may come across random 'waking' hypnagogia, which I think shows that our 'subconscious' is dreaming all of the time, even in the day and we just need to 'tune in' in order to access it
- many believe that there exists several planes of existence, all multi layered and on top of one another (the astral, mental,buddhic etc) this may be crossing ideas but also may be corroborating what you are suggesting.
- this would help to make sense of information transferred and received within shared dreaming

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Originally Posted by floatinghead

This is very interesting - thanks for posting!

I think you may have hit upon something here that is little well known. I personally have not encountered this multi layering of dreams - but, it makes sense to me for a number of reasons:

- when you meditate in the day or just phase out/daydream you may come across random 'waking' hypnagogia, which I think shows that our 'subconscious' is dreaming all of the time, even in the day and we just need to 'tune in' in order to access it
- many believe that there exists several planes of existence, all multi layered and on top of one another (the astral, mental,buddhic etc) this may be crossing ideas but also may be corroborating what you are suggesting.
- this would help to make sense of information transferred and received within shared dreaming

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Yea, if applied to SDing, you might be having one LD and somebody is having another SD with you on another level, you might just miss it.
We could observe someone's past memories, we would not need to be there to see those places, we can simply find them in their dreams, even if they think that they did not dream of it, when they did.
Or even more insane idea, we could trigger those memories that we want to see from them, they would not even realize that we triggered needed memories.

Does that mean - a story is playing out in one dream - you switch over to another - and lets say only concentrate on that one consciously - that the other dream-story does meanwhile play itself out with - also you as an actor in it - a lucid actor, even.

And when then you put your conscious awareness back to that before dream - has it resulted in some scenario, that you do not know about yet - having concentrated on dream two all the time?
And then what - both you´s are now different - they have divergent experiences, thoughts, actions, memories - are you sure there is a lucid actor in all these dreams?
Would the memory of all of them reach "the main you" - the one that wakes up - and if - how?
Do you really think, this is common - I have never heard of an experience like this, to be honest*.
Like a five-layer dream-multiverse?

*not as a default-state, I haven´t - I believe, there are people, who are able to split their point of view into different scenarios.
But not by having to switch - especially do they not report any difficulties to take in all at once - simultaneously.
You describe a restriction concerning it..

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Originally Posted by StephL

Does that mean - a story is playing out in one dream - you switch over to another - and lets say only concentrate on that one consciously - that the other dream-story does meanwhile play itself out with - also you as an actor in it - a lucid actor, even.

And when then you put your conscious awareness back to that before dream - has it resulted in some scenario, that you do not know about yet - having concentrated on dream two all the time?
And then what - both you´s are now different - they have divergent experiences, thoughts, actions, memories - are you sure there is a lucid actor in all these dreams?
Would the memory of all of them reach "the main you" - the one that wakes up - and if - how?
Do you really think, this is common - I have never heard of an experience like this, to be honest*.
Like a five-layer dream-multiverse?

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Yes, all other dreams are playing out them self without conscious me as an actor, I think it might be our subconscious that plays the scenario. Also same subconscious participates in main dream that I am focused on.

And yes, I let other dreams play without my awareness and then came back there and saw a move in time, saw how scenario kept moving without me while I was focused on another dream, the scenario was moving in unpredictable direction, every time I came back I was surprised by what happened there because I did not think of that outcome.

For example I was having a Lucid Dream in a dream realm that I created my self. In my lucid dream I was trying to glitch through wall on Counter Strike 1.6 map - cs_mansion, on CT side. Before when I glitched through that wall I always felt down from the sky into the ocean and I wanted to do that again, I was running into the wall and tried to glitch through. At some point I stopped and noticed some memories that are out of that LD. Old times, horses, castles, kings, somebody's daughter and etc. I focused on those memories and moved to other dream, I then unintentionally moved many times between these two, I moved like 10 times per second, back and forth. While I was moving in between these two dreams, I saw another one going on too. It was similar to one of my daily activities.
I had the exact same question as you, what happens with other dream while I focus on main dream, does it play it self? I focused only on my first LD where I was glitching through wall in my own dream realm, I stayed there for a while and then went back to my other dream of old times. When I came back there, the whole village was dead, somebody killed that daughter, killed the whole army, destroyed the village, while King was alive and still did not knew about his daughter. I stayed there and found who killed those people, I killed them, I was already in control of that dream.

It is not the same dream going in two different scenarios, they are different dreams, each moving in their own scenarios. I do not know if it is possible to create a new dream realm and make it a copy of that other dream that you saw. I guess it is possible, but not sure how similar they would be.

Yes, all memories reach same me when I wake up. But it is hard to describe, depends how often you switch between them. If you switch too often it would be very mixed up recall, hard to interpret. If you would switch lets say every 5 minutes, you will recall them in 5 minutes bursts.
How? My subconscious mind is present in every of those dreams, also all those dreams are playing in my head. Whom else would they reach, me :)

Imagine it as 2 different stories written in text.
If you switch between dreams too fast, like once each second. You mix up two stories, you put them in a same txt file and every next word is from different story, like 1-2-1-2-1-2.. It will be very hard to interpret what happened when you wake up.
If you switch between dream every 5 minutes, then you mix those stories again, but this time you are mixing them every couple of sentences, it is much easier to understand them when you wake up. But still it is hard to see a logical story of both.
If you pick one of them and stay with it, you will recall most of it normally. You can switch for a few minutes to other dream to see what it is about, not to disturb your main chosen dream.

Also sometimes when I participate in one main dream and I do not switch to others anymore I still get some memories of other dreams, that perfectly answers how sometimes I recall during 2 hour nap more dreams then I recalled during 6-8 hour sleep. I do not know how to explain it, maybe if you relax and don't jump between them too fast, you let your subconscious mind to work better.

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Originally Posted by StephL

*not as a default-state, I haven´t - I believe, there are people, who are able to split their point of view into different scenarios.
But not by having to switch - especially do they not report any difficulties to take in all at once - simultaneously.
You describe a restriction concerning it..

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Yea I think it is common, I noticed this around 4 month ago. Took some time to understand how they work, but I think and feel that it is something that you can notice in your dreams and then improve.

The easiest way to see it in - DEILD's.

Very interesting - somehow I have a feeling, that it might not be a default state - but some sort of subconscious dream-control roaming through your inner realm and creating this.
Something you have set up within yourself - without intent to do so.
But we will see, if not really many more people have experienced something similar - or consciously created something similar.

Reminds me of science-fiction stories, where an AI (artificial intelligence) does have a main connection to several physical avatars - but they are - outside emergencies - acting on their own and creating their own story line to be fused later into the whole.
Temporarily shut off from the main core - on purpose - where was this - there is something hiding just behind the curtain of my memory..?

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Originally Posted by StephL

Very interesting - somehow I have a feeling, that it might not be a default state - but some sort of subconscious dream-control roaming through your inner realm and creating this.
Something you have set up within yourself - without intent to do so.
But we will see, if not really many more people have experienced something similar - or consciously created something similar.

Reminds me of science-fiction stories, where an AI (artificial intelligence) does have a main connection to several physical avatars - but they are - outside emergencies - acting on their own and creating their own story line to be fused later into the whole.
Temporarily shut off from the main core - on purpose - where was this - there is something hiding just behind the curtain of my memory..?

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Well, maybe. We know very little about how it all works, but that is how I feel and think it works :)

It is not like 3 completely different places. It is like one place where you are trying to watch 3 TV's at once, you have to turn to each to see the picture, but with your side vision you catch a glimpse of next TV.

I've experienced this layer phenomenon myself many times now. Here's a snippet from one such experience of mine:


DEILD "OBE-Style" Into Bedroom With 2 Overlayed Layers

TO BED: 01:21 AM
WAKE: 06:42 AM

TOTAL SLEEP TIME: 5 hours 21 minutes ( I went back to sleep afterwards for another 3 hours to get my total 8 )

1 DILD, 5 DEILD's

I'll only go into one of the DEILD exits/re-entries I experienced where I found something very interesting. I exited out of my physical body into the dream/astral copy of my bedroom and noticed the floor was clear of stuff, nothing there but carpet.

But then I felt our cat rubbing up against my leg but I couldn't see her. I started to pet her in the second invisible layer that was occupying the same space, and I notice my vision started to switch to the invisible layer that was overlayed.

I could also now see that this version of my room had a different arrangement, and I saw some of my old toys from when I younger on the floor. I could also now see our cat clearly running around me.

I also realized I could now see my dream/astral arms properly out in front of me, but before I couldn't. It was like my tactile sensations were tuned on one layer, and my visual senses were tuned on another, until I switched focus fully to the previously invisible layer with both tactile and visual, fully formed dream/etheric/astral body.

Had a LD where I appeared doing the same thing I did just before I went to sleep, realized that it came from one of my memories and switched to a new dream that was ongoing already. I tried to experience both dreams at the same time. I felt from one dream to another, after some time I managed to stay in between. I would be glad to describe how that felt and looked like, but it is really hard to put in words. This would sound odd, it looked like I was there and wasn't there at the same time. I had a pretty good recall of both dreams, also I had recall of 3rd dream that was there, but I did not play much attention to it. And it felt pretty tiring, had to comprehend both dreams at once.

When I was just in between those two dreams I opened my eyes, I did not have have intention to wake up, but I opened my eyes because I could not hold between two dreams anymore. It was unintentional wake up. I opened my eyes, but I was still there dreaming in my mind, I tried to move but I could not. I realized that something went wrong and I got into SP. The same moment I decided not to wait until SP goes off and I forced my self to move. I tried really hard, it felt like I was stuck in my bed and it took lots of effort to move my head up.
When I started to move, I had a very strange feeling like I am inside a centrifuge, not my body, but my mind and my head is inside a centrifuge. A Centrifuge and a pendulum working at the same time, I felt like something is rotating really fast and from time to time I had those short pushes to random side. If you ever hold a working hard drive from a computer in your hand and then you would move it and feel like it is rotating inside and you feel like it jumps to right and left when you move it. The more effort I made to move the faster it started to spin, finally I gathered all my efforts together and used my hands(elbows) to pull my self up and at the same time I pull my head with my body. I came to a sitting position but that felt like a long journey, I was shaking from right to left and went back to my bed because I thought I will loose my conscious, I felt very dizzy.

Went back to lying position and was thinking about it for some time, was a pretty fun experience. Never forced my self out of SP before :)

I would like to know if anyone had similar experience when woke up or tried to move during SP.

Since reading this thread a couple of days ago I've began noticing this in my recent dreams. At least it seems like what you are talking about. I seem to be in one dream plot and suddenly am in a completely new setting. for example:
I was in a dream where i was spider man and encountered some bad guys, the scene changed to one of 2 people talking about a girl that wasn't able to be with some guy for a certain reason. I then proceeded to know exactly who they were talking about and what they were relating to. Like a false memory that according to what you guys are saying may be because it happened in this other dream that got switched and even though i was not taking part of that dream actively i still took part of it and so had memories of it that came to me when i was actually taking part of it.

I've been thinking if this layers would explain why a dream transitions from one scene to another really quick?

I've experienced this a few weeks ago: Dream A and Dream B happened simultaneously

Dream A:
I am standing on a floating platform with a friend from school, in a large, dark chamber. We are having a conversation of sorts.

Then suddenly Dream B:
I am going to the crystal store with my mother.

When that dream ended I was back in Dream A, continuing the conversation.

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Originally Posted by Rodrodrod

Since reading this thread a couple of days ago I've began noticing this in my recent dreams. At least it seems like what you are talking about. I seem to be in one dream plot and suddenly am in a completely new setting. for example:
I was in a dream where i was spider man and encountered some bad guys, the scene changed to one of 2 people talking about a girl that wasn't able to be with some guy for a certain reason. I then proceeded to know exactly who they were talking about and what they were relating to. Like a false memory that according to what you guys are saying may be because it happened in this other dream that got switched and even though i was not taking part of that dream actively i still took part of it and so had memories of it that came to me when i was actually taking part of it.

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I also thought that this is the reason why we are having those memories that seemed to come from nowhere. Sometimes when I appear in some place in my LD I already have cetairn set of knowledge of who is who and what is happening there, I guess this is because I was having that dream somewhere in background.

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Originally Posted by Rodrodrod

I've been thinking if this layers would explain why a dream transitions from one scene to another really quick?

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I think Yes and No.
Yes, because we can switch really fast between them, that might look like a dream change.
No, because even if we are staying in one dream we can change it really fast, but here it is different. You can see that events are not happening on their own. You control every change, in case if it a lucid dream.
I am not sure how would it feel to see dream switch in a non-lucid dream. My guess would be that most probably we will comprehend that dream switch as something else, or a new dream. Also we might not recall what was the delay between those two dreams. Never mind, I get lost when I think of non-lucids.

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Originally Posted by Spaghetti

I've experienced this a few weeks ago: Dream A and Dream B happened simultaneously

Dream A:
I am standing on a floating platform with a friend from school, in a large, dark chamber. We are having a conversation of sorts.

Then suddenly Dream B:
I am going to the crystal store with my mother.

When that dream ended I was back in Dream A, continuing the conversation.

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Cool, what feelings did you have, was it harder to comprehend what is happening in both dreams?

Did you have any difficulties sorting A from B memories? I mean, did you have any confusion where exactly some fragments are from, A or B? Or it was a clear recall of both A and B?

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Originally Posted by flowofmysoul

Cool, what feelings did you have, was it harder to comprehend what is happening in both dreams?

Did you have any difficulties sorting A from B memories? I mean, did you have any confusion where exactly some fragments are from, A or B? Or it was a clear recall of both A and B?

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Hmmm. Well, I wasn't lucid so I only realised that this happened after I woke up.
I did not recall certain things (such as the topic of conversation etc.) but the events I did recall, I was able to sort into two separate dreams.
It's as if my brain stored the scripts for both dreams into different folders.

The difficulty I had was determining the exact point where I switched between A & B. But I know for sure that I started in A and ended in A.

Maybe I experienced both simultaneously but B had a shorter timeline than A.