In the weeks after an addendum to an older text on an odd dream ([1]), I had an unusual number of new odd dreams (two of which are discussed briefly further down; ditto, two dreams that took place after the original publication; ditto, one much older dream).
A particular point of interest has been when I am and am not aware that I am dreaming, which, together with other issues around dreams and awareness of dreams, is the core topic of this page.
In the past, I have often had a sequence of growing awareness of the fact that I was dreaming as the dream progressed—especially, if the dream involved a very, very bad situation. This with the effect that the very, very bad situation was defused by my growing awareness.
A problem with “observing” dreams is that memories seem contingent on waking during the dream. (Although, I have had some experiences of remembering, or seeming to remember, the one dream or dream scenario while having another dream.) Correspondingly, this progression has always been one that moved towards waking, which raises questions about issues like causality. For instance, did I wake up because I understood that the dream was a dream or did I understand because I was waking up?
My most recent (remembered) dream shows an odd inversion of this pattern:
I was stuck in some end-of-computers scenario (maybe, end-of-civilization; my memory fails me), there were no more computers, no more Internet, all my writings were just gone, etc. As I and a small group of others were climbing out of a volcano (dreams!), it suddenly appeared that at least some computers were still intact, piece after piece of happy news followed, and by the time that we rested after exiting the volcano, it became clear that the whole thing had been a false alarm. After this very, very bad situation had already been defused, I (in unknown order) realized that it was a dream and woke up.
A few days earlier, I had a dream where I just woke up in the middle of the very, very bad situation (not something unique for me, but rare):
I had entered a building and was walking along a narrow corridor. I went through a door and, suddenly, somehow, found myself about to walk into something ravine-like, which crossed the building from one end to the other. I barely caught my step in time, but now found that I could not just step back, because behind me was a wall, I was standing on a very small ledge, and my only way back to the corridor was through stepping over a piece of empty air between ledge and door in a very dangerous, misstep-slightly-and-plunge-to-my-death, manner. Worse, I was so sleepy (within the dream) that I could barely hold my eyes open—while closing my eyes would make me fall asleep (still within the dream) and then down. At this point, I just woke up.
An interesting side issue is that the sleepiness-within-the-dream reflected a very similar sleepiness in real life. In fact, I was at the beginning, not the end, of my intended sleep when I woke up, in a scenario of having over-stretched the day, fallen asleep in a daze, and waking up much, much too early. (How early, I cannot estimate, but it was long before I had enough sleep to kill the sleepiness.)
In both cases, there were plenty of signs that would normally have helped me see through the dream. (Note e.g. the cellphone dream below.) Why I did not, I cannot say with certainty, but chances are that the reversal of the very, very bad situation in the first dream made me complacent, while I simply woke up too early from the second (the interval from landing on the ledge to waking up seemed quite short) and/or might have had mind too dulled by a real-life sleep deficit.
In [1], I also (probably) woke up without realizing that I had been dreaming. This is in so far unremarkable that there was no very, very bad situation at hand, while it seems that it is the presence of very, very bad situations that move me to think about what is going on and make me realize that a dream is taking place (compatible with my remarks on the first dream). On the contrary, that dream put me in a (in many regards) better place than in real life, including being first twenty, then ten, years younger and having a correspondingly longer remaining life expectancy. Likewise, if I find myself in bed with Jessica Alba, why should I take the risk of waking too early?
The development of that dream could conceivably be taken to imply that my mind was trying bring me “back to the future” of 2009, but this would be overly speculative.
Also note a high degree of complacency in the below dreams about odd visitors (while some potential danger was present, I was mostly interested in finding out what would happen, without any feeling of fear) and a film within a dream (the film was clearly fictional, regardless of whether I was awake or dreaming).
In 1999 and, maybe, parts of 2000, I worked in a project where we developers alternated as off-hours emergency support for an auction platform that we developed and maintained for another party. A typical scenario that resulted was that someone was relaxing at home, a company cellphone would ring, an upset platform owner would ask why the platform was down, and the unlucky emergency supporter would have to log in via a company notebook and a dial-up modem to troubleshot—all while knowing that there might be dozens or hundreds of platform users who could not enter auctions and make bids, and who might be tempted to move to the competition, which made every minute of downtime count.
Once, I was engaged in such emergency support, screwed up horribly, and saw myself being fired as soon as management got wind of the screw-up. (How I screwed up, I do not remember, but I do remember that sinking feeling of I-am-going-to-be-fired.) Then I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong with the cellphone, and I began to question its size—was a cellphone supposed to be this large? I realized that it was, in fact, several times larger than it should be, and that the only plausible explanation was that I was dreaming. (Something soon confirmed, because I woke up to a complete absence of both a downed platform and a horrible screw-up.)
A secondary point is how stress in the real world can affect dreams, how the stress from the additional support tasks might have been heavier than I perceived it to be, how the size of the cellphone might have reflected its importance to my life during the hours on emergency support, and similar. (However, as the many failed efforts of psychoanalysts show, the interpretation of dreams needs to be done with great caution when we move beyond the obvious—and, no, I have no reason to believe that the cellphone was a penis in disguise.)
The reader who did not deal with computers in 1999 should note that this was a very different time when it came to matters like Internet connections (including speed and reliability). Even the mere dial-up took a bit off time and sometimes failed, causing repeated attempts to be needed before I even had a connection. (Those who did deal with computers likely remember the very characteristic sequences of sounds that accompanied the dial-up.)
Ditto cellphones: The days of cellphones that were gigantic because of large batteries and other not-yet-sufficiently-miniaturized technology were gone, while the days of smartphones with enormous displays would not begin until quite a few years later.
Some time after the original publication, I dreamt that I was visited by four older teens or younger twenty-somethings, who were strangers but did have some plausible sounding pretense (what, I do not remember). I hesitated about letting them into my apartment, because I did not know them and because there are (very much in the real world) all sorts of stories about friendly seeming visitors who visit the elderly under false pretenses to e.g. commit theft. (Whether I, at fifty, was a likely target might be disputed, but who knows?)
After they had shown IDs, I did decide to let them in, while explicitly mentioning both the aforementioned risks and that I was not certain whether the events were real or just a dream. (The possibility of a dream was likely what tipped the scales, but I cannot say for certain after the fact.)
A lengthy conversation followed (on topics that I do not remember), while I did have to run some interference as one or two of them tried to stray.
In due time they left, and shortly thereafter I found a receipt for some object that they had “repossessed”, after which I drifted out of sleep.
Here there are several notable things:
While I likely was never certain that I was dreaming until I woke up, I clearly had an awareness of the possibility at a very early stage of the dream.
My actions in the dream were, in and by themselves, suspect and a potential indicator that I was dreaming or that something was otherwise “off”—chances are that I would have simply told them to take a hike in real life, maybe, even that I would not even have bothered to open the door.
To my recollection, I have never bought anything “on a payment plan”, which makes the premise of a repossession very odd. Likewise, chances are that the costs and effort involved in such a repossession, in real life, would have been entirely out of proportion relative the value of whatever object was repossessed, and with a fair chance that the same plan would have worked equally well with just two or three repo-teens. (However, this particular aspect only became clear towards the end of the dream.)
Another potential issue is whether this type of trickery would even be contemplated in real life, or whether a direct question along the pattern of “Please hand us back the X voluntarily, so that we do not have to go to court!” would have been more likely. (In real life, I would also expect any personal visit to be preceded by one or several letters. Whether such had been received within the dream universe, but before the dream, I do not know.)
In Germany, such repossession would likely be outright illegal, but my main impressions of repossession stem from U.S. fiction to such a degree that the U.S. norms, real or fictional, might be more relevant.
I also note the odd depictions of someone “being served”, where U.S. fiction invariably has a server “trick” the served into accepting an envelope that he likely would have accepted anyway, after which, more often than not, what amounts to “Ha! I just served you, you sucker!!! Nyah! Nyah!” follows (if rarely with so explicit formulations). This idea of trickery might well have affected the dream.
(And it astounds me how such serving, with neither a verification of identity per ID, nor a signature to confirm receipt, could be legally binding—even in fiction.)
An interesting clue is that I took a mental note of the extremely sharp image that I had of both the repo-teens and their IDs—likely sharper than my real-life view of objects even when using glasses/lenses and decidedly so when compared to my current attempts to get along without such aids to the degree possible. Unfortunately, I missed that this was a clue during the dream. (However, this also answers a question that I sometimes put myself when thinking back on dreams, namely, whether they actually are as realistic in terms of optics as often claimed. The answer, at least sometimes, is manifestly “yes”.)
Had I spent more time thinking on the dream during the dream, I might also have noted that the apartment that was mine-in-the-dream looked nothing like my actual apartment, and similar deviations. (I do not even own a tea service, e.g., but one figured in the dream and on my table—and a table of a type that I also do not even own.)
At an even later date (April 2025), I had a multilayered dream that dealt exactly with topics like when someone is dreaming or otherwise on a different “level of reality”, in a manner similar to e.g. “eXistenZ” (nested VR games; my dream also had a Cronenbergian feel) and “Inception” (nested dreams):
Most of the dream consisted of a film-within-the-dream and a dream-within-the-film-within-the-dream, and I will limit myself to an abbreviated version of the film portion. (Below, references to e.g. “dream” are to be understood as referring to the dream-within-the-film-within-the-dream, unless otherwise clear. The portions outside the film consisted of discussions of the film by various film viewers, which are only interesting in as far as they prove that we had a film-within-a-dream, as opposed to a straight dream with the same contents—and I was aware throughout that the film was not real, just as if I had watched a film in real-life.)
The premise was that a group of evil scientists were kidnapping innocents and putting them into some sort of dream state for nefarious purposes. While in this dream state, the victims shared a dream environment and could interact with each other. As one of the dreamers, within the dream, explained to a newcomer, it was possible to gain awareness of being-in-a-dream (as proved by his own awareness), but that it was impossible to leave the dream state by waking up—any apparent success was just a “false awakening”.
For some time, in the film but outside the dream, the evil scientists tried to break the dream state, but even they failed. More continual attempts by the dreamers also failed.
Towards the end of the film, the dreamers are walking in a group down the street when, out of nowhere, a big concert piano drops onto one of them, squashing him—something absurd even by the standards of the dream, up till then. (Indeed, even by the standards of dreams, more generally, this seems less like a dream event and more like a cartoon event.) A moment later, the same happens to a second dreamer.
The film now shifts considerably (leaving unclear whether the remainder are also hit by pianos), with the potential implication that these extreme events are proof of something or someone somehow breaking the dream. The dreamers are next shown separately in various settings (at least one involving someone resting in a bed), and a happy ending appears to have been reached. Then nightmarish events follow for each of the dreamers, including one case of a monstrous floating head, pointing to an ongoing dream and confirming the earlier claims about “false awakenings”. (Alternate explanations, e.g. some supernatural force, are possible but more far-fetched. They are also ruled out by the conclusion of the film.)
The film moves out of the dream(s) and shows a TV-broadcast-within-the-film, where one of the evil scientists (to boot, the one most humane seeming during earlier phases) demonstrates how the dreamers and their brain power are used for weather predictions (or some such), with a message of roughly “Well, we cannot wake them, but at least their sleep is not wasted!”. (Hereabouts, both the film and the surrounding dream end.)
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