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Dreams About And / Or Within Other Dreams

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garrick92

Guest
I had the oddest dream last night, in which I was doing something (it's not important to the tale) that reminded me of something I had previously done and could do again in this new situation.

The thing is, the 'something I had previously done' had occurred in a dream two years previously.

This is not the first time this has happened -- I have a sort of dream narrative "parallel life" emerging in unpredictable episodes.

Sometimes I'll dream that I'm revisiting the scene of an old dream, and observing how things have changed there since the first time I dreamt about the place.

Does anyone recognise what I'm describing, or have you experienced similar?

(Anthony Burgess's first wife claimed to be able to pick up last night's dream where she had left off on wakening, so would dream an entire 'adventure' in a coherent narrative over the course of a week or so, which sounds like an extreme example of the sort of thing I'm describing.

Does this ring any bells with anyone? Is there a name for it?
 
I don't know a name for it, but it happens to me all the time. Because I've lived so many different places, I sometimes have to deliberately check through memory to see whether a place I've "revisited" in a dream was a place I'd lived in a different dream, or a real former residence. I have a city I return to over and over, a pleasant vibrant pedestrian-friendly place with a clean river; and a nightmare city which at first seems to be the same one, except that my favorite places have been condemned or built over, the river has been paved, and the traffic is so bad I can't get across the street.
 
There are such things as recurring dreams, I used to get them all the time as a kid, with behaviour (like gliding a few feet above the ground) I could carry over into different dreams too.
 
I've got that sort or parallel universe thing going in some of my dreams. Where events in one pick up on something from a previous night.

I do have fairly consistent dream cities and towns, one where I have a flat, that's the mirror image of a place I used to live. There's an alternate version of the town where I grew up as well that has features in the dreamscape that don't exist in the real world, but are always there in the dreams.
 
Same here, there's at least 3 or 4 different urban locations that I've 're-visited' after several months or even years, in some cases entering shops and noting how they've changed. On the whole, my dreams have always been more focused on environments than actions, so it's probably not surprising that they re-appear periodically.
 
I usually return to familiar fictional places in my dreams and seem to know my way around .. usually a huge crumbling Victorian building that changes slightly each time, I think because I once lived in one (renting a flat). I've travelled around entire towns that don't exist and returned to them at different stages, sometimes people I know are in them and sometimes complete strangers are thrown into the mix. I can't wait untill technology advances to the stage where we can all record our dreams to re-watch them and show them to other people. Youtube would be out of a job :lol: ..... taking that a step further, forget film directors in the future ... we'd have the top ten famous dream directors instead! :D
 
Same here.

I have a complete Dream World with consistent locations, people, various apartments that I've lived, and places I've worked.

There are also tunnels that go all over the place so that if I'm in one location and quickly want to get to another, I just need to find the tunnel entrance.

I've also noticed memories that carry over too. I'll think, "Oh, last time I was here, [such-and-such] happened. I should be on the lookout."
 
I often have dreams that, though aren't the same place seem to be 'based' on the same place, or there is some kind of antecedent for them, such as...
1) I'm on holiday with my parents - unsure where - it's hot and sunny. The kind of heat you only get in memories ofchildhood summers - if that makes sense. I've gone off for a walk on my own, and discover that I am able to access some kindof field that will lead me to a clump of trees (usually too small to be called a wood). There's a feeling of 'I'm not meant to be there' but also a feeling of great joy and happiness that I am there - and also that I am back there as well - as if I felt I would never have seen that place again. When I wake from these dreams, I am sure there is some waking life origin for them, as the places all have a sense of overwhelming familiarity about them, even though they do differ slightly from dream to dream.
2) A flooded hilly landscape, usually under bright winter sun. A similar sense of joy to the one above, and when I wake the same sense of familiarity, as if I do know the place I have dreamt about (even though the flooded landscapes do seem to differ from dream to dream).
 
I often have dreams in which i revisit the same locations over and over again and the places are sort of copies of places i know in ‘real life’ but different in odd ways so i dream of my current house but it’s in the midst of deep countryside for example. It’s always very consistent so there is obviously a deep bank of dream memories to draw on. Or are these memories completely imagined as part of the dream? So we dream the previous visits as part of the current one?
 
The answer must be to start writing this stuff down so one would know about recurrent dreamscapes. Note to self....
 
I have had a dream where I wake up.
Except I am still dreaming, and then I genuinely wake up.

I have had a dream where I have revisited a landscape I had only previously visited in a dream.
 
I've rarely had dreams of waking up within a dream that continued, and they were very unpleasant dreams.
Recurring dream landscapes, which exist only in my dreams, have been frequent, though the ones I used to dream about are places I no longer go in my dreams. There are new landscapes now.
I often have hypnagogic visions of beautiful green parks, which are very pleasant.
I once dreamed I was riding a bike through a long, long tunnel, to emerge very far from my starting place. It was an empty, eerie tunnel, even though well lit. It was just like being all alone in a public place after hours. The whole dream was very strange and vivid.
 
I've definitely read accounts of people who have lived parallel "dream" lives, or even had a single dream in which they have lived years upon years of another life before waking up.

The nearest comparison I can draw to my own experience (and I'm not suggesting this is the case with you) is that sometimes I will wake up and think that something in my dream related to another dream I'd had months ago, but as I sit with it I start to realise that I'd actually had both dreams in the same night and the distance was part of the dream "narrative".
 
Yes this is the issue. i think i go back repeatedly to the same ‘dream versions’ of places that i know in waking life, and i recognise them and think ‘this is the dream Edinburgh’ or wherever but i can’t be sure that it was in a previous dream that i was there. Remembering dreams is hit and miss at the best of times
 
Write them down or record them on a voice recorder.
I've definitely gone back to the same dream locations and noticed how they'd changed while I was still in the dream, and having written them down has helped me verify this.
Now if I could just have lucid dreams!
 
Write them down or record them on a voice recorder.
I've definitely gone back to the same dream locations and noticed how they'd changed while I was still in the dream, and having written them down has helped me verify this.
Now if I could just have lucid dreams!

Man, I spent yeeeeears obsessed with trying to master lucid dreaming and could never do it until I realised I was doing it every night just not in the way I imagined it would work.

It's more of a third-person experience for me, almost like playing a video game rather than in first-person. It only happens occasionally but it'll be like I'm watching a dream and letting it play out, then decide I've had enough and it's time to wake up (like making the choice to turn off a video game), then I'll wake up and be like "YOU IDIOT, YOU WERE LUCID!!!!".
 
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