An Experience of Nested Dreams

What's real?

“What is 1+1?” I asked.

“Molecules are made up of atoms. They move randomly across this room. They collide with each other...” Ashish, my roommate, answered.

“What the hell are you speaking? OK, tell me this. What is Force?” I demanded. He continued explaining to me something about molecules, I don’t clearly recall what he answered. Now I realised what it was all about.

“Yes, I am still in the dream. How many more levels should I go through? Is it ever gonna end? Wake up! Wake up!” I spoke to myself.

You might be wondering what I am narrating here. I encountered something identical to what happens in “Inception”, a dream inside a dream! Not just two levels, around five to ten. This happened on 1st September. The previous day was Friday, so I had slept early and had a good sleep. I woke up at around 9:20 AM, realised it was my sister’s birthday and called home. She had already left for school, so I just scrolled through my Facebook and Instagram feed. I recently started remembering dreams, so I had thought of making note of them. I had a dream that night in which I and my friends were on an adventure at a mystical place and I prepared food for them on the way back with just mixing ingredients in the air. I don’t know why but my mind wanted me to take a nap, and I dozed again.

I had this experience during the second time I slept, maybe because I already had a good sleep and my mind had nothing else to do. I don’t remember the correct sequence in which the dreams occurred but here are the dreams I, rather my dream-selves had, which I recall. You can call each dream a level; each level is a previous level’s dream!

I woke up from my bed and looked around. It was my sister and someone else I don’t remember. They were talking about something and she started exhibiting stuff that looked like witchcraft. “Why are you acting strange? We all know magic!” She exclaimed after looking at my expressions. A house-elf, similar to one in the “Harry Potter” popped up in the room and I was absolutely baffled. I then realised I was in a dream and suddenly woke in the previous level.

I don’t recognize which level it was, correctly. Also, I don’t know if the one above was the lowest level. In one of the other levels, I came out of my room and saw one of my friends, Ashim, walking in the hostel corridor. I abruptly felt like my feet were about a foot above the floor. I was really surprised and asked him if I was walking above the floor. His face was like I had gone crazy. He just said, “No”. I thought maybe it was because I just woke up and moving towards the other wing of the corridor. Now, I felt like I was lifted to a greater height and my body turned parallel to the floor. I noticed another friend Aniket over there and asked, “Am I floating?” He was surprised but just replied, “No”. I told him what I was feeling and pleaded with him to tell where I was according to what he saw. He didn’t reply. He called out people from the rooms and pointed at me and said, “He has gone mad. No one should go near him. He can do anything!” I was awestruck. I continued asking what was happening, but no one replied and everyone joined Aniket and started calling me mad. “Oh, wait! This can’t be real because everyone is just saying “No” and not replying to my question. Yes, I am in a dream. Wake up!” I said to myself.

In another level, something fascinating happened. I woke up and realised I had this amazing experience of having a dream inside a dream and was eager to note that down. I opened my phone and discovered my home screen a bit strange. "Maybe I had altered it the previous night", I thought. I tried to locate “Google Keep”, the application I take notes on. I couldn’t find it anywhere on my phone! I suddenly realised I was still inside a dream. “I just had dreams inside dreams, but how am I still inside a dream, is this another level! What the hell is happening?” I got anxious but soon woke up to a new level.

I had possibly gone through five to ten levels, but these are the ones I recall clearly. And yeah, since I had so many levels, I was both astounded and terrified at the same time. I thought what if I get stuck in these dreams? What is “Existence”? Am I feeling the "reality" to be a dream? How do I get out of this soon if it is just a dream? Several questions came into my dream-selves’ minds. And suddenly I woke up to see my roommate. Everything seemed too real. But I couldn’t just trust it. I had to find out a way to check it and then showed up the idea, “1+1”, the one I mentioned in the beginning, which made me realise I was still in a dream. I was so scared now and felt like throwing things around.

Then I woke up, and the time was around 12:30 PM. Ashish wasn’t there. All my dreams seemed to start with me getting up from my bed. I felt even more terrified. I was in such a bad state I ran out of my room. And then saw two of my friends, Hari and Abhijith talking to each other outside the room on the corridor. I had to figure out if it was the “reality”. So I asked him the same question I had asked Ashish, “What is 1+1?” He replied effortlessly, “1+1 is an amazing phone...” I was petrified now. I felt I will get stuck in these dreams, but suddenly I realised I had chosen a wrong person, a pun-master. I asked him again, “This is serious. Please tell me what 1+1 is. I am so screwed right now”, I pleaded. He replied, “Oh, you mean that! It’s two, but why would you ask that?” I told him what happened in the dream. I continued asking people around more questions: “What is Force”? “What is Newton’s first law?” But this time I received the correct answers. I felt relieved. I washed my wash and came back to my room and tried to recall what happened and noted it down.

This is called "False Awakening". Wikipedia says, "A false awakening is a vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep, while the dreamer, in reality, continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing daily morning rituals such as showering, cooking, cleaning, eating and using the toilet. False awakenings, mainly those in which one dreams that they have awoken from a sleep that featured dreams, take on aspects of a double dream or a dream within a dream". Usually, people have dreams up to two levels, but I had multiple levels. It was a really astounding experience.

But I have so many debatable questions in my mind now. How do I recall these levels so precisely? Why do I not recall all the levels and the order in which they had appeared? Were my dream-selves’ thinking same as my “actual” thinking? I had a lucid dream but why was I not able to control what happened? Are we all just in a dream or controlled by someone? Is there any difference between a dream and the "reality"? Will we ever have the science that can find out if we are in a "reality"?

I have just narrated the levels I vividly remember, but there were possibly more levels. This is my first proper writing. Please give your valuable comments. You can also share your experience if you had similar "inception". Thank you for reading my experience! Subscribe for more interesting stuff!

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening