The dreamworld is not an abstraction. It is a real plane of existence, every time you go to sleep, your consciousness is in the dreamworld. The dreamworld is very different from our universe, as you might imagine, the laws of space and time are drastically altered there. Time flows in unpredictable ways, a few minutes in the dreamworld might take place over many hours in the waking world, days can pass in the dreamworld in the span of a few minutes in this one. Teleportation, creating matter from nothing, is all possible there, it's all governed by belief and willpower, not the physical laws we're used to.The dreamworld is sectioned into different planes or layers, areas with different properties. I imagine that its layout looks something like the rough illustration I have drawn, although I heavily doubt it actually looks like this, I find it helpful to think of it this way. I'm not even sure if it has an actual physical structure, let alone one that makes sense to us and can be represented by a picture, but please bear with me.There are the four layers that I either know to exist because I have been there or have reason to believe exists.
>Layer 1: the voidThis is where 99% of dreams take place, it's a vast empty black void where consciousnesses are just dropped in after they've fallen asleep. This doesn't mean there's nothing going on here, though, the consciousnesses have the power to create these little "bubbles" of reality where their dreams play out. These bubbles are, like I said, created by dreamers, and the world within is also determined by the dreamer. These bubbles can be created, destroyed, split apart, intersect and merge with one another. If you ever had a shared dream with someone, it's likely that your dream bubbles fused and unified somehow.Because most people are rarely lucid when they dream, the logic they produce is usually very tenuous, dreamers act a lot like they're on drugs when they're in this nonlucid state, and the dream bubbles are honestly pretty fucking boring, "I was playing pokemon but the gameboy was 4x bigger than it should be and my hands couldn't reach the buttons, also ronald mcdoald was in the game and I caught my house in a pokeball, then I got naked in public and my teeth fell out" type dreams are typical. If they do manage to wake up in the dream and go lucid, the dreamers can control their bubble however they please, as long as their minds can sustain it. If they can't, the bubble collapses and they usually wake up.I theorize that the bubbles are a lot like movie sets, only what the dreamer expects to see exists at one time, and if he forgets about something in his dream, it simply ceases to exist, because everything is created and sustained by his mind. Another thing I believe is that those non-dreams you have when you fall asleep, but can't recall a dream, is just your consciousness chilling in the void doing fuck all if it fails to create its own bubble (or get caught up by someone else's).
>Layer 2: outer rimBeyond the void is where you'll find the first part of the dreamworld proper, the outer rim, the crucial difference between here and the void is that there is a concrete, consistent reality, this place isn't simply created by your fantasies, it's consistent, and although you can change it, (quite easily, in fact, given the power that dreamers have), it requires a concerted effort, and the changes stick. You can't simply stop looking at something for 4 seconds and expect it to go away, things don't just change randomly because of chaotic dream nonsense, that's how you can tell if you're here.The world itself resembles our world, but it's altered, far less logical, and vastly bigger. I know it's a cliche word, but liminal would be the best way to describe it. Infinite mall world, infinite toilet dimension, any of those strange, recurring, and shared dream locations you've heard of or gone to yourself are located in the outer rim. If you've ever visited the same location in two seperate dreams, most likely you were here and went to the same area twice. For the most part, this plane is deserted, as is the rest of this entire universe. I say mostly, because you might run into who or what I'm going to explain next.
>SentinelsI've seen these entities discussed under many names, due to their behavior, some people call them chasers, shadow people is another one (which I personally believe is a misnomer, shadow people are an entirely unrelated category of entities) but I think sentinels describes them the best. I don't know anything about the origins of the sentinels, but I believe they are the native inhabitants of the dreamworld. You can tell them apart from the "NPCs" created by your own mind from the fact that they never speak, as they do not understand our language. They can take on any form they please, human, animal, monster, or inanimate objects.When you meet them, these guys have one singular goal, which is to wake you up. They do not fuck with dreamers at all, they tolerate us if we stick to the void and the rim, it's actually pretty rare to meet one in the rim, but they're not any nicer for that reason, they're always aggressive without exception.>What kinds of powers do they have?Pretty much the same as you, they can teleport, warp space around them, create and disintegrate stuff at will, shapeshift, anything you can do in a dream, they can do too. One thing it seems they can't do is make sounds, but they can make stuff that makes sound, their muteness is an identifying trait.They can do any number of things to try to wake you up, they'll try to jumpscare you, they'll chase you around, they'll turn into monsters and try to frighten you, they'll trap you in labyrinths, they'll warp you around, they absolutely do not want humans to make it to the intermediate zone, and they get meaner and meaner the deeper you go. If you run into one in the rim, they'll do something like try to scare you with a scary face, or splash water on you, or warp you on top of a tall building, if and when you meet one further in, that's when they'll get up to some more high effort fuckery.
>>41748014imagine being so good at dreaming you end up in a boss fight just to keep sleeping.
Pic related is a sketch of a sentinel, the first one I can remember meeting. I was at the beginning of a very, very long corridor, which I now believe was an accessway to the third layer, and he was standing there in the distance. When he noticed me, he started moving towards me, not running, but walking at a brisk determined pace, I stood there gawking at him for a while before understanding that this guy is probably bad news. I know my drawing looks lame, but he was pretty scary to me when this happened back when I was a kid. I went around the corner and mistakenly believed that if I just ignored him for a bit, he would go away just like every other unpleasant dream thing. You can imagine my fear as he popped out from around the corner with a cold, wet blanket in his hands, which he quickly unfurled and chucked right at my face, waking me up instantly. They really can be this pragmatic about it.You might be questioning how one even gets to the outer rim if you spawn in the void every time? Well, as I've explained earlier, the laws of space and time don't apply here, dreamers usually end up there by accident, they can teleport and wind up there by chance, I'm also pretty sure that if you go really fast and just so happen to be facing the right direction, you'll burst right out of your bubble and crash land in the rim. Most of them end up confused and scared when they find themselves wandering an infinite vacant building that kind of reminds them of their highschool but more fucked up, and they can be stuck for days before making it out, but most of the time they just create something to distract themselves with and go on with their dreamy escapades until they awaken on their own. If you know what you're doing, of course, you can go here intentionally.>>41748058When I meet them now, I just let them wake me up, it's not worth trying to fight them because they almost always win, I'd rather just wake up and go back to sleep.
These guys are huge assholes, is basically what I'm saying>layer 3: intermediate zoneIf liminal describes the previous layer, the word to use here is paradiselike, this plane looks like something out of a fantasy anime. The few times I've been there, I've seen crazy rock formations, impossibly beautiful palaces, giant forests and other things that could never exist IRL. If you've had one of those beautiful dreams that make you sad when you wake up from them, it probably ocurred here. On occasion, a dreamer manages to stumble in without immediately being detected by the sentinels, this is rare enough that it'll probably only happen a handful of times in your lifetime, they usually only get to hang out here briefly, though, before being kindly kicked out by a sentinel, which is why these dreams all seem to end abruptly.I think this is where the sentinels live, this is just conjecture on my part, but I think the reason why they don't want us here is because while the worst they can do to us is make us piss our pants, we can actually kill them, it's not easy, but if you outmatch one and annihilate him completely, it appears that they can be killed permanently. I'm certain of this because I've done it before. My theory is that they're trying to keep from being genocided by humans who want to take over their world so they can have awesome dreams about kissing their crush every night.One of the places I went to looked a lot like the chasm from genshin impact, inb4 >gachaslop, I know, but it's an example of something you could find on the 3rd layer
>final layer / the coreI don't know what's up with the core, I've never been there, as I've only ever made it to the third layer. Some people have told me with confidence that this fourth layer is the nightmare zone, that this is where the monsters live, and that those truly awful, evil night terrors that some people experience take place here. I've also been told that this is actually the place where the answers lie, that this is a place that holds the secrets to the universe, that prophets throughout history have gotten their insights from this place. I've been warned that something truly horrible lurks in the core, and that the dreamworld was constructed to keep this thing trapped, that we shouldn't really be interacting with the dreamworld at all on the chance that we come face to face with this thing, whatever it is. That would naturally make the sentinels its guardians, and it would explain why they are so gung ho about booting anyone who dares set foot there back to meatspace.I don't believe in any of these, but I won't dismiss them entirely either, as a possibility. It might also be that there's nothing there and that the third layer IS the core. I'll probably never find out.>but anon, how do you know all this shit?Because I've experienced all this first hand. Since I was a child, I've frequently experienced these mild bouts of sleep paralysis, they're not severe enough to totally immobilize me, but strong enough that I have to struggle to move if I want to break out of them. I found out one night that if I simply shut my eyes while it was happening, I could jump right into a lucid dream. This is very convenient if you want to explore. I noticed that the rules of the dream, like for example what is and isn't under your control, varied from dream to dream, and I worked out that there were two distinct areas you could end up in, then I pieced everything else together afterwards through trial and error.
>>41748135if you die in the dream you die in real
>>41748135You should always be skeptical of dreams from the perspective of waking reality, and skeptical of reality from the perspective of dreaming.The more you believe in a dream as real the more you try to make it like the waking world, where the rules are fixed, and the reality is predetermined by agreements and fixations upon concepts and ideas, which are themselves simply data which has been interpreted in a certain way. You should try to travel into the boundary of a dream, it will be somewhat enlightening to you. Every dream has something of a boundary layer, that separates the content of the dream from the universe outside of the dream. We go into these boundaries and accept the reality as shown to us within them as 'real', but when you go in the other direction you find that most of what you thought was real was a construct. I went outside once, and on the outside I was in total darkness, I didn't even have a body. Then I turned to look back at the boundary layer, and I was able to travel back towards it into the dream. I reached a loading room where I heard mayan chanting and then I saw a holographic interface on the surface and I got to pick and choose, when and where I would reenter into the dream, and what form I would take, and what my capabilities would be. I did so, and since I didn't have a body, I got 'born' into the dream reality. Literally became a baby falling through a tube down a slide, and by the time I got to the bottom I had grown up. My 'father', which was the dream reality's voice was speaking to me, and I went into a pool with other babies. I looked at my body and it was indeed the sex and attributes I had chosen at the interface.I'd imagine you are within a specific bubble, and haven't really gone into other areas yet. You should try to make it so you can access multiple bubbles, without destroying yourself in the current bubble, akin to existing in multiple realities. Then you will really see how arbitrary they all are.
>>41748039>If you've ever visited the same location in two seperate dreams, most likely you were here and went to the same area twice.Thank you for this. I don't dream much and they're usually nonsense but I occasionally get a recurring dream where my house is different...like alot of extra rooms and different stuff. It's odd but when I'm there I know it's just a different version of my home but it's so real I'm not sure which is the dream house and which is my physical house. Usually my wife and kids are there but sometimes it's just me alone in a giant ramshackle Victorian house.
>>41748160The bubbles are very limited, I've successfully "crashed" bubbles before just by spawning way too much shit at once, the bubble is sustained by your own imagination, and in order for it to be consistent, you have to remember each detail. If you can't, then the details get fuzzy, if you try to make a huge open area, the bubble also takes shortcuts.One time, for example, I was in a bubble, and I kicked a road sign so hard I launched myself in the air, I went far above the city, and when I looked closely at it, the "city" wasn't a city at all, it was basically a JPEG of a bunch of squares representing buildings, and only became a city once I fell low enough to sustain a more limited area.In another dream, I was in the Grand Canyon, I noticed that the canyon looked really plain, like it was lacking details, it wasn't even close to looking like the real thing. I decided to simply stop sustaining the canyon, and it disappeared, I could see the void outside.I find it so tiresome to be in the void now for these reasons, being the god of your own micro-reality gets boring when you're like me and get to do it almost every night, so I almost only hang out in layer 2 now>You should try to make it so you can access multiple bubbles, without destroying yourself in the current bubble, akin to existing in multiple realities. Then you will really see how arbitrary they all are.nigga wat
>>41748212>I find it so tiresome to be in the void now for these reasons, being the god of your own micro-reality gets boring when you're like me and get to do it almost every night, so I almost only hang out in layer 2 nowTry access to real space cosmic data using your crown chakra. When you see the real stars in your dreams and start interacting with them and traveling to them things can get very interesting.>You should try to make it so you can access multiple bubbles, without destroying yourself in the current bubble, akin to existing in multiple realities. Then you will really see how arbitrary they all are.Something like a save state in a reality so you can log out of one and into another. All the meta information you are getting about dreams is somewhat of your own creation, so you should try to get outside of yourself and go explore father.If you are really into this stuff I'd suggest learning about nagualism, assemblage point, pleiadians, sorcery, stuff like that.
