The 5 Levels of Dreams - YouTube
Transcripts:
Dreaming is ridiculous. For reference, we know more about the abyss that is the Mariana's Trench than we do about the mental landscapes of your dreams. We know more about the tiny remnants of DNA extinct creatures have left behind than we do about your nightly hallucinations. Heck, we even know more about Martian dust storms than we do about our little bedtime stories.
And yet, everyone dreams. They're the most private thing that all of us have in common. immediately recognizable but incredibly difficult to define. So much so that for decades dreams were believed to be nothing more than brain noise. Very fleeting and completely meaningless. But if that's true, why would your brain paralyze you during REM sleep? Why would it burn costly energy running simulations instead of repairing itself? And why would REM sleep appear in the womb way before any life experience? The reality is the rabbit hole of dreams is
deep, way deeper than you think. And from personal Reddit threads claiming to see the same stranger in every dream for over a decade to entire scientific databases containing tens of thousands of peer-reviewed dream reports, completely different people find themselves in the exact same places with the exact same sequence of events, sometimes even while being awake.
So, what exactly is going on here? And how deep into dreams do we have to go to find out? Well, as it turns out, dreams have levels, and they get far stranger, go far deeper, and are far more consequential than we could have ever possibly imagined. Level one. The five levels of dreams aren't random. They build on one another through a sequence.
But before that sequence even begins, there are two primary states of consciousness that everyone will experience. Being awake and being asleep. However, what's less wellknown is that there's also a third state, a strange in between called hypnogogia, which is a transitional state between being awake then falling asleep or vice versa.
But what's interesting is that even though you're not fully asleep, raw fragmented noise still floods the brain, specifically geometric patterns. And yes, I mean these geometric patterns, which in level one is the pulsating chaos you'll experience as you drift into sleep. It was Hinrich Clover in the 1920s who first documented this phenomenon and he found that there were four common patterns anytime someone begins entering an altered state.
Latises, cobwebs, tunnels, and spirals, all of which are described as the precursors to our inner worlds. We're not entirely sure why this happens, but we do know it comes from the visual cortex, which is one of the theories behind why we dream in general. Because of neuroplasticity, if the visual cortex is unused, like in people who are blind, neighboring brain regions essentially invade that space to then repurpose it for what they do.
So, it's thought that we dream as a defense mechanism to keep the visual cortex active and protect its territory while we sleep. But while this may very well be why we started dreaming in the first place, it doesn't explain the content of dreams or why so many brain areas other than the visual cortex need to be involved.
But still, these geometric patterns are the doorway to dreams. They're all that exist in level one. Some people remember experiencing them and some people don't. But it is only once you cross through them that the real dreaming begins. Level two. In level two, you're dreaming kind of. You're somewhere. You might be someone, but the dream is still forming.
So, at this level, the landscape is the focus, but it's odd, feels incomplete, and is completely empty. which is why this level is where the concept of dreamscape comes from. An art style defined by surrealism, usually characterized by familiar landscapes and bright colors. But while most people focus on the everyday environments, the houses that look familiar, or the proportions that make things feel off, what I find most interesting is the things that are missing.
Now, I'm no artist, but I am familiar with the concept of negative spaces, which is when the absence of something outlines the main subject of the image by contrast. It works by creating a visual hierarchy that guides the viewer's eyes through the composition. But where it really shines is in its contribution to the harmony of the art piece.
Negative spaces are used to distribute visual weight evenly. However, artists can take advantage of this by using too little or too much. Use too little and you can alter the viewer's perception by creating the feeling of being overwhelmed. Use too much and you can create a feeling of isolation or emptiness. In Dreamscape, aside from the fact that familiar objects are often conveyed, images feel familiar because the large negative space gives you the room needed to project your own feelings onto that artwork. And in this level of dreams,
that's exactly what's happening. Dream researchers describe it as the void behind perception. Anthony Ravanchow calls it selective simulation. Dream dictionaries call it the archetypal emblem of the void. Either way, this is when your brain starts to build. And oh boy, does it do that with the most vivid accessible material it has at its disposal. Memories.
But not just any memories. Heavy ones tagged with emotion which come from the amygdala instead of the hippocampus. But at this point, what's supposed to be a dream is a void, unrendered and empty. And yet, it is that emptiness that allows the brain to project its emotions onto that void, creating a simple, barely rendered landscape of emotion.
Pure emotion in its most primal, raw, and chaotic form stitched together from the deepest parts of your memories with no plot, no structure, and no people bubbling up to the surface as a foundation that every other level will be built upon. However, at this stage, what you experience is just the beginning. Level three. A strange phenomenon that exemplifies what level 3 is about is the airport dream, which has hundreds of posts dedicated to it on our dreams.
In them, people report finding themselves in an airport, scrambling to catch a flight. But as they make their way towards the flight gate, things start to go terribly wrong. At first, the gate will move or disappear. In response, the dreamer changes course, but as they do, they get lost.
So, in a desperate attempt at reaching their flight on time, they try to ask people for help, but get ignored or worse, turn to find themselves as the only person in a massive airport. And no matter how much they run or how hard they try, eventually they'll miss their flight. Now, by itself, this isn't a particularly unsettling dream.
It's not comfortable, obviously, but I wouldn't call it a nightmare. However, where things do start to get nightmarish is when they repeat. And in the airport dream, this seems to be a frequent occurrence as a couple months later, the same person will find themselves in the same narrative arc, but happening on a cruise or in a hotel or when they're on vacation.
All of which have the same outcome, but with a different sequence of events. Generally, it's thought that a dream about never arriving in a transportation setting is tied to anxiety about unresolved life tasks. But with the setting itself, depending on the transportation settings you're most accustomed to. Regardless, this phenomenon perfectly encapsulates the key aspect of this level.
It's metaphorical. With raw emotion taking center stage, your brain is now trying to shape it. But to do that, it needs to turn up the volume, amplifying the emotion until it's strong enough to be processed. Without the ability to use language, since you know you're asleep, it does this by distilling the emotions into one of five central themes.
identity, desire, fear, loss, or conflict. Taking the same memory fragments as earlier and then repurposing and combining them into a structure that can express one of these themes. So, the plot that comes from this isn't logical. It's not the story you'd expect from a movie script. It's emotional logic, cause and effect that's used to reinforce the core emotion, not to make literal sense.
But why it chooses these specific themes or where those themes even come from is something we still don't know. However, some people have ventured far enough to give us some clues. Level four. Level four is where dreams cross a boundary. They stop feeling like they're generated from you and start feeling like they're generated for you.
Experiences include characters that keep returning, real places you'll visit, and encounters with independent agents. But above all else, what defines this level is the feeling that your experience is in yours. And on Reddit, there's some really strange examples of this. One case describes the experience of encountering the same figure night after night across more than 10 years of dreaming, first meeting as children, and then growing up together.
Another describes dreaming about places they've never been to or heard of. Vividly picturing everything like the colors, the architecture, or the extravagant shop names, only to then wake up and find out that that place and the way they dreamt it actually exists. In both cases, the dream unfolds from their perspective, while the person in place feel like independent agents.
However, these are individual examples. It's not like this theme is that widespread, right? Nope. When I was looking through the massive Dream Bank database, the most interesting thing I found was this consistent reports of being chased, sometimes by strangers and sometimes by people you know, sometimes on foot and sometimes in a vehicle.
Regardless, the theme is so widespread that it consistently ranks in the top three most experienced nightmares, as well as being the single most frequently reoccurring one. But what's more is that it's often accompanied by an inability to escape where the dreamer falls and then gets caught or where their legs get so heavy that they can't move.
It's not like the dreamer wants that to happen. They're actively trying to escape. And yet, in a similar manner to the Reddit examples, no matter how urgently they try, the outcome is inevitable. I believe that this is because the elements of your dreams can mean multiple things at once. But why this happens is particularly interesting to me.
We know it's because in some way level four is where the brain attempts to extract meaning from the structured emotions it created earlier. But extracting meaning predominantly comes in two forms. There's the top layer which is subjective and personal determined by things like your experience, memories and how you interpret them.
And then there's the deeper layer which is universal and instinctual shaped by evolutionary pressures where the inherited neural templates that follow. Generally the structuring of dreams comes from the top layer. So think things like the people, length of or situations in your dreams. While the emotional gravity, the five themes from earlier come from the deeper shared layer.
In your dream, both are present at the same time. But to do that, your brain uses something called an emergent attractor network, which to keep it brief are reoccurring motifs of memory that emerge from the interactions of neurons due to how they're connected. This gives them two key properties. stable concepts that can be recalled consistently while also being flexible enough to adapt to new experiences.
The adaptable part is where your control in the dream, the top layer, comes from while the stable part stays the same and is where the elements you can't control come from. So, for example, if you experience a nightmare about being chased, the person chasing you might embody something from your personal life that you've had a recent conflict with, while the experience of being chased embodies the universal fear of a confrontation with inescapable consequences.
In the Reddit example, with the unknown person appearing again and again, this figure might reappear whenever the dreamer is caught in a reoccurring emotional cycle, but in the stable layer, it's a symbol for a part of them that they need to incorporate. And is only when they do that the person and the emotional cycle will stop appearing.
So in other words, the lack of control is what provides the consistent framework necessary to make the dream interpretable while the flexibility of it is shaped and colored by your own experiences for whatever you're going through. Still, level four is where dream research basically falls off a cliff. So I'm reasoning based on the limited information I have.
But what makes this even crazier is that this isn't even the deepest level. There are some dreams where you know you're dreaming and that awareness opens up a whole new door into an entirely different experience. Level five. It's rare and I've never experienced it before. But in the people who get to level five, something radically different emerges.
lucid dreaming, which is when you're in a dream, but are aware of the fact that you're in a dream. When things are going your way, that's great. You can randomly fly or jump through walls or otherwise play around with the contents of your unconscious. But when it's not, it's terrifying. As just because you're aware doesn't mean you have control.
And when this happens, two experiences are reported more than any others. encounters with hostile characters and getting stuck in a nesting dream. In the first one, there are many reports on both Reddit and the Dream Bank that explain what happens. The person becomes lucid, gains awareness, and tries to tell the figures in their dreams that they aren't real.
In the good scenarios, nothing happens. But in the bad ones, the characters get angry. Sometimes screaming things like, "You weren't supposed to know." And at others, just turning around to lunge at the dreamer. No one really knows why things like this happen. The only thing we do know about lucid dreams is that parts of your prefrontal cortex reactivate.
But even that gets complicated because in the second experience, you don't have the same level of freedom. As the reports go, a person wakes up and starts their day. They get dressed, use the bathroom, and brush their teeth. At first, everything feels normal until they catch the reflection in the mirror. It's wrong. Their nose is on their forehead, and the mirror is a different color than it's supposed to be.
As soon as they realize, bam, they wake up. Luckily, it was just a dream. So, they feel a sense of relief and then get started on their morning routine again. But when they check the mirror this time, their face is still distorted. Only now, the mirror's color matches reality. So, they panic and then bam, wake up again.
This time, they get suspicious, so they go straight into the bathroom and look at the reflection in the mirror. Immediately, a sense of relief washes over them. They're finally actually awake. But then when they take a second glance, their face distorts again. Suddenly, bam, they wake up. This time for real.
In the reports of people who have experienced this, this cycle can happen again and again and again. Sometimes seven times in total, all while the dream gets closer to reality every single time. It's a terrifying experience to think about, honestly, because as of right now, all we have are reports. Some people think these experiences emerge from the tension of being aware in the system of the dream itself.
Others think it's because your awareness can't sync with the sensory input you get when you're awake. So the looping is done to flip through dream layers and waking signals until they match and that's when you wake up. Regardless, this is the final level of dreams, at least based on our understanding right now. And honestly, I think it just opens more questions than it answers.
But maybe with time we'll be able to figure them out. Anyway, thanks for watching.
