Dreaming and Dreams – Beyond Lucid and the 70 Steps of Light Slumber

[Gray Raven]

A Dream Within a Dream

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

 

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

 

For the average Waking World individual, we often barely pay attention to the time we spend in sleep and in our dreams.  For the ordinary Waking World individual, we are like Poe’s sleeper who, upon leaving our dreams, can barely retain them.  They slip away easily like sand through our fingers, seemingly fading from our grasp no matter how hard we try to keep and save them from the pitiless waves of coming wakefulness. 

This difficulty and its subsequent reality are reflected in the Dreamland rules. 

“Any time an investigator awakens from a dream, he risks forgetting much of what he learned therein. To simulate this, after the investigator wakes, have him attempt an Idea roll. If it succeeds, then he can remember what happened in his dream as if it had occurred in ‘real life’ If the Idea roll fails, however, the dream experiences and discoveries are not clearly remembered.”  From Dreamland: Roleplaying Beyond the Walls of Sleep, Chaosium Inc., Fifth ed., 2004, pg. 16.

This makes sense if the player character is an ordinary Waking World sleeper and has entered Dreamland unexpectedly by stumbling upon the doorway leading down to this realm in her ordinary sleep.  There are those of the Waking World who have more skill with their dreams.  Those individuals who have consciously cultivated the art of recalling and writing down their dreams systematically in a dream journal will retain more of their ordinary dreams and thus should be able to do the same with the extraordinary experiences of being in Dreamland.  To simulate this, a Keeper should increase that idea role percentage and thus enable more or even all of the memory of Dreamland to be retained by the Waking World character.

There are Waking World individuals who have spontaneously had a lucid dream experience and/or cultivated that skill and ability.  The first individual to write about lucid dreaming was Hervey de Saint Denys.  Hervey de Saint Denys was one of the earliest oneirologists (specialists in the study of dreams), and is nowadays regarded as "The Father" of modern lucid dreaming. In 1867 there appeared as an anonymous publication a book entitled Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger; observations pratiques (Translation: Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them: Practical Observations).

“In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while they are dreaming. It is a trainable skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

These individuals have gained the ability to be consciously aware and active within their ordinary dreams, and they have gained even more.  Thus, these lucid dreamers can not only actively explore their ordinary dreamscape and environment but can actually shape that experience.  They can control their ordinary dreams.  They have essentially gained and cultivated the skill of Dreaming.

A Waking World lucid dreamer would have no trouble at all retaining knowledge of the experience that they have had in Dreamland since, to cultivate the skill of lucid dreaming, they would have already practiced the ability to retain the memory of their ordinary dreams.  Therefore, a lucid dreamer would not need to make an Idea Roll to retain memory of what took place for them in Dreamland.  They have already cultivated the skill of retaining the memory of their ordinary dreams, and this would serve them to retain the experience of what happened when they ventured into Dreamland.

A Waking World lucid dreamer actually already has the skill of Dreaming.

“The investigator receives this skill the first time he enters the Dreamlands, whether he dreams to get there or arrives physically. It starts at a percentile amount equal to the investigator’s POW. The investigator gets one experience check in this skill each time he re-enters the Dreamlands and remains for more than a dream week, the skill increasing in identical fashion to any other game skill.” Dreamland, pg. 12

Thus, I would submit those who have practiced the skill of lucid dreaming would enter Dreamland with not merely a percentage amount equal to their POW but perhaps POW plus INT to simulate their lucid dreaming skill. 

If you are interested in learning and cultivating the Waking World skill of lucid dreaming, I recommend Dylan Tucccillo, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel’s book, A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics, Workman Publishing, 2013.