The n'th dream theory

The topic of n'th dream theory first arose in the year 2003. This happened when one of my friends claimed that in his sleep he had once had two dreams at the same time. He claimed that he was playing Basketball in the first dream and at the same instant in the other dream he was busy scoring goals for Manchester United in their match against Real Madrid. Now, the two dreams are totally unrelated and my friend claimed that he could switch from one dream to another whenever he wanted. Obviously, this idea was preposterous and we just laughed at its absurdity and soon forgot about it. However, later when i gave it a thought, i realized that it was possible. People could actually stay in more than one dream, serially though and not parallelly. This is how I, Ashish R. Gandhe, proposed the n'th dream theory.

Now, how can an individual's mind stay in multiple dreams at the same time. Could you possibly be seeing yourself speeding past Michael Schumacher in a Grand Prix and at the same time enjoying the company of your girlfriend. This, as i said, sounds absurd . A person's mind can not concentrate on more than one idea at an instant, even when he is sleeping. However, my friend's statement 'switching between dreams' gave me an idea. And the theory is put forth as follows:

Let us say that a person's mind, when he's asleep, takes him into a dream. What the dream is doesn't matter now. Now, let us assume that the person is able to see himself in the dream, doing something which is irrelevant. (Hence forth, we will refer to the self vision of the dreamer in his dream as his dream-self). What if that something is sleeping itself. That is, the guy is sleeping, and in his dream also he is asleep. And in his dream, his dream-self who is asleep also gets a dream in which again he is sleeping. i.e. we start with an asleep guy's dream, make his dream-self sleep. And not stopping there we continue to make his dream-self's dream-self, his dream-self's dream-self's dream self and so on, sleep.

Now, this sleeping process, however strange the guy's dream chain may be, can not possibly go to infinity. What i mean to say is, at some point of time, the person should be doing something other than sleeping at the end of this ' guy (asleep) -> dream-self(asleep) -> dream-self(asleep) -> .....-> dream-self(awake)' chain. Let the end be reached after n sub-dreams. We call this end the n'th dream. Let us assume that the guy in his n'th dream is doing some activity A. What if he suddenly falls asleep (it can happen in a dream, trust me), and switches to the (n+1)'th dream where he is doing activity B. Note that the person in the n'th dream can always wake up from his sleep and continue activity A. This way, the person can switch from one dream to another, serially and not parallely as my friend had claimed. And so concluded the n'th dream theory, i have.

But the theory does not end here, because every theory brings with itself a lot of questions and doubts. And there are a lot of questions which surfaced just after the theory and i havent been able to answer all of them.

Let us assume that there is a person x who is asleep and doing some activity A in his n'th dream. Now, consider his m'th dream, where 1"<"m"<"n, m not equal to n-1. Now, we say that the person x may not be alone in his m'th dream. x has a friend y who comes and wakes him up in his m'th dream. i.e x is doing some activity A in his n'th dream and is suddenly woken up by his friend in his m'th dream where m"<"n-1. Therefore, x is now awake in his m'th dream and all his dreams from m+1 to n get cut off.

The question is : --

We say that a person stays in his n'th dream as long as he doesn't doze off in it (which would take him to his n+1'th dream ) and does not wake up in his n-1'th dream. In the case when x is woken up by y, none of the above two happen. What happens to the activity A in x's n'th dream then? Do all the dreams from m+1 to n just disappear from x's mind? Is the sudden switch from n to m where m is not adjacent to n logical?

There is an explanation to this:

We say that the switch from n'th to m'th dream is not sudden. When y wakes up x, x doesn't just wake up in his m'th dream. He first goes through a series of awakenings. i.e. x first wakes up in his n-1'th dream. No sooner than he opens his eyes, he wakes up in his n-2'th dream. This goes on till he reaches his m'th dream, greets y and gives him a good treatment for stopping activity A.

There is an alternate explanation:

Consider the n'th dream chain to be a doubly linked list. It is doubly because from an i'th dream, the person can switch over to i+1'th or i-1'th dream, i.e he can go both ways. Now, consider x's dream chain. We say that in the list, x is sleeping at all the nodes except the last one where he is awake and doing activity A. An i'th node (other than the end node of the chain) can exist only if the person is asleep in his i'th dream. Because if he is awake, it will be the end of the chain. Now, x's list has n nodes. When y wakes him up, the link between the m'th node and the m+1'th node is broken since x wakes up suddenly at the m'th node. But the part of the chain from the m+1 to the n'th node just doesn't disappear. It still exists in x's mind. i.e. when x is woken up, the chain is broken into two halves, one of length m at the end of which x wakes up and meets y, and the other of length m-n at the end of which x is still doing activity A. However, only the first chain is visible to the asleep person. The link to the second half of the chain is broken. Therefore, the second chain just hangs in the person's mind without his knowledge or realization. And the chain stays in the person's mind even after he has woken up from all his dreams. This provides an explanation to why some people are more confused than others when they wake up.

The n'th dream theory may sound absurd, but it does explain a lot of things. The existence of the n'th dream may not be true or even possible. But there have been some living proofs found recently that might hint towards its existence. I am sure that in the recent future, we will know more about this concept.

Ashish Gandhe