By Emmy van Swaaij © 2006
I stumbled upon something interesting in the dreamstate… a technique to travel in between two different layers of soil…. so to speak. I’m still exploring this whole thing myself (and will probably do so for many years to come) and it’s still very fresh…but I would like to share some of the things I found exploring the area so to speak. I haven’t come across this technique in any dream books I’ve read thus far, but who knows…maybe there is a fellow explorer somewhere who discovered the same technique but I’m just not aware of it yet (it would be cool to exchange notes though). So far I’ve had three experiences where I used the technique…
Ok….the technique is quite simple, but as with many things, takes some practice. It’s something you can do when you catch yourself in a lucid dream and do not know what to do next, as happens with me sometimes.
I stumbled upon it INSIDE the following dream: (I had this dream sometime in April of this year.)
I’m having a conscious dream, I’m very conscious of dreaming and am inside a building. I see people walking into one of the rooms. I have the impulse to follow them and see what is happening there. When I enter the particular room they entered…they are gone! The only thing I see is a yellow mattress on the ground. I know they did something to travel out of that room. I get the impulse, to lay down on the yellow mattress and fall asleep.
(little note intermezzo….ok, so I’m inside a conscious/lucid dream and decide to fall asleep within the conscious dream)
Suddenly I find myself traveling VERY fast to Egypt. When I arrive there I’m stunned. I went soooo very fast…..geez! and decide to head back to the old location. I’m stunned when I see that I returned to the exact same room I started the whole dream adventure. I wake up, like I would do normally waking up on the yellow mattress, and the only thing I think is: “Wow this is big!” Then I wake up in the waking state.
This was not a false awakening as many people experience when having lucid dreams, (I’m talking about the moment I woke up in the room with the yellow mattress) this was consciously deciding to wake up from that deeper dream layer, ending up at the location I used to enter that second dream layer.
At the first of May 2006 I had the following dream:

Photo by Jim Carrey via Showtime
I’m sitting on a yellow mattress (the mattress had this color for me to remember…it’s not necesarrily a yellow mattress always…and you can use anything I guess that will help you fall asleep). Jim Carey sits next to me and I explain to him the function of the mattress. I say: “You can use this as a kind of portal”. I’m trying to travel with the mattress technique together with Jim, but it does not work. We try several times, laugh a lot, and Jim is very interested in the technique and we both hope it will work. Then I give up for a second and decide to walk away for a moment. I walk to the next room and just as I enter the room I hear a strange sound. I turn back to see that the “portal” is open! I run to it and see it is closing again. “Jim just did it!! He was able to do it! Man!”I think, and I run and run and jump in the portal after him. I have to force it open a bit…and I feel VERY uneasy about that…
I’m very worried that “others” will be disappointed in me, that I did something stupid…I’m always the one to say NEVER force yourself, and see what I just did…. man I am angry at myself and ready to get a lecture by the woman that I see as soon as I’m really looking around me.
I’m in the middle of this HUGE library.
The woman is not angry at all…not even showing signs of disapproval…nope…she is explaining to me what I can do there (and to Jim who is just as stunned as I am…about the hugeness of this library). Jim just says something like: “Hey…we did it!” He is very enthusiastic and not at all noticing that I feel uneasy about forcing myself. I’m fretting about it for quite some time….
The woman starts talking and she says something like this: “This is a gigantic library of information. It’s not a library as you normally know it…it’s WAY more practical. Instead of reading about information you experience it here. You literally GAIN EXPERIENCE. You can do whatever you want…in whatever pace you want to…”
I look at Jim who is somewhere in the library. He is beyond enthusiastic, delving into some subject he totally likes. Sometimes shouting to me: “Man this is SO cool!”
I’m delving into another area of the library on my own… after hugging him for a second.
Nobody is angry at me, even though I made the mistake (in my eyes) of forcing myself.
(And I still in the waking state find it not a really good idea to force myself, and would not likely do it again.)
This dream I had on Friday 26th of May in the morning:
I have a semi-conscious dream. I’m in a house and explore several rooms. Before this, I hear very clearly some voices and suddenly remember the mattress dream experience and the technique I used, etc.
I suddenly realize: “Hey! I can do that NOW! First of all I’m dreaming…and that means…hey..that’s interesting!” I’m very excited that I remember a conversation that I had with someone about the mattress dream and at least one of my former experiences with this technique. I fall asleep and suddenly stand in another room, I’m not sure if it is in the same building or not. I travel with a similar technique (though I’m not sure if I actually fell asleep) back to the first room. Then I look for a mattress. I’m thinking and suddenly fear sets in: what if I’m not able to go back to my waking state reality?
I think this at the moment I’m realizing I’m consciously dreaming already, for a while time-wise…(like, oh, let’s say 15 minutes of being very conscious) what if I can’t find my way back to my waking state reality? I look at a window in the room and see to my amazement that Margo, a classmate of mine, flies through the window. This is, I realize the second person that entered a room in this house through such a window. The first time that happened I suddenly remember again; I was scared and wanted to run away even before seeing who it was. I decided to not run, even though that was my first impulse. I recognize (and this is very important) my fear and my USUAL response to that (running away…) of the unknown – in this case: a woman I don’t know, with whatever intention.

Photo by furniturestop via Pixabay
But this second time it is Margo and I’m so puzzled as to WHY…out of all people…Margo… I’m really stunned since I normally don’t have much contact with her, and at the moment she is in another class. I think all these thoughts – very consciously – in the moment I stand there stunned in the room.
Then I look at the mattress again and think: “Oh yeah. . .I want to see if I can wake up in my normal waking life state. That would be nice…what if I’m dreaming my whole day away? That wouldn’t be good.” I’m fretting about this in this dream. Then I lay down on the mattress, meanwhile being puzzled about the two people appearing in the room through the window (first the woman and then Margo.) What should I do with that? Why does that happen? What can I do? What does it mean?
I try to wake up and am very scared it might not work and cause me to be stuck in this dimension, I think: “What if someone rings the doorbell and I’m not able to open the door because I’m so fast asleep…etc.”
I close my eyes and try to fall asleep as I always do. First this does not work because I worry too much. Then boom! I fall asleep and as soon as that happens my eyes flash open in the physical waking state reality.
I’m VERY excited, first of all that it worked, but second of all, the very immediate transition to the waking state. My eyes flashed open at the moment I fell asleep “over there”. In such an immediate way.
I’m curious if anyone else ever had such an experience or something similar…
With love,
Emmy