Asking a dream expert about 'Inception'

Q: In the movie, Dom Cobb’s team (while in a drug-induced state), travels through a dream within a dream within yet another dream. Do real dreams have multilayers?

A: Anything is possible within the dreaming world. But that’s not very likely for the vast majority of people — to be dreaming while you’re dreaming.

There are two things in regard to dreaming that people will want to tie into this movie. Can you become aware that you’re dreaming or become what is known as a lucid dreamer — with some level of consciousness? The answer is absolutely yes. The second layer of all of that is can you do or direct something that’s happening in the dream or are you a passive observer? The answer to that is yes. But both things take practice, and both things take intent.

Q: The “Inception” dreamers use totems, essentially handmade objects that they carry with them to test whether they are awake or dreaming. Is there a way for a sleeping person to know whether they are dreaming?

A: There are things that I would call dream signs. Almost like the spinning top. And those dream signs can be a number of different things that make you realize that you’re dreaming. For instance, if you have a dream and you’re not in your own body or that your body isn’t the same as usual, that can be a dream sign. Or that you can fly or do things that you normally can’t do in your real life. Those are signs that you can say to yourself that if that experience happens or I see that, that must mean that I’m dreaming.

Q: Can an idea from a person’s dream really become a part of their subconscious and cause them to act a certain way later, or is the idea already there, which is why the person dreamed it anyway?

A: The idea of the experience is already there. It’s a synthesis of the conscious and unconscious world of the individual.

It’s not that someone put it in there. It’s not like someone is beaming their dream into them. We are the writer and directors of our own dreams and in that sense you can take better control of your own dream if you realize, “OK, this is me. I’ve constructed it. I’m the architect and the writer of the story.”

Q: What about the idea of sharing dreams?

A: Sharing a dream is much like talking to someone else about it. But sharing a dream because you sleep near somebody is impossible. You could share elements of dreams because you’ve had a similar experience.

Q: Individuals hurt in “Inception’s” dream world experience pain to some degree, while death causes the dreamer to wake up. Like the movie, don’t we tend to wake up right before death occurs?

A: It is possible for people to die in their dream. There are plenty of people who have been shot and killed in their dream and later woke up and remembered that they died, that they fell off the cliff. Do you always wake up before you hit the ground? No. Some people hit the ground when they jump off a cliff and they get hurt or they die. There’s no hard and fast rule. The beauty and the mystery of all this is that dreaming is very individualistic.

If you can check your reality at the door, it’s a very enjoyable and visually interesting movie. But just as the movie leaves big questions unanswered, there are many unanswered questions about the dream world.