The Yellow Mattress,
dreams within dreams within dreams!

by Emmy van Swaaij

I stumbled upon something interesting in the dream state. A technique to travel in between two different dream layers. It is still very fresh and I’m still exploring it (and will probably do so for many years to come) but I would like to share some of what I found during my explorations.

I haven’t come across this technique in any dream books I’ve read so far — who knows, maybe a fellow explorer somewhere discovered the same technique but I’m just not aware of it yet. So far I’ve had three experiences where I used this technique.

It’s something you can do when you catch yourself in a lucid /conscious dream and when you do not know what to do next. This occurs with me sometimes, where I stand blinking with my eyes, “I’m conscious now… what shall I do?”
Well, during one of those moments I discovered the following travel technique that opens pathways to even more explorations! (as if there is not enough to explore already)

The yellow mattress, portal to unknown lands

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 lying in the corner. I know they did something to travel out of that room. I get the impulse to lay down on the yellow mattress and decide to fall asleep and see what happens.

Suddenly I find myself travelling very fast to Egypt. When I arrive there I’m stunned. I zoom through the sky and go so very fast, even get a bit nauseous from it. Geez! I 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 inside the dream adventure. I wake up, like I would normally wake up, only this time not in my bedroom, but in the room with 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.

On the first of May 2006 I had the following dream where I used this technique again:

The yellow mattress adventure continues:

Jim Carrey¹ and the library of experience

I’m sitting on a yellow mattress [the mattress had this color for me to remember what happened in that other dream…]

Jim Carrey 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 brief moment. I walk towards 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 feel 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. I am angry at myself and ready to get a lecture by the woman whom I see as soon as I start looking around me. I find myself in the middle of this huge library.

The woman is not angry at all, not even showing signs of disapproval… no… she explains to both Jim and me what we can do here. We are both in awe of the hugeness of this library. Jim just says something: “Hey… we did it!” He is very enthusiastic and not at all noticing that I feel uneasy about forcing myself.

The woman starts talking and goes: “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 exploring one aisle of the library. He is very 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. Then I wake up.

I’ve had one more of these kind of dreams and plan to try again next time I find myself in a conscious dream. I’m curious if there are other people who had similar experiences during their conscious/lucid dreams. I also found out that it doesn’t matter if it’s a yellow mattress. Any place where you can fall asleep at inside the dreamstate will do.

Note from Emmy

1 Speaking of Jim Carrey, you may want to check http://betterufoundation.org the website of Better U Foundation, which was created by Jim Carrey.

“One of Better U’s guiding principles is the idea of being of service as a motivation to all great accomplishment - Our Mission is to teach a person how to fish rather than order off the menu”

A Better U means a better universe.