The term persistent realm refers to when dreams contain recurring plots, narratives, places, characters, and other elements that persist from one dream to the next. Even though a dream may be broken up by periods of waking, the narrative of your persistent realm doesn't stop at the end of a dream. The story continues from one dream to the next in an ongoing chronological manner, similarly to how waking life continues from one waking period to the next. Essentially, your dream world becomes a separate reality and takes on a life of its own.
In persistent realms, it's common to see the same locations and dream characters repeatedly, just like in waking life. You may eventually learn their names and backstories, just like you would get to know places and people in your life over time. You remember the events from previous dreams in which you interacted with those characters, and those characters also remember your past dream events as it happened from their perspective.
Just like in waking life, you may frequent the same locations in your persistent realm, such as a particular beach or park. You can wear the same time-traveling watch in multiple dreams or have a trusty compaion who aids you in your adventures. There can be advanced world-building and you may engage in increasingly complicated plot structures with realistic character arcs and realtionships.
Ever wanted to go on an epic adventures with a genie? Journey to the center of the earth to look for treasure? Get abducted by aliens? Or have a dream family? You can even visit canonical universes from television shows, movies, books, or video games. One dream might not be enough time to accomplish these goals, which is where persistent realms come in. In your persistent realm, the story doesn't end when you wake up. You can engage with a story that lasts for years, even decades.
Although continuous dream worlds sounds like a plot for a fantasy or science fiction movie, they are a real experience for many lucid dreamers. Persistent realms often happen naturally as a result of lucid dreaming, although they also happen in nonlucid dreams. If you've heard of a recurring dream before, this is similar, except persistent realms may not necessarily have any psychological basis behind them (you can have a PR simply as a result of incubation/training/intention, rather than trauma or other psychological need for repeated experiences in dreams). The elements in these dreams persist because you remember them from one dream to the next.
If you're thinking Wow! This sounds incredible! Is this why people want to have lucid dreams?, then you would be right! Many people want to lucid dream just for the purpose of having persistent realms. It's the ultimate form of virtual reality made real with full immersion of all your senses! This is something technology has not yet achieved, but it's achievable with training. Best of all, it's free and you can do it in your sleep, so you'll always have spare time for it!
Persistent realms don't have to be elaborate. They can be as simple as you want. You can create a whole world, cast of characters, and powers/devices, plots, and scenarios that you return to anytime you go to sleep. If you would rather keep it simple, you can stick to one persietent character or a specific location. If you already experience recurring elements in your dreams, you may already have a persistent realm (or at least parts of it). Recurring dreams are common in both lucid and nonlucid dreamers, but they become persistent when you start to remember them from one dream to the next.
Lucid dreaming (knowing that it's a dream in the moment) isn't a hard requirement for persistent realms. The only hard requirement is that you be able to have and remember your dreams (since you can't be expected to continue a story you don't remember). Click here for the dream recall guide on how to remember your dreams. However, lucidity makes PRs more controlled and is higly recommended. If you know that you're currently dreaming and engaging with your PR, you can make snap decisions in the moment about what direction you want it to go in. For example, you can choose to tell a dream character your secret identity as the dreamer or keep it a secret.
Persistent realm elements can also trigger lucidity. If you know that a certain character only appears when you're dreaming, for example, you may become lucid from your own PR since it makes you realize the implications (that you must be dreaming) every time your PR comes up in nonlucid dreams. This is the fundamental idea behind the popular VILD technique and a great way to increase longterm lucidity rates through a snowballing effect, since lucidity and PRs naturally feed into each other once the initial groundwork is started (once you've started using lucid dreaming techniques and developing a PR, this is a bonus you can look forward to which will cause lucid dreaming to become more automatic).
Lucidity and persistent realms go hand-in-hand! If you have lucid dreams, you're more likely to naturally develop a persistent realm than someone who doesn't have lucid dreams. And vice versa if you have a persistent realm, you're more likely to develop natural lucidity than someone who doesn't have a persistent realm.
Developing a persistent realm can be done either inside a dream or while you are awake. Developing your PR while awake (especially before bed) can be a great way to wind down for the night. You can either develop a PR from scratch, or work off of existing dreams and ideas that you have. Working off existing dreams is often the most effective, even if the PR goes off in a completely different direction (which you can correct later with in-dream development).
To develop a PR from waking state, you should do two things: 1. Develop the idea and 2: connect it with your dreams. You can do this any time of day or night, but the best time to do it is night before bed (or when waking up in the middle of the night before going back to sleep) so that the concepts are fresh in your mind when you'll be (soon) asleep.
To start, think back to any dream you want to be your starter setting. Say you met an interesting dream character a few nights ago (or even years ago) and want to expand on that old dream. Thinking back and imagining yourself back in that dream again (with the same characters and setting) is a good place to start. Now, continue with the following:
Developing the Idea
Start developing a part of the dream, like a character. Decide on a name for the character—let's say Sara. Think about Sara's day-to-day life. Imagine what it's like to see Sara go about her day as she drives to the bank, goes to a store, works at the local coffee shop, and meets with her ex who she doesn't get along with. Imagine her stating her name to the bank teller, or greeting customers where she works. Think about what she wears, her name tag, all that stuff (it's best to go with whatever pops into your head first for anything you're not sure of).
You can do this with any characters, setting, and scenarios of course—we're just using Sara as an example.
When you're asleep, your mind craves content to dream about, and this kind of exercise feeds content to the hungry sleeping mind. By fleshing this character out in your mind and creating a story around her before sleeping, you create a narrative that feels real and impactful—which is what your brain latches onto when you dream. Think of it like a computer and your mind is a database. You need to populate some data to give your mind something to work with (something to process). Once you get the process started with a bit of data, it will continue on its own using the details you initually fed into it.
Connect with Dreams:
As you go through these ideas in your mind, you can strengthen your ideas (and make them more likely to appear in your dreams) by connecting your ideas with previous dreams you've already had. Do you remember walking down a particular street in another dream you had once? Let this be the street Sara walks down, thus strengthening both concepts. Did you ever see an unnamed man in your dreams? This could be her ex. Connect any and everything that makes the most sense to you, creating a web of ideas in your mind. The more things you can connect with previous dreams, the more you mind will naturally bring up this data.
Connecting ideas you want with things you've already dreamed about will not only strengthen the concepts in your mind, it will trigger the elements to appear in your dreams more often. For example, the next time you walk down that street in your dreams, you might look over your shoulder and see Sara, because she is now associated with that street in your mind. Or you might encounter her ex! Each mental pathway you connect between ideas, the easier to navigate them in your dreams. This is how dream formation works.
Dream formation works with connections and associations between your thoughts, so creating this web of mental connections around what you want to dream about will yield whatever results you want. The more everything makes sense in your mental framework, the better! Click here to read a guide on schematic associations, which is essentially what we're using here.
Building up mental associations is also the backbone of the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams technique developed by Dr. Stephan LaBerge to make lucid dreams more accessible for research. It's a is a powerful tool to induce lucidity, and can also be used to plan your PRs and make specific elements recur. You can choose to see a desired dream character in your next dream, or revisit a location you've been before. Sure, you could do this on the fly in a lucid dream, but planning it ahead helps to ensure you will remember what you want to do and enhance your dream control (especially in the case of more complex goals).
You can even imagine yourself having a dream while you're awake, and this can become part of your PR lore. For example, if you imagine yourself going to a concert with Sara, the story you envisioned can become canon to your PR—the next time you dream about Sara, she will already know who you are and refer to that time you two went to that concert (when you were awake, but she won't know the difference—unless you want to get meta with your PRs).
In-dream development of PRs can work too. You can do this with lucid dreaming simply by using dream control and engaging in whatever it is you want to do. If you repeat the same activities in multiple dreams, they will easily become habits that repeat naturally over time. The more you engage with something, the more it appears. Repetition of patterns builds pathways in your mind, which will repeat naturally in dreams over time (which can cause longterm automatic results).
Keep in mind that you do not have to control everything. Some people experience tension when trying to control every detail of a dream, which can cause friction to be manifested in the dream as a lack of control—causing you to get stuck fighting with your dreams, rather than enjoying them. This doesn't always happen, but it's a common issue that can be fixed by taking a step back and choosing your battles. What do you really want to control? And what do you want to be surprised by? Controlled surprises can be incredibly rewarding!
Going with the flow of your dreams and letting them unfold over time is a great way to practice relaxed dream control. Your goal is to control things through incubation, natural association, and opportunity, rather than creating tension through force. Going with the flow can also result in natural PR formation. The act of simply practicing dream recall, journaling, thinking about dreams, and increasing your awareness in dreams tends to result in more naturally recuring PR elements.
PRs also develop naturally from paying attention to particular elements in your dreams, or doing the same things until you form consistent habits/routines. The more you pay attention to certain things in dreams, the more likely they are to naturally recur. Use this to your benefit by focusing on the things you want, and putting less attention onto the things you don't want.
This also goes for PR-formation itself. If you hyperfocus on creating the perfect PR, it takes attention OFF of the contents of your dreams. This can result in more meta dreams and tension that hinders naturally flowing control.
Although persistent realms are an aspect of dreams, that does not mean you have to be dreaming to engage with them! You can close your eyes and daydream through your persistent realm stories any time. If you pretend to dream in your mind while you're awake, you can decide to make that daydream a part of your PR's history. This is an excellent option for skippable parts of your story that you want to flesh out while awake, or scenes that you're eager to daydream about.
To daydream your PR, tell yourself that everything you imagine during these waking stories is a part of your canon. For example, you can play out an interaction with a character in a daydream by imagining their responses. The character will be able to remember these intreraction in your next real dream.
As another example, you could build a shed in your daydream, putting it in one of your persistent realm locations, and then go visit that shed in your real dreams.
Don't worry about making mistakes as your daydream, such as saying or doing something you want to undo a moment later. You can rewind your errors and redo details. Tell yourself that the dream characters will only remember the good takes. Remember, history can be rewritten in dream reality, unlike in waking life. You are a dream god in your own dreams. You control space and time.
Nonlucid dream characters won't know the difference between dreams or daydreams because they don't know the nature of their reality. If you have lucid dream characters, you can decide whether to let them know whether these portions of history were dreamed or daydreamed—though honestly, does it make a difference to them? You can decide that, too!
When you regard daydreams as canon for your persistent realm, you give power to your mind. This helps to establish a deeper understanding that dreams are not a separate substance from your thoughts, which can bolster your overall sense of presence and control. Best of all, you won't have to limit your PR engagement to sleeping hours!
If you found these guides helpful, consider making a donation! This will help fund the author and more free lucid dreaming guides and content from MH Designs. Thank you for your support!