rules of dream

today went to watch for a second time ,found certain new things i missed previously.skip the lengthy story ,I'd like to summarise this movie ,in case you found it very hard and time consuming to read the long ,lenghty passage down there ,swt

there are several rules I'd like to introduce .
what's an architect ?
an architect is a person who designs dreamworld ,constructs places ,streets and small details of real world to make the dream looks real ,in other words ,to create a close-loop to deceive the subject's mind so that he will think it's reality,the maze is designed so that as the subject runs around it,he can never reach the boundary or edge of it ,and subsequently realises that it's an imaginary place,and the more complicated the maze the more time they will have before the subject's mind start to realize that he's in other people dream,and will react violently to find the dreamer to drive him out,the subject subconscious' projection will lead them to the top secret they try to extract.an architect can manipulate real world architecture and physics and teach them to each dreamer.she or he may not necessary enter the dreamworld ,they can choose to stay behind . but in this case ,Ariadne wants to follow Cobb into the dreams ,as she knows that Cobb is very unstable now ,and will bring in his own subconscious projection such as Mal and his own kids to the dreams ,the others still haven't known about his secret and this can endanger the whole mission ,as his wife Mal can always turns up and ruins it.the train we see in the first level running and crashing into their car is actually the projection of Cobb subconscious.

dreamer
an achitect may not neccesary have to be a dreamer at the same time.dreamer is the host of a dream level,and whose dream is filled with the subject subconscious.he or she can manipulate the design on that level ,create a dreamworld ,such as when Cobb wants Ariadne to show him what she could do in 5 Min's ,they enter into a dream whose dreamer is Ariadne and filled with Cobb's projection ,she can change things on that level ,create new things ,but the more she changes ,the more attention conjured on her .and when a dreamer is killed ,the dream is destroyed .this is shown when Aurthur is killed at the beginning ,the building in level 2 start to crumble down ,and Saito start to wake up.and Aurthur as a second level dreamer can set up tricks like the endless staircase ,paradox.Eames who is the third level dreamer can add a shortcut to get into the snow fort.a dreamer is like us,when we dream,we create our dreams,sometimes the places may not be something we are familiar with but we don't feel strange about it until we wake up from it.and i feel like when i am close to waking up ,which is when my mind enter into rapid eye movement stage ,i can actually control or manipulate the dream ,i can reverse back the scene after it's happened when i don't feel like the ending ,i can twist and change it into my own version ,or if i know there's something bad going to happen to my characters in the dream ,like stuck in a house and zombie is after me ,i can simply shrink myself to an ant size and hide in certain places before it's gone and I'm back to original size ,or i simply can jump from roof to roof before taking off to a flight ,or rather i can dream the bars of window to have disappeared so that I'm able to get out of the house.sometimes ,i can control my dreams ,just like the characters in the movie do .i can totally relate to the feeling of them confused about dreams and reality ,cause in a dream ,it feels good to have the power of controlling over something,and everything seems lucidly real that you choose not to wake up from it.
extractor
a person who is skillful and trained to extract thoughts from the subject's mind.it's possible also to place an idea ,if you placed deep enough ,as the deeper you go ,the lesser control your conscious areas of brain has over the dream,hence the more influential will the idea planted turn out to be.the idea planted can define a person or destroy him.

the subject
whose subconscious is actually brought inside the dream ,and thoughts is extracted from.


projection
a manifestation of a subject 's vision of reality,projection populates the dreamworld.

and it's said that when we dream ,we create our dream and proceed to find our true self simultaneously,Cobb's job is to find a shortcut through that process ,replaces the creation part with his own,manipulate the subject subconscious so as to get the secret he wants.

1.time seems to double or lengthen as you go deeper.5 Min's in reality can be 60 Min's in dream.this is because your brain works fast in dream ,when Cobb and his wife wake up from limbo ,he says it's as if old souls in young bodies .

2.the physics of each level is disturbed by what's happening above .when yusuf swerves around the corner ,Aurthur is thrown sideways ,this affects the dream in which he hosts,and the hotel floor goes askew,inclined.and when rain water splashes on his face,the weather turns from sunny to raining on second level.when the van falls off the bridge ,Aurthur 's sleeping body is thrown upwards and suspended in the air ,this causes the second level to lose gravity.

3. kicks,designed to bring you back from the level below to the level in which the kick is initiated.this is shown at the beginning of the movie ,when they are trying to extract info from saito's mind,the second level dream is destroyed when Aurthur dies,but Cobb is not waken up yet,then Nash dunks his body in a bathtub full of water ,the kick wakes him up ,this suggests that you can wake up from a dream either by using kicks ,death or simply wait for the timer of the machine to stop and release you from the dream.when they take heavy sedative to stabilise dreams within dreams,they are specifically told that it will not impair the inner ears function and they could still feel the falling sensation ,which is the kick ,and they demonstrating it by tipping the chair to wake Aurthur up ,i believe Aurthur isn't under sedative at that moment ,they are simply just showing how a kick will work to Ariadne.however ,taking heavy sedative means that you'll need two synchronised kicks ,a kick from your current level and a kick from where your sleeping body is ,to drop yourself at the same time , Aurthur says :his music warns me ,and when the van hits the barrier ,it should be unmistakable,and i will blow up the room ,so we will get a nice synchronised kick. before the van gets chased off the bridge ,yusuf places a headset over Aurthur 's ears to warn him that a kick is coming and he needs to get ready to create a kick on second level exactly at that moment,and the synchronised kick will bring them back to the first level.but the kick happens too soon ,and Aurthur isn't in any position to start off the second layer kick ,hence he is not able to pull off simultaneous kicks and this explains why he does not wake up from the second level dream when the van falls off the bridge.and after Mal's killed Fischer ,Cobb says to eames ,who is trying to revive him using defibrillator, that it will not work ,because his mind is trapped down there,and let's set up the charges,if a kick from the level above was enough to pull them back ,why did eames bring the charges along in the first place?it seems to me that they have planned it before they entered the dreams.and Ariadne suggests to go down there and bring Fischer back,she says we go down there to create a kick for him ,when the music starts ,use the defibrillator ,we will give him a kick down there ,when it stops ,blow the charges.the falling sensation and the defibrillator wakes him up to third level.they preferably choose kicks or waking up naturally after 10 hours rather than death,because in this case ,death throws you into limbo,which is an unconstructed dream scape,a place of raw,infinite subconscious,and you may easily lose grip on reality.

under normal sedation-death and kick from above level wake you up

heavy sedation-two simulataneous kicks are needed ,one from above level and one from the current dream state in which you are in,this is to boost the effect of kicks as you are under heavy sedation,it's harder to wake up than usual.

4.never recreate places from memories ,as this will make you feel lost and no longer able to distinguish between reality and dreams .

5.totem .an object created by dreamer to help him figure out weather he's in reality or a dreamworld .Cobb's totem ,or rather Mal's ,is a top ,that will keep on spinning ,infinitely in dreams.never let anyone touch your totem ,this is because if they knew your totem ,the weight,structure and shape of it,they can fake one ,and this will defeat the purpose of a totem ,and they can con you into a dream in which you believe is true .

6.when you die in you dream ,you simply wake up from it .but if you are injured ,you will feel real pain.if you died on sedative ,depends on the strenght of it ,if it's the normal sedative you use,as what Aurthur and Cobb did at the beginning of the movie ,you wake up from level 2 dream ,back to level 1 which is the hotel room .


7.the deeper the dreamstate,the lesser control of your consciousness have over the dream and the harder it's to wake up,dream becomes lucid and more vivid as you do deeper ,and you may lose track of what it's real ,no longer able to differentiate between reality and dreams ,hence your mind will not try to wake up and slipping into a coma state.

so questions ,
how Mal and Cobb got out of limbo in the first place ?
i presume that they didn't take any forms of sedative when they go to sleep ,i know you may ask how come the dream level can become so stable for them,if previously they didn't take any sedative.later i will present the explanation which i think is the most probable .Cobb says they were experimenting,and he wanted to go deep down ,to see how many levels they could descend to ,but he didn't realise that the deeper they went ,the easier they'd lose grip on reality,and start to lost sight of what's real ,and they constructed buildings from their memories ,such as Mal's childhood house,this made it even difficult for them to see the truth and Mal becomes increasingly convinced that the dream she's in is real.this is what prevents them from waking up ,because the mind wouldn't want to,they are in a state of ''coma'' or at the brink of their subconscious.and Cobb incepted her ,as they realised their minds were trapped down here,and they had no one up there to kick them back up,as cobb ,the dreamer had gone down there with mal,when the dreamer is gone ,the dreamworld is destroyed ,and the link to levels above is cut off completely ,hence this left them the only choice of leaving limbo by death.they had been on their own ,instead of leaving people on each level to activate the kicks,then Cobb decided to create his own kick by killing themselves to wake them up from dreams within dreams,he just thought of trying ,cause they were the first person down here and didn't know weather it's work ,but it truly brought them back ..without anyone help,depends solely on the feeling of imminent death in limbo.

this establishes a rule:when you are in limbo ,and your mind is trapped within ,you can kill yourself to leave limbo.the condition of this rule applied is that you shouldn't take any sedative before that or when the sedative has worn off.then you can jump from limbo straight to reality ,there's a shortcut from limbo back up to reality.but the thing is will you dare to try ? the courage of killing yourself isn't something you can scramble up within ,and what if you are wrong ,then you'd be truly dead by then.and it's also likely that you are trapped down there for so long that you think it's reality and choose not to kill yourself.

Cobb and his team use a heavy sedative to stabilise the dream levels so that fisher will not wake up as the mission proceeds ,but the side effect is when you die you go to limbo ,and lost there,cause your mind may try to wake up but your body wont ,because of the sedative in your blood.and by the time the sedative wears off ,it can be years down there in limbo,and your mind slowly become trapped and muddled,that you choose to believe the world you are in is real and may not kill yourself to leave .when saito is shot ,yusuf says he will die and trapped in limbo ,and can only wait for the sedative to wear off before he can leave.but will he choose to leave by then ?

kicks can also be used to pull you out from limbo ,as Cobb and Mal never tried doesn't mean that it wont work. the kick in limbo(ariadne pushes him off the building )and the kick in third level(electric shock) brings him back.

Cobb found saito ,and he's already an old man,their sedative has already worn off,as the dosage they used lasts only 10 hours ,the span of flight from Sydney to LA,but the problem is now Cobb seems to forget the purpose he came here for,Ariadne specifically told him not to lost himself before she jumped off the building ,but years in limbo can impair your memory ,but the conversation with saito makes him remember ,and he convinces saito that the world he's in isn't real ,they kill themselves with gun and goes back to reality . the first rule of limbo can be applied here:death can escape limbo .and straightaway back to reality without having to pass through those 3 layers in front,there's no other way to explain this ,they wouldn't have been able to go from level to level as Aurthur them already back in the plane ,and the three levels dreams have collapsed and no one is there to kick them from level to level,and this is also possible for them to leave by death,as the sedative effect already worn off.

and you may ask why Aurthur death at the beginning of the movie didn't send him straight from that specific dream level to reality ,i have thought about the answer ,i think possibly they take a normal sedative (but not the yusuf's specially formulated sedative),it makes sense that they are on a mission and they will not want to blow it up by having the subject (mr.saito)wakes up before they get what they want from him .but mr.saito did wake up from the second level dream before Cobb ,this maybe not due to the effect of sedative ,but rather it's because the second dream ,dreamt by Aurthur has already been destroyed as he's shot in head by Cobb.

and the ending ,omg ,I'm so happy that i saw it ,it's a reality for me !maybe you will have different evidences or proofs to show that it's a dream ,but it's all simply due to different opinions we have,and the ending is rather ambiguous and unclear . I'd like to stick to the belief that he wakes up and comes back to reality.i found the clothes his kids wear in dream are not the same as in reality,they aren't wearing the same clothes exactly ,although it may be just subtle difference ,but the difference is still there.in his dreams,his daughter wears a pink dress and the shoes she wears are of dark brown or black coloured,and his son wears a green and red checked shirt with a very obvious-looking red strip going down from the top of the collar at the back of his shirt,and he's playing on the ground before Philipa runs to him ,then in reality ,i mean in the ending part,she wears a pink dress with a white shirt inside,you can tell form the sleeves,and her shoes are white coloured ,his son wears a green -blue checked shirt and the RED STRIP at the back is gone !and Philipa is kneeling beside her brother playing with him ,her head jerks up when she hears her dad is back.

and how did Cobb get washed up on the shore next to saito's house in limbo? i don't think I'll be able to find any answer to this question ,this is because as we are told from the beginning ,don't you always not remember the beginning of your dream ?the dream seems vague and hard to recall ,i have always just remembered the behind part or the middle when i dream ,and dream can jump from dream so easily.hence it doesn't make sense trying to explain here ,or crack your head for a possible answer.