I am sure that there is a lot more going on in the objective real world than we can monitor with our five senses. I think dreams allow us to engage with the real world and monitor the way it is acting on us.

One thing I love is to stop doing. When I just STOP and start looking, I enter a state that is much more dreamy, and find I look at things quite differently. It seems like a change in scale - both very close up, and simultaneously very distant.

I think both science and art are impelled by curiosity: What's really happening? How do things really function? How can I really engage with the world around me? These are questions that artists and scientists both ask.

A recurring dream probably merits close attention. Something wants you to pay attention.

We dream primarily the same way that we have consciousness of the world for the same reason. Basically, that our brains evolve to simulate reality and to control what's happening around us.

I agree that dreams seem to be involved in laying down memories but I realise that dreaming gives us access to a part of our brain we do not normally have access to.

We forget most of our dreams because we don't have access to those parts of our brain once we are switched to wakefulness. But why we evolved that way is a puzzle to me.