[plakspin]

You know how a loud sound or a flash of light can alter your dream ... For example you hear your alarm clock and all of a sudden you are dreaming you are in an ambulance?

My theory is that we are always in a "dream" state. Stimuli that manage to reach our conscious attention will alter this dream.

When a asleep only very strong stimuli will reach us so for the most part our "dream" is in a feedback loop mostly doing its own thing. When awake though we have a much more weaker filter for stimuli . The direction that our "dream" takes is fully controlled by it.