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Some Shakespeare quotes to think about (ref. wikipedia.org):

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep." -The Tempest

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil. " - Hamlet

This man sure sounds like he knew what he was talking about - what does it mean that the Bard himself played with the idea of waking sleep in many of his great works? In his dealings with dreams, there are premonitions, apparitions, omens and even murderous trances - this is a huge range, it would seem, of the I function and its ability to generate such a variation of patterns in our unconscious states. So sleep is merely an ideal condition for the I function to regain control from our obstinate bodies when we can't control our every move? Would Shakespeare agree that it isn't really us dreaming, that dreaming, in itself, is an act of trying to reassert control over the body's activities? He certainly used altered states of consciousness to his advantage in staging drama. And isn't drama a distillation and a dilation of everyday life? Curious. Very curious...