I believe that dreaming is, amongst other things, the experience of the mind actively establishing, optimizing and endowing the forms and structural templates (and thus abilities) of memory. And this process actually causes the evolution of our consciousness over time, for as memory takes on (or loses) dimensionality, we acquire new possibilities of representation, comprehension, expression, and integration. I realize how trivial this sounds until you realize that novel forms of experience cannot really be made conscious without an appropriately ‘shaped’ extension of memory to ‘receive” them for ‘reflection’ within consciousness.

Dreaming, it turns out, is analogous to the Christmas stocking of consciousness in a world where Christmas comes every time we go to sleep. And the chimney is the channel along which dreaming flows… and that toy-maker? Well, that’s another story entirely.