But seriously ….
I woke up in the middle of the night once and there was a hamster scuttling about on my bedroom floor. I sat up and realised it was a ghost hamster, but I was interested rather than spooked …..
Then I woke up for real - and wondered wtf.
This "waking up" in a dream has happened to me a few times - the most weird was one night in 2011. I almost never dream religious things but that time I had this really urgent call to pray in my sleep. That was the morning of 9/11 ….
I seem to be dreaming all the time, awake or asleep, but usually below awareness. Many times if I doze of in a chair I'll pick up a dream that seems to be in progress part way through as though it had been going on already in the background.
When I was about 5 years old, I dreamed that the world was invaded by aliens. I was running away from a flying saucer but it shot me with a ray and I was killed - weirdly, it was a beautiful experience!
Jung talks about a dream where he experienced himself as an image projected by a magic lantern from a flying saucer - I've never dreamt anything like that, but it just feels right to think of my conscious self as a projection of some deeper reality.