This morning I woke up from a nightmare about Conan O'Brien. But then I drifted back to sleep off and on for over an hour (I stayed up really late last night). I kept going back into the dream where people were being interviewed about the incident and whether or not he'd recover or the show would continue, etc.

They weren't long dreams but snippets, more like thoughts than actual dreams even though I was in a light stage of sleep.

So, it makes me wonder. Are we always dreaming even when we're awake? Do we not notice because reality is too overpowering and breaks into random thoughts not really directed by our conscious minds? Hmmmm.......

The line between dreaming and being conscious is very blurry. There was a study done, similar to a sleep study, in which participants were asked to lie down and relax - but stay awake. When the experimenters interrupted them and asked them to report what they had just been thinking about, they reported really bizarre, dream-like things. EEG results showed that the subjects were truly awake the whole time; they didn't drift off for a moment without realising.

People hallucinate when they're falling asleep or waking up, halfway between sleeping and waking, and if you go without sleep for a long time, you will start to hallucinate - go into a dream state - while you're awake.

It's also believed by some that schizophrenics are "stuck" in a dream state. This could have to do with issues around dopamine production.

There are also meditative/trance states and drug-induced states that are similar, in a way, to dreaming.

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That's interesting. You don't suppose some people lied about what they were thinking about. I imagine some, thinking of things of a sexual nature, wouldn't readily admit it.

I've often experienced sensory hallucinations in moments right before awaking such as hearing gun shots and feeling insects crawling on me.

I've never been part of a sleep study but I've always had the feeling that they ask you so quickly that you don't have time to think of a lie. And I'm sure the people who do these studies have heard every bizarre sexual dream imaginable. But I don't know for sure.