Just some random brainstorming inspired by this post: If you imagined a layer above reality in the chain of dream->reality->x, what qualities would describe it? People often differentiate dreams and reality by the fact that reality follows rigid rules instead of having subjectively-bent rules. Would the rules of x be even rigid-er? Maybe you follow the pattern by subtracting the rest of the subjectiveness left in reality. Reality still has subjective qualities: we're all bound to an arbitrary viewpoint, and things like the Anthropic Principle affect the circumstances that we experience. I guess that basically means some "objective" total view of reality would be the higher layer, but that doesn't really leave any room for actions or cognition as we know it, so it's just a fun thought.