The dream reality is just as real as the waking virtual reality. We can choose to see it in a waking state by parallel processing.

Your analogy of the river and glacier were as poetic, as they were the perfect metaphor for the stream of consciousness .

Seeing the future is taking a random draw of the probable outcomes by increments of delta T's. This explains slight differences in a future scenario playing out. The location may be off, or the players. But the core event usually remains the same.

Einstein never completed his unified field theory. He spent the rest of his life in this failed attempt. He didn't know about virtual realities.

Understanding that light isn't a particle or a wave, it's information. Consciousness is fundamental, all else is virtual, as in the information exchanged within consciousness.

When this is understood, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics fall out as a logical by product.

It all comes down to reducing entropy, growing up, making choices, loosing the opposite of love, which is fear.

Dreams allow us this growth opportunity, with fewer negative consequences of damage to the physical body, or avatar. Our core being is still making choices in the dream reality, and growing with them.

We do not die, and we take what we learn in every life with us to the next. Ever growing, evolving, becoming more complex and organized. Lowering entropy, becoming love.