The case may be made, that while inhabiting our bodies, that at that point we're actually dreaming. We may actually be more awake when we're "dead".

Think about the way in which we compose our every day... we have a job, we have family and friends, we have beliefs about things... all these are conditional and transitory. Even our attachment to money is a process of acceptance, we accept that it has value, so it does. We are maneuvering a physical body through a physical environment, and pretty much anything we think about in regards to our situation (outside of our primary physical needs) may be thought-of as something of a massively shared dream...

With all of it being conditional... jobs end, people die, economies prosper and fail.... and all our imagery and reactions to this takes place, based on the ways that the people around are processing the dreams that they're having about the nature of life as they interpret it...

So it may be that we have this all backwards... that while "alive" we are enmeshed in a brain-interpretative dream... and that once we "die" and leave this dream, then once again we're more fully awake.... :^)