Originally Posted by
Sageous
I'm going to wax heretical* for a moment, Kaan, to maybe offer an explanation for why persistent realms work:
Persistent realms might actually be changing all the time, whether "suffering" from MHV transformations or simply from the unconscious/dreaming mind filling in details or plot lines with things that the dreamer hadn't expected. But, in the name of maintaining his persistent realm, the dreamer, upon waking, either forgets those diverting details or remembers them as true additions to what they had intended in the first place.
The same goes for time dilation: like everything else about the dream time dilation is defined post-dream by memory, and it is very easy to remember yourself living through weeks or even years in one night if your dream was laid out like a movie might be, with the passage of time built into the dream's plot; and yes, an inventive dreamer can easily assemble, and honestly believe, an "actual" tick-tock of the dilation by filling in the missing spaces with memories that never happened (just as any Star Wars fan, for instance, could easily give you a 20-year history of the Republic/Empire, with an accurate tick-tock by accessing the "memory" that Lucas created when presenting his overall persistent realm).
On top of all that, MHV transformations or unconscious additions might not be happening at all. During the dream, the persistent realm might be a very dull, bare-bones place indeed, but upon waking a dreamer dutifully, even energetically fills in interesting details or bridges gaps in imagery or time, all while completely honestly remembering that those details and bridges were there in the dream in the first place.
In other words, it can be very easy, even exciting, to remember a persistent realm, even if the place you just dreamed about only vaguely resembled your invented realm. Change in the dream itself can be overlooked, ignored, or properly adjusted by a dreamer upon waking without the dreamer ever realizing she had made any adjustments.
I personally believe that a substantial amount of our dreaming lives, my own included, might never have occurred at all; we are simply remembering that it occurred, and adding details that best fit our expectations (or hopes). I also believe the opposite -- that there is some truly amazing shit happening to us in dreams (or during sleep in general) that we do not remember at all, and our lives would be much more interesting if we could hang on to those experiences.
Like I said, this may be DV heresy (and I don't want to argue about it), but it could explain your misgivings about persistent realms, and how they might exist -- even if they cannot.
tl;dr:Dreams are a unique experience in our lives in that the only way we see them is as memories; we cannot record them as they are happening, but must rely on how we remember them upon waking. Memory is a fallible tool in the best of cases, but with dreams -- even lucids, though they are much easier to remember -- memory is an extremely weak tool at best.
When remembering dreams, it is very important to avoid adding details or making assumptions about what "really" happened, lest the dreams start picking up details that never occurred during them. I wonder if a lot of persistent realmers are assembling much of their realms upon waking without ever knowing they were doing so. I could be wrong, but it is a thought...
*Heretical because: so very few dreamers are willing to accept that they might not remember what happened in exactly the same way that it happened -- sometimes, especially with dreams, memory is an extremely shoddy tool; and yet we LD'ers base everything purely on what we remember, and rarely question the validity of that memory.