1. The dream world is, to a great extent, uncharted territory for all sciences. I believe that there is a conflict in bringing you consciousness into the dream world. You could say it is unnatural, it goes against the natural order of thing(which doesn't make it wrong, of course).

What the subconscious is trying to do is preserve things as they should be. It tried to make us believe that it is real and not just a fabrication of our mind. This is what happens when you are lucid and then just loose this state.

However, when it is a normal dream most of the times your mind is not awake enough to be conscious of the fact that its a dream. It isn't the subconscious tricking you, in my opinion, it is just that the dream world is the world of the unconscious and in it your dream self plays out all of its fantasies, fantasies that are not meant for the conscious mind to know.

2. I don't believe that the subconscious has anything to do with that. When you are lucid, at a high lucidity level, it is as if you are awake in the dreamworld. Also, you can tell how much power you have while you are in there. I have personally never had any LD where I could control everything. But, with the limited control I have, I could tell that what I was able to change or conjure was in fact due to my lucidity.

Dreams are not only in the past, in the recall. They are also in the present and when lucid enough there should be no reason not to remember it as you remember the waking life.

3. On this matter there is actually no way of proving if the person is saying the truth, but I would like to be able to believe at least some of them. I know people here probably worst than you(you've been here much longer) but I have no reason to distrust what they say. I know that I personally have about 3 LD's per week, whether you believe it or not, and have nothing to gain from lying to you guys.

4. As I said before the dream world is uncharted territory, mostly when it comes to such an intricate subject as this one. I believe that most of the times it is a fabrication of the unconscious mind, but I do not rule out the posibility that sometimes we might enter something deeper than that. I believe that we might all be somehow mentally connected with each other and with the world itself. Maybe it is part of a collective unconscious, but it is posible to enter it through a spiritual plane, such as meditation or LD's. I just do not rule out the posibility that sometimes when we become lucid we might somehow tap into it, connect to this intelectual and spiritual web that connects us all.

Hope this is what you were looking for Lowercase...

P.S. Don't be so easy to dismiss the fact that there is no other form of life out there...it is highly unprobable and very presumptious to say that there isn't.