im sure most of you have had a dream about the same place before. Not a reoccuring dream. But a dream about a certain place or time. And perhaps later in ur life you have another dream and u revisit that place. Only its not the same its different, just like a brand new dream but at the same location. I find this facsinating that ur mind cannot only create a dream for u, but store the dreams world in memory and bring it back for later use! this furthers my belief that there is more to dreaming than just nuerons firing. Also what about having a dream where you could swear you’uv been there before in a different dream but ur not 100% sure. When you wake up ofcourse you prolly would not be able to remember the past dream let alone be 100% sure of it. But you get the feeling that the world you were in last night u were there b4. How can u be sure? If dreams are supposed to be randomized collections of real life content, also known as day residue. and thats all they are. then what allows them to recreate something from long ago and long forgotten and use it again. there is no randomness to that.
Last night i had a dream that i was in a european city long ago, around the turn of the century to 1920s that time. And in between theses alleyways of id say 5 story buildings(mostly living quarter buildings) there was suspended lik platforms about 4 square feet all around held up by long poles and they were about 4 stories high so up near the top. I was hanging around up there walking across them and sitting on the building ledges. And i could swear i had been there b4 and had hung out there with friends but i couldnt remember when. Then i came across a friend of mine whom id remembered from b4 and i talked to him for awile. Every1 else was gone for the night and it was just me and him. When i awoke i was unsure whether i had dreamed of that place hanging out with friends b4 and now revisited it or if that too was just implemented in my dream memory.
Sounds kind of like deja vu, except in a dream. I get this a lot both in waking life and in my dreams. I never noticed this before but i just realized that in my dreams the deja vu is a lot more pronounced, and is about a bigger thing, while in waking reality it is smaller stuff like today i got it walking down the stairs towards one of my classes, just the whole situation and how i was walking and where my arms were and whatnot and i just grinned my usual grin. In my dreams its usually about a huge event or just a whole dream altogether, except it takes awhile for me to realize that ‘all this has happened before’ and so i know whats going to happen next and can change things, though sometimes thats what i did in the past incarnation. With the realization of deja vu, sometimes i feel stuck, sometimes i feel free. Funny how ive never became fully lucid through dream deja vu realization. And i get deja dreams all the time! Those who experience deja vu in dreams would probably stand to benefit doing an RC upon realizing deja. However i think a good number of people already do this, myself included.
I totally agree with you that dreams are by far not randomized collections. I sometimes wonder how they came to such a conclusion (though i dont know who ‘they’ is im assuming its what some psychologist concluded, though i know not his or her argument heck it could be quite valid), but i still believe that dreams have more purpose than just randomization. I believe that dreams can have spiritual purpose, ive had many a mystical dream that symbolism cannot explain, that contain an ineffable feeling of spirituality and unity, and im sure everyone else has as well.
Trigpoe
You are absolutely right that a lot of places in dreams are the same and we were there sometimes earlier. Actually you can even try to make a map of your dream world 
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I have dreamt about the same “world” as long as I can remember. Painting pictures and maps of the places helps me remember the dreams. Sometimes I will dream of characters from that “world” appearing in real life, and sometimes they tell me I’m dreaming! The strange part is, my brother found my map of the dream city. He had been there too. 
After that we were able to go there together!
I’m constantly dreaming of going back to school and doing some kind of sixth form study. It’s always based in the same building and my two best friends of the time are there. My other common dream is of work and there’s often more worrying going on in those ones. I’m meant to be using the clock at work as an RC and other clocks, watches as well but it’s not working 
I have such a bad memory.