As images in the mind when one sleeps, dreams are immaterial. They do not correspond to the external world, and since consciousness is immaterial whatever its causal relationship with the body is and whether it survives the death of the body (though the Bible does not actually teach this, saying instead that dead humans must be resurrected to again be conscious), dreams can only be nonphysical things. However, a consciousness without a body, though it could have auditory or visual perceptions that do not connect with any outside stimuli, would be unable to feel physical sensations at all, having no capacity for physical experiences of even a partly distorted kind. If one is experiencing physical sensations, one must be contacting something made of matter, even if only one's body, no matter its true appearance. If one is contacting matter, one cannot be dreaming. This is the sole way to know such a thing for a being with human limitations.
Knowing these things is only possible by knowing that logical truths and one's own consciousness cannot be illusions and then letting reason lead them step by step (though proving one is not dreaming is extremely precise and likely to be difficult initially, to the point where even rationalists might not discover all of this). There could be non-rationalists who think that their experiences in the external world are what reveal to them moment by moment if they are dreaming or awake--but they also just assume that there is an external world, perhaps believing they can "know" that they are dreaming when they perceive abnormal sights (the phenomena in the world of matter could change into any logically possible pattern or event, of which there are many). As ironically close as they are, their belief is like that of someone believing in God because of a sense of his presence rather than because of the logical necessity of an uncaused cause. The conclusion is in part true and knowable with absolute certainty, not the probabilistic, perception-based evidences of most experiences that could turn out to be an illusion beyond the fact that one is perceiving the experience.
It can be very difficult to discover the proof that there is a material world of any kind, especially since only one of the senses--understood in light of an absolute, assumption-free alignment with the objective truths of logic--is relevant to proving this. In no way is it as easy as opening one's eyes and seeing tables, houses, plants, pets, or other belongings. The existence of matter of any kind is not obvious from hearing sounds that seem like they originate from material objects like alarm clocks or falling branches or cars or even the bodies of other people. Similarly, it does not logically follow from waking up to ordinary, expected sensory experiences that through this one can know that one is now awake.
The laws of nature and the specific appearances of environments and items that one perceives might not even be the ones that really exist, and they also could have been different because there is no logical necessity in them being as they seem right now, unlike logical axioms. Because of this, they could also change at any time on the level of metaphysics or epistemological perception involving the senses. They are wholly, objectively irrelevant to whether one is dreaming. Beyond these facts, one could also have a dream with "realistic" events (with no sudden powers of flight, for example) and perceive real or imagined abnormalities while awake. A person could also have their memories infiltrate their dreams to the point that the seeming distinction--which is only one on the level of perception as far as epistemology goes--vanishes between waking life with its sudden influx of memories and dreams with their likely focus on mostly the contents of the dream.
To dream requires consciousness and to perceive anything through the senses requires consciousness. Mental imagery and sensory imagery (visual perceptions) are epistemologically indistinguishable from the mere experience of each. The immaterial nature of consciousness and its dreams and the physical substance that a material world must have are keys to realizing how to prove one is dreaming or awake. Of course, without the necessities and possibilities dictated by reason, none of this would be true or knowable, so it is not from thought alone that one can tell the metaphysical difference between a dream and an experience with the senses in the external world. The non-rationalist who thinks they can "just know" they are awake with ease until they have discovered everything from logical axioms all the way up to these other logical facts is delusional, as sane as they might feel or think they must be.
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