Are the 31 realms literal separate realms/places, or means of describing how differently attained beings experience their environments?

I was under the impression that these were all literal separate realms, like different dimensions of sorts, but I was reading a reddit thread (here) where multiple people seemed to suggest that the realms often just refer to how beings experience their surrounding world, and not necessarily where that world is located. IE, realm as a "mode of experience" and not necessarily a place.

There was a comment suggesting that those in the Deva realms could just be highly evolved Alien species on another planet that have elongated their lives with technology; planets that we humans theoretically could travel to with spaceships. Another comment suggested that beings in the God realms could in fact be beings that roam the earth, but they are considered to be in the god realm because of how their minds perceive and experience their reality, and due to the composition of their bodies. Another comment suggested sea turtles belong to one of the deva realms, and this relates to how they experience their world.

This seems like an odd idea that contradicts some of the things I understood about the realm theory. Does this have any merit to it? I understand that there probably are higher dimensional realms, or mechanisms of physics where different types of beings can exist, but the way people talk about this theory is that beings of all different levels of realms could exist in the same physical area, and talk and interact with each other, yet be in different realms because of how their minds experience the world.

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