Certain memory-image events are often experienced by an awareness, when it enters a resting phase and the effort of sustaining a web of conscious coherence is relaxed. By reducing the immediacy of sensory input, or entering the physiological sleep state, these dream-events appear to the individuals experiencing them to be a consequence of allowing their memory structures some recovery time from the biochemical effort of maintaining an integrated net of consciousness. Whether it is a so called 'day-dream' or during the diurnal sleep state... when the significance of sensory input is substantially reduced... mental processes appear to become freed of the constraints of the conventional rules and expectations of reality. Seemingly bizarre and unthinkable combinations intermingle unconstrainedly with relatively little concern for how the behaviour of the universe has normally been perceived. In some circumstances... immediately upon regaining normal consciousness... it is possible to remember some of these dream-events and so attempt to reconstruct their content from the memory. Bizarre as the content forms and relationships may be, they usually appear to have an overall focus or structure based upon experience, and this broad concern of the dream often integrates a sense of continuity.

So persuasive is this recollection process, that even the living structures of nature and the observable patterns of the cosmos can merge and link themselves into interrelated structures. These are then frequently interpreted symbolically in mythological art forms of powerful cultural influence. Strong experiences of every variety become unbonded from the sites of their conscious reconstruction and range unhindered to intermingle in a chaos of disassociations and to indulge in transient linkages indifferent to the experiences of reality. A soldier's battle experiences, a teacher's unremitting bondage to timetables of performance, or the frustration and denial of an individuals sexual orientation, could all form the basis of a dream structure shaped by a sort of synoptic circumstantial anxiety. Even strong emotions associated with the images can participate in the seamless and bizarre concatenations and sequences... so that sweating, fear, violent movements and erotic participations may often accompany the experiences. These dream states would rarely be realistic and sensible when immediately compared with recollections of experience... when objects and persons are unconstrained by space and time or things have emotions and so on... but many human individuals seem obliged to use consciousness to attempt to impose coherence upon any recollected fragments.

It may even be possible that dreaming confers an evolutionary impetus, in that the process facilitates the contravention of convention and thus enhances the prospects of creativity. Certainly, although some divergent thinking and ingenuity is possible in a conscious self-awareness sensory-input state, the dream state remains a principle source and inspiration for the many creative endeavours. Whenever the conscious mind is unable to resolve an issue of creativity... like the elements of a technological design, the structure of a work of literature, the form of a sculpture or the fabrication of one of the images of this wordweb... allowing oneself to enter into a quasi-sleep-dream state with the issue uppermost in the conscious mind, will almost certainly reveal options and suggest possibilities.