There are situations in which our “attention to life” relaxes itself, for instance, when we are daydreaming. In these cases, memories that have been buried more deeply and are not directly relevant to our everyday actions might resurface. When we are asleep, our attention to life relaxes completely. Awake, we are in a state of “uninterrupted tension” in which perceptions, with some effort, attach themselves to mostly relevant memory images. But when we are asleep, any memory taken from the entirety of our past can attach itself to any external stimulus that happens to make its way into our
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