With each rising from my bed of dreams I can link all those risings that preceded it. I remember yesterday's awakening which is separated from today's by last night's dream. I can, by focusing my awakened attention upon the task, look at each link in my chain of awakenings. I can remember only a certain number of links before the chain begins to blur. The chain of awakenings becomes a moving film strip and I remember only fragments of the film.

Between every remembered awakening there is a gap of forgetfulness. I cannot recall last night's dream let alone a film strip of past dreamings. Some people have a much greater capacity than I do to call their dreams up before them in the light of day, but this does not alter the fact that dreams resist remembrance. I cannot link them together as with the scenario of myself; I cannot remember myself from my dreams.

Sleep overcomes, it comes over mybody like the dream comes over myself. It is a covering that relaxes the demands of the reality principle. The womb is protection from reality. Dreaming is regression, a movement backward toward the origin of myembodiedself. Originally, I thought I was the world and the world was me and then, as things developed, I woke up and found myself in a real world.