David Gelernter penned the book "The Muse in the Machine" in which he offers a slightly more technical explanation. It somewhat goes like this: There are situa

David Gelernter penned the book "The Muse in the Machine" in which he offers a slightly more technical explanation. It somewhat goes like this: There are situations in which your subconscious mind is busy but the conscious mind's censors are active, blocking some connections from being made before they can be; now consider what happens when the conscious mind's censors are inactive. A prime time for that is the fog which occurs between deep sleep and fully awake - a brief period in which answers start popping up. There have been stories in the past about people who solved complex problems "in their sleep". Monica Anderson says of Gelernter's fog: whatever you do,don't open your eyes until you have fully locked the ideas down in memory,owing to the zillion bits/second flooding into your brain. So, in my view, since I've learned how to keep my eyes closed as the fog lifts, I've also come to realize that a shower is a perfect place to allow the subconscious to shine. I found that sitting at a piano playing a mindless minimalist cord sequence works as well. I've read that Einstein would play his violin. Where this all gets truly dangerous is driving along an endless road. How many times have you arrived at a destination and realized you have no idea how you got there?