It’s only imaginary in the same way all sound is imaginary. A tree fell in the forest did it make a sound? The answer is it created vibrations in the air but it’s not considered sound unless it is heard. If you hear something, like tinnitus, it is a sound even though the air is not actually vibrating creating that sound.
Upside-down teleologies.
What I mean by that is that it isn’t the imaginary sounds that wake you from sleep, but the waking from sleep that causes the imaginary sounds. The semi-conscious brain, in searching for an explanation for why you awoke, assumes there must have been some reason, resulting in you imagining one, probably by associating any random noise as having been loud enough to have startled you.
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