Eric wrote:
As for dreams: Plenty of people believe they have had dreams confirmed, both in their own direct experience and in the experiences of others. It really is a much more mirky topic than most give it credit for.
around age 16, we lived in a semi-rural area where there was a street but not every lot had a house and there was light industry. Across the road from us a man ran a construction operation where he had various big yellow machines, piles of materials, etc. He often worked on those machines himself, by himself.
One afternoon after school (I worked nights) I was napping on my parents couch, slipping in and out of dream (as I often did during those naps). I constructed a dream around someone yelling help repeatedly, I don't remember the dream I constructed, but I awoke enough to realize the yelling was in my waking life as well as in my dream. I was still half in dream it seemed as I ran across the street to the source of the yelling, trying to sort reality from dream (with stakes like watching for traffic). The man working on a road-grader had trapped his foot under the blade. My understanding of such things had me assuming his toes were severed, but as soon as he saw me, his tone shifted from panic to relief and he quietly intructed me how to climb into the cab of the grader and raise the blade for him. His boot was creased and he had a slight limp as he thanked me and assured me he was OK. It was not until he indicated the pair of 2x4 blocks under the blade did I realize that he *had* taken precautions but when the blade descended ?unexpectedly? the safety gap those gave were only enough to keep his foot from being sheared, but still trapped it. His bootlaces were undone making it obvious he had tried removing his foot from the boot, but apparently to no avail. I asked if he had steel toed boots (I had recent got my own first pair for riding a motorcycle) and he said "yes, that is what was trapped, with normal boots, I would probably have been able to pull my boot out".
I was still half-dreaming I felt as I returned home. The man (in embarassment?) was pretty dismissive of me. Politely thanked me but made it clear that once he was not trapped it was time for me to leave. I did not fall back asleep, but I *did* sit and contemplate what I had just experienced, especially the transition from the "dream-reason" for the cries for help to the real-reason, and also the transition from believing I was about to try to save a man's life (and toes?) from having had them severed to being dismissed summarily. I went to work that evening still thinking about it, and I think it stayed (strongly) with me for days (and weakly for the rest of my life obviously). The *high stakes* of what felt like life-death imprinted this strongly, and made me at least consider the question of "what is really real?" and how I could be so wrong (especially on the severed toes ideation).
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