Something that blew my mind

[Box77]

Here's the scenario: My room was located in the 3rd floor of a building, I used to let the window open and it was above a common yard. At the end of the dream: I'm staring at some stuff hanging from a rope, when I see the rope breaks and lets the stuff fall on the floor making a pretty loud noise which wakes me up, then I realize that somebody has let some stuff fall on the floor downstairs and now they are starting to pick it up... How would you explain that? Coincidence, all of it happened at the same time, or did I dream it after it happened?

[Saizaphod]

Ummmm the real life event noises probably just carried to your dream trough your ears i would say. But if you dreamed the scenario before the noise now that would be strange. Time works differently with in the dream like in real life 4 seconds have passed but in the dream in your case it may have been much longer.

[Box77]

But if you dreamed the scenario before the noise now that would be strange.. Yeah.. that's my point, because of sometimes I used to have similar experiences (not many), where they all apparently happened with a difference of around 5 or 6 seconds before the event. It looked like the dream was preparing for the real event to happen and use it as part of the dream. My conclusion was that perhaps there were other events running on simultaneously which I used as an indicator for the event that was coming on. In this sample, what should I dreamed if anybody let those things fall? perhaps I would have seen the stuff hanging and nothing more? I don't know

[Arra]

Sorry for being a bit vague, but I'm not sure about the specifics of this as I heard it a long time ago. There was some famous person, I think a philosopher, who had a long, intricate dream involving a guillotine (I think it was), and the entire dream led up to him dying from that method. As soon as he 'died' in the dream, something fell on his head in real life and woke him up. He was convinced that his entire dream, which seemed to last for hours, was really made up by his brain in the split second his head was being hit. It would just be too coincidental otherwise. That being said, most experiments about time in dreams have revealed that time actually passes at the same rate in dreams as in reality. In one experiment, lucid dreamers are asked to perform some eye motion once they receive a signal. The lucid dreamer is then supposed to count to 10 seconds, and make the eye motion again, all while he's asleep. The time that it actually took the dreaming person to count to 10 is recorded. That time is then compared to the time it takes the same person to count to 10 while awake, and the result turned out to be the same. The person didn't necessarily count to 10 accurately, but they over or under-estimated by the same amount, both while sleeping and while awake. You may still be right if, maybe, time is only sometimes altered in dreams. Perhaps it happens rarely, or is more common with you.

[Box77]

Sorry for being a bit vague, but I'm not sure about the specifics of this as I heard it a long time ago.... Don't worry, I did the search thanks to your info!! It's described in Sigmund Freud's Book 'Interpretation of Dreams', it was a guy called Maury who had this dream of the guillotine. It was the head-board of the bed which had fallen on his neck. Again, I can conclude that previous events could be integrated during the dream until the final event woke him up.