Deja... WHO?

Sometimes, the most seemingly pedestrian and "uneventful" occurrences are the most fascinating ones. They certainly are to me: there is nothing to cloud the essence, the core of the event, whatever it was, and the number of elements subject to misunderstanding or misinterpretation is reduced to a minimum.

One such story is a dream coinciding with the waking reality next day that my mother had when she was in her 20s. It is very simple indeed: one night, my mother dreamt - among other things - that she was walking down a busy central street in her hometown when an unknown young man - "nice, nothing special" - came walking from the opposite direction. They exchanged a brief glance, as passers-by often do, and went on walking, each one in their direction. The dream - rather, a fragment of a dream - ended right there.

It was probably because she dreamt this just before she woke up - or at least that's how she recalled it - that she remembered this last, uninteresting fragment of the dream. In fact, she recalled the man's face quite vividly; and she was perfectly certain she had never seen him before. She then put the entire thing - not much! - out of her mind and went to work.

As she was walking down the busy central street from her dreams, there comes the young man from her dream: he came walking towards her, they exchanged a passing glance and went on walking. (She thought he looked at her with a slightly puzzled expression on his face, but that might have been a reflexion of her own astonishment. Or maybe... eh, who knows.)

I am sure some so-called "skeptics" (you see, I am a skeptic: a true one, i.e. an open-minded one, which is why I don't like the term being misused and hijacked by fearful ignorants) - would jump in to say that she probably thought she had seen him in her dreams but it was a false deja-vu; or that she had seen him before but she "forgot" about him.

None of these "explanations" allow for the simple fact that the person might be telling the truth: that it was indeed just as she said. Nor do they - always relentlessly looking for a well-definable "reason" for everything! - explain the reason for the appearance of that specific person in her dreams at that time.

I remember reading about an identical event in a book on time slips: a woman dreamt about another woman limping out of a subway station (I think) towards and past her.
And that was it.
If I remember correctly, she even felt slightly irritated upon waking because she didn't see "the point" of such a, well, pointless dream.
She went on about her daily business; and as soon as she approached the subway station of her dreams, there came the woman, limping up the stairs and past her. The woman (the dreamer) turned around and watched her walk away.
And that was it.

That was... what?
That is the question.

What I find interesting about such events is precisely the fact that they are not "meaningful" - they bear no visible "message": they are, or seem to be, simply fragments of everyday life... before it occurs. Or before we perceive it as occurring.

I tend to believe such occurrences are actually time slips: for some reason, this woman and my mother had access to the stream of time "in the raw", if you will - unprocessed by the "time-keeping" mechanisms in our own minds.

Which always reminds me of how children take a relatively long time (and have a hard time) to learn the distinction between "yesterday" and "tomorrow"... and yet, they never confuse the concept of "you" and "I", do they?

Think about it. 

If you liked reading this, you might enjoy this book that would explain such occurrences in the light of parallel universes or "multiverse" theory:

Of course, you might also absolutely hate it.
I'd like to hear your opinion in any case.