This happens to me. I’ll have an especially vivid dream, that can be so vivid I don’t realize I’m dreaming it until I wake up, and recall it in detail when I do awake. Then some time later (days, weeks, months) the same event I dreamed about will occur. I usually don’t recognize it until I’m in the middle of it or shortly before it ends.
When I do realize I am experiencing something I already dreamed, everything sort of slows down and takes on a flat, spooky, one-step-ahead quality – I know that next someone will walk into the room, and then they do; the person I am talking to will say this, and then they do; I will respond with this and look at the clock, notice the plant in the corner, and then I do. If I catch it early enough I can alter what is "supposed to happen" – but if I don’t, it proceeds "as scripted", except I have this awareness that I’m saying "lines". In fact I guess that’s how I’d describe it: I’ve already rehearsed this scene, and now I’m living it. It is not like deja vu for me; deja vu is more vague, a funny feeling, "I know I’ve been here before and can’t quite place it". This is quite clear when it occurs, it plays out point-for-point like I saw it on TV or in a movie, and I can remember when I dreamed it even if it was a while ago.
I’ve always been curious about it, especially since I have had a couple instances where I wrote down or mentally fixed the dream-images in my head very firmly and then experienced the replay a short enough time afterwards to be sure that I am actually dreaming the future and it’s not some kind of mental hitch (deja vu feels more like a mental hitch to me). But I can’t recall at the moment any specific instance being about anything very important, just random conversations or scenes, nothing significant, so I never gave it much thought beyond the curiosity. My personal opinion is something along the lines of when we dream, we can tap into the unconscious stuff that links us into a universal energy/hive mind/consciousness – probably a holdover from my quasi-hippie teenage years, but as good an explanation as any for something that you can’t concretely explain.
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