Has there ever been a study to confirm this? It seems similar to the ''nocebo'' effect. Your thoughts?
''There are a lot of stories floating around out there about people who experienced an injury in their dreams and then found real, physical evidence of the wound on their bodies once they awoke. For instance, some people have claimed to have been caught in a fire in their dreams and then woke up to find burn marks on their skin. Other common stories involve people being attacked during their dreams and then waking up to find scratch marks somewhere on their bodies. However, most of these stories are found in chat rooms or message boards, so it’s hard to corroborate if they are true.But, there is one well documented case, reported by famed psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, about an Indian man named Durga Jatav who, during a battle with typhoid fever, had an extremely vivid dream about being held captive in another realm. To keep him from escaping, his dream captors cut his legs off at the knee. Unfortunately, his legs were already severed by the time the captors realized they had the wrong man and didn’t need to keep Jatav after all. When Jatav asked how he could leave with no legs, they offered him several pairs of legs, he picked out his own pair, and then they were miraculously reattached.
While Jatav was having the dream, his body became very cold and at one point his family thought he was dead, yet he revived a few days later. Once he was awake, his sister and neighbor noticed deep fissures around his knees that weren’t there previously. X-ray photographs showed no abnormality below the surface of the skin, which led Jatav and his family to believe the marks came from his dream experience. Dr. Stevenson met Jatav some 30 years later (1979) and took pictures of the still visible scars. Although Stevenson did not witness the event, he apparently believed the story, which was confirmed by all involved, and he even included the account and photographs in his book “Reincarnation and Biology: A contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects.”
Obviously there’s no scientific proof to this intriguing account, but it’s not too far-fetched considering what we already know about the power of the brain over the body.'
'Edward Kelly and his co-authors in their book Irreducible Mind refer to a couple of incidents[1]. The first story was reported in the nineteenth century in the book Influence of the Mind on the Body written by an English physician, Daniel Hack Tuke. It concerns a man who dreamed that he had been hit on the chest by a stone and woke up to find a bruise on his chest. Here is the account from Tuke’s book:In the Bibliotheque choisie de Medecine, by Planque, tome vi. p. 103, is the following case: A man, thirty years of age, healthy and robust, saw in a dream a Pole with a stone in his hand, which he threw at his breast. The vivid shock awoke him, and then he found that there was on his chest (dans le même endroit) a round mark, having the appearance of a bruise. Next day there was so much swelling, etc., that a surgeon was requested to see it, who, fearing a slough, scarified the part, and relieved it. The wound healed in a short time. Without more definite information, it would not be safe to build a theory upon this case, but looking at the previous one of the spectre, and others equally well authenticated, there appears no reason to doubt that the dream and the inflammatory action of the skin stood in the relation of cause and effect. [2]''
The third story comes from the Aurobindo Ashram and was reported by Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. His wife Sehra woke up after a nightmare and was found to have sustained injuries which seemed related to her dream. This is the account as given by Amal Kiran:The time was a little after 2 a.m. on 19 December 1978. I happened to be awake in bed. In the bed across the room Sehra started moaning very piteously. I thought she was doing so in sleep, as on some occasions she had done during a nightmare. As she went on moaning, I spoke loudly to her and then got up and touched her so as to rouse her from sleep.She answered: “Someone has attacked me with a stick and beaten me on my head,” I said: “It’s only a bad dream. Don’t worry.” But she complained of severe pain in the head and shouted to our servant Lakshmi who was sleeping in the next room. I said: “There is no need to wake her. Tell me what you want.” She went on shouting for Lakshmi. I called out also and Lakshmi came in.Before this I had switched on the light. When Lakshmi came, I pulled back from Sehra’s head the counterpane which had been over it. The sight before our eyes was horrible. Above the upper ridge of the left eye there was a huge ugly lump and a swelling along the bone between the eye and the ear. In the middle of the lump was a point where the skin seemed slightly abrased: it was a reddish spot as if the stroke of the stick had especially fallen there.What we saw was unbelievable. How could a beating received on the head in a dream have such a strong physical effect? I have read accounts in journals of occultism in which people getting hurt in dreams showed visible marks. The Mother (Mirra Alfassa) also has in one place spoken of the body showing signs of mishaps experienced in a dream. But never had I witnessed such a consequence and never could I have imagined that so concrete and severe an injury to the body might appear as the result of a nightmare.If I had not been absolutely sure that Sehra had not got up and fallen somewhere, I would not have believed a nightmare had hurt her so grievously. But here was no room for doubt. She had not got up at all after she had been to the bathroom just before retiring at about 10.30 p.m. on the night of the 18th. Besides, if she had fallen in the bathroom or on the way to it or back from it she-would have cried out from that place and not from under her counterpane in bed. I could at once have known — and so would Lakshmi or her daughter who early that night had been sleepless and later asserted that she had not heard Sehra go to the bathroom any time after 10.30 or so. Again, our bathroom door creaks very loudly whenever opened or closed and is likely to wake up anyone who is not too heavy a sleeper. It is quite certain from my own evidence as well as from that of others that the terrible hurt was received during a nightmare.…While drinking her coffee, she recalled that she had started dreaming of going to meet the Mother(Mirra Alfassa). Before she could proceed she was crossed by some being and dealt a blow with a stick. The blow was aimed at her head and meant to break it. Somehow it was diverted to the area of the left eye and it landed on the temple above it.The enormous swelling subsided just a little during the day by getting spread along the temple, but the entire part round the eye became a deep blackish red and the skin below the eye was puffed up. (It took Sehra nearly seven weeks to get back to normal.)The whole event proves how dangerously one can be attacked by a hostile force in one’s sleep. One must always call the Mother’s protection and be on guard even in a dream. People have got up with pain in some parts of the body — e.g. the abdomen — after a nightmare. I was myself once attacked during one of my out-of-the-body rambles several years ago and the sensation was as if the spine had been smashed. But there was no physical injury left. Sri Aurobindo in Savitri has written of how a spiritual worker in the subtle world.
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