OK, so can anybody answer me this? Why is it that you sometimes know, from within a dream, that it's only a dream? Example: a couple of nights ago I dreamt that one of the phones in our house was missing. I don't mean a mobile (aka cell) phone. I mean one of the land-line phones. It was gone, as in misplaced or stolen. And this bothered me. But I sort of sensed that when I woke up the phone's absence would turn out not to be real.
Other times the dream allows no such semi-detachment. So how come? I hope more people have an answer than when I asked this question - on which I got zilch.