Strange encounter

Hi,

I don’t know whether to call the following experience a spiritual experience, but it was quite strange, and though it happened some years ago it has been puzzling me lately.
It was 1994 and I was staying for my study in the Czech mountains to collect soil samples. I was working on a thesis on forest decline and air pollution. I was sitting on the forest floor on a clearing, taking samples. Suddenly from the corner of my eye I saw someone standing. I looked up and saw some 20 meters ahead of me a man looking like some kind of hunter from prehistoric times. He was wearing clothes made of animal skin and was carrying a long spear. The moment I saw him I felt really startled and shocked. The strange thing however was that the biggest shock was not so much in the fact that there was this man who seemed to come from a completely different time and space. The biggest shock was to see or to feel that we were so alike. I’d almost say he was me. Though primitively dressed it felt as if he was a very bright, I’d almost say civilized man, by no means some kind of savage. It’s very hard to explain the recognition I felt, but it was strong and shocking. And by the look in his eyes I could see and feel that this shock of recognition was mutual. Our encounter was not frightening, but puzzling and confusing, and looking back I think I can say it was in a strange way very positive.
I blinked my eyes and he was gone. Where he had been there was just this tree trunk.

Some years later when I was camping I had a (lucid ?) dream in which I even felt more like him. Just before waking up I felt I entered my tent as if I’d come back after wandering about the area in the early morning. It felt like standing on the threshold of my home after having been away for a long period. At the same time I saw myself (him? – wearing the same outfit) enter as I was lying in my sleeping bag. It felt good, as if I had been really free, just strolling about on my own in the wild. I really like to think back of this experience.

Maybe I should add to this story that at the time of my encounter with this prehistoric man I was going through a period of considerable stress and confusion. This could maybe partly explain what I experienced, or rather why experienced something strange. Still I’m convinced that what I saw was real. But apart from that I still don’t know what to think of it, especially because in a way I feel sort of certain that the person I saw was both me and not me. Sounds pretty impossible doesn’t it?

Love, joost