>The thing to do is yell. Sometimes even now, I have this old dream that somebody wants to kill me and my mother and father are running away with me to Egypt; I hear the sounds of soldiers riding at night and the screams, and I yell, and the yell wakes me up, and then I know that it's a dream. Well, whispering wouldn't work anyhow. Another way is just to tell yourself, "Wait a minute here, this is a nightmare, and I have to wake up in order to stop it." Then just force your eyes open and the dream will be gone. Well, that complicates things; maybe the thing to do is police your mind before you go to sleep. Say to yourself, "I'm going to sleep now, and I'm not going to have any nightmares." It could be done, you know? With practice. You feel yourself getting drowsy- Nothing? Maybe we should take a different line of attack altogether; let us begin by assuming that everything is a dream, which, by and large, it is. When we're awake we have one kind of dream; when we're asleep we have another. The difference is that we control our day-dreams, and the dream that comes at night controls us. Now think about that: when you dream that the rat is there, do you control the dream? Or does the dream control you? Yes, exactly. If the rat were really there, you'd knock it off, wouldn't you? So the fact that you don't knock it off proves it really is a dream. No arms? Since your real life is a greater nightmare than your dreams, it would be cruel to pretend that anyone could help you. What you need is a miracle.