posted February 06, 2009 12:38 AM
Hello augentier 
Yes, I believe those can be true psychic/telepathic/astral experiences. Not only do I believe it, I know it to be true, and I rarely claim to definitively know anything. 
How to tell from a regular dream? ... that is a very good question for which I do not have a definitive answer.
People we are close to appear in our dreams all of the time, usually as constructs of our own minds, as you said. But then there are those times ... and I think you probably answered your own question within your first question. We feel it to be so. There is a different quality to it.
Of course, this all happens on an unconscious level for the most part, so there may be little, if any, feeling or memory of the encounter by the person you communed with. In fact, I believe we do this more often than we know, and we simply do not remember. But I think the key may be the feeling of it.
I don't know that there is any way to actually verify it. The other person could have the same "feeling", or synchronicity could suggest that it is so, but I'm not sure how to determine it to be a matter of fact.
Maybe someone else will chime in with some insight.
