Deja Vu

We’ve all experienced déjà vu, looking at an unfamiliar situation and feeling like we’ve seen it before. It turns out that a lot of successful and creative people flip this around and consciously practice “vu déjà”–looking at a familiar situation as if they have never seen it before.

The phrase is French and means “already seen“. The deja vu phenomenon describes an experience in which, for a few seconds or fractions of seconds, we feel that something we are experiencing at the moment has already happened in the past.

Some people experience it every day, others very rarely, but almost all people have  deja vu at least once in their life.

Deja vu is a hotly debated issue amoung scientists, psychologists and mystics. As it would be expected, opinions and explanations differ.

from fastcompany.com:

Scientific point of view

Scientists, being more rational, explain deja vu as a temporary “dysfunction” of the brain, which mixes the past with the present. Put more simply, imagine the brain as a computer. Every day, every hour, every moment, this computer “stores” in the memory everything that happens, just like computer files with dates. Memory contains billions of files, which all are considered “old”, since each of them gets “old” in fractions of seconds. Deja vu is a small temporary dysfunction, when the computer, instead of saving a new file, recognizes it as a re-opened old one.

Two opinions of psychologists

The most rational ones explain deja vu as a rapid recall of some forgotten memory which has some common features with what we are experience at the moment. For example, suppose that one day many years ago you went for a walk in the countryside and saw a tree that impressed you much with its large purple flowers. But after many years you no longer remember that incident at all. And now you are going back to the countryside and see the same tree or a similar one. Your mind instantly recalls the forgotten memory, but instead of remembering the old event, you confuse it with the present one. The same can happen if the tree you see resembles a tree that you once saw in the dream but have forgotten.

The second opinion of psychologists is less rationalist and has some unexplainable “loopholes”. Some psychologists do not reject the ability of the subconscious to act prophetic during sleep and to speak through dreams. So, they explain the phenomenon of deja vu as an instant recall of a prophetic dream that had been forgotten.

Mystics reject any scientific view. Perhaps we all have heard an opinion that deja vu is a forgotten memory of our previous incarnations.

Deja vu stories

Certainly, there are “gaps” and all the 3 theories. Here are some examples of real deja vu stories that either prove or disapprove the mentioned theories:

1. A lady once went to a house in a town that had not visited before. At the very moment she stepped foot inside the house, she felt to know in detail the layout of all rooms. The impressive thing is that the lady was right. She knew exactly the position of things in the rooms she had not yet visited, etc.

As you see, this story rejects the scientific point of view. The psychological one can not be completely excluded, although the lady swears that she has never been to this house. The mystical theory is also rejected on the sole ground that the building was not over 30 y.o. and the lady was at least 50 y.o.(the house was built at least 20 years after the birth of the lady).

2. A 7 years old boy with his parents visited a medieval castle in a country he had never been to before. And just like the lady from the previous example, at the moment of entering the castle, he felt to know the details around it, although there were several dozens rooms. The boy perfectly knew what was in every room.

The scientific and the psychological theories are rejected again, as the child had never visited that castle before, as well as any other castle… So we are left with the mystical point of view. In this case, only the belief in reincarnation can explain this incident.

3. A young girl is sitting in the company of her friends in a park. While casually talking and laughing, she suddenly declares: “I’ve seen it before, I remember it very well… Soon a boy with a very funny haircut will come…” Indeed, after a few minutes, this boy appears and really has a funny haircut. The girl can not explain it all.

The scientific theory is rejected again, as well as the psychological and the mystical ones… The only one that could explain this incident is the second psychological opinion about prophetic dreams.

Deja vu in little children often confirms the mystical theory, while this phenomenon in adults can often be explained either by psychological or by scientific theory. A portion of teenage and older people experiencing deja vu can support the “prophetic” theory. Age certainly affects the brain’s function as well as the emotions. Does it also affect the deja vu phenomenon?

So, as you can see from the above examples, all the theories can be easily confirmed or rejected. So finally what is deja vu? Neither scientists nor mystics can give a definite answer yet…

end from fastcompany.com

We are masters at pattern recognition, so our brains quickly scan our memory banks when stimulated and identify how we handled a situation before. The problem is that our first instinct is to quickly reach a previous conclusion rather than re-examine a situation with a fresh perspective. This is great for some things (walking, using a spoon, language, eating, etc) since we don’t need to re-learn those skills each time they’re needed.

One theory not proposed would be the event in questioned may be the result of precognition in the prebirth memory of our ability to see into our future life from the standpoint of our lifes contract. So we may have spontaneous memories from what we agreed to experiences before we come here.  Many near death experiencers percieve deja vu as something that guides us as a touchstone at certain junctures on our life’s journey. I don’t know, just a thought.

 In any event deja vu occurs for many reasons, the body spirit during sleep leaves the body,astral travel, during sleep and sees the issue or the place, the next day or so you get the feeling….this is also clairvoyance/astral travel done by many Gurus.

Astral travel just when you are about to sleep occurs to many, suddenly you will be falling down to earth or an endless hollow area, for some people During deep sleep you will be flying without control.

Astral travel is spirit leaving the body with a silver thread connecting body and spirit.

Any one have any thots on this??