Have you ever felt like you’ve experienced a situation or event before, but couldn’t place it; almost as if you dreamed your own future and only just realised it as the moment passed you by? Many would call that Déjà vu.
Have you ever felt like you’ve experienced a situation or event before, but couldn’t place it; almost as if you dreamed your own future and only just realised it as the moment passed you by? Many would call that Déjà vu.
Heh…ok, so that was a poor attempt at humour, but it does illustrate the basic idea behind Déjà vu. Déjà vu type experiences are probably the most common type of so-called paranormal event around the globe. People from all walks of life, at all ages, in all states of health and mental ability and in any class or position can and do experience déjà vu to some degree at some point in their lives. Some experience it so often that it can almost conclusively be classed as precognition, but we’ll get into that a bit later.
Déjà vu, which is French for “already seen”, and is also known as paramnesia, which is Greek for “near-memory”, has been written about and mused over for centuries. The term Déjà vu was coined by Emil Boirac, a French psychic, in his book L’Avenir des sciences psychiques” (“The Future of Psychic Sciences”), but no one has been successful in re-creating or studying the phenomena in a laboratory setting.
To the frustration of many people, there are several definitions for the experience associated with the term déjà vu, ranging from out-and-out precognition, to a simple lapse of short term memory, in which a person simply believes that they’ve experienced something twice. If you can accept a middle ground explanation, you might be further ahead than some modern psychologists who are taking this little psychoanalytic hatchling under their wings (likely in search of an easy Nobel Prize). That middle ground explanation is a little easier to swallow no matter what side of the proverbial fence you sit on.
“The experience or feeling of reliving a moment in time” is probably the most recognisable definition, though not necessarily the most accurate. To most people who experience déjà vu, and the numbers in that regard are staggering, it is described more like the recollection of a dream, in which the event they were living was repeated.
Quite often there is a feeling of awe or uneasiness that accompanies the experience and in the vast majority of cases the person is adamant that they have experienced that moment previously.
Of course, the scientific community has contributed its share of ink-on-paper for this subject, and in large part has dismissed any notion that the phenomena is anything more than a simple misfiring of neurons in our complex brains. Psychologists, psychiatrists and neurophysiologists have nearly exhausted the comparative studies of schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and dissociative identity disorders and have yet to bring forward an acceptable conclusion or hypothesis.
Those same scientists have opened the discussion to pharmacological explanations, as well as visual and auditory impairment, with about the same success. This is not to say they’re wrong, as some of the less scientific explanations are suspect as well, but their results are unconvincing to say the least.
On the metaphysical side of the argument, equally zealous practitioners have claimed déjà vu to be a purely psychic phenomenon, some wildly proclaiming that it’s the accidental manipulation of time; others calmly suggesting that déjà vu is a mild form of precognitive psychic ability.
Nothing could be less important though, than what some lab coat wearing scientist, or incense burning guru thinks about déjà vu, and the best thing about it is that, with more than 70% of the world’s population experiencing the phenomenon on a regular basis, we can each make our own determination and quantify the experience in our own minds.
A great many people explain their own déjà vu experiences as a cosmic sign that they are, or have been on the correct life path, that the “event” in question was important to their individual destiny and is marked as so by the recognition of those circumstances. Others still believe that déjà vu has a modern religious aspect to it, and attribute the experience to the voice of angels.
Again, the beauty of such a widely common experience is that the best person to make that determination for your experience is you. Recommendations for or against one specific explanation or one branch of explanations are only as valuable as they are similar to your own understanding, and in order to increase that understanding, take measures to increase the quality and duration of your déjà vu events.
Unfortunately, there is no way to predict or induce an event, and as such, there is no way to prepare and plan for the next opportunity, but if you make the conscious declaration that you will examine the experience to it’s full potential at the next opportunity, you will already be better equipped to further your understanding than the next guy.
So, with that in mind, I challenge you to go boldly into life and experience all that you can, all in the hunt for more déjà vu understanding.