Dejavu Options

Anyone here have any theories on dejavu we get when we know for a fact we've never been in a similar situation so should not be remembering being in a similar situation?

I'm just going to speak like I know what I'm talking about, almost dogmatically, in the interest of expedience.
but I hate dogma, so don't feel compelled to agree!

Neurologists believe that deja vu occurs when one hemisphere of the brain works faster in processing information than the other half. That seems logical to me. It is simple and fits the facts well.

mmm, except that many deja vu experiences include precognitive content.
well, that and the fact that the neurologist theory has absolutely zero scientific data behind it, it's just an "explain something away" style theory, much like sleep paralysis.

when I first read the theory you're talking about, I loved it. I was actually very relieved, and felt like "gee, that's a load off figuring out what that stuff was all about!" but then in the hours after that, I thought of many many examples of deja vu content which simply could not fit with the brain-lag theory.

Most deja vu lasts only about 1 second. during that time there is a sudden and strong sense of recognition. This is not recognition of say your kitchen table and your jar of mayo and your loaf of bread, etc. you've seen all these things before. It's more like a recognition of a moment in time, as though you've seen that moment in time before. So what looks 'familiar' is the EXACT placement of objects, the exact placement of dust particles in the sunbeam coming through the window, the exact background sounds, etc. everything is just a 'perfect' match, for a split second. It's like reality takes a moment to be a 'rerun' instead of being all fresh new material.

Since it usually lasts only a moment, the typical reaction is simply to say "whoa, deja vu" and it's usually gone before you can finish spitting the words out. However, it doesn't *just* happen for a split second, it can last longer. This is fairly rare, and the momentary deja vu experience is actually very common, while the prolonged version is fairly rare, but for those who've experienced both, it is very clearly the same sort of phenomenon, differentiated only by duration.

In a longer deja vu episode, reality gets 'weird', everything seems kinda surreal. Technically it does in a shorter deja vu episode as well, but it's so brief you don't really get time to soak it all in. Basically you find yourself moving through a sequence of time which you've already seen before. Instead of just a moment, it might be say 10 seconds worth of time, or even as long as a minute. During this altered state of consciousness, you have full precognitive awareness of everything you are about to perceive, up to the limit of the duration. In other words, the experience starts with the basic recognition, like a typical short deja vu, and then, if the deja vu is about to last say 20 seconds, you'd realize that you've seen everything you're seeing before, and heard everything you're hearing before, etc. in full 5 sense clarity, and you'd "remember" what comes next... out to the limit of the episode's timeframe. in the case of a 20 second episode, it would take you a couple seconds to recognize the event, and then recollect the content, and then you'd know everything that's about to happen in your immediate surroundings for the remaining 17 seconds or so. This will include highly unpredictable events, which happen on que, in an extremely precise fashion, perfectly matching the foreknowledge.

As I child and adolescent, I would get episodes of prolonged deja vu (interspersed with more common brief episodes) which lasted for as long as a full minute or two. As an adult, I find all of the deja vu experiences to be less common, and the prolonged episodes to be quite rare and seldom exceed about 15 seconds tops.

What makes it very surreal (aside from the relationship between time and memory seeming 'out of whack'), is that you, as in your body, will just kinda effortlessly coast through your scripted role in the setting. You'll know in advance when you're going to blink, what you're going to say, if your nose is going to itch, which hand you'll scratch it with, etc. but not as a decision making process, instead you know all of this on a purely precognitive basis. And it is very surreal to watch yourself flow through the motions in perfect sync with the precognitive content, with perfect precision, much more precision than you could muster if you deliberately tried to go through the motions.

For several years in my youth, I was actually afraid of deviating from flowing through my seemingly destined role in the time-line. I had a general sense that if I wanted to I could 'break from script', but I also had a secret fear that doing so might do something bad to time itself... so I left well enough alone for several years. At a somewhat older age though, in early adolescence, I decided that if time was as easy as that to break, then surely someone else out there would have already broken it. So I began to experiment with willfully 'deviating' from my scripted role in the precognitive sequence. The first time I just stopped what I was doing and waved my arms around wildly, just to do 'something OTHER than what I was doing in the "remembered future". I was still a little afraid of breaking some sort of law of physics and dematerializing myself or something, but nothing happened, except that in the original future I didn't wave my arms around, and in my current present I did. Interestingly, it took a substantial amount of willpower to do it, there's a sort of 'undercurrent' which tends to pull you through your scripted role in the timeline, and it takes a very deliberate decision and conscious effort to 'do something else'.

So then I began experimenting on a broader scale with it. For example, could I make someone else *not* fulfill their role in the timeline script? So the next time a prolonged deja vu occurred around other people, i tried just poking someone. they reacted, and thus were deviating from their normal timeline role where they did not react, because in the original timeline I didn't poke anybody. It was only when i became precognitively aware of a small segment of time that I made the decision to change my behavior and poke someone. I also tried saying to someone exactly what I knew they were about to say to me, sometimes on extremely obscure topics... this seemed to have one of two possible effects: either the person would momentarily blank out, and then carry on and say what I just said, acting as though I hadn't said anything (an apparent mental rejection of what they had just witnessed), or they would react by saying "hey I was just gonna say that! how'd you know???". Sometimes it would badly freak someone out, I had one aquaintence which would not associate with me any longer because he was afraid I was reading his mind.

Testing content validity further, I remember one episode while driving where i was in the car with my family, and we were stopped at a light which had buildings to either side of us, obscuring the road to either side. So I called out the color and model of car for each car about to pass in front of us, in a long string of traffic, before they came into view. They found this to be very disturbing, but they confirmed my perceptions that I was accurate and calling them off before it would be possible to see them.

On one other occasion, I had an episode and realized that someone would very shortly walk past my cafeteria table and get bumped by the person at the table behind me, and end up spilling their drink on the table and on myself. it would get on my white jeans (god those were hard to keep clean) and just generally be a mess. the stain on my pants would be a sort of elongated splotch on my left hip, the guy who spilled would say 'shit', the girl to my left would make one of those little gasp-like scream sounds, etc. So, I got up, took my tray, and stepped a few paces away from the table, and waited for the bump, and spill, etc. to occur. It did, like clockwork, except I wasn't involved in it. Which makes me wonder, where did the stain in my jeans go? a minute before, a stain of exact size & shape & cause was extant in my future, and now it wasn't... was the stain 'un-existed'? did it still exist in an alternate reality? I don't really know, but I started reading about physics in junior high purely because I wanted to figure it out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It occurs usually very briefly, being only a momentary flash. almost everyone I know has experienced this. It rarely occurs for more prolonged periods of time, not so many people I know have experienced these longer episodes. But it is the same thing... whether it lasts 0.2 seconds, or 1.1 seconds or 5.7 seconds, or a full minute, it's the same 'sort' of thing, though the first couple seconds you do go through a recognition & remembering process, and it generally has to last long enough for you to complete that, and still have the episode occurring, in order for you to be consciously able to recognize it as precognitive content.

anyway, they are random. they are not related to past life content. they are not 'meaningful' or 'symbolic'. they are not even overtly 'magical' seeming. they have no purpose, intent, religious underpinning, etc. they don't save you from anything. You could have a prolonged precognitive deja vue episode, which included content of nothing more than a casual drive, and a few minutes after it was over, get into a car crash and die. Its far too random and rare and short lived to be of much use. The "only" material benefit I've ever gotten from them was avoiding a stain on a pair of pants. They are not visionary. they do not include precognitive content of any sort which is not directly perceived by your physical body in your immediate surroundings during the duration of the episode. there are no spirits associated with it. there are no overtly odd sensations of energy. it does not seem to relate to chakra state or flow. It is not relevant to my spiritual path. It has no meaning, no purpose, no plan, no intent, no pattern... it just randomly occurs, and is interesting. If I ever could work out exactly what the causal factor is, trust me I'd tell you all... riiiight after I went to a casino and spent about 5 minutes at the roulette table, where 20 seconds of precognition equals a 35:1 payout, which if you rolled over all of the winnings a few times, would turn a few bucks into a few million in a hurry. No such luck as yet though. but I do suspect that training the mind to "not react" to it might be of help. I think that one of the reasons it usually lasts only a moment, is that the very act of thinking 'whoa, deja vu!' may itself be messing up the consciousness state which is responsible for the event.

OK well there for starters i was thinking alot on dejavu. There is something that was interesting to me like the string theory and m theory. It suggest that there are parallel worlds and that dejavu is a small glimpse into the other world. Its very interesting stuff google it or youtube there hope this helps. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/bigwink.gif)

I've always felt it was a glimpse into 'this' world... I experience it like a flash of 'future memory'.
I'd be very curious to hear more about your ideas on it though, deja vu is actually the original reason I started reading about theoretical physics in my youth (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by Kath: Nov 10 2009, 03:48 AM