Theories of Déjà Vu

[StormFeather]

Ok – this may be an odd one, and possibly posted in the wrong place? (Mods – please move to a more appropriate one if you see fit)

I just wanted to find out what my fellow Chrons thoughts are on Déjà vu?

I experienced it a lot as a kid. My first clear memory of it was when I was about 5 and I was doing a ‘Painting by Numbers’ picture of a horse. I can still remember exactly where I was, what I was wearing, the weather outside my window – the entire moment. Being 5, I had never come across the term déjà vu, so my explanation to myself was ‘I’ve always dreamed of doing this’ and to my mind, it was my dream made real. I couldn’t remember the dream – but in my mind, I must have had it to have felt that way. Right?

I ended up having this experience so frequently that even my young mind refused to believe that I could have ‘always have dreamed’ of doing all these things – most of which were pretty mundane.

So, I came up with a theory. Bear with me – this is just what a childish, overactive imagination produced, but I still like the idea

My theory was:

Your life is like a continuous tube – every second of it a constant fact. You are just a consciousness moving through this tube, with another consciousness before you, and another behind. Your entire life is being experienced at every second, by an endless stream of conscious thoughts, and you are only one of those thoughts progressing down the line.

With me so far?

Sometimes, the consciousness in front of you leaves an echo of a memory, that resounds for it’s following fellows. It’s often of nothing important, or special, but it leaves a trace that subsequent 'you’s' pick up on and therefore experience as déjà vu.

Make any sense?

It all seemed so straight forward when I was 10!

I know I haven’t expressed myself very clearly – writing it down and making it make sense is a lot harder than I thought it would be!

So, I just wondered if anyone else had such strong experiences, or had come up with other interesting theories on what causes it

 

[StormFeather]

Bizarrely, I hadn't bothered to look this up before posting - blame it on the tiredness, and an interest to know if other people have had similar experiences.


Therefore - if anyone is interested in further reading - the wiki version is:

Déjà vu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Ursa major]

I always did have the feeling my life was going down the tubes....


There are theories of time based on this sort of thing: that because we experience time, we think it exists, in the sense that reality changes from moment to moment whereas each section (what we'd think of as a moment) of reality is always there, in some sense, and our movement . . . you see, it's hard to get verbs of motion out of this) . . . our "selection" of one section then another creates the perception of time as motion.


I once read a book about this, hoping that the author would stop using ever more useless analogies to say what he thought was happening (particularly how we move from section to section in such a way that we observe cause and effect), but my hopes were in vain. (It is, sadly, perfectly possible that I was just too dumb to understand the author's "theory".)


EDIT: I still have the book: The End of Time by Julian Barbour. (Sounds like TEIN may like this. ) See Julian Barbour and The End of Time (book).

 

[mosaix]

StormFeather I have, from time to time, a related experience. I don't know if there's a name for it but it goes like this:

Something will trigger a memory of an event that I know I have never experienced. Thinking more about the event I then realise that it is just a small part of an entire complex scenario.

I then realise that it is all part of a series of inter-related dreams, an alternative reality that I have experienced over a period of time but not remembered until the triggering event.

So here's the weird thing: I must have memories that I don't know about, things that are in my head that I don't know are there until some accidental event reminds me that they are.

When this happens, maybe once very couple of years, I am just stunned by the complex nature of what actually exists inside my head and leads me to ponder the nature of reality.

 

[StormFeather]

oooh - now - well, if we're going there . . .

As a kid, before I was 10, I was convinced that I wasn't actually me.

I thought that I was actually some alien creature sent to live the entire life of a human, to then report back on humanity from their perspective. Hence, how fascinating I found the things that my friends thought were ordinary.

I was always an introvert as a kid, and given my dad's reading material that he left all over the place, it's no wonder that I had strange ideas.

The earliest dream I remember is of a bedroom where you could control everything - the lights, the way the dolls moved, the way the furniture interacted with you - all by your voice to a panel near where the light switch would be. This was late 70's, but I didn't turn 5 until the 80's.

Maybe I was a little ahead of my time - or I was just a very strange child

 

[Ursa major]

Memory is a strange thing.

I sometimes have terrible trouble recalling things I've done (or not done - I can't remember) only minutes (or even seconds) before. On the other hand, I've found myself giving the correct answers** to questions without having the slightest idea how I've known them.



** - One example: In a pub quiz many years ago, our team was asked the name of the night club in the film Cabaret. In spite of never having seen the film or musical, or read the book (books?) on which it's based, I knew the answer: the Kit Kat Club. It may be - it's the theory I prefer - that when one of the songs from Cabaret was played on the radio, the DJ mentioned the club's name; then my brain, thinking only of a Kit Kat as something you eat - but with a slightly unnerving connection with Kit-e-Kat, a cat food - took note of this third meaning and stored it away for future use.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I'm surprised nobody's yet remarked, 'I'm sure I've read this thread before.'

 

[Interference]

I wrote this in my novel about three years ago, pretty much as it occurred to me at the time, but it fitted what my story was dealing with at that point. I hope it doesn't seem too pathetic now:

(this follows on from a character's observation)

There are, indeed, five types of déjà vu.

First is Coincidence of Circumstance, which occurs when you're in a very similar grouping as a faintly remembered event, and a sequence of events accidentally falls into a momentarily similar pattern. The brain makes a mistake and you have the feeling you've done all this before. You have.

Second is Sensory Coincidence, where some combination of two or more of your five senses matches precisely, for a brief moment, a previous configuration, but with a notable exception, usually a location. The brain makes a mistake and you have the feeling you've been there before. You haven't.

Third is Dream-Image Matching. Fragmented dream images, patterns formed from imperfections in your eyes, are only composed into the rationality of pictures by the brain. The brain can occasionally fail to do this properly. But then, once a suitable experience comes along, the match is made and it applies its solution retrospectively. "I've seen you in that coat before," you might say. Not necessarily.

Fourth is Distracted Unconscious. In this, a period of unconscious thought is interrupted abruptly by a moment of clarity. The impressions are jumbled and mixed as the brain sorts itself out. This happens a lot when people are just waking up. You think a noise woke you but you're convinced the noise didn't happen until after you had awoken. Very common.

And fifth is Historical Echo, where an event of profound emotional impact distorts space-time by its enormity and echoes into neighbouring layers of history. When the event actually transpires, you go through the same emotions as during your experience of the imprinted version, which in turn reinforces the imprint. Depending on the enormity of the event and your own sensitivity, you may experience this as a feeling of unease, which you might later attribute to intuition, or as a full-blown precognitive flash, which you might try to build a career on. Hence most psychics, even some of the honest ones, must balance their integrity with an element of fraud.

All of which, as explained by an inebriated Dee-Dee to the assembled company of the previous evening, must have sounded a bit like a rant. But that wasn't what she'd wanted him to tell her. She didn't wish to be reminded of the quarrel that followed between her and Rabbit, nor that the resultant hair-pulling and name-calling had nearly got them all thrown out.

"'Remind me what we were talking about' is what I actually said," she pointed out, "and we were talking about déjà vu."

*****

--- Hmmmm .... a little clumsy, but I can edit it another day

.... then my brain, thinking only of a Kit Kat as something you eat - but with a slightly unnerving connection with Kit-e-Kat, a cat food - took note of this third meaning and stored it away for future use.

A valuable insight into the workings of the Master Punster's Mind

 

[chrispenycate]

I'm surprised nobody's yet remarked, 'I'm sure I've read this thread before.'

No, that's 'déja lu', a completely different phenomenon that occurs just about every time I pick up a newspaper. Like 'déja entendu' if I should happen to turn the radio on

More worrying is 'déja vécu', the total experience.

 

[AstroDude]

Fourth is Distracted Unconscious. In this, a period of unconscious thought is interrupted abruptly by a moment of clarity. The impressions are jumbled and mixed as the brain sorts itself out. This happens a lot when people are just waking up. You think a noise woke you but you're convinced the noise didn't happen until after you had awoken. Very common.

Hmm... "noise" you say? would that noise be a kind of Interference?