29 replies to this topic

[Lobosque]

This is quite interesting, and i dount found any topic about it
Here it goes:

Quote

"The term "déjà vu" (French for "already seen", also called paramnesia) describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L'Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future of Psychic Sciences), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate French concentrator at the University of Chicago. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eerieness", "strangeness", or "weirdness". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past. Déjà vu has been described as "Remembering the future".

The experience of déjà vu seems to be very common; in formal studies 70% or more of the population report having experienced it at least once. References to the experience of déjà vu are also found in literature of the past, indicating it is not a new phenomenon. It has been extremely difficult to invoke the déjà vu experience in laboratory settings, therefore making it a subject of few empirical studies, recently researchers have found ways to recreate this sensation using hypnosis."

Edited by Lobosque, 22 December 2006 - 03:21 PM.

[shadowx]

Hey, word of warning, if you copied any of that from anywhere put it into quote tags, [-quote-] text [/-quote-] without the "-".

According to the new film coming out here in the UK deja vu is a government tool r something for going back in time a few days, its all rather confusing! But the government have a tool or something they can use to send agents back in time or let them veiw things back in time and the lead character is an agent who doesnt know about this and finds out and has to go back in time or something to save a boat getting blown up.

I think deja vu could be a few things, like a memory of an event, EG someone saying hello, being badly recalled when someone else says hello and as its badly recalled, sort of corrupt, you don't feel it as a memory just as deja vu.

Or a similar thing but something that happened in a dream/daydream

Or even a sort of premonition that hasn't happened and when it does you get a similar thing to the corrupt memory idea and you feel deja vu.

I don't think we will ever know for sure though.

[master_bacarra]

deja vu is a tool? that's silly. it's not like a time machine or something. clearly that would confuse anyone, and even mislead.

i've experienced a lot of that before. but the events of the future usually happens in my dream. i remember one instance that i was cleaning our backyard, then it felt as if i've seen that exact moment before, i just couldn't remember. but there was one instance that i knew it was really deja vu, and i clearly remember the dream where i saw the same event before. when i was about 10 or 11 years old, i dreamt that i was in a different classroom, sitting beside the wall, i had different classmates and i saw a different teacher. i was still in gradeschool but i know very much how our classroom looked like, and my classmates and my teachers, so that dream was kinda weird for me. a few years later, i was in highschool, i was sitting beside the wall and was listening to our teacher with the lesson for that day. suddenly i had felt woozy, and it gave me a feeling that i've seen that particular event before. that's when i realized that the event was the dream i saw when i was younger.

in psychology, they have a scientific explanation for that. although i can't remember, because i wasn't listening clearly to my psychology professor at that time.

oh, and by the way, that quoted text was taken from wikipedia.

Edited by mbacarra, 22 December 2006 - 05:10 PM.

[salamangkero]

The parapsychologist, Carl Jung, once coined the term synchronocity: a phenomenon characterized by seemingly meaningful coincidences (for example, suddenly calling to mind, out of the blue, memories of a high-school classmate only to receive a call from him later on in the day); deja vu is said to be one of the manifestations of this synchronicity.

I've read the wikipedia entry and I was shocked to find that there are different kinds of deja vu. I had no idea deja vu actually encompasses different phenomena and what I knew to be deja vu was but only one of them.

I think subliminal stimuli, dreams and conscious thought factor into a deja vu in the making.

For example, you could very well be in a classroom listening to the teacher. Your conscious thought is focused on the lecture, effectively overriding other stimuli from leaking into your conscious thoughts. However, it could very well be that you are overhearing talk of something, let's say a hotel lobby. We could very well be unconscious that descriptions of this hotel lobby is secretly being encoded into our memory. Indeed, we'd have no idea of it since our mind is pre-occupied with this lecture.

Now, dream. There is a theory that dreaming is like a survival strategy machine where the mind tries out random possibilities and attempts to predict the outcome. We all know nitroglycerine is highly unstable but ever and anon, we may dream of ourselves, or someone else, shaking nitro and ending up in fine pieces. This is how the mind, through simulation, re-affirms that nitro, indeed, is dangerous.

Sometimes, the dreaming mind might retrieve from our memory something we are not aware we know, like our hotel lobby, for example. From this stealthily encoded data, our mind could very well conjure us a scenario where we'd be in this lobby when the bomb goes off.

Now, let's say you have finally made it to the hotel in question. Entering the lobby, we'd get that strange feeling that we have been here. In reality, we have our suspicion that we have dreamed of this. True enough, we have; what is eerie is the accuracy of that dream owing to a conversation we have unknowingly overheard.

Well, that's just my n cents on deja vu concerning places. I'm not so sure how deja vu for experiences works. As a matter of fact, I have no idea how deja vu really works.

Then again, it could just be the Matrix reprogramming something.

[Dagoth Nereviar]

My view of the "after-life" is slightly odd. Basically, my view is that when you die, you are re-born to your same life, but so you can make it better. And you keep being re-born until you have it how you want it. But, the first time you live your life is what other people see. For example, the first time someone famous (Say Hitler) lived their life, he created the holocaust. This is the life that went down in history. But when he died, he re-lived his life and he might not of created it the second time.

Often, your "paths" cross. Say, when you do something you did in one of your previous lifes again. This is what I think Deja Vu is. Something had happened, and you're seeing it happen again. I also feel that in dreams, you can sometimes tell the future, which then ends up being deja vu (I swear it's happened to me )

Weird thinking? Yes. Change my view later on? Yes. But? Meh.

[Kioku]

I don't see how deja vu could be a tool. It's just an event seeming familiar.

[TeeCee06]

Actually deja vu is a movie

[styfer]

yes there is a recent movie named deja vu. And what the peps are discussing here is what does the term means..

to sidetrack: the movie deja vu is quite nice thou.. althou i see quite a few loopholes in there.. lol

Edited by styfer, 23 December 2006 - 07:04 AM.

[salamangkero]

Dagoth Nereviar, on Dec 23 2006, 05:04 AM, said:

Often, your "paths" cross. Say, when you do something you did in one of your previous lifes again. This is what I think Deja Vu is.

This... altered view on reliving one's life is, well, quite interesting. So if it were true, I could very well be on my second or billionth life but most certainly not my first, as evidenced by the mere existence of the deja vu phenomenon I've encountered.

However, there is one grave flaw I have observed in this theory. If, indeed, what goes down in history is a person's first shot at life, then we shouldn't be hearing of anyone encountering deja vu. As a matter of fact, we shouldn't even come to know of such a phenomenon. If deja vu really is the result of a glimpse into an event in a former life, then everyone who had been remembered in history and, also, have encountered deja vu will:

1. Be on his/her first attempt at living a life.
2. Have had a glimpse of a previous life.

Quite contradictory if you ask me. It's very interesting, though. Your ideas had my mental gears a-running.

[quakesand]

That happened to me everytime, but now it happens less since I'm growing bigger...
I trying to practice it these days but i don't see any better results.
I had no idea why that happen

[Dagoth Nereviar]

salamangkero, on Dec 23 2006, 06:03 PM, said:

This... altered view on reliving one's life is, well, quite interesting. So if it were true, I could very well be on my second or billionth life but most certainly not my first, as evidenced by the mere existence of the deja vu phenomenon I've encountered.
[cut out text to keep short]
Quite contradictory if you ask me. It's very interesting, though. Your ideas had my mental gears a-running.

Damn you and your reasoning Only joking...I knew the theory would be very flawed, but is interesting/weird I'm glad it got you thinking Maybe the deja vu's you get in your first life...are...uhm...pretend ones? *hides* I still believe my idea, but i'm sure I'll end up thinking differently.

salamangkero, on Dec 22 2006, 05:38 PM, said:

Now, dream. There is a theory that dreaming is like a survival strategy machine where the mind tries out random possibilities and attempts to predict the outcome.
[cut out text to keep short...again ]
True enough, we have; what is eerie is the accuracy of that dream owing to a conversation we have unknowingly overheard.

All of this post got me thinking, and alot of it is amazing (were you taught that, or did you think it up yourself?) because it's close to what it could possibly be. But it was the dream thing that got me the most (again because it could actually be that)...but it (and a previous post) made me recall when I had a dream when I was younger. I was in my brother's bedroom, with my brother, playing some sort of hand-held console (it actually looked like a toy gun I had). It wasn't until a year or so ago that I realised, it had actually taken place in my brother's current bedroom, which is a converted loft. Back when I had the dream, it was still a normal loft. I also realised that the colour scheme and some of his drawers where similar/the same as to what he has today.

It could be, however, that I couldn't fully remember the dream (I do have very bad memory) and filled in "blanks" of the dream with recent information (I think something like this was also said in a previous post?)

But, I am going slightly off topic here, so I'll shush before I go too far

Edited by Dagoth Nereviar, 25 December 2006 - 10:23 PM.

[tonzi]

i read somewehere that this regards in our past life. Our life before we exist had been on those places that you actually felt the dejavu ..

[csgaming]

hmmmm... It's like teleportation... Well at least i saw it like done by Criss Angel...

[Jimmy]

quakesand, on Dec 24 2006, 07:39 AM, said:

That happened to me everytime, but now it happens less since I'm growing bigger...
I trying to practice it these days but i don't see any better results.
I had no idea why that happen

Very true...
I used to get this really ALL the time, but now I'm older I don't experience it; on a significantly less frequent basis... interesting to hear someone else say that!! very interesting.

Quote

For example, you could very well be in a classroom listening to the teacher. Your conscious thought is focused on the lecture, effectively overriding other stimuli from leaking into your conscious thoughts. However, it could very well be that you are overhearing talk of something, let's say a hotel lobby. We could very well be unconscious that descriptions of this hotel lobby is secretly being encoded into our memory. Indeed, we'd have no idea of it since our mind is pre-occupied with this lecture.

Now, dream. There is a theory that dreaming is like a survival strategy machine where the mind tries out random possibilities and attempts to predict the outcome. We all know nitroglycerine is highly unstable but ever and anon, we may dream of ourselves, or someone else, shaking nitro and ending up in fine pieces. This is how the mind, through simulation, re-affirms that nitro, indeed, is dangerous.

Sometimes, the dreaming mind might retrieve from our memory something we are not aware we know, like our hotel lobby, for example. From this stealthily encoded data, our mind could very well conjure us a scenario where we'd be in this lobby when the bomb goes off.

Now, let's say you have finally made it to the hotel in question. Entering the lobby, we'd get that strange feeling that we have been here. In reality, we have our suspicion that we have dreamed of this. True enough, we have; what is eerie is the accuracy of that dream owing to a conversation we have unknowingly overheard.

Then again, it could just be the Matrix reprogramming something.

All very accurate ideas. I would go as far as to say I agree 99.9%
i would have given 100%, but I may just be re-thinking this, and so in a few hours i may have decided that I do not agree!
Especially the matrix one. Those films really hit me as I can get the entire idea into my head and it could well be an explanation to everything...!

Interesting topic. I shall follow this one

Quote

i read somewehere that this regards in our past life. Our life before we exist had been on those places that you actually felt the dejavu ..

sorry, but I don't agree. For example, if in my previous life I was a bug, how would the situations I feel deja vu in now, such as walking along a part of a street or past a certain person take place, since a bug has a really different perspective, different view of "seeing things" and massively larger sizes of everything - just doesn't seem to be a valid argument... sorry !

Edited by Jimmy, 14 January 2007 - 11:58 PM.

[salamangkero]

Jimmy, on Jan 15 2007, 07:55 AM, said:

sorry, but I don't agree. For example, if in my previous life I was a bug, how would the situations I feel deja vu in now, such as walking along a part of a street or past a certain person take place, since a bug has a really different perspective, different view of "seeing things" and massively larger sizes of everything - just doesn't seem to be a valid argument... sorry !

Perhaps it is this "skewed" perspective that makes deja vu practically untraceable. You'll think you've never been to a place before but it's vaguely familiar. It could be because you have, indeed, been there, only, not as a human but, say, a parrot or a parakeet. It's like not remembering walking into a room because you flew in. If it were so, it'd be something our human minds might have difficulty grasping, hence, the vagueness

(I'm really to have used your counter-argument to prove what you were trying to disprove. It was nothing personal; 'twas nothing more than a spark of an idea)

[techclave]

Sounds interesting. I have experienced it may times. It is really , something strange. It makes me feel, i am in that place , doing things which i have already done there many times before.

On watching the movie ,Matrix i really started believing there might be something more to it. That too, when Neo is informed by the Oracle , "You have already made the choice. But you are here to understand , why you made it. "

I spent sleepless night thinking over this !!!!!!!!!

[iamlica]

It's actually having the feeling of being in a place or a situation before even if you havent. Like when you go visit a museum, you feel like you've been there before even if it's your first time there. Or when you get into a situation, you feel like "hey, this has happened before", even if it hasnt.

In psychology, it's quite normal to have these feelings once in a while.

[Yratorm, LightMage]

You know the 'arrow of time' is linked to the third law of thermodynamics, which is, in one word, entropy. That is, things have a tendency to revert to chaos. Or, it takes more energy to make a thing than to break it.

Sorry for the technicalities - bear with me.

Now, our experience of the arrow of time is from 'past to future' BUT the reality of time need not be what it seems to be to human senses.

Human senses have evolved NOT to perceive the true reality of the universe, but have evolved based on SURVIVAL of the fittest. So that what we 'perceive' to be true might not be reality at all. Consider that what seem to be 'solid objects' to our senses are actually largely empty space.



That said, it just may be that time isn't the journey from past to future that human consciousness makes it appear to be - perhaps it's more like a field of endless possibilities, where all probabilities are possible!

And that said, just perhaps, what we call 'deja vu' is not even remembering the past or future, but instead perceiving an event from another possible past or future, a perception of a random event plucked by random probability from the sheet of time.

[-+-+-]

thank you
the term "deja vu" mean : already considering

[salamangkero]

Yratorm, LightMage, on Jan 17 2007, 03:11 PM, said:

That said, it just may be that time isn't the journey from past to future that human consciousness makes it appear to be - perhaps it's more like a field of endless possibilities, where all probabilities are possible!

And that said, just perhaps, what we call 'deja vu' is not even remembering the past or future, but instead perceiving an event from another possible past or future, a perception of a random event plucked by random probability from the sheet of time.

Much as the views of a probabilistic universe tend to disturb my very soul, I would have to agree. There may be a lot more to the world than what we perceive.

-+-+-, on Feb 10 2007, 01:30 AM, said:

thank you
the term "deja vu" mean : already considering

Yes, we all know that. Also, the "What is..." forum is probably more suited to discussions about a term rather than the mere statement of what it denotes or what the dictionary (or heaven forbid, Wikipedia) says it means

[itrainmonkeys]

I don't know how many of you have experienced it.....but I sure have. It's usually from a dream that I ahve and anywhere from 1-6 months after that dream I will be in a situation where I feel like i've been doing or seeing it before. Like at one moment....everything just clicks. All the angles and views, the action that is going on.....sometimes even the discussion. It's crazy but i've felt deja vu. Now IDK if it's all in my head or what....but i've felt it and it's pretty neat. I like it and just smile whenever it occurs. I try to explain to people but they're just like yea whatever.

[Unregistered 012]

Deja Vu to me is where you are doing something that you swear that you have done before. Like you have a dream and then a few days or weeks later you do the thing that you did in your dream. It happens to me quite often. I think it is kinda weird too.

[zyzzyvette]

What's even weirder is when you your your original dream pops back into your head a few moments before, so you know something is about to happen a little before it actually does (rather then "remembering" during or after). Crazy stuff; hopefully someone will figure it out for sure one day so I can find out why it happens.

[hybridsystem]

I don't agree with the whole past life experience stuff. I'm sorry I just don't. I'm too stuck in this Matrix that my physics teacher shows me. Same reason I don't believe in God. If my crappy survival of the fittest senses can't work it out then I can't work it out. I don't believe in God becuase I can't see him, get me? Although I do ponder on things such as god I do normally end up just reverting back to what I thought before, what is written in physics books.

Anyway, someone once told me what they belive deja vu is and I think it's the best explanation for it that I have heard.

The brain thinks quicker than our nerves and senses and sometimes if our sense send information to our brain in two parts, such as YOUR RIGHT HAND JUST TOUCHED AN OVEN, then it sent THE OVER IS HOT. You move your hand away, though it takes a second due to this sensory delay. Also, some senses are faster than others, for example touching something hot automatically makes you withdraw your hand but trying to press the stop button when the screen goes red (like on reaction tests).

So, say one sense says WE ARE IN THIS SITUATION, your brain reconginses this and logs it in memory, then ANOTHER sense says WE ARE IN THIS SITUATION your brain loads it's memorys (though it has no idea how old they are) and goes, WOW, we've beem here before.

Therefore, under this theory, deja vu (in most cases, of course the whole dream thing is not explained) is merely a sensory 'delay' as our brain goes to quickly...

That was quite hard to explain, do you all understand what I mean?

[irdix]

I got what u've said hybridsystem it's quite nice explanation and it's very nice that you don't believe in god since you "can't see" Him. -back to topic-

well I know few friends who talks about past lifes, matrix stuff and things about dejavu's explanation, I just had one question for them.. "did you find it out by yourself or you just simply believe what other people said when your mind said 'hey it's a nice explanation' ? ", so how about it.. ?

I agree with something u said hybridsystem, we simply often decide something by our memory or past experience (sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad -how good or bad is relative- ) when doing, facing and act on things..