It's already ready already.

[raybear]

I just had the strangest bit of deja vu. While standing in the illustrious men's room, thinking about putting something in the mail and whether the envelopes would fit inside of each other. I mean, I had deja vu about my thoughts in addition to what I was doing and seeing.

I have the sensation fairly regularly, maybe up to once a week, and generally it involves someone talking to me. The emotional response and the flash of familiarity is exactly the same as when I'm suddenly hit by a memory of a dream the night before, which also perplexes me because I don't have a neat explanation for deja vu. Even though I'm quite comfortable in my spiritual beliefs when it comes to dream interpretation and psychic connections and collective unconscious and the universe sending signs and gut feelings, I still don't know how I feel about this particular phenomenon, and often I'm inclined to go with the scientific explanation where it's just a brain chemical misfiring so you perceive something as familiar simultaneously while experiencing it.

Why in this case do I go the rational route rather than the mystical one? Because for some reason it suits my sense of Occam's razor. Which can't exactly be true because the whole purpose of the principle of simplicity is that it has a touch of universal meaning, where everyone could agree on what is the least number of explaining entities. So what does that even mean?

Deja vu, already seen, already experienced. Is this about past-life experiences? This doesn't make sense, because I doubt in my past life I was doing the exact same things in the same people at the same place, which is how the feeling plays out for me, and how would that even be a past-life? It's my present life. It's about the carpet being the same shade with the same stains and same person using the same intonation and the same words. If I was just repeating things from a past-life, wouldn't the conversation be taking place in a barn or in a different country or in a different language or surrounded by different bodies? So perhaps then, deja vu is more about parallel universes, or even more about experiencing nonlinear time. But does nonlinear mean you experience things multiple times or just things out of order? Can you experience them simultanesouly?

This is probably making no sense. I just meant to ask, what the hell is the purpose of having deja vu, even if I can't explain it? Because that's what gets me more -- I don't always need to know how something works, but I like to know why it's around.

[Ed. note: Before anyone else says it, let me just put it here out of sheer olbigation: yes, yes, it's a glich in the Matrix. ha ha.]

Comments

[zenchump.livejournal.com]

I heard somewhere that it's a hemisphere-dominance thing... or rather, that one brain, er, hemisphere, is a tiny flash ahead of the other one, so the experience is at the same time immediate and also a familiar memory....
i like that one.
For some reason I'm very inclined to believe a lot of the physical electrochemical explanations, too, even given that I've got a lot of leanings toward the universal mind stuff too.

It's just, the things I have deja vu about are so oddly particular, it makes me doubt there's something other than a glitch in my personal matrix...

[peepshowghost.livejournal.com]

I like the Zenchump theory of hemisphere dominance. While, I've not heard of it before it does seem probably the simplest explanation of the whole thing I've ever heard. I've also heard theories about parallel universes crossing paths and hence the cause of such exact-moment deja vu. I mean really, let's think about it... a nanosecond of electro-bio-chemical misfire VS. an infinite number of universes that have somehow been created and two of which just happen to converge. Which seems the most believable?

It is odd that you can be rational and semi-superstitious, for lack of a better word [no offense], in equal amounts. I recommend Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark to help nurture your rational side. I pretty much shed almost all of my "spiritual" side by the end of high school, am two steps from being an atheist, and in turn tend to lean on science like a religious crutch, so I'm mildly skewed.

I still can't stop myself from looking at my horoscope. In my head I know it's total bullshit, but it's something I've done since I was 10 so, it's a hard habit to break.

[brothernumber3.livejournal.com]

the scientific blah blah is very interesting. i never looked into it, and now i'm all curious.

for me, most of my deja vu experiences are as you described. where i have deja vu about what is happening both internally and externally. it's actually the only way i've ever experienced it. a combination of all senses plus thoughts making a complete image that finally makes sense. and i say finally because i always feel like the first time i experienced it, it didn't make sense. and the second time brought everything together.

i would think that would jive with some hemisphere explanation though, since different pieces of our brain work with different senses and perception is such a delicate thing.

but i rather enjoy not having an answer to it, i like the feeling i get when the picture comes together. those moments feel remarkable, especially since i think for me i experience them multipile times before i get to the final time when it finally makes sense.