What is Deja vu ?
Hello,
I’ve been thinking about this and I wanted to get input. You gals have great insights. Will you share your ideas/stories/thoughts.
Do you have many experiences with it or are they rare? What is the nature of your experiences? What do you personally think deja vu is? Does it have a spiritual dimension? Has it served a spiritual purpose for you?
February 13th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Great topic!
Once I met a girl at a church conference and we both immediate knew one another. It was as if I’d found someone that I once really cared about (and she felt the same way), but neither of us could figure out how we knew each other. It turns out that we lived in the same state, but our towns were several hours apart and we couldn’t figure out how we might have met.
If I believed in past lives, I’d think that we’d been very close in a previous one.
As it is, I think it’s more likely that we had either met as children and forgotten it (or maybe reminded one another of other people we had known…although it sure didn’t feel that way when I first saw her – I knew that girl, even though I didn’t “know” her!) or that we were tapping into the Collective Unconscious.
(For those who don’t know, Karl Jung had a theory that all of the memories of everyone who has ever lived is stored in something called the Collective Unconscious. He thought that some of us are able to tap into those memories on rare occasions, thus explaining deja vu as well as people who have “memories” of past lives.)
February 13th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I have tons of deja vu, normally in dreams. I’ll be somewhere or doing something and remember I had a dream about it a couple of nights ago. I’ve done this since grade school.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I read something that deja vu was the brain combining memories into one feeling that may have nothing to do with the happening at hand. I think that was a theory like Jung’s. The brain is so mysterious!
I’ve met people I feel connected with right away too. I have a 30 out of 30 Intuitive score on Myers-Briggs so when I meet other high “Ns” this seems to sort of “happen” it’s like we both are good at reading each other very well without speaking, sub-contextually, so a lot doesn’t have to be said. Lots of ground gets covered quickly as if we’ve known each other for months or even years. Sometimes we’ve even chosen similar fields, activities or traveled to same locations… odd huh? I have a art/design mentor who was always like this with me and she swears I was her little sister/or siblings in another life. She’s a Pantheist. The trouble is I could never believe we devolve rather than transcend, that is if I was to throw out all my ontology and theology I mean.
Spiritually though these connections have been so POWERFUL! It’s any wonder they seem providential. That’s why I’ve been trying to tap into other ideas, opinions, and experiences about it. I was wondering if it was my personality, a larger phenomenon, the nature of reality . . ???
Thanks SO much for that story. Can’t wait to hear others, or more.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:39 am
spiritually…i think that experiences such as deja vu help me to envision creation as something much more layered, interconnected and complex than the “biblical world view” we heard proposed in church life.
i really love the idea of creation as being a huge web, or net, with God infusing every fiber, knot, and open space with His/Her/Its presence.
in that multiple, parallel world, deja vu seems inevitable—because in that world, time—like God—is omnipresent rather than linear.
February 18th, 2008 at 7:11 am
She’s a Pantheist. The trouble is I could never believe we devolve rather than transcend, that is if I was to throw out all my ontology and theology I mean.
Could you explain this a little more? I’m not sure exactly what you mean.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Sorry… I popped off the scene for a bit.. I had some term papers due… I guess for me I think returning to physical form would be a bummer than to transcend to other realities beyond this one. (likely smaller ones we can’t see according to string theory.) It seems like this would be progress and physical reentry wouldn’t be… just my gut feeling from way back as a little girl when I first encountered the reincarnation concept.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
yes wilsford… interesting!!!
I was thinking a lot about that.
If we thinking about leaving the physical world the spiritual one could be layered in and through are and intersecting it… maybe there are bumps in it, and maybe it disturbs it sometimes… I can’t say I know for sure!!! My imagination runs wild with it sometimes.