As with many odd things such as this, there are many theories.
I, personally, have finally come across one which I believe and find logical (you can find better discriptions of this all over the interwebs I am sure - I have tried to put it a very simple explaination).
The mind sees a certain scene once.
The brain experiences a sort of hiccup (this could be a mild form of epilepsy, brain signals failing to operate correctly, etc)
The scene is played to our mind again.
We have this odd feeling that EXACT scene has happened before.
The brain does odd things!
So what do you think?
Brain hiccup? A past experience in a former life? Simply been there before, you know, maybe a week ago? Or a frikin’ damn change in the MaTrIx?!
deja vu is when you think it before you experience it.
the only possible thing i can think of is that, time only exists where there is matter. perhaps it has something to do with that- may be its even spiritual, since that is the only part of you which is not matter [possibly].
And what about in the case where we’ve gone somewhere and the feeling overtakes us that we’ve been there before - Déjà visité - when we know that we haven’t been – unless we happened to be looking in a travelogue or some other kind of book at some other time. That happened to me only once in my life near a beach in Massachusetts. Been to many, many beaches and that has never occurred. But would the “feeling” and “experience” be so strong? Felt such a strong sense of familiarity, almost like I had “come home”. I don’t live in Mass. The feelings that came over me was very powerful.
Maybe I travelled there in a dream or had an out-of-body experience while asleep – for those who may believe in them – I don’t know – anything under the sun can be possible I guess.
Or perhaps I was simply picking up on someone else’s brain waves. Have you ever had the experience when watching television of saying something and immediately the exact same thing is said on tv. It has happened many, many times. Maybe we pick up unconscious “signals” from the ether, radio signals.
Or perhaps someone who had lived near that beach in Mass. had somehow left their mental imprint and I simply picked up on it. Guess it could happen. It is so very fascinating, isn’t it?
I think it’s the replication of a certain chemical reaction in the brain.
Let’s say you feel a certain way at a given time. A year later, you are somewhere completely different, but you get that exact same feeling you had a year earlier, and it matches exactly or almost exactly the chemical state your brain was in.
I have nothing to back me up here, but I liken it to the feeling you get when you recognize a certain smell, maybe one that smells exactly like grandma’s house. Instantly a familiar feeling washes over you, and you are immersed in grandma’s house for a split second.
I used to ponder about the possibilities of deja vu being a dream or outer body experience - but ever since i came across this explanation it seemed to answer a lot of questions. Especially that the feeling is so sure and so exact to a ‘past’ experience. What’s the likeliness of a dream or past experience being exactly like another experience? We could discuss the ideas of humans giving of brain waves to others or a former life forever. It’s not as exciting as other explanations but sometimes its best to follow occams razor.
Science has gone quite deep into research the human brain and, after reading a couple of books myself, this idea of a mental ‘hiccup’ seems very likely.
Here’s another thing to consider. You know when you walk into a room and you completely forget why you went in there in the first place? Or when you perform a mundane task and then can’t remember doing it? That’s, apperently, a minor form of epilepsy everyone suffers with.
We know with a fair amount of certainty what deja vu is…
The human brain dosn’t work like a single computer… but rather like a network of computers… a deja vu is when two different parts of the brain are processing the same information (each computer set up to look for different kinds of patterns off course) but fail to communicate with eachother so that one process moves ahead before the other… and only catches up later.
Imagine requesting a picture from two computers, where every other pixel is stored in a different computer… one of them has a lag… so you get the first set of pixels (like a see-through ghost of the whole picture) before you get the other half giving you the “real” picture…
Might deja vu not be the marker of exactly that monotony, in that we do the same sorts of things so often that we start to think they are exactly the same?
Of course, Mad Man P has given a “psychological” explanation that probably doesn’t allow for that “psychiatric” theory, but what the hell…?!
I think that there just may be some kind of “tingling sensation” or gut feeling that sets the feeling apart from just experiencing repetition. Perhaps…
Yeah Magsj I certainly agree and let’s see what would we be rushing to the stores to buy on this day?
mmm I wonder. Have any ideas?
Ah, life can be grand, can’t it?
And what about a day when we simply sit all day and try to focus in on all of our reincarnations. I think I’m tired and i need coffee. Happy Reincarnation Day – gotta go out and buy a crystal ball and some tea leaves.
The smilies are only matched by the sound of my laughing…
Actually it’s the “neuro-biological” explination I’ve given…
Psychology is 99% bullshit, by the way…I would never dream of spewing out that much bullshit in one post… I only sprinkle a little on top sometimes for decore…
Well, sometimes one can think back to the initial deja vu act, so it is real - I find that when I can’t remember the inital act, then it seems unreal/my imagination, but it’s not, or why would we have deja vus…
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