Almost all of us have experienced the effect of déjà vu at least once in our lives. Experts advise to treat such moments with special attention. This amazing feeling can become a "compass" showing you the correctness of the path chosen in life, and also testify to special abilities.
The expression "deja vu" comes from the French deja vu, which literally means "already seen." For the first time the term was suggested to be used by the French psychologist Emile Bourak, who described the mysterious phenomenon in his book "Psychology of the Future".
More than 100 years have passed since then, but today neither eminent scientists nor esotericists have an unequivocal answer to the question of what is deja vu.
Only one thing is clear: this is a completely special state, when the situation that is taking place at the moment seems so familiar, as if it has already been experienced. At some moment you catch yourself thinking that the room in which you are, the interior items and people are exactly the same combination has already happened in your life. But in the next second everything passes, the past, present and future fall into their usual places, and only a memory remains of the experienced miracle. And questions that have no answer.
SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
Scientists began to study the phenomenon back in the 19th century, and immediately two completely opposite theories arose to explain the mysterious effect. The first says that déjà vu occurs when you are physically tired. Usually, the processes of perception of reality and processing of information occur in our brain at the same time, however, when overworked, a certain failure occurs, due to which a person begins to think that he has already experienced this once.
According to another theory, the effect of déja vu, on the contrary, occurs in a well-rested, full of energy person, when all processes in the brain are accelerated and the signal about the perception of reality is processed faster than necessary, causing a feeling of repetition.
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In the modern scientific world, passions about déjà vu continue unabated. Thanks to the latest technology, science has been able to explore the areas of the brain that are responsible for various processes of perception.
Recently, British scientists conducted a large experiment that made it possible to reproduce the effect of déjà vu in laboratory conditions. Volunteers were shown cards with pictures and words, and then, using hypnosis, they were forced to forget them, after which they were shown again.
Most of the participants in the experiment experienced a feeling very similar to the feeling of "already seen." As a result, it was found that during recollection in the temporal lobe of the brain, a certain chain of neurons is closed. When a person suffers from constant deja vu, this chain is in a state of hyperactivity or closed all the time. That is why memories rush through my head, for which there are no grounds, and new impressions are accompanied by a feeling of remembering.
Scientists will sooner or later find out all the subtleties of the physiological process of déjà vu, and finally it will become clear what their essence is. But this information is unlikely to shed light on the causes of the phenomenon. Probably, they should be looked for in finer matters.
If the feeling of déjà vu occurs quite often, this most likely indicates psychic abilities. You can start developing them, but I would advise you to do this only under the guidance of an experienced mentor. When déjà vu occurs only from time to time, it can be regarded as a kind of signs of fate. These are signals from the subconscious that indicate which aspects of your life need to be paid special attention to.
Also, the feeling of déjà vu can send you away in those moments and situations when you did not behave quite right. Again and again you are confronted with what happened, because circumstances require you to take a different approach. Try to track down exactly what moments it seems to you that everything is repeating itself. Move away from the situation, look at it from the side. Try to go beyond your own ideas and stereotypes and do, for example, something that you have never allowed yourself to.
Albina Selitskaya, psychic, clairvoyant
A burst of subconsciousness
The effect of déjà vu is somehow connected with the sphere of the subconscious, the study of which lies in the jurisdiction of psychological science. However, psychologists also have no consensus on the explanation of the phenomenon.
American professor of psychology Arthur Allin in 1896 put forward the theory that déjà vu are fragments of dreams forgotten and revived in our memory. The feeling of false recognition arises as an emotional reaction to a situation at the moment when our attention is briefly distracted from acquaintance with a new image, and then returns to it again.
The father of modern psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, also paid a lot of attention to déjà vu. In his opinion, this feeling is a trace of a forgotten memory of a very strong emotional traumatic experience or desire that we reject. In his book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, he examines déjà vu using the example of a girl who first came to visit her school friend in the village.
She knew in advance that she had a brother who was seriously ill. Seeing the garden and the house of the owners, she felt as if she had already been to this place. And at the same moment I remembered my brother, who was also sick. Once she suppressed these memories, because deep down she wanted to be the only child in the family. A similar situation at a party for a moment resurrected this forgotten experience, but instead of recalling her shameful thoughts, in Freud's opinion, she transferred the "recall" to the garden and house, and it seemed to her that she saw it all.
"I can explain my own experiences of déja vu in a similar way," Freud adds, "namely, by the resurrection of an unconscious desire to improve my situation." That is, the feeling of "already experienced" is a kind of reminder of a person's secret fantasies. A signal that we are touching something desirable and at the same time forbidden.
At the end of the 20th century, Dutch psychiatrist Hermann Sno hypothesized that every memory is stored in the human brain in the form of a kind of hologram. The amount of information accumulated over a lifetime is too large for the brain to store all memories in full. Therefore, each one is compressed to a separate small fragment. When a person wants to pull something out of his memory, he turns to this fragment, from which a full hologram of the memory “unfolds”. Sno believed that the effect of déja vu appears in the case when some detail of the experienced situation closely coincides with one of such fragments of memory and calls up a stored hologram in the mind - an unclear picture of the past event that actually took place.
In general, psychiatry regards déjà vu as normal if it is not repeated too often. If a person experiences it regularly, then there is a reason to think about their own health and find out if this condition is a consequence of any disease.
MEMORY OF ANCESTORS
However, rational interpretations of the phenomenon are far from satisfying everyone who has come across this mysterious phenomenon. The experience of such an experience looks too mystical: as if for a moment someone else's soul infiltrates the body, or the consciousness suddenly “bifurcates”.
There is a version that the phenomenon of déjà vu may be associated with genetic, or, as it is called in another way, ancestral memory. Proponents of the theory are convinced that each person is endowed with a hidden "gene archive", which contains memories not only of the life of his parents, grandparents, but also beyond, right up to the very first living creature on Earth. In this vein, the effect of déjà vu is interpreted as "reading" fragments of memory that belonged to our ancestors.
By the way, this approach is closely related to the theory of the "collective unconscious" psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung. Jung himself believed that he lived two parallel lives. Once, while still a young man, while visiting, he saw an old porcelain figurine depicting a doctor who lived in the 18th century. The doctor was wearing shoes with buckles, in which the future psychotherapist recognized the shoes that once belonged to him. He remembered this and from that moment he was sure that he was living simultaneously for himself and for that doctor.
Another hypothesis is based on belief in reincarnation. Its author is the hypnotherapist Dolores Cannon. She has developed a unique hypnosis technique that allows patients to be immersed in a deep trance and receive information of a historical and spiritual nature. Cannon certainly believes in soul rebirth. In her opinion, deja vu occurs in two cases:
1) when a person remembers a place or event that he already experienced in his previous incarnation;
2) at the moment before settling into a new body, his soul saw what would happen. The fact is that immediately before incarnation, the soul enters the spiritual dimension, where it is given the opportunity to look over its future life. And the moments of deja vu are not even memories, but a kind of reminder of the path that a person has chosen, deciding to be reborn on Earth.
Perhaps it would be correct to assume that different people experience the effect of déjà vu for different reasons: for some, these are truly forgotten dreams, while others actually remember their past incarnations. Therefore, it is very important to listen to your intuition - it will certainly tell you why strange "memories" come to you.
Article author: Olga Grishaeva