Deja Vu

[â€On]

I dream every night, and I get deja vu all the time. Like, at least a few times a week. Sometimes it's something minor, like looking at a specific wall from a specific angle, or it could be something more major, like talking about something that has not happened yet with someone I do not know yet. The longest it has ever taken me to catch up with it is about 3 years. I don't read too much into it, as it's a waste of time and energy and never leads anywhere. Does it bring up some serious questions about consciousness, life, dreams, etc? Absolutely. Does it fascinate me? Yeah, for sure. But, aside from using that information to try and better my own life, to expand my dreams and my consciousness...well, it's pretty much useless.

That being said, I have literally just experienced something quite profound that jarred a memory in me. A little over a year ago, I joined this forum. I had been smoking since about 2006, but had never been a member of any hookah community. Long story short, I joined this forum because a year ago I had a dream where I was a member of a hookah forum and the deja vu I just had revolved around me thinking how it was weird that Katie's age is shown as "00". I know for a fact that I would have never joined this forum had I not had that dream. It's actually quite lucky, as I did not see "hookah forum" in the dream, I just knew it was a hookah forum. So, I googled Hookah Forum and this was the first result, which turned out to be the correct result from the dream (as my deja vu just proved). What interests me most is that the dream itself planted the idea, creating a continuum essentially. Starting from when I woke up that day, HF has been a part of my life because of that dream. I don't feel some cosmic "meant-to-be" feeling because of that, but, It is quite strange, as it's the first time I have really felt a large, legitimate change in my life because of a dream. I am now outside of that continuum, and that's a really good feeling. So, thank you all for playing supporting roles in my year long dream. I wonder, whose dream are we living now?

[vendetta_revived]

Whoa...that's a mindfuck.

I do get deja vu sometimes and every time it inclines me to believe that we are all living in a time loop (or may be we all are in parallel universes and everyone else there apart from yourself is just make belief, so you're not real...but that's for another thread may be ), and that our memory gets erased at the end and it all starts again. But there seems to be a minor defect in memory deletion which results in deja vu.

The strongest one I've felt yet was during an exam. I was writing an answer and I remembered very specifically that I had already written that answer before and during the same exam, and I also remembered that when I did it last, my pen stopped working exactly 3 lines after the one I was writing at the time, exactly when I was typing the letter "a" in that line, and that's exactly what happened.

[â€On]

Woah, that's a pretty crazy deja vu! I get what you are saying about parallel universes, but I think the theory that jives most with current science is based around the idea that our universe is a "hologram". And there is proof. Essentially, they have discovered that black holes store all the information of everything they absorb on their surface, indefinitely. What the theory ([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle"]holographic principle[/url]) proposes is that everything in the universe is a 3d interpretation of a 2d "surface" at the boundary of visible space.[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDtBvtEX3H8"]This helps explain it in a fairly simple way.[/url] Basically, we are "inside" the hologram on the surface of something, sort of swimming in information that has been "painted" on a surface, interpreting everything stored in that information as 3 dimensional, because all space obeys the same rules, and at a quantum level compression doesn't matter, there is always space. What this means is that all the information we have now and all the information we will ever have, it all already exists. Past, present, future, everything is floating in this information. It explains deja vu, because we are basically picking up information we "shouldn't" have. Why this only happens in dreams, I have no idea. What is dreaming? Unchained intake of all information available?

I love science, but this is exactly why I don't read too much into dreams. It is a debate that rolls philosophical, cosmological, mathematical, ethical, etc. ideas and viewpoints all into one. I love life, and I just live it, but, at the back of my mind, there is always the deep thoughts that make me think "what does this mean? how is this possible?"

[Chreees]

[img]http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p40/INCUBUSRATM/Funny%20pics%20and%20gifs/mind-blown.gif[/img]

But seriously, I have deja vu time to time. But most of the time I cannot connect it to a previous occurrence. It's just a feeling, and that's it.

EDIT: Sometimes it's triggered by a certain smell...

[vendetta_revived]

[quote name='aeon' timestamp='1338227047' post='548135']
Woah, that's a pretty crazy deja vu! I get what you are saying about parallel universes, but I think the theory that jives most with current science is based around the idea that our universe is a "hologram". And there is proof. Essentially, they have discovered that black holes store all the information of everything they absorb on their surface, indefinitely. What the theory ([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle"]holographic principle[/url]) proposes is that everything in the universe is a 3d interpretation of a 2d "surface" at the boundary of visible space.[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDtBvtEX3H8"]This helps explain it in a fairly simple way.[/url] Basically, we are "inside" the hologram on the surface of something, sort of swimming in information that has been "painted" on a surface, interpreting everything stored in that information as 3 dimensional, because all space obeys the same rules, and at a quantum level compression doesn't matter, there is always space. What this means is that all the information we have now and all the information we will ever have, it all already exists. Past, present, future, everything is floating in this information. It explains deja vu, because we are basically picking up information we "shouldn't" have. Why this only happens in dreams, I have no idea. What is dreaming? Unchained intake of all information available?

I love science, but this is exactly why I don't read too much into dreams. It is a debate that rolls philosophical, cosmological, mathematical, ethical, etc. ideas and viewpoints all into one. I love life, and I just live it, but, at the back of my mind, there is always the deep thoughts that make me think "what does this mean? how is this possible?"
[/quote]

Thanks for the articles. I am a sucker for these kind of things, and now I have something to keep me occupied for a while!

[â€On]

No problem! In general, I would recommend the Fabric Of The Cosmos miniseries, it's fantastic and readily available.

[IainUM]

i hate to be a buzz kill, but i'm pretty sure deja vu really only happens when your brain accidentally sorts a stimulus (such as a sight) into long term memory when it is supposed to be put in short term

[Rani]

Personally, I'm of the philosophy that our minds are much more powerful than we have even the slightest inkling about yet. I don't automatically buy into any particular theory, but I accept the possibility of anything and everything. So I think it's entirely possible that deja vu is caused by us actually living what we've previously glimpsed.

There are a whole lot of other instances where the power of our minds seems to show. Magic as practiced by wiccans works. And is a big reason why fundamentalists are afraid of it. If it didn't work, they wouldn't have anything to fear. The Law of Attraction (positive thought) works. There are literally thousands of instances where changing your thought pattern changes your "luck". Pray at a statue for a few generations and it starts to actually bleed. I don't think any of it is "supernatural". I think it's that we're much more than current philosophy believes we are.

'Rani

[â€On]

[quote name='IainUM' timestamp='1338270805' post='548171']
i hate to be a buzz kill, but i'm pretty sure deja vu really only happens when your brain accidentally sorts a stimulus (such as a sight) into long term memory when it is supposed to be put in short term
[/quote]

I've heard that before, and it is probably the most valid explanation of it, but, it is quite strange in my case to say that my brain has so many "Accidents" a week when most people don't even experience deja vu. Not saying that validates it as being more than just a misfire, but, it is a bit strange.

[Giant Ninja Robot]

Rani, I love you I was gonna say essentially the same thing but didn't wanna take the time to put it into words. It also points to linear time being somewhat of a confine to how vast our consciousness and beings actually are, deja vu seems to slip out of it for a bit and reveal the vastness of singular and collective consciousness.

And Aeon, I think that information storage, that undercurrent of everything that's simply projected into our daily existence is a lead towards what we to this point have called "God".

I love this thread. Personally I have come to tears in moments of deja vu. Whatever it is as a phenomenon it can be so comforting to feel (even if it's an illusory thing though I don't believe it is) that we are on the right path in our lives. Shit man, this forum has played a HUGE role in my life's events. I met the girl I love on here 4 years ago and in 3 weeks she's coming to stay with me for a few weeks, see if we really work enough for her to move out here with me. And I would not have her in my life were it not for my similar guidance to this forum. I also believe that what Rani is alluding to, us being SO much more than we've come to understand thus far? I think we're gonna be delving into that sooner rather than later as a species. I'm callin' it.

[DrSmokes]

I don't believe in the "stored in long term memory" theory. I walked into a room, I knew exactly where my dad was in the other room and what he was going to say when I walked into that room he was in before I was 10 feet away from him. Part of me wanted to play along with my "premonition" and part of me wanted to see what would happen if I didn't say what I saw/heard myself saying. That was the most extreme deja vu I've had and the last time I had it. It was about 11-12 years ago.

I also believe that there is much more to the mind than it currently is given credit. One day I hope we learn how to unlock these doors in our minds, to expand it into something we've only begun to fathom about.