If you have ever experienced the déjà vu sensation and wondered what is the meaning behind it, you are in the right place. The truth of the matter is, the meaning of this phenomenon still remains universal. Since so many people experience déjà vu, scientists have begun researching on it. Their aim is to gain more insight into what really causes it, physical or spiritual.
Deja vu is an expression that is derived from the French ‘déjà vu’ which means ‘already seen’ in English and it is a common intuitive experience that happens to most human beings. It is however said to affect a higher number of 15 to 25-year-olds than any other age group. This strange phenomenon gives you the impression that a certain event has happened before despite you knowing that this particular event is happening for the first time and it is very unique.
This experience is followed by a sense of unreality. There are surveys which indicate that most people experience déjà vu at least once in their life. Some of them experience frequent deja vu. There are a number of theoretical approaches that have been advanced on the account of mechanisms that really produce the déjà vu sensation. Déjà vu occurs in such a way that it seems to spark your memory of a place you have been before, a person you already know or even an act you have already done.
Never blame yourself if you ever get this feeling of “I have been here before” or “he is not a stranger to me, I have seen him before”. The deja vu sensation may be freaky although it may turn out to be actually a good thing by the way.
What actually happens when you happen to get that weird feeling may possibly be beneficial to your memory issue. Essentially, there are people who have traced their deja vu in places they just watched on TV or seen photos maybe somewhere on the internet. That is why a more recent research with the help of brain imaging and virtual reality technique reveals that deja vu is a process in a more complicated memory than just an overactive memory.
There are different theories behind deja vu like a memory from a dream, a coincidental, overlapping of events or even a life experience in the past. Whichever way, it gives you an opportunity for additional knowledge about yourself and your surroundings.
If you look at the western culture, people tend to consider someone as a stranger if he is not in their circle of friends and family. Yet there are those moments you meet this person and feel like you have known him for years and you don’t feel like you are meeting and mingling with a stranger. You even get surprised when you talk to them about anything and you understand each other quite well.
As you continue having a good time and laughing together easily, all seems to be in a commonplace. If you think they are reminding you of someone else you could be probably wrong and maybe you are just relating to them as people with a common history or members of the same tribe other than the strangers they are.
Deja vu has been explained as processing information that has been stored in the mind as just memories or imaginations. Herman Sno is one of the leading experts of deja vu in the world and he believes that memories are stored in a format that is similar to a format that is used to store holographic images.
If you are married, how did you meet your spouse? Did you know that you are going to marry your spouse on your first date? This has actually happened to a lot of people. You could have dated different people, but one day you meet this person and you experience this feeling of knowing they are the right fit for you.
Something about their eyes, the way they take coffee, some jokes they say or even the way they smile makes you feel like you have known them for ages. You actually realize that your paths have never crossed with theirs but due to the closeness you have with each other, after your first date you become inseparable and even get married after a short period of courtship.
At times, the feeling of deja vu is confused with the feeling of meeting someone and getting attracted to them in an addictive obsession. There are addiction specialists who warn against meeting someone and getting that feeling of addictive explosion saying that that is not a sign of love but it is one of neurosis meeting another. In fact, they advocate that you run very fast and forget you ever met them.
You may have come across addicts and some none-addicts who strongly feel that love and sex will fix their challenges. They end up getting into premature relationships which are inspired by intense physical attraction and they have nothing to do with deja vu.
This could have been as a result of basic emptiness that desires to be filled up. These are people without a true bond between them. Furthermore, they don’t know each other and the moment the pink glow of newness wears off, they will hardly recognize each other thereafter. It is important to give the feeling of deja vu a discerning approach since it is not obvious that an encounter that feels compelling or immediate is either healthy or not healthy.
However, most experiences from deja vu are not obsessive or compulsive but instead; they convey a quiet and solid quality. The more intimate partnerships have the possibility of having deja vu inherent although it can also happen in all kinds of partnerships. This means that it can occur in business, friendships and even family.
This may lead to a pivotal outcome which end up in impacting the direction of your life. The deja vu experiences can happen and take place anywhere at any time. Come to think of it, has your real estate agent show you a house that made you feel so familiar and right in there? Maybe that is how you took it after instantly knowing it is yours.
You could be sitting in a restaurant and this lady sitting at the back corner booth seems to be someone you know. You don’t have to let these possibilities pass you by, just take note of that and investigate. Taking the courage to act on synchronicities and having faith to what is not yet visible will definitely make that experience your own.
A study about déjà vu
Akira O’Connor and his team at the University of St. Andrews UK did one study and found out that deja vu occurs so that human beings can check out their memories. To test this phenomenon, Akira and his team triggered the feeling of deja vu in the lab. There were 21 volunteers who had brain scans while they experienced deja vu. If you think that the areas of the brain that sort memories like the hippocampus would become active during the phenomenon, it would surprise you to know it didn’t happen that way. The team discovered that the parts that become activated were the frontal area of the brain that is involved in decision making.
Akira believes that this occurs because the frontal regions of the brain are most probably sorting through the memories and sending signals in case of an error in the memory. This may suggest that there could be some conflicts between what you have actually experienced and what you believe you have experienced during deja vu.
The suggestions of the study about your memory
The study suggests that this is something good to people and those who experience frequent deja vu are less likely to forget details of their important events. According to the study, deja vu is just a part of having a healthy memory check. This may explain why deja vu is experienced by more young people as the memory tends to decline as people get older.
On the other hand, Akira suggests that people who don’t experience deja vu may also have a better memory in the first place. He says that if they are not misremembering events, then deja vu won’t become triggered either.
The bottom line
So, the issue of déjà vu is still being figured out on the exact happening. One can only say that it could be an actual sign of your mind’s very complicated memory process working as they should anyway. Hope you shake that unsettling feeling next time it happens to you.