Does "Deja Vu" Exist?

Assuming I have interpreted your posts properly:

Gen-X claims to have had what I would call a more intense and sustained deja vu than I ever recall having.

Sam sounds like he doesn't believe in deja vu.

I wonder if it could be a doorway to evil or advancement of humankind.

Gen-X is a "believer" while Sam is a non-believer, and I am just searching for the truth with an open mind.

How does one PROVE to the other, that only one of these beliefs is the TRUTH, and which one?

Discuss...

Then see if "Deja Vu" can be replaced with "God".

I think Deja Vu happens all the time, at least it does to me, but only when you get a very large amount of information at a very unexpected time, you could feel this "have seen" phenomenon

Let's first start with a definition:
What is Deja Vu?

This expression comes from the French and literally
translates as "Already Seen"

So, in a simplistic way, yes... Everyone may find
himself/herself in a situation where you have seen
something before. The common use of this expression
however also implies that You can't remember much
about that at all and is usually followed by an
unsettling feeling...

What could cause this?
we currently understand very little about the human
brain, what it unconsciously registers when and where
Could the brain, at this moment it happens, be replaying
in the background a similar situation that it has
previously encountered/registered and about which we
have no recollection?

Just think of this... The same way, we inherit our
ancestor's genes and therefore emulate their physical
traits!? Could it be that certain fragments of memory
genes transmigrate to the descendants? This is why
(probably) one finds certain people whop are able
to know the details of a specific chunk of history
details that are not documented anywhere and are
later verified to a high degree of accuracy by
investigators... The details sometimes include the
exact location of a piece of property in a certain
area or an historic event that actually took place
and may even contradict knowledge of the current
known facts

The magnificent brain we have been blessed with and of
we know not much may decide to replay a situation
at any time based on certain triggering factors

could we have seen/done something in a dream that we
recollected and that's popping up now?

One could go on... (but time...)

It sounds to me like our sub-conscious is somehow able to violate the rules of causality and space-time. How else could we know of a forthcoming event in such detail? Somehow our mind has visited the future and recorded it in our memory. Is it possible that our sub-consciousness spans all Time and that our consciousness selects a chronological path through Time? Sometimes these get blurred.... I don't know. I'm just hypothesizing.

I think it's very interesting that such a small unimportant think like 'deja-vu' could potentially be a key to unloacking a much larger mystery about the brain.

Experience of deja-va cannot be discounted. They are not like UFO sightings. These 'already-seen' moments happen all the time, and happen to all sorts of people. I really don't think we should just ignore them, and say 'we don't understand'.

I would like to see some kind of serious research whose aim would be to discover exactly what's going on in a person's mind when one of the deja-vus occurs. I know this kind of research is probably a long-way off, but if we ever solve this mystery, I think it can lead to a plethora of other possibilities.


dvsdvst8

VVB

Could I just mention that I don't disbelieve the phenomenom of deja vu, it obviously happens and it happens quite a lot to me. I am simply saying that seeing as we can't explain it we should first have a good go at trying to explain it with rational arguments that do not break physical laws such as causality. In Gen-X's case I can give a reasonable explanation of his predicting someone walking into the room in that he heard them coming subconciosly and it reminded him of a dream, seeing as dreams are not in as much detail as real life he filled in the missing bits to match the dream and was able to reconstruct the end of the dream before it happened.

while I can't reasonably explain his CD changing example I;m sure there is a similar explanation which is a little more complicated.

Gen-X did state that he was the sort of person that absorbs an enormous amount if information without actually noticing it conciously. Isn't this the explanation we shuld assume before jumping to the conclusion that we can see into the future.

Lafor

I like the Idea of people having access to ancestral memory through DNA, Modrn forensic techniques can take what's called a genetic fingerprint of people, this is a sort of map of somones DNA, forensic scientists like to hide this but If you take someones genecic fingerpring and compare it to one taken 20 years ago they do in fact change slightly. This could be a way of putting your experiences into your DNA and maight be a way that insticts and morals are passed from generation to genaration.

yes but sam, no where in your theory do you come close to explaining how gen-x predicted what the other person would say. this has happened to me on occasion as well. you just simply know the words that are going to come out of someone's mouth. i've had such dreams maybe months prior to an event, but soon my surroundings will become very familiar and i'll think.. 'wait i've been here before' or 'wait i've done this before'. such and such is going to happen next....

events like this have no precursory signs that could give them away (like the sound of someone's footsteps). Your theory also fails to explain the feeling of extreme familiarity that often accompanies these deja vu episodes. it's not just that we can predict the events, we have UNDERGONE THESE EVENTS BEFORE. Until you can come up with something to explain such strange happenings, I have to accept that we're somehow 'seeing into the future' as irrational as that may sound.

but definitely give it a go using your 'rational' arguments, but I'm sure you'll come up short, seeing as we understand so little of what's happening in our conscious minds and even less in our unconscious minds.

maybe in the future we develop time travel, and we're traveling back to fix something, and somehow the histories get scrambled a bit... i don't know. like i said before i'm just theorizing here, and I encourage others to offer their own wacked-out explanations.

dvst8

Sam
Basically your discussion with Gen-X sparked my interest in pursuing this because there can exist a person with an extreme belief in deja vu and another with an extreme dis-belief in it. It had looked as though you both fit the model. You can make it less personal at anytime. But I was wondering if you had any such experiences. Apparently you have and also have rationalized it away somehow. Similar arguments are said about God, but we can try to stick with just the deja vu here.

All
Although it has been said that we've "been" here before; I have had experiences where I could not have been there physically (with respect to this reality--if that makes sense). The surrounding environment was definitely a future environment, so I would say it is a vision of some sort.

Bear with me...If all time exists now, then this may be a way to interact with this dimension. It isn't a spacial fourth dimension; it was like our reality. Except, when the "real" event happened, there was a link in my mind to the endpoint in time (in the past) when I experienced the event as I would call a memory from the past. There had also been times when the "vision event" endpoint happened while I knew it was of the future and had not happened for real yet. I haven't been able to "focus" one endpoint exactly with the other to say when the real event would occur, but while the real event was happening, I almost could say (because it was on the tip of my tongue) what would happen next. Gen-X achieved this state and "foretold" it to some other person (unless he's just pulling our legs). It could be a ploy to say that I am gullible, although I believe it is a true claim and a true phenomena.

VVB

I think Gen-X is being truthful when he speaks of his deja-vu experiences. Your theory about endpoints in time is interesting. Good stuff. Hopefully, one day we'll have some way of verifying this kind of stuff experimentally.

dvst8

dvs8

there's a very good reason that I couldn't predict how Gen-X knew what the guy entering the room was going to say,It's because he didn't.

Quote:

---

I remember having a dream about reading a book with a Knight in it, sitting in a group of people and someone walking into the room.

About 6 months later I was in Social Studies at High School and we were studying Feudal England. I opened the textbook I was given and on that page there was a Knight.

That stopped me in my tracks and I looked around at the people in the class. The person next to me asked what was going on because I looked startled and I said to them without turning around "Someone will come in through that door (pointing over my shoulder)".

Well... someone walked in that door and the person next to me was gob-smacked

---

I don't think that just knowing the words that are going to come out of someones mouth is enough, I can know something, it can be on the tip of my tounge but I still can't say it, because I don't know it, I only THINK I know it.

The way the human brain works is that it's good at pattern fitting, it can fill in the gaps given limited information, so given some information about a situation and some information that fits in a dream that you had, then you can put this information together and reconstruct your dream, you can put together from someones actions that they are going to say something (it's called intuition) and what they are going to say is on the tip of your tounge because you are putting together in the dream what they are going to say in the same way as you put together memories in your brain. So as far as you concerned you know it, when the person says something you say "I knew that" like you would if you were asked a question which the answer was on the tip of your tounge but couldn't remember in time. But in this case you weren't trying to get the information out so you just believe that you knew it. If you can write down the exact words someone is going to say that's different. (although you could still tell from the gist of the conversation what they were going to say and be able to work out how they were going to say it because you've talked to them before and know their dialect)

The human brain doesn't usually remember exact details, it remembers what it needs to reconstruct the information, kinda like a compressin algorithm, if you leave the information unaccessed for a while it compresses it further so that even fewer details are remembersed, but if you need it you will usually get some additional details when you need it (If you learn something (especially a language) and dont use it for a while you forget it, but when you start using it again everything starts flooding back as the details are put back in place) I can remember very clear pictures of situations with me and my friends when we were about 14 and in all those pictures the people who have beards now have beards then, and I know for a fact that my friends didn't have beards at 14. what I've done is remember the person and what position they were standing in, and I reconstruct the details from that. I think it's very unlikley that you would have a dream in its full form from months back, you are simply getting similar information and putting the pieces together.

Ok, I havent read this thread very closely, but this reminds me of stuff that happens to me...
its kind of hard to explain,

its like I dream of something, I vageuly remember the dream, I barely remember any of of it, just the roughest detail.


but then something happens, the same as in my dream, its like my dream is telling me what is going to happen, then all the details come.. thats when I say "Oh yeah I dreamt that!"


its really wierd, and sometimes it just freaks me out....

even if I have NEVER Been to a place before I see that place in my dream, and I go there the next day(not knowing it is the same place in my dream) and I am like "what how did I dream that? I have never seen this place before"

like I said it really freaks me out sometimes....

if anybody has an explanation of this I would *[b]*REALLY*[b]* like to here it.....

thanks.

VirtuallyVB

Read my other post in the other thread.

Basicially I never said I "believed" that it was Deja Vu, just that it fit that category and I was more than happy to have it explained in any possible way and in fact was happy to accept (and even helped) in developing the theory of subconscious information intake.

All

Does "Deja Vu" exist? Of course it does... because the term indicates a sense of familiarity and we have all felt that familiarity so we can acredit to the word.

I think the real question is "What IS Deja Vu?".

Is it a vision into the future, a repeating brain pattern or just simply a triggering of a chemical release to which we attribute the emotion of having seen it before.

I think there are many ways of explaining it and while I agree with Sam that my knowledge of the person entering the room could have been as a result of gathering subconscious information it doesn't directly explain the fact I had a dream months before that depicted the same thing.

Then again, I was dreaming and didn't "specifically" take note (or write down) what happened in my dream so it could be entirely possible that the event that occured caused my recollection of the dream to adapt accordingly.


I have another theory however... which is interesting if nothing else in that "Deja Vu" is the result of "cross-talk" with another time... I believe perhaps Ghosts fit into this category... they are not manifestations in our reality but instead are simply a "shadow" image (like the ghost on a TV) simply existing as they have for some reason become out of phase with their own time period.

It certainly would explain why Ghosts always look like they did at the time of their lives... because it is really the two periods of time crossing over for a bare moment.

Of course there is nothing to support the theory other than it makes logical sense that just as sound waves being carried through parallel wires can occasionally induce currents in the other wire and this create echos of the same sound in the other wire... I dont see why time cannot do a similar thing.

But like I said before... I'm open to any possibility as long as it is within the realms of sense and reason and fits the facts at hand.

As for it being "evil" I think that is just habitual religious zealousness to dump anything that appears to be "other-worldly" in the bad basket as if God is the only being with a right to exhibit more-than-human powers.

"He can see the future? He must be evil... lets burn him at the stake"

Sound familiar :D

how "convenient" as Gen-X would say, it is to accept Sam's explanation because it is grounded in his belief of being able to explain things (i.e. brain's need for reconciliation of events)

BTW people, it is I who am now playing devil's advocate with this entire thread. Originally I thought Gen-X would be the proponent (or someone with similar experiences) because his experience was more sustained than I recall any of mine. This leads to so-called "open mindedness" being somewhat equivalent to "never taking a stance". But that is for another discussion and I don't mean to offend anyone; I'm more interested in the Deja Vu component here.

denniswrenn also describes deja vu the way I have experienced it.

Gen-X, which "other thread" are you refering to?

VVB

Quote:

---

how "convenient" as Gen-X would say, it is to accept Sam's explanation because it is grounded in his belief of being able to explain things (i.e. brain's need for reconciliation of events)

---

Your not going to confuse "belief" with "faith" on me are you???

I think Harry pointed out something quite interesting in one of the other threads about the fact that Christians have developed a different meaning to the word "faith" in that it is probably more closer to "belief".

I have always argued that I don't have faith because I require evidence and yet religious people have continued to say "You have faith". We have both totally disagreed with each other and yet both sides continued to believe they were right.

Then when Harry mentioned this it all suddenly fit together, like a jigsaw puzzle. When I was saying "faith" to them... they were hearing "belief", and when they were saying "belief" to me, I heard "faith" and so the confuse began.

Yes I "believe" that evidence leads to truth and understanding so of course I would accept what Sam said as a possiblity because it matches my axiom of "truth". So there is no "convenience" in it, in fact anyone would have expected that to be the case... I'm not about to just suddenly accept something without any evidence to support it (what *I* call faith) because they would NOT be open-minded... that would in fact be closing my mind to possiblities.

Please don't confuse the definition of "faith" with the one the Bible generated for its own purposes....

As for the "Deja Vu" component I think I quite succinctly addressed that in your confusion between the existance of the "feeling" and what it was actually believed to be.

VVB, You never really did answer which one you meant.

Yes I believe Deja Vu exists, I have 'felt' that particular sensation so the evidence suggests it does.

But as for WHAT I think it means, if its a vision of the future or whatever... I'm open to any and every possible explaination that makes sense and that I cannot find flaws in.

As for the other thread... Mmmm... Its one of the ones on top, Should be easy to spot ;)

I have had 4-10 deja vu experiences, starting when I was in high school and occurring over the next 5-10 years. The deja vu experiences I have had were a convincing feeling in my mind that I had previously lived through the present circumstances. It was the feeling that in my mind was an exact memory of a short period of time (20 seconds to a minute or so). The first occurred when I was in high school

In every one of my deja vu experiences, I knew that I had never lived though the events which were currently happening. The deja vu always terminated before I had a chance to predict what was going to happen next.

It is my nature to be to want to be as rational as possible, and I attempt to understand anything that seems potentially important. These experiences bothered me. Since I do not believe in the occult, clairvoyance, et cetera my instinctive interpretation was some brain malfunction.

As is my nature, I started researching the experience. I did not know a term for the phenomena. The best I could do was describe the experience to friends, teachers, et cetera. Finally somebody came up with the term deja vu, which allowed me to research it in a library. I was relieved to discover that the experience was not unique to me, and was not considered a symptom of any serious mental disorder.

Many years after my last experience, I read an article that made sense to me. It claimed that while the brain is making a record of what is happening, it gets momentarily confused and thinks it is remembering instead of storing data. Kind of like cross-talk between the read & write circuitry for your hard drive.

I do not believe that anybody really knows what deja vu is, but that explanation was the best guess I ever encountered.

It is my nature to flat out dismiss ESP-like explanations, so I have accepted the above idea in the absence of anything that looks more plausible to me. If anybody has a better explanation, I will be interested. I will be amused by, disbelieve, and not comment on occult or ESP-like explanations.

What about my pet theory of trans-chronological cross-talk?
(Read way above somewhere)

:D

All

Interesting topic. Before i go off on one, i will say that i too have experienced Deja Vu. My experiences have been very similar to the ones the have been cited above. I have had a couple of dreams come to life as such. Usually a month or so after i had the dream. I do not recognize what is going on though, until very near the end of the experience.

Gen-X, got me thinking though. It is about the way the brain stores memories. If it is indeed patterns that are used to store experiences, then this could provide an explanation. How often is it that you remember a dream? I usually don't. So logically dreams would be stored in a small as possible pattern. This means that a lot of detail has gone. When we have an experience of Deja Vu, could it be that the basic pattern matches of the occurring event matches perfectly the pattern of the dream. The brain recognizes the two patterns as almost identical, and fills in the details of the dream with what is actually happening now? So maybe you did not dream the exact experience, but the basic pattern of what you dreamt is made to match the experience. Food for thought.


dvst8 has also got me thinking, with the idea on the subconscious spanning all time, and not being restricted to our chronological experience of it. My thoughts go back to our discussions on higher dimensions and souls. A being that exists in a higher dimension than another being has God like powers over the lower dimensional being. Remember our 2d flatworld. If a 3d being can interact with the 2d world, that 3d being has a lot of power over a 2d person.

Imagine this scenario. A 2d person is being kept prisoner by his 2d captors. To contain someone in a 2d world, it only requires a closed box around them.

Code:

---

    '----------'
    '    O    '
    '  \|/    '
    '  / \    '
    '----------'

---

Now imagine that a 3d being came along, and plucked the 2d being from his prison and placed him outside of the "Walls"

Code:

---

    '----------'         
    '          '      O
    '          '      \|/
    '          '      / \
    '----------'

---

To our flatlanders it appear that the prisoner has achieved the impossible. Yet to us, this was a rather simple feat, because we existed in a higher dimension.


So back to the point. If we have a soul, i personally think it would be linked in with our subconscious mind. What is it that makes some twins separated at birth take almost the exact same path through life? I think that is to do with our subconscious mind, but they must be linked somehow. This is where i think the soul comes in. I think the soul is linked to our subconscious, and our soul itself exists in a higher dimension. For the case of twins, i think they are souls which are somehow joined in this higher dimension, or even possibly they may be the same soul. It all depends on how much influence the soul has over us. Gen-X has had some good thought on the types of people there are, maybe this could explain why some twins are nearly exactly the same, and why some aren't.

If the soul is in a higher dimension, then we can compare it to the analogy i used earlier. So theoretically It would be possible for the Soul to "Travel" freely in any of the lower dimensions. This means that Time is not an issue. Theoretically, all time has happened, it would be just like another spatial dimension. This means that the Soul could "See" all of what has happened, and what is going to happen. If it is linked in with our subconscious, it may be possible for us to dream what the soul is seeing at the time. This could be used to explain prophecies as well. Some people i think have a stronger link with their subconscious brain. If this were true, it would follow that they were more likely to "see" and remember what the soul was "seeing".

Anyway, i think i have ranted and raved more than enough for now. I will be interested in your replies.

Guv

But we have heard people having experiences where their deja-vu experiences are predictive. If this is the case, then the explanation that the brain is fuzzing up the details of a memory and 'filling in the details' doesn't hold. Our explanation of this phenomenon must take into account prediction.

Iain
Very interesting ideas. Although I don't believe we have a 'soul' per se (because the word 'soul' and 'spirit' have been poluted by Oprah), I can accept the idea that our sub-conscious minds can have a connection with another dimension. Perhaps this connection is current being developed and is the next step in our evolution, who knows.

I've been meaning to read a book called "Flatland", but haven't got around to it. It sounds like you may have read it? --> or maybe you even recommended it to me ? ;)

dvst8

Guv
As dvst8 pointed out, there is a prediction component. I was going to mention the "vision/dream" endpoint versus the "real event" endpoint; how do you explain the vision endpoint?

If I dream of an event that must take place in the future, I can easily dismiss it as merely a dream, but when that endpoint also carries with it information that this will be perceived as a deja vu at an almost specified time in the future, that's a bit more interesting.

Has anyone else experienced the vision endpoint knowing that it would occur for real in the future?

I ignore the prediction aspect of deja vu. It never happened to me. If it did, I would have dismissed it as coincidence.

I believe that some people seem able to make good predictions based on some type of subconscious processing of data. In most cases, these people have a lot of experience relating to what they are predicting. The best example I know of has to do with playing poker with experts (I am not one). For these people, Poker is not a card game, it is a people reading game. When deciding to bet, raise, or fold they do a good job of predicting how good the mark's hand is. I am not talking about obvious "Tells." I am referring to some type of subliminal clues.

Aside from the above, I attribute anecdotes about successful predictions to be due to coincidence, faulty memory, hallucination, after-the-fact fitting of the prediction to the events (Nostradamus, for example), deliberate exaggeration (Id est: lying), non-deliberate exaggeration.

Guv
Ignoring an aspect of something just because it hasn't happened directly to you (i.e. predictive deja-vu), is a very poor way of dealing with it.

Most people who I have talked to, who have had deja-vu experiences, claim that they 'knew what was going to happen next'. Whether or not they told someone else about it, as GenX did, is kind of irrelevant.

There is more at work here than simply, after-the-fact fitting.

dvst8

dvst8
After rereading my Post, I understand how you could interpret my comments the way you did. However I did not mean to imply that I dismiss predictive deja vu because it never happened to me.

I dismiss it because I attribute all claims, anecdotes, et cetera relating to predictive abilities as coincidence (most likely), faulty memory, hallucination, retro-fit of events to prediction (EG: Nostradamus), deliberate exaggeration (lying), non-deliberate lying, stage magic.

In general, I do not view anecdotes as evidence. If I had some miraculous experience, it might convince me of the existence of occult phenomena, ESP, et cetera. However, I would not expect my telling of the experience to convince anybody else, and would not present it as evidence.

How would you propose this could be proved?

I didn't think of it as future telling (although I did see the Lotto benefit). Now I wonder if this is not merely a taste of prophecy, but the doorway and path to it.

If so, then I suppose the proof would be in the accuracy and detail of predictions coming true.

Is this the only benefit (albeit a big one) or is there something more to deja vu?

VVB

Here is a thought for you... something that Sam brought up that made sense to me as a result of the kind of person I am

It seems I collect information subconsciously, such that almost everything I see/hear goes in.... Often has been the case that I come up with answers at totally unrelated times as if my subconscious was thinking about a particular problem without me having to be aware of it.

In fact I would say that on occasion when I have been faced with a problem (lets say a coding problem), I will mentally "file away" the problem knowing at some point in the near future an answer will come to me.

What if predictive Deja Vous (Thought we should start using the correct French Term), was simply a subconscious extrapolation of data to produce a probabalistic outcome?

I often predict people's actions in advance which I attribute to the fact I have an accumulated knowledge of what they are like and that this knowledge is subconsciously extrapolated to provide a likely course of action... If there is not enough data to provide an almost certainty then nothing happens... if however there is enough information to indicate an almost 100% change of occurance that fact is raised from the subconscious.

If dreaming happened to be the point at which this final analysis came to bear, when our conscious and subconscious are the closest.... it would come to us as a dream.

Gen-X
French is not my specialty, but "deja vu" is correct. "Voir" is the verb "to see," and "vu" is some tense of it. "Vous" is a pronoun meaning "you", as in "Parlez vous Englais?" (Speak you English?).

Gen-X
Even though you botched the Deja Vu term, I am not looking to "win" an argument (as I generally perceive is your motivation) and I do consider the points you or others try to make (for or against my opinions). I didn't see why you said I "botched" the business with Deja Vu and Sam and You (I think it was another thread); but you and Sam are not the issue. Deja Vu is the issue. I'm not going to dismiss your opinions merely because you have clearly erred (as you suggested would be reason to dismiss my views, implying that I had botched something).

As far as accumulating information and spawning a background process, I think every average person exhibits the same subconscious thinking.
However, I know someone that is annoyingly socially "slow" and onlookers may perceive him to be retarded, yet I have noticed that if you mention a topic to him, he may respond several hours later (totally out of context for the present conversation) with a well thought out view, had it been presented at the former time. We might have joked that this person (or all in the conversation) was having a deja vu.

Since the information in the "vision endpoint" seems to come as a dream, the only way I can think of to monitor for deja vu is to keep track of dreams (log them) that might otherwise be dismissed. Then if the "real endpoint" occurs, they would tend to break this model of the brain trying to reconcile faulty information.

I have spent many hours just thinking, triyng to explain to myself why these "Deja-Vu" happens. And I had develop a persnal "theory". I'm not sayng that this is what I believe. But from all the posible "causes" I could imagine, this seems as one of the most "posible" ones.

First, I will asume that all of you have played computer games with "levels". If you make a mistake on the current level, you don't have to start the game from the start, you only go back to the begining of the current level. Sometimes, you are stuck for a while on that level. So when you actually have the skills to pass, you already know where and when a monter will try to kill you, where are the traps etc...

Well, I think that maybe, this happens to our daily lives. It could be divided on "time frames", live levels. And if you make a mistake, you have to go back and live everything again, and again, and again... until you get it done right. And thats why:

1) When there is something that makes you unhappy (you have a big personal problem or something), and you have that feeling that you are doing something wrong in your life, the calendar seems to be so damm slow. Months feels like years. Days passes and you still don't see the months passing by. That's is because (and remember this is just a theory) you ARE doing something wrong. And you are living a in a loop on that "Time Frame". And thats were "Deja-Vus" happens more often. Because you ARE living the same time frame, again and again.

2) On the other hand. When you are really happy with your live. Days and months seems to fly... "Deja-Vus" are almost cero. Thats is because you are making no mistakes, so you are not repeating any levels.

Ruben

Sure Deja Vu exists! She's my next door neighbour. Every time a see her I get the feeling I've seen her before :)

Yeap, I guess that could be a hole in my theory. But maibe the same "time lapses" are not repeated for everybody (at least thats where my thinking lead me). Maybe they are repeated only for u... or maibe the fact that I like many fiction movies is affecting my thinking procedures. I was really impresed with "matrix"... and there was another movie, I don't remember the name but the main actor was the same guy that did "Ace Ventura" On that movie, everybody else is an actor and his life is really a tv show, but he doesn't now. He just feels that something is not right. A similar thing happened on "The 13 Floor".

And that happens to me a lot. I just feels that someting is not right ... maibe there are to much dumb people in this world, or maibe I'm really an ET, left here when I was a baby, and thats why I feel so out of place everywhere :)

Ruben :)
-----------
To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer!

I was trying to reconcile in your theory if it could be only the person having the deja vu and was left with:

If the events repeated without change, then I'd agree that it could be affecting only the one person.

If the events were being changed (until done correctly as you suggest), where is the intereaction coming from? I would say that it requires more "players". Although a single "hiccup" in the matrix could be perceived by one person; what about repeated requirements until done correctly?

It could be as you say if somehow only one "retake" were allowed. I've never had (to my recollection) repeated deja-vu; although I have had recurring dreams.

Does Deja-vu exist? Although I'm not going to be drawn into the actualities of why it happens (ie anything spiritual/religious etc) I think its fair to assume that most people believe it happens and have experienced it to some degree.

So if we (collect term!) believe it happens, what is it?

From what I've read about it the answer I've come up with is a bit similar to what Guv said:
"Many years after my last experience, I read an article that made sense to me. It claimed that while the brain is making a record of what is happening, it gets momentarily confused and thinks it is remembering instead of storing data. Kind of like cross talk between the read & write circuitry for your hard drive. "

If you think about how quickly the brain processes information without us paying any real attention or being conscious of any decision process going on, for example people regularly claim they have no idea how the drove their car from A to B...well it happens to me! Yet clearly we must have been aware of our surroundings or you'd have crashed.

Deja-vu has been described as you seeing an event, not processing it fully so your brain starts to do it again, however in this time it has a memory of what it partially processed before and hence you have a unconscious memory of it and so "think" you've seen it before. In reality your processing info twice without realizing it and the quickness off the brain gives you time to think that you know what someone is about to say/do when they've probably already start to say or do it. Most of us are very repetitive in our actions or speech.

Anyway this is an explanation I was given and I happen to like it, although it doesn't explain all situations.

ViartuallyVB

I spent some time re-thinking about this. And this is what came to my mind:

If time can be bent, and time-travel is possible, then our player could be sent back in time. This could explain why not every-body u know share your same deja-vu's. But I also question myself ... who is sending us back?

Most of us believe that there is a "Higer Something" watching us from above. Most people call it GOD, other believe that they are the extraterrestial aliens, but most of us believe that something/somebody create us and is watching our lives. Maibe I take fiction movies to seriosly but, I remember an old one that have a similar situation. There was a world, with players who believed that there was something on a higer plane of existance. That movie was Tron. I'm not saying that we live inside GOD's playstation video games. But if the universe is infinite on every way, there could be a similar thing happening to us.

About repeated deja-vu's I really have not experienced such a thing. But I end up with this theory because on some Deja-Vu's esperiences, I had the usual feeling "I pass tru this before" and some other experiences I have a little diferent feeling: "I pass tru this before, more than once".

And there is something that doesn't change. Everytime I had one of those experiences, I have also the feeling that "I'm doing something wrong".

Ruben :)