Déjà Vu: Here and Now, There and Then.
The experience of Déjà Vu in scientific and spiritual terms.
Todd Murphy
Déjà vu has meaning, both in science and in our spiritual lives.
Déjà Vu refers to those odd and usually rare moments when the present feels like the past. It’s a hard experience to interpret. Some people try to remember dreams that might have been like the present. Others think that the Déjà Vu moments are past life memories. Both notions are impossible to prove, disprove, or (until recently), investigate. The belief that its about past lives is a matter of faith. The idea that it has to do with dreams is less so – only a few people claim to recall past lives, but almost everybody remembers some of their dreams. Some can recall lots of them.
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Thinking that Déjà Vu moments are memories of our dreams presents a problem. Both dreams and Déjà Vu experiences happen in non-normal states of consciousness. Most altered states are a fertile ground for confabulations (“embroidered” or false memories). It’s easier to create a false memory during a moment of Déjà Vu, than it would be normally. In fact, during moments of Déjà Vu, the mind has unusually direct access to long-term memories, and the brain processes that allow us to create and retrieve them, but it’s also more likely to create a false memory. As it happens, people who have déjà vu often are also prone to false memories (link opens in a new window).
Déjà Vu is a spiritual gift, and there are others waiting for you in the same place – your brain and mind. If you have Déjà Vu often, then you probably also have other gifts, like sensing presences when you’re alone, or tingling in your hands. It also gives simple instructions about how to open your psychic “sight”, go deeper into prayer, learn to heal by laying on hands, and other skills that use your spiritual gifts.
New Book: Déjà Vu & Other Spiritual Gifts (Click to see on Amazon.com)By Neuroscientist Todd Murphy
I won’t say that Déjà Vu doesn’t come from past lives or dreams. But we want to understand what it is, and how we can respond when it happens. If we explain it as reflections of past lives or dreams, we can never know if we’re right or not. There’s no way we can verify a past life memory and the brain can falsify memories of dreams with ease. It’ll become another matter of faith, and some people want to know, not just believe.
Some of us have precognitive dreams, but most episodes of Déjà Vu happen without any sense of its relating to a dream. Precognitive dreams are a different matter altogether. Having the present moment feel like a repeat of something from the past is not the same as having the present validate a previous precognition. I have spoken to some professional psychics about this, and one of them said that he could tell the two apart, but that it took him some time to learn the difference. I asked him what the difference was, and he said that it was an ‘energy.’ That’s not really enough to help understand what the difference was, but enough for us to know that there might be one.
How does Déjà Vu happen?
The scientific explanation is that it has to do with memory processes. I’ll make it as simple as I can here. The basic idea is that there are portions of the brain that are specialized for the past, the present and the future. In general, the frontal lobes are concerned with the future, the temporal lobes are concerned with the past, and the underlying, portions between them (the limbic system) are concerned with the present. When they’re all doing their normal jobs, in normal states of consciousness, the feeling that ‘something is going to happen’ will only come up when we’re thinking about the future, worrying about it, anticipating it or making plans for it. The sense of the past (like being reminded of something) will only appear when our memories have been triggered in some way.
The structure that overwhelms our consciousness when we are ‘in the present’ or ‘being here now’ is the amygdala. It assigns an emotional ‘tone’ to our perceptions. When you step into the street and see a car speeding towards you, and you instantly freeze in terror and jump out of the way, that terror is the amygdala at work. Present. Here and now. The amygdala also recognizes expressions the expressions on people’s faces. When we are talking to someone, we can recognize their expressions and change the way we are talking to them just as quickly as we recognize danger. Words can often seem dangerous to the one hearing them. “we’re thinking of letting you go.” “I’ve been thinking that our relationship is holding me back.” Or – “You are under arrest.”
Phrases like these need instant, appropriate responses, and there is a cognitive (or “thinking”) brain part (the hippocampus) that’s specialized to provide them, in the present moment. For example, it participates in maintaining the sense of self, a job it repeats 40 times each second. Every 25 milliseconds. Each instance of the self is able to manifest a new emotional response, but only if circumstances have changed. In fact, the duration of the ‘present’ in neurological terms is so short that we don’t experience it so much as remember it.
The next level could be called ‘being around here-just about now.’
Short term-memory deals in periods of a few minutes. Its mostly based in the hippocampus. We know this because problems with the hippocampus often lead to severe short-term memory problems. It helps us to stay oriented in time. There have been a few people who have lost all hippocampal functions, and they are unable to remember anything that happened after their brain problems began. Humans are a linguistic species, and an intensely social one. We relate to each other through words. We have conversations. To do this, we have to be able to remember what people say to us. We also have to be to think about it long enough to be able to respond to it. We have to remember what we’ve just finished doing in order not to have to do it again.
There is a joke I heard while working in a nursing home: Happiness is finding your glasses before you forget what you need them for.
Then there is long-term memory. Its ‘seated’ on the surface of the brain, on the bottom of the temporal lobes. The area has been called the parahippocampal cortex, and it’s very closely connected to the hippocampus.
Ordinarily, there is a fairly seamless integration of the past, present and the future. In simple terms, we experience something in the present, compare it to similar experiences in the past, and decide how we will respond. The time frame can be very brief; even a few milliseconds. Once in a while, though, there can be too much communication between short-term and long-term memories. When this happens, then the present can feel like the past. In many cases, it’s triggered by an error in feeling that something is familiar.
If perceptions from the present are shunted through the parts of the brain that process memories from the past, those perceptions will feel like they’re memories, and the person will feel that they are re-living a moment stored in long-term memory.
There is another experience worth mentioning; Jamais Vu. It’s the opposite of Déjà Vu. Instead of feeling extra familiar, thing seem totally unfamiliar. In this case there is too little connection between long-term memory and perceptions from the present. When a person is in this state, nothing they experience seems to have anything to do with the past. They might be talking to a person they know well and suddenly the person seems totally unfamiliar. Their sense of knowing the person, and knowing how to relate to them simply vanishes. A room in which they spend a lot of time suddenly becomes totally novel; everything seems new. Details they will have seen a thousand times suddenly become engaging.
Jamais Vu is not so common as Déjà Vu, but it can be just as compelling.
How do I respond to Déjà Vu?
That depends on whether you enjoy it or not. A few people are just terrified when it happens. Others find it mildly euphoric. I think most people just find it to be a perplexing sensation, neither pleasant nor threatening.
As with all other altered state experiences, most people who enjoy it think of it as a spiritual moment, and those who don’t, think about it in psychological terms. I’ve talked to people who had it often, and found the experience terrifying. There is nothing frightening about Déjà Vu in itself, but it can happen that activity from the hippocampus can spill over into the neighboring structure, the amygdala, which is a very emotional structure. If it gets into the one on the right, the emotion is going to be unpleasant, most likely fearful.
If you have Déjà Vu appear with fear, you might want to get some help, depending on how strong the feeling is. One of the best places to start is with an epilepsy specialist, especially if you think you might be going crazy. Why not start with a psychologist? Because Déjà Vu is often symptomatic of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), and its misdiagnosed more often than not, usually as schizophrenia, but also as bipolar disorder, and several others.
One reason psychologists get the diagnosis wrong so often is that TLE isn’t listed in the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders, the psychiatrist’s handbook. It’s the standard guide to diagnosing psychiatric illness. Because it isn’t listed, its pathology isn’t covered, and psychologists miss the mark when dealing with it. TLE also has a much wider range of possible symptoms than other disorders. While most seizures of this type (called complex partial seizures) begin in the amygdala, they spread into other structures, and there are quite a number of them. One nearby structure will introduce smells into the experiences, and leave someone a heightened sense of smell. Another will create distortions in spatial perception. Another can leave someone with overactive sweat glands. Another can leave someone wanting to talk or write all the time. Another can make a person prone to brief, intense bursts of anger. Another can make a person’s sexuality change. The list goes on. There are also a variety of personality changes that can happen. With so many possible symptoms, proper diagnosis can be a problem.
There’s no need for a diagnosis when Déjà Vu feels good, even if it’s TLE that’s emotionally positive. In that case, it really can’t be called a disorder, but people still feel that it somehow calls for a response, and it will ‘feel’ like it should be a spiritual one.
For Déjà Vu that feels spiritual, I suggest meditation. The kind that emphasizes being present in the here and now. Déjà Vu is an alteration in the perception of the present moment. The two best known ones are Zen and vipassana, both Buddhist practices. I’m not saying that people who have Déjà Vu a lot should become Buddhists, only that these two Buddhist practices are well suited for those with frequent Déjà Vu experiences. There are times I’ve thought that Jesus might have been close to these practices when he said to ‘be still and know”. The more often Déjà Vu happens, the more likely a person will be able to stop their ongoing mental processes, and just be in the present. Déjà Vu is an experience that won’t go into words very well. When its happening, a person can still speak, but the phenomena that will demand their attention is that sense of the past.
Most commonly, a person having Déjà Vu will give their attention to the feeling that ‘this is the past!’ If someone wants to use the experience to enhance their spirituality, there are three things they can try.
1) When Déjà Vu happens, you should focus on what’s happening in the present. You can pay attention to your senses, and look at the ‘sense’ that perceives that sense of familiarity. If you can get a clear perception of that ‘sense’, you can look there at any time. Especially while practicing meditation. This practice, for those who have Déjà Vu often enough to take advantage of it, can chop months off the time it takes to get into meditation deeply.
2) You should try to disconnect from your sense of the past and try to see the present through that same sense.
3) You can pretend that Déjà Vu is happening during meditation. With practice, the familiar sensation should eventually appear, and by then, you may be able to stop paying attention to the ‘past’ and go into being ‘present’. When this happens, your meditation practice should acquire something new. This one may be hard to do, so let it go if it doesn’t work for you.
With time, Déjà Vu can become a friend.
END.
Watch my video about Deja Vu.
(Opens in a new Window)
QUESTION:
How do you personally relate Déjà Vu to the existence of time?
ANSWER:
These are provisional opinions only, something like ‘working hypotheses’, but to me, time is a matter of subjective experience which follows as-yet undiscovered algorithms. A year is a long time when you’re nine years old, and much shorter when you’re 40.
Déjà Vu and the phenomena of time are completely unrelated, despite the connection we feel between them. Understanding one offers no clues to the other. We may understand the physics of time and the time-space continuum, but the sense of the past is a feeling, and our feelings don’t match the laws of physics.
Déjà Vu is ‘about’ the past. There is a related phenomenon, precognition, also called ‘future memory‘, whose existence offers the possibility that Déjà Vu and ‘future memory’ are at two different ends of a single spectrum. If so, then we have perception in two directions – past and future.
A skeptical scientist would deny the existence of future memory, and there is no evidence that can prove them wrong. I have yet to experience the phenomena myself, and I have no jobs right now that would change if I held an opinion on the subject, so I prefer not to decide about it now.
Time only runs in one direction.
My opinion is that Déjà Vu is a neural phenomenon, and not connected to time (“The time-space continuum”) itself. It’s a change in our perception of time. Relating it to time itself is a bit like saying that sunlight wavers when it hits water instead of seeing that the water has waves.
It may or may not reference actual events in the past. The sense of the past is enough to create the feeling.
It may also be that there are two mechanisms – one behind Déjà Vu ‘to’ actual events, and one that spins out (confabulates) memories to which the Déjà Vu seems to refer.
For the mind to create a memory, right in the moment, that matches the present is a small thing next to the entire worlds it can create in dreams, visions, and near-death experiences.
End.
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References:
(1) Bancaud, J., Et Al, “Anatomical Origins of Déjà Vu and vivid ‘memories’ in human temporal lobe epilepsy” Brain, (1994) v.117, 71-90
(2) Gloor, Pierre, MD, Ph.D., Et Al, “The Role of the Limbic System in Experiential Phenomena of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy” Annals of Neurology Vol. 12, No.2 August 1982
(3) Persinger, M.A., “Geophysical Variables and Behavior: XXII. The Tectonic Strain Continuum of Unusual events” Perceptual and Motor Skills 1985, 60, 59-65
(4) Persinger, M.A. & Lafreniere, “Space-time Transients and Unusual Events” Nelson-Hall Chicago, 1977
Also Read: “Future Memory” by PMH Atwater.
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