Do you Believe in Deja Vu? Have you Ever Experienced It?

I've had the feeling that I've been somewhere before and it's actually the first time I've ever been there...or the feeling that "hey, I know I've been in this situation before" and it's the first time you can really remember it happening. It's weird. It gives me chills when that happens.

I got this interseting read from The Skeptic's dictionary skepdic.com déjà vu Déjà vu is French for "already seen." Déjà vu is an uncanny feeling or illusion of having already seen or experienced something that is being experienced for the first time. If we assume that the experience is actually of a remembered event, then déjà vu probably occurs because an original experience was neither fully attended to nor elaborately encoded in memory. If so, then it would seem most likely that the present situation triggers the recollection of a fragment from one's past. The experience may seem uncanny if the memory is so fragmented that no strong connections can be made between the fragment and other memories. Thus, the feeling that one has been there before is often due to the fact that one has been there before. One has simply forgotten most of the original experience because one was not paying close attention the first time. The original experience may even have occurred only seconds or minutes earlier. On the other hand, the déjà vu experience may be due to having seen pictures or heard vivid stories many years earlier. The experience may be part of the dim recollections of childhood. However, it is possible that the déjà vu feeling is triggered by a neurochemical action in the brain that is not connected to any actual experience in the past. One feels strange and identifies the feeling with a memory, even though the experience is completely new. The term was applied by Emile Boirac (1851-1917), who had strong interests in psychic phenomena. Boirac's term directs our attention to the past. However, a little reflection reveals that what is unique about déjà vu is not something from the past but something in the present, namely, the strange feeling one has. We often have experiences the novelty of which is unclear. In such cases we may have been led to ask such questions as, "Have I read this book before?" "Is this an episode of Inspector Morse I've seen before?" "This place looks familiar; have I been here before?" Yet, these experiences are not accompanied by an uncanny feeling. We may feel a bit confused, but the feeling associated with the déjà vu experience is not one of confusion; it is one of strangeness. There is nothing strange about not remembering whether you've read a book before, especially if you are fifty years old and have read thousands of books over your lifetime. In the déjà vu experience, however, we feel strange because we don't think we should feel familiar with the present perception. That sense of inappropriateness is not present when one is simply unclear whether one has read a book or seen a film before. Thus, it is possible that the attempt to explain the déjà vu experience in terms of lost memory, past lives, clairvoyance, and so on may be completely misguided. We should be talking about the déjà vu feeling. That feeling may be caused by a brain state, by neurochemical factors during perception that have nothing to do with memory. It is worth noting that the déjà vu feeling is common among psychiatric patients. The déjà vu feeling also frequently precedes temporal lobe epilepsy attacks. When Wilder Penfield did his famous experiment in 1955 in which he electrically stimulated the temporal lobes, he found about 8% of his subjects experienced "memories." He assumed he elicited actual memories. They could well have been hallucinations and the first examples of artificially stimulated déjà vu.

I've experienced Deja Vu on several occasions. A friend of mine says that Deja Vu is God's way of telling you that you are exactly where you are supposed to be at that moment in time.

Yes I have experienced Deja Vu! If you believe in alternate realities, the point of deja vu may be where several realities converge for a moment, giving you, and all of your alternate yous, an echo of that moment, which your brains interpret as reliving an experience even tho you are having it for the first time. In other words you and a number of alternate yous are having the experience at the same time before splitting off again into different universes. (Isn't Theoretical Physics fun?)

I experience it every time I remember a dream. When I remember them they always come true.

I have experienced deja vu on many occassions, although seldom on the dramatic level you say you have. Most of the time it is an unsettling familiarity to a place I have not been before. There are many "rational explanations" for such occurances, but I would like to think perhaps I have been there before on some level.

I get that ALL the time, It's actually when you dream about it before you physically see it. The dream seam's so real but you don't really remember it, then you come across a place and you say I have been hear before or DEJA-VU.

Yes I have experienced Deja Vu on more than one occasion. Sometimes I can't figure out why, and where the memory is coming from. Other times I realize that a similar event has occured. (Did your brother come out okay from the accident?) Other times yes I've had it so strong and remembered it from a dream or a sudden jolt and then weeks months or even years later it comes to pass.

Yes, and I have eperienced Deja Vu on more than one occasion.

Yes and it was so strange, I was in bed almost sound asleep, then i sat up and told my husband something is gonna happen,That it has to do with a brown dog. He just told me to go back to sleep. About 30 min. later my son came and woke us up an said his dog just bite his girlfriend in the face. he has a brown weener dog. she had to go get stitches, it wasnt the dogs fauld she spooked him. Is'nt that strange?

Hi all.... This is trullly a bitter experience as u mentioned.. its brings a twitch in ur stomach.. Those who have experienced it can only understand it.. I am also one of it..

Deja Vu is quite interesting. I've experienced arriving at a someones house for the first time and not being able to enjoy the evening with friends because I was trying to figure out when I had been there before.

Yes I Do Belive In It I have had It Happend To Me

I have experienced deja vu several times. It is actually a recollection of what has happened before.

yes and often i find it scarey

Yes.Many times.Thank you for letting me know that there are many more out there.It is a very freaky experience indeed.

Not every day but sometime I feel de ja vu =))

i believe in deja vu in a sense that it's a product of our subconscious state of mind...i've been to certain places and even it was my first time to go to that particular place, i feel as if i've been there a couple of times before...:)

Yes quite often.

Yeah!! it happens a lot of times with me as well.... it usually happens in situations, that a particualar situation that i have been in has happened before.At that time i can even predict what is going to happen next...and it even does happen!!!!! i usually have a sensation that i have been in that situation before, or even maybe seen it in a dream, but can never exactly pinpoint whr n when that incident happned before.