Déjà vu - is it some kind of time warp or evolution of the mind?

Hello everyone. I have just recently joined ATS although I have been reading the posts here for a few years now. Something very strange has been happening to me that I wanted to share with the open minded people of ATS.

For the past few months I have been experiencing intense episodes of déjà vu. I am sure everyone has had some experience with this, the feeling that you have been in a place or situation before even though you know you have not. Since I was a kid I have had these experiences and my mom used to just tell me its déjà vu and shrug it off.

Lately these experiences have been more intense. So much so that when this now happens to me I can actually remember the conversions and predict what is going to happen before it does. These episodes usually last about 10-15 minutes then everything is back to normal. During these times I kind of feel like I am in a haze or semi-trace state. Everything around me almost seems to move in slow motion until time catches up.

Here is how the latest déjà vu episode went down:
I was in a car with my wife and another couple. I was in the back seat with my wife and the other couple was up front. We were in a city that my wife and I were never in before.
As we are driving down the street I am looking out the window checking out the scenery when I start to notice I am familiar with the buildings and even the people on the streets. I get that “slow motion” feeling. I tell everyone in the car that I have the strange feeling that I have been here before. They kind of laugh it off and continue with conversation. I then realize that I know what everyone is going to say before they say it. It’s really freaking me out at this point. I am just listening silently to the conversation I know exactly what each person is going to say. I couldn’t stay silent anymore. I told everyone in the car what was happening. They did not believe me so I started reciting what each person was going to say right before they said it. This went on for a few minutes until I snapped out of it. This really freaked my wife and this other couple out. There was awkward silence for the rest of the car ride and I was getting these horrified looks from the couple. As a matter of fact once we returned home from the trip this couple stopped calling us to hang out.

I have had these episodes since I was about 12 years old (i'm 39 now). It used to happen maybe a couple of times a year and I could never remember conversations like this. Usually it was just a familiar feeling of “being there before”. Now it seems to happen to me about once a month and the familiarity is more detailed.

Questions for all the fine people here on ATS:
Has anyone else experienced déjà vu where you can remember converstations? Are your experiences more frequent?
What is déjà vu? Is it some kind of time warp that some people experience? Is it an evolution of the human mind where people are now starting to use the other 90% of the brain that has been idle for so long? A portal into the 4th dimension? I just don’t know. I just know what I am experiencing is real.


[edit on 18-7-2008 by Erasurehead]

reply to post by Erasurehead


Hi Erasurehead,
interesting experiences you're having- I have a theory that is sort of based on what a psychic guy described ...he records his dreams every morning on tape and lets them accumulate for a time and then transcribes them sometimes weeks or months later. He has listened to the tapes and found that very specific details emerge that are part of his present reality, e.g. a sweet potato on top of his fridge that sprouted was an object he described on tape from a dream some months before ...

So, maybe deja vu functions like a dream of some future event that you remember as it is happening in real time. When I experience it, it seems to always have a dreamlike quality.

As for those people who freaked out about it, good riddance I say, you don't want to be hanging with people who are afraid of this kind of phenomena -I think these kinds of experiences will start becoming more common and soon we will all be much more psychically adept.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, it could be a very useful tool don't you think? Try and cultivate it if you can.

I posted this last week in another thread:

Originally posted by kaffemoka
Don't know if this is the same thing, but yesterday I had a major deja vu incident. I've had them before, and usually, it's just because a similar experience has happened before. This time, however, was really different. It was a simple conversation with my husband, but it was in the same exact way I felt it had "happened" before. Same room, same words, same everything. What makes it extraordinary, to me, is that we just moved into our house a couple months ago. Some how, I had pictured/experienced/dreamed that moment before.

I've often wondered about deja vu and just "feelings" that are different than normal. I've sensed things that were going to happen and try to tune it out, because frankly, it scares me....but this was one of the strongest sensations I've ever felt. The only other time I felt this strong was when the concorde crashed a few years ago. I woke up that morning and didn't turn on the news because I knew there was going to be a major plane crash being reported. Got to work, and sure enough, it had happened.... There have been others, but those two stick out the most in memory.

I really am interested in the deja vu phenomenon. I am very open-minded, so I really think the cause could be a range of things. I'll look forward to following this thread. Thanks for posting!!

reply to post by kaffemoka


Wow. Thanks for the reply kaffemoka. This is happening to me more and more these days. It used to kind of frighten me but now I actually get a kick out of it. I am trying to figure out what triggers this, it seems so random when it happens.

I get deja vu all the time, although my episodes aren't nearly as long or as severe as yours, i just have a brief unquestionable certainty that i have been here before. usually something big happens in my life when i have allot of them in a short period of time.

I get deja vu quite a lot. It's such a strange thing to happen, yet it fascinates me. Alot of the time, I think it happens when I dream in my sleep then the next day, for example, that exact same thing happens. Other times, it's completely random and I know for a fact I've never been/seen/heard such an event take place before yet it feels like it has.

The most recent episode of deja vu I experienced was on Thursday evening when I was with my band, setting up the PA system for a show. Our keyboardist had some speakon cables in his hand and said something to the guitarist and I thought, "Woah, I'm sure this has happened before" then the guitarist replied exactly the same way as I had expected him too, which freaked me out even more. This carried on for a good three or four minutes, afterwards I said, "Guys, I've just had the coolest deja vu ever!"

It would be really good if we could learn to maybe train our minds to do this when we wanted and I'm sure with enough effort and belief it's possible.

I remember back in school, my psychology teacher told me deja vu occurs when the short and long term memories get confused with eachother. I don't really think that's true, although it's obviously plausible.

I think it's either an error in time, precognition or maybe even something as "out there" as 'jumping' between universes.