There are has been a couple periods in my life that I have experienced 'revelations'. Some greater and more impressive than others, but all life altering in their own right. One such revelation was when I was staying in London. I was out with some friends at a club, having a fairly enjoyable time. A thought crossed my mind, and I realised that this wasn't what I wanted for my life. I suddenly felt numb to everything that was around me, the people, the music and the place. Just my thoughts and my emotion trapped sitting there. All the things that I had done and experienced in the UK felt pointless. It was like everything I knew and felt needed to change. And things did, to some extent. I guess I knew things needed to change but never really new how or what to change.
There have been several moments in my life where I have felt that I have been in the same place, at the same time, doing the exact same thing or observing the exact scene. Déjà vu? It's something that surely cant mean anything. I mean I'm not a sceptical person, but surely I couldn't have experienced the exact situation before? I asked my friend if he ever had something similar. He said numerous times and continued to tell me his thoughts on the whole concept of Déjà vu. He said that according to philosophy, we plan our lives before we are even born and the feelings of dejavu are signs that we are on the right path, achieving our pre-planned destiny. I felt the need to do some research and came up with this.
Déjà vu is french meaning 'already seen' and has been associated with reincarnation and with medical conditions such as Temporal lobe epilepsy. Several psychoanalysts attribute deja vu to simple fantasy or wish fulfillment, while some psychiatrists ascribe it to a mismatching in the brain that causes the brain to mistake the present for the past. Many parapsychologists believe it is related to a past-life experience. In the déjà vu experience we feel strange because we don't think we should feel familiar with the present perception. Swiss scholar Arthur Funkhouser described three types of Déjà vu. The first incidence as deja visite ("already visited") where a person visits a new location, but knows his way around. The second as deja vecu ("already experienced or lived through"), which is the closest do what us as lay-men describe as Déjà vu. Such experiences are frequently, if not always, connected with very banal events. They are so striking, though, that they are often clearly remembered for years following their occurrence. Anyone having had such experiences knows that they normally involve more sense modalities than just sight. As in the Dickens quotation, they can easily involve hearing, tasting, touch and/or proprioceptive perceptions as well (Funkhouser A. 2006). Lastly deja sente ("already felt") is a mental happening where past feelings are recalled suddenly and then forgotten. This is sometimes confused with Deja vecu, but is also been said to occur in the aura of Temporal Lobe epilepsy attacks.
Other similar phenomena include
Jamais vu ("never seen") - involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.
Presque vu ("Tip of Tongue") - is when one cannot recall a familiar word or name or situation, but with effort one eventually recalls the elusive memory.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/question657.htm
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=264
http://www.skepdic.com/dejavu.html
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