A strange world experience I am very familiar with - and I believe most
everyone else is as well - is what the twentieth century parapsychologist Emile
Boirac termed Déjà vu. That is, the weird feeling that one
has previously experienced the present moment or memory before. In French Déjà
vu means "already seen."
Most of us feel there is something mystic, or at least
uncanny, about the experience. Materialists, who have no room in their worldview
for mysticism, tend to dismiss this phenomenon as "reintegration." Psychology
professor and professional skeptic Ray Hyman explains reintegration as the
memory of an event or place resurfacing upon the appearance of part of the
stimulus that formerly aroused the memory.
Among the more mysterious-inclined explanations
for Déjà vu are legitimate memories available through reincarnation, or perhaps
precognition.
I lean towards the latter. Inasmuch as down through the
years I have had flashes of insight (not always experienced as Déjà vu) that
illuminated my future, I tend to find precognition more in line with my
experience. I have had many premonition as precognitive dreams.
Coming as I do from a Christian background, the concept
of reincarnation is unfamiliar and strange - although I am fascinated by and
open to it.
Then again, for those who are familiar with the Matrix movie franchise,
Déjà vu could be something akin to what Neo called a glitch
in the Matrix.
My personal Déjà vu experiences have tended to be about
situations that I suddenly find myself in and knowing what is about to happen
just before it happens. I don't dismiss Hyman's explanation out of hand, but
sometimes it just doesn't seem to fit - at least not for me.
I have often pondered if time is not an illusion. Is it
possible that the past, present and future somehow all exist
simultaneously?
In all this I have to say that the one suspicion
that Déjà vu arouses in me is that reality is not exactly what it appears to be.
Perhaps reality is a many-layered thing and the mind has to be prepared to look
more carefully at these various layers.
