“It’s déjà vu all over again.”
~ Yogi Berra
What a beautiful still morning it is here today. No cat fights to wake me up. I was up on my own, before my alarm, and did a bit of yoga out on my yoga deck before the sunrise, followed by a bit of random web surfing before writing my post here, and as always, came up with some interesting things following what meditation revealed to me. Life if good
So I’ve been having little bits of déjà vu recently. And it’s interesting that there aren’t really too many quotes on the subject. And a read of the wiki on the subject matter is just as vague.
Déjà vu (French for “already seen”) is the uncanny feeling when it seems as if we had already had exactly the same experience, or had previously found ourselves in the same situation, yet we are unable to recall that former experience or situation. Why French, I don’t know.
Science wants to chalk déjà vu up to a neurological issue. Others for gaps in short and long term memory. Others to re-incarnation.
As I was falling asleep last night, for some reason I was recalling a previous moment of déjà vu from the day before. I was in our small grocery store, and couldn’t find the radishes. As I turned around for the 3rd time, I saw a man who looked like maybe an employee. As I went to ask if the radishes were out, I looked down to see that he was holding two bags of radishes in his hand. It was almost laughable. As I was falling asleep, my mind moving into dream state, I was contemplating if my waking state is also a dream. Many have suggested it. While the man certainly was real, did I somehow manifest him before me???
It has felt to me in these recent moments of déjà vu that time has completely slowed down. Maybe it is my mindfulness at work. I don’t know. It’s like I’m watching myself preparing to proceed.
So here’s a few quotes on the subject, as well as a few on piercing the veil of reality, as maybe it is this.
How about you … What is déjà vu? How often to you experience it? Any particular memories of memories that really stand out??
Happy Tuesday, living in the moment 😉
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“There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. “I have been here before,” we think to ourselves, “and this is one of my true homes.” It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now; that all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings.”
~ E. C. Bentley
“We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time — of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances — of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it!”
~ Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)
“Madness is the déjà-vu of death.”
~ Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (1961)
“It is wrong to designate the feeling of having experienced something before as an illusion. On the contrary, in such moments something is really touched that we have already experienced, only we cannot consciously recall the latter because it never was conscious. In short, the feeling of Déjà vu corresponds to the memory of an unconscious fantasy.”
~ Sigmund Freud
“When some French were assembling an encyclopedia of paranormal experiences, they decided to leave déjà vu out, because it was so common it could not be considered paranormal.”
~ Kim Stanley Robinson
“There was the Door to which I found no key; There was the Veil through which I might see”
~ Edward Fitzgerald
“The veil of illusion has been cut away, and I shall not go out wandering any more.”
~ Sri Guru Granth Sahib
“Open the gates of wisdom, tear the veil of ignorance, enter the abode of Divine Bliss. Rest in peace forever.”
~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba
And for those baseball fans, Yogi Berra would say “It was deja vu all over again,” in response to pitcher Phil Hughes. Going into the 8th inning, he had a no hitter going. And like another game 3 years earlier, the game ended with Hughes allowing no hits but being removed from the game, as he popped his hamstring, visible from underneath his pants, making a pitch. Ouch !!!
