Déjà vu is the other phenomenon that to me is easily explainable. Déjà vu is the experience of suddenly feeling like you have been here before, like every event that happens has happened before. You remember it in incredible detail. If there is somethere talking, you remember every word he or she says…just as they say it. You can never quite predict what will happen next, but it feels like you should be able to.
This is not caused by any mystical force, it is not because you dreamed the events prior to the time they take place. It is a result of the subconscious mind processing things at a much higher rate of speed than the conscious mind. I think, once in awhile, a “filing” error occurs and what is happening now is getting filed as an old memory. So when the conscious mind becomes aware of the glass falling off the table, the unconscious mind is ready with the “long ago memory” that was created milliseconds before.
And déjà vu.
Meagan and I have talked a lot about consciousness in the short time we’ve been together, and when we were laying here scrolling through your blog — is there any more romantic evening, after all? — she saw the tag “consciousness” in the sidebar and landed on this post.
I wanted to add that déjà vu could very well be related to dreams as well. We dream a lot of mundane stuff, most of which we never remember, even if we wake up during the dream. But our brain tends to tuck pretty much everything away, even if we can’t consciously access the memories; still, the neural connections are there, waiting to be activated.
So if we come across a situation which hits similarly to one of those unremembered dreams, those pathways may be activated, triggering a memory that doesn’t quite fit with what we know of our lives but does in fact make the moment we’re living right then feel all too familiar, creating déjà vu.