I'm crap at explaining things, but thankfully we live in an age where Wikipedia is on hand to do it for us:
The term "déjà vu" (French for "already seen", also called paramnesia) describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was created by a French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L'Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future of Psychic Sciences), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate French concentrator at the University of Chicago. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eerieness," "strangeness," or "weirdness." The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past.
The experience of déjà vu seems to be very common; in formal studies 70% or more of the population report having experienced it at least once. References to the experience of déjà vu are also found in literature of the past, indicating it is not a new phenomenon. While it has been extremely difficult to invoke the déjà vu experience in laboratory settings, therefore making it a subject of few empirical studies, recently researchers have found ways to recreate this sensation using hypnosis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deja_vu
So come on, give, let's hear your experiences. As for me, I once dreamed a whole day and then woke up and lived through it exactly as dreamed... very weird feeling.
Déjà vu
Yeah, I also experience it quite often. However, I'm slightly torn on the subject.
I am generally a believer in things paranormal, so long as they're not wacky. I have it happen a lot, even having things happen that I believe I've seen in dreams previously. There is supposedly a scientific explanation for deja vu though. It's simply the brain crossing wires and adding an extra flag to the transmission, so to speak. Normally when the brain processes something, it receives a signal indicating whether it's happening currently or whether it's a memory. Deja vu is supposedly what happens when those signals get mixed up. So you could have genuinely never experienced something before but you brain thinks you have, therefore you honestly believe you've experienced it before, and you'd never know the difference.
Then again, I'm a big believer in dream experiences and intuition... so I really don't know what to think about deja vu.
I am generally a believer in things paranormal, so long as they're not wacky. I have it happen a lot, even having things happen that I believe I've seen in dreams previously. There is supposedly a scientific explanation for deja vu though. It's simply the brain crossing wires and adding an extra flag to the transmission, so to speak. Normally when the brain processes something, it receives a signal indicating whether it's happening currently or whether it's a memory. Deja vu is supposedly what happens when those signals get mixed up. So you could have genuinely never experienced something before but you brain thinks you have, therefore you honestly believe you've experienced it before, and you'd never know the difference.
Then again, I'm a big believer in dream experiences and intuition... so I really don't know what to think about deja vu.
