Déjà vu is a strange personal experience that makes you face the erratic nature of time itself, not simply a passing mental failure. Despite rationality telling you otherwise, it is the sensation of standing in a moment and swearing you have lived it before. It’s the way your heart skips a beat when someone you don’t know says something that seems familiar to you. When people first discover a location, they frequently feel as though they have been there before. This can be more than just a memory; it is an intense emotional bond with an incomprehensible thing. You wonder: Have I lived this life before? Is this a vision of something I’ve forgotten? Is this maybe a life that was supposed to be lived but never was? You are left stuck at the precarious junction of memory and imagination when you experience déjà vu. It’s the feeling of catching hold of a dream you thought you had forgotten, only to have it briefly resurface, serving as a reminder of the thin line separating truth from illusion.
Some people think it’s just a brain glitch where you see a moment as a memory because two streams of consciousness collide. What if it’s something more, though? What if déjà vu is our soul’s subtle reminder that we are here for all of our lives and that we occasionally see our past or future? All of a sudden, you sense a connection to something huge, unknowable, yet eerily familiar. You are caught in the tide of something endless during those seconds, rather than in the past or present. And when it goes away, you feel as though you’ve lost something you weren’t even aware you had, leaving you with a bittersweet feeling in your chest. Perhaps déjà vu serves more as a reminder than as an emotional fault. Time is not as fixed as it appears, and our lives are not linear. Maybe it is a sign that the universe is gently saying that you are more than the present moment and that parts of your life have already been written down. The fact that déjà vu is more than just a mental illusion may be the reason it seems so real. For a split second, you remember it because it reminds you of a narrative you’ve lived or are destined to relive.
The phenomena of déjà vu combines the deep, unexplainable depth of human feeling with the complex science of the brain. Between what you know and what you feel, there is a phase known as liminality. The feeling of having already experienced something you know you haven’t is déjà vu in its most literal definition. It has long been known in science that déjà vu is a strange brain malfunction. According to neuroscience, déjà vu is the outcome of two concurrent brain processes colliding: one that mistakenly interprets an experience as familiar and the other that views it as new. The brain sends conflicting signals when its intricate network of neurons and signals, especially in the medial temporal lobe, which is in charge of memory and perception. Essentially, there is a momentary failure in your brain that causes it to see the present as a memory, but not just any memory. As if you are experiencing an event that previously had great meaning in your life, it feels uncannily personal. But the reason that recollection chills you and makes you uneasy is because it is not a part of your conscious thought. In other situations, déjà vu stems from memory problems. Similar sensory experiences from the past may be inadvertently misattributed to the present by your brain. A subconscious childhood memory may be triggered.
However, because the memory isn’t instantly accessible, your brain mistakenly records it as having “lived this before.” Because déjà vu is the mind’s disjointed attempt to link the present to something profoundly concealed within you, it frequently seems quite personal.
An unsettling reminder that time is not as linear as it looks and that maybe your soul has already traveled this path, in a different life, a different dimension, or a different version of yourself, déjà vu does more than simply affect your thoughts. You find yourself standing in the midst of a moment that seems both old and new at the same time. Trying to cling to something that has already slipped through your fingers is a bittersweet experience, and it could be déjà vu’s worst sorrow. It’s a reminder from the heart, not a bug in the head. A reminder that you have been here before, someplace, in some way.
References:
BBC Science Focus. “What Is Déjà Vu and Why Does It Happen?” Science Focus, https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/deja-vu. Accessed 9 Mar. 2025.
Cherry, Kendra. “What Is Déjà Vu? Why Do We Experience It?” Verywell Mind, Dotdash Meredith, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-deja-vu-why-do-we-experience-it-5272526. Accessed 9 Mar. 2025.