PARAMNESIA

Image borrowed here

(also known as "déjà vu")

The term "déjà vu" (French for "already seen", also called paramnesia from the Greek word para (παρα) for parallel and mnēmē (μνήμη) for memory) describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac in his book L'Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future of Psychic Sciences), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "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. Déjà vu has been described as "remembering the future."

The experience of déjà vu seems to be very common; in formal studies 70% of people 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. 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.

Types of Déjà vu:

According to Arthur Funkhouser there are three major types of déjà vu.

Déjà vécu

Usually translated as 'already lived,' déjà vécu is described in a quotation from Charles Dickens:

“ 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 remember it!”

Déjà vécu refers to an experience involving more than just sight, which is why labeling such "déjà vu" is usually inaccurate. The sense involves a great amount of detail, sensing that everything is just as it was before and a weird knowledge of what is going to be said or happen next.

More recently, the term déjà vécu has been used to describe very intense and persistent feelings of a déjà vu type, which occur as part of a memory disorder.


Déjà senti

This phenomenon specifies something 'already felt.' Unlike the implied precognition of déjà vécu, déjà senti is primarily or even exclusively a mental happening, has no precognitive aspects, and rarely if ever remains in the afflicted person's memory afterwards.

Dr. John Hughlings Jackson recorded the words of one of his patients who suffered from temporal lobe or psychomotor epilepsy in an 1889 paper:

“ What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been for a time forgotten, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for. ... At the same time, or ... more accurately in immediate sequence, I am dimly aware that the recollection is fictitious and my state abnormal. The recollection is always started by another person's voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as 'Oh yes – I see', 'Of course – I remember', but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions. ”

Déjà visité

This experience is less common and involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place. The translation is "already visited." Here one may know his or her way around in a new town or landscape while at the same time knowing that this should not be possible.

Dreams, reincarnation and also out-of-body travel have been invoked to explain this phenomenon. Additionally, some suggest that reading a detailed account of a place can result in this feeling when the locale is later visited. Two famous examples of such a situation were described by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his book Our Old Home and Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering. Hawthorne recognized the ruins of a castle in England and later was able to trace the sensation to a piece written about the castle by Alexander Pope two hundred years earlier.


*******

For more information, please click the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramnesia

Call for a Purpose

Image borrowed here

School's cancelled because of the tropical storm Egay, I've been stuck at home for the fifth day already, and it's not until Tuesday before school's back. During those days that I've spent on reading a new book entitled By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho, as I lie in my bed all day, I've been thinking about things that might come up in the future.

I really don't know how to put this but I think I'm beginning to get tired of my life. No, it's not that I want to embrace Death or something, it's just that everything, in an instant seemed to get mundane.

There's no more spark, no more spice, no more magic moments that distinguishes one day from another. Everything seemed to be all the same as if I had lived the same day over and over for years (despite all the changes I've been dealing recently), waking up every morning in the same way, repeating same words, and dreaming about same dreams.

That's when I realize I'm stuck. I lost the enthusiasm that has been supplying me with fuel to continue. Worse, I also think lost my dreams, my hopes, and my purpose, the reason for my very existence. I'm lost on track and I don't know where my destination is. Sometimes I'm beginning to think if I really have a destination. Then it struck me that I really haven't thought about it much as if I started on a journey without a definite place to go. And now, I think I'm stuck, for everything on my path is covered in a dense mist.

Everything's hazy. Everything's in blurred mode. I'm lost. And I don't know what to do.

God help me. Please.

Afternoon Journey

Image borrowed here

Noise, confusion, bloodshed...

Those are only samples among thousands or probably millions of words we can use to describe our present age. Everyday we go on with our same old businesses. We thought everything would turn out okay as we drive and take control of our desperate existence only to be bombarded with more problems, stress, and woes at the end of each day.

We turn on the television, or read the daily broadsheets and tabloids only to hear news of wars, terrorism, epidemics, gruel crimes, heinous incidents, and other catastrophic happenings in the local and even abroad. We then turn on the radio or listen to those popular music channels only to hear pure noise with nonsense lyrics that promotes the usage of bad language and as well as values and morals which are somewhat in conflict on what we believe in and on how we are brought up to.

Aren't we getting weary of this kind of lifestyle??? Well, I do. And just as I came up with all these thoughts, some mysterious force out of nowhere signaled me to stop.

Yep... stop, relax and take everything easily.

Amidst all those exhausting realizations, I have found my haven in a place which I knew could bring me comfort.

Yesterday, I went to that residential park where my highschool buddies and I used to go. The fact that it is inside the church grounds gave me a sense of peacefulness. I felt the presence of an omnipotent and divine force calming me. I sat quiet on a bench and started to read my reviewer in Theory of Architecture. I figured that if I would go in a certain place where it is quiet and peaceful, I could help myself sink in the lessons for my midterm examination tomorrow. But I guess I was wrong.

The afternoon was so beautiful and tranquil I couldn't help but to focus instead on the small details I see around me. A few parents were with their small kids playing with the swing and the monkey bars. Somehow, their soft laughter and the sound of rusted metal as it swung in midair gave me a strange feeling of bliss. A cold breeze that reminded me of summer whispers silently as the branches of the tall trees started dancing and as it's green leaves create a harmonious rustling sound. A few moments later, the choir of crickets began to sing their afternoon lullaby just as I notice the warm orange sun fading into the horizon and the darkening afternoon sky prevailing.

Magical moments and flicks of my highschool days began playing in front of me. I remember those afternoons, just like this one, when we would also go to this very same place to play, chat, have a little picnic, spend some quality time together and at the same time, rest, and let go of all our worries. It's a place we could call our own yet we share with other people. A place we call our refuge, our paradise. A wonderful place that God has unfolded before us.

But just like all the other aspects of life, we can never expect too much good things from coming. At the end of the day, when the only source of light I have comes from a nearby street lamp and the constellations scattered on the blanket of the endless nothingness, I usually find myself walking all alone on the silent streets, leaving the place I call our paradise and going back to the real world that is as cruel and as ugly as it used to be, but now with a light heart and a reinforced feeling of tranquility and pure joy.

That place I call our paradise, feeds my great longing for those moments that only exist in the past. We may have chosen to take different lives to lead and paths to take, but until that time when we would find our way back into each other's lives, I wanted it to literally happen in this place, where we can continue weaving new sets of priceless treasures.