Most of us have heard of it, many have felt it. But what, really, is deja vu? The term “deja vu” means “already seen.” But how can it be familiar when this is the first time? And how can you actually see something before it happens?
It reminds me of what Luang Por Thoon often said: our past lives, this life, and the future life are all the same. That statement in and of itself is such a big topic to contemplate. As it relates to deja vu, because we never change our deep-seeded personality traits, we repeat the same kind of actions over and over in the course of each of our rebirths. We fall into the same patterns of behavior, (re-)meet the same people, make the same choices, and feel the same happiness and pain.
While we repeat certain phrases that we’ve uttered countless times in the past, the familiarity strikes a chord within us. This is actually what a lot of dhamma practitioners aim to discover in order to have their precious “a-ha!” moment: the action that it is so engrained in us (like the lotus flower, threading the spools, flowers for khujjutara, etc) that all it takes is a single repetition of that experience to open the flood gates of memories and emotion.
In these cases, the familiarity of the situation makes us ask, “why does this feel like I’ve said this or done this before?” Because you have. You’ve given this ultimatum before, tasted the bitterness of rejection before, cried at the loss of this same loved one before, cursed at the injustice of being falsely accused before. It has all been already seen. Sure, our gender, ethnicity, religion, and culture change according to each era in which we are reborn, but we are essentially living a re-run of our past. The stage changes, the roles change, but the actors are the same.
Now what about the kind of deja vu where you experience something that you had already dreamed before it happened? I am not taking about a moment of familiarity, but a whole episode. I have had a lot of personal experience with this. The first time it happened, I was a teenager, and I thought I was going nuts but I knew I wasn’t. I had a weird, detailed dream and the next day I asked my friend whether she was angry with her boyfriend because I had dreamed that she had gotten into a fight with him at some random party. She was still very happy with the relationship at the time. She remembered the conversation. I wasn’t crazy and just thinking I had seen the episode somewhere before. There was actually a timestamp.
Fast forward one month later, the events I had dreamed actually happened…and it lasted the entire 30 minutes. It wasn’t just similar, but it was the exact events I had already experienced in my dream, down to the thoughts I had about the events while they were unfolding. I had dreamed it all before it happened. When it was a dream, I didn’t know all the characters or understand why I was in the situation I was in. Now while it was actually happening, it made much more sense.
I believe one part of it is that we are constantly analyzing and thinking about the past, present, and future. If I do this, what will happen. If I continue to see this person, what will happen. In a sense, we’re constantly predicting many outcomes. It is no wonder that they sometimes manifest as dreams. Those symbolic warning dreams are just our minds continuing to process information and attempting to view possibilities.
To this day, I still continue to have these detailed, meaningless dreams that later on become reality. Only now when I have them, I can better distinguish between symbolic dreams, past life dreams, and likely-to-happen dreams. But so what? The symbolic and past life dreams only show me patterns of my behavior. They show me the suffering I have experienced and will continue to experience if I repeat the same actions. With a good eye, I can also see all that while I am awake.
When I have these deja-vu dreams, all I can see is random faces and situations that won’t be significant to me until they happen. I can’t see the future events related to things I want to see. And even if I could, nothing is for certain. Things change all the time. Psychic visions can be a dangerous detour if given too much importance. They are in no way necessary. You can understand impermanence and improve your life without experiencing a single deja-vu moment or psychic vision.
In the end, we are the ones who can affect our lives. Sure, we are not the only actors in this play. Sure there’s the unknown karma aspect. But as the events of our lives unfold, we can have a role in shaping them. We can chose to go against our natural inclinations and make new decisions. We can chose to learn from our mistakes. In this way, we cultivate new karma and deal with new outcomes.
In Luang Por Thoon’s method of practice, you can erase grudges and wrong perceptions that lead you down certain paths. The key? Understanding the suffering and harmful consequences in the actions you’ve been repeating. You don’t have to be psychic or experience your past lives to realize your past, repetitive patterns. Just look at your track record from this life and you will see that you are living a life of deja vu. If you don’t hurry up and change your ways, this life will be the deja-vu for your next.
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