Reliving scenes and conversations which we unaccountably appear to have lapsed memories about is termed
Deja Vu or Mystic Memory. It is a VERY common human experience. So common that it is often taken for granted as some
kind of 'trick' of the brain, yet the review below shows that it is in fact a major magical technique to
gaining access to the inner-planes and is prime-facie evidence of the disruption of time and space which
as an explorer of the esoteric and psychic worlds you yourself may learn how to replicate.
On the 17th February 1828 the eminent Sir Walter Scott entered in his Diary, that, on the preceding day at
dinner, he was strangely haunted by what he would call ' the sense of pre-existence ;' namely, a confused
idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time—that the same topics had been discussed, and the
same persons had stated the same opinions on them. The sensation, he adds, ' was so strong as to resemble
what is called a mirage, when lakes are seen in the desert, and sylvan landscapes in the sea. . . .
There was a vile sense of want of reality in all that I did and said.'
In his novel Scott has Guy Mannering, one of his characters say:
' Why is it that some scenes awaken thoughts which belong, as it were, to dreams of early and
shadowy-recollection, such as [others] would have ascribed to a state of previous existence ?
How often do we find ourselves [with people] which we have never before met, and yet feel impressed
with a mysterious and ill-defined consciousness that neither the scene, the speakers, nor the
subject are entirely new ; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that part of the conversation which has
not yet taken place'
Occultists take this as an evidence that our mental part has actually had an
existence before our present bodily life, souls being, so to speak, created from the beginning, and
attached to bodies at the moment of mortal birth.
Many intelligent folk see the thousands of cases on record as cases of fore-knowledge. Mystics hold that
the human mind is capable of foreseeing the future more or less distinctly. May we not suppose that, in
dreams or waking reveries, we sometimes anticipate what will befall us, and that this impression, forgotten
in the interval, is revived by the actual occurrence of the event foreseen?
In the Confessions of Rousseau there is a remarkable passage which appears to support this theory.
This singular man, in his youth, taking a solitary walk, fell into a reverie, in which he clearly foresaw
'the happiest day of his life,' which occurred seven or eight years afterwards.
'I saw myself as in an ecstasy, transported into that happy time and occasion, where my heart,
possessing all
the happiness possible, enjoyed it with inexpressible raptures, without thinking of anything sensual.
I do not remember being ever thrown into the future with more force, or of an illusion so complete as
I then experienced; and that which has struck me most in the recollection of that reverie, now that it
has been realized, is to have found objects so exactly as I had imagined them. If ever a dream of
man awake had the air of a prophetic vision, that was assuredly such.'
Rousseau tells how his reverie was realized, at a fete champetre,
at a place which he had not previously seen.
' The condition of mind in which I found myself,
all that we said and did that day, all the objects whch struck me, recalled to me a kind of dream
whcih I had at Annecy seven or eight years before, and which I have given an account in writing
previously. The relations were so striking that in thinking of them I could not refrain from tears.'
This brings to mind a similar experience published as An Adventure, about two English lady tourists
walking in modern day Versailles Palace who both somehow 'stepped through' time into the period of
Louis IV. Their detailed investigations into what they saw during the twenty minute 'break in time'
proved beyond doubt that what they had seen was factually correct, even reporting the existence of
buildings extant then, but which had since been remodelled or demolished. Neither ladies had ever been
to France before.
Mr Elihu Bich has many times experienced 'the mysterious sense of having been surrounded at some
previous time by precisely the same circumstances' and presents us with another case. A gentleman
of high intellectual attainments, now deceased, told Bich that he had dreamed of being in a strange city,
so vividly that he remembered the streets, houses, and public buildings as distinctly as those of any
place he ever visited. A few weeks afterwards he was startled by seeing the city of which he had dreamed.
The likeness was perfect, except that one additional church appeared in the picture. He was so struck
by the circumstance that he spoke to the exhibitor, assuming for the purpose the air of a traveller
acquainted with the place. He was informed that the church was a recent erection.
.
The case of Mr John Pavin Phillips, of Haverfordwest, contains even greater detail.
'I was seated at the breakfast-table with some members of my family, when suddenly the room and objects
around me vanished away, and I found myself, without surprise, in the street of a foreign city. Never
having been abroad, I imagined it to have been a foreign city from the peculiar character of the
architecture.
The street was very wide, and on either side of the roadway there was a foot pavement
elevated above the street to a considerable height. The houses had pointed gables and casemented windows
overhanging the street. The roadway presented a gentle acclivity ; and at the end of the street there was
a road crossing it at right angles, backed by a green slope which which rose to the eminence of a hill and
was crowned by more houses over which soared a lofty tower, either of a churh or ome other ecclesiastical
building.
As I gazed on the scene before me I was impressed with an overwhelming conviction that I had looked upon it
before, and that its features were perfectly familiar to me ; I even seemed almost to remember the name of
the place, and whilst I was making an effort to do so a crowd of people appeared to be advancing in an
orderly manner up the street. As it came nearer it resolved itself into a quaint procession of persons in
what we should call fancy dress or perhaps more like one of the guild festivals which we read of as being
held in some of the old continenal cities.
As the procession came abreast of the spot where I was standing I stood onto the pavement to let it go by
and as it filed past me, with its banners and gay paraphernalia flashing in the sunlight, the irresistible
conviction again came over me that I had seen this same procession before, and in the very street through which it was now passing.
Again I almost recollected the name of the concourse and its occasion ; but whilst endeavouring to remember
the effort dispelled the vision, and I found myself, as before,
seated at my breakfast-table, cup in hand.
My exclamation of astonishment attracted the notice of one of
the members of my family, who inquired what I had been staring at. Upon telling them about the vision,
which appeared to me to embrace a period of considerable duration, it became apparent that it must have been
to them just an instant. The city, with its landscape, is indelibly fixed in my memory, but the sense of
previous familiarity with it has never again been renewed. The " spirit of man within him " is indeed a
mystery ; and those who have witnessed it cannot but have been
impressed with the conviction that there are dormant faculties belonging to the human mind, which, like
the rudimentary wings said to be contained within the skin of the caterpillar, are only to be developed
in a higher sphere of being.'
A still more remarkable case is that from the memoirs of Mr William Hone, who was originaly a hard-bitten
materialist. In the course of business he visited the city of
London for the first time.
I was shown into a room to wait. On looking round,
everything appeared perfectly familiar to me ; I seemed to recognise every object. I said to myself,
" What is this ? I was never here before, and yet I have seen all this ; and, if so, I know that there is
a very peculiar knot in the shutter." ' He opened the shutter, and found the knot!
' Now then,' he thought, here is something I cannot explain according to my existing beliefs;
there must be some power beyond matter.'
This case is just one where 'proof' of the 'reality' of the 'memory' is undoubted as nothing else
can account for the preconception of the knot in the shutter, or the case of the extraneous church in
the visioned city.
An experience of Mystic Memory / Deja Vu might be supposed to arise from a previous dream, or it
may be a day reverie, perhaps one of only an instant's duration and very recent occurrence, in which the
assemblage of objects and transactions was foreseen. It could also easily be a kink in time which enables
us to be in one time dimension whilst viewing another. Whatever the true mechanics of it are the
existence of these experiences are far too common to simply be taken as 'quirks' of memory and those
of an enquiring mind look upon them as validation of the existence of states beyond matter and justification
for experimenting further to try to gain control over willed events.