Hi Geoff, Dee, Ani, Zettel & Grinder,

The deja vu I get is similar to Grinder's.

I don't get it very often. I can go months without getting deja vu and then usually I get two or three experiences very close together in the space of a few weeks. It's not quick, vague deja vu either. It's a longer moment of surrealism that lasts from anything from 15-20 seconds +.

I'm able to tell the people I am with that I'm having deja vu at the time, and everything that happens from that is deja vu. Whether it be someone walking in a room, a person on the TV, a piece of music in the background. A whole series of events, so specific that I have not experienced them in their exact context before. I mean, they haven't happened before, so how could I?

It's like future deja vu and it's seriously creepy when it happens. The look on my face is a picture for about thirty seconds. Waiting for reality to catch up with what I've already seen in the brief moment of deja vu is the weirdest part of it. When it's actually over and I'm left questioning, what just happened there?

Is it possible that our eyes and our subconscious work on delayed reaction time? Our minds may be several minutes behind from what is actually happening. I mean there's a fragment of delay when we listen to other people speaking, sometimes it takes a few seconds to grasp what they are saying. Is it possible that our eyes and mind works in the same way, but we're so used to seeing everything that we take it for granted.

Maybe all of our ideas are sitting in a region of our brain, already thought out, already archived. Maybe we dream our ideas then recall them when we're awake. It's interesting to think about it. I've spent more time thinking about thinking that I have writing this weekend

This thread really is getting fascinating.

Ste

For me, there are two possible explanations that I’m comfortable with.

ONE
That what I think is déjà vu is actually just a trick of the mind. Such as when you wake from a dream, but the dream seems real. That’s just my mind playing tricks.

TWO
My mind does a short record and playback sequence, I experience something and my mind records it, then my mind replays it, so from my point of view things happen twice and I feel as though I’ve experienced it before.

I prefer explanation ONE, simply because explanation TWO implies that there is something going wrong.

Fascinating stuff none-the-less.

Grinder

Grinder,

I go with number TWO.

But I'd still like to know how the human mind can create elaborate, detailed, realistic stories from the imagination alone. It's just too bizarre to be able to write about something that I've not experienced. Where do the details come from, the atmospherics?

I'm writing a short story recently and the street I'm writing about looks very familiar. A little too familiar for it to be fiction. lol, it's a mind-bender.

Richard Laymon, a horror writer, used to express how many times he'd find himself in a real-life situation of something that he had written. I would not like to be walking down the street in my latest story. To one minute be walking down a normal street and then think, 'Wait a minute...' - that would be way beyond deja vu, but a very similar thing.

Maybe deja vu is the first step to something much more frightening.

Ste

I agree, Grinder. Some years ago I read about the 'echo theory' to explain deja vu. It seems to make sense to me so I'll go along with that.

A fascinating exercise which may also demonstrate what we do see and NOT consciously experience or register is to walk towards the road where you live - a road that you know so well. As you approach the corner say to yourself 'I have NEVER seen around this corner. I don't know this road. This is my first visit.' You will be amazed at the many 'things' you must have looked at many times but which you now see for the first time.

So, where do ideas come from? I am of the opinion that everything our senses experience - see, hear, touch etc - registers but most of it remains in the library of our mind to be recalled in the form of 'ideas'.

Len.

Len,

That sounds like a good idea (the 'go to the corner of the road' or some variant of it) whenever we are writing, or preparnig to write. It's an opportunity to "see".

Ani

Ani,

The interesting aspect of this exercise, is that it works! The most surprising revelations can be realised... the simplest things like the colour of the tiles on your house, the large tree opposite, the leaning postbox, the roadsigns and so on.

This came home to me when some years ago I was 'done' for parking on a pavement. A railway ran down the whole length of that street and the local policeman who charged me had stated in the written submission that my car had been parked on the same side as the brick wall separating the road from the railway lines. There was no brick wall. The hundred yards or so of fencing was entirely constructed of wooden planks. I think I could have 'got off' through this but I didn't bother.
Len

Coming lamentably late to this fascinating and erudite debate, and returning to the original question; surely ideas come either from outside us, or from within, or from a combination of these two. If they come from without, there's a problem as to where the data is stored (Jung's collective unconscious? but where is it?) and how it is transmitted. My view is that we all have huge amounts of data (maybe even everything there is to know) within our brains. (Not long ago this would have seemed technically unfeasible but nano technology is showing that astonishing amounts of data can be stored in tiny spaces).

When Plato asserted that 'all learning is remembering' he was not, in my view, far from the truth but it would have been better had he written 'discovery' rather than 'learning'. The difficulty is in retrieving the stored data. Mystics of most ages and cultures have cut themselves off from external inputs and focused on the inner world. Their 'findings' are remarkably consistent (which might suggest that they were tapping into something truthful)
I suggest that some people (often deemed to be geniuses) have much better retrieval mechanisms than the rest of us.

At the risk of seeming immodest I hesitantly mention my web site - www.universetheory.com - which suggests one account as to how it could be possible that we 'know' so much. This is not, I hasten to add, a micro account but an attempt at a general metaphysic.

Richard.

Richard, your site sounds fascinating, but I copied and pasted the address and can't get into it.

Adele.

Ooops! Thanks for the alert! I can't access it either. It's usually ok. I'll get on to the web master right away.

Thanks for your interest.

Richrd.

I have another theory where ideas and creativity might stem from.

I’m sure we remember far more than we’re aware of. In just a quick glance of a room I’m sure all the faces, clothes possessions of people in view are recorded, newspaper headlines, book covers, posters on the wall, the half empty paper carton, the variety of insect spray on the printer cupboard, whether or not its cap is missing. However, all we’re aware of a very small part of this, but I’m sure we do remember.

I’m sure that all this stored stuff gets shuffled, mixed up and reordered, and some of it gets accessed and “bingo” an original thought pops into our heads without us having a notion of where it came from.

Perhaps creative people just do this process differently. Getting into that “zone”, perhaps we’re able to tap into the pool of stuff we don’t realise we remember…

Then again it might be complete tosh.

Grinder

Grinder,

I think you are right. Studies of memory show that we do not retrieve a memory,but reassemble it. Therefore, 'memories' can change over the passage of time This was relevant to me as a language teacher when studying memory and learning, and, in language, this leads to the challenge of trying to chunk info together so that it forms one complex 'unit'.

Anyway, sometimes when I remember, orevenunderstand, 'incorrectly', I am aware of doing so and can look on with interest at what I have produed instead!

Ani

"Mummy - where do I come from?"
"Well darling, it's a little bit complicated and you'll understand it a bit better when you're a bit older. For now, when a mummy and a daddy love each other......"
(Impatiently)
"No mummy, Janie comes from Watford....where do I come from?"
******************
"My task in philosophy is to prevent the bewitchment of our intelligence by language" (Wittgenstein)
******************
For me, this fascinating discussion and thread is under the sway of a philosophical misunderstanding well over 2000 years old.

If everything comes from something else you are locked into an infinite regress. (A sublime and funny illustration of this can be found in Lewis Carroll's little story of Achilles and the Tortoise).

Genesis gives a much more logical 'account' of how the world began than science because science can't get off the "what banged?" merrygoround. Whereas Genesis just starts with God and that's it. (where did God come from? is a question from within the scientific language game which does not make sense within the religious language game) All of this just shows you the limitations of both logic and science.

To our question: where do ideas come from? It is not a somewhere , but it is not a nowhere either. Best 'answer' I know (courtesy of Ticonderoga) "to the (native american) Indian, song is the breath of the spirit that consecrates the act of life" I would no more try to analyse that than I would the following

The bee hanging beneath his small rainbow
who visits poppies in the deep garden
has forgotten himself
for he has passed
far from remembrance
and his soul is drugged
by the sanity of flowers.

Someone, not me sadly, assembled these words, but what they express, like the Indians' song .......just is.

"Where does an idea come from?" is a bit like saying "where does beauty come from?" - that's the kind of mistake only dumb philosophers (like me) will encourage you to make.

(It ain't where an idea came from that matters, it's where you take it or what you do with it. But I respect the motivation that keeps asking the question).

Zettel

There are so many questions in Life that have no answers; it is therefore pointless to ask those questions.

However it is not pointless to consider the thoughts, fears, experiences, emotions and so on that gave rise to those unanswerable questions.

Within this jumble of wonder, awe and belief, one will become aware of ideas and creative thoughts emerging. These are usually given form and substance by 'stimulation' from outside of ourselves, but this manifestation can develop entirely within ourselves.

Len

Zettel,

Have you been smoking something?

Geoff

Geoff
No such excuse I fear - just too long, too verbose and too dumb.

It's a nice sunny day outside though. Not sure where it came from but it feels good.

regards

Z