Ever experience Jamais Vu?

Jamais Vu happens to me frequently.  It is the feeling that something such as a person or place is totally unfamiliar when you are in reality extremely familiar with that person or place.  For me it all stems from a brain injury i had 8 years ago.  Has anyone else ever experienced this?

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

It must be very challenging!

I'm not sure that I have, much more familiar with presque vu


But thanks for asking. Fascinating question,


Love,


Nicole

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

Yes, I've experience Jamais Vu and it's usually related to a spiritual experience.  Are you aware there is a book by that name?  The Jamais Vu Papers by Wm Coleman and Pat Perrin.

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

i was not aware of that book, but thank you as i am as looking for new reading material.  i will check that one out.

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

I definitely go through times where things feel unusual that are completely ordinary.  It can be a little disconcerting, but if I let myself be okay with the unfamiliar feelings then I often find a new way of seeing the world.  I can ask myself, what feels different, what am I noticing that I don't normally notice?  It can be thoughts, feeling, images or sensations in my body (often all of them together, since the line between them tends to shift as I explore the continuum.)    It can be be frightening, but it also feels like I can use it as an opportunity to let go of my attachment to seeing the world in a certain way

P.S. I don't have a brain injury.

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

This same type of thing can be done as a meditation using words or some familiar item. The trick is to become so completely absorbed in it that you begin to experience the item or word in a totally new and previously unexplored way.

If the focus is a word, simply keep repeating it while paying close attention to how it sounds and what the significance of the sound means. At some point you will begin to wonder if you have the right word or if you have somehow gotten it wrong.

If this same type of meditation is performed using an object, the object will soon take on an unfamiliarity that is the beginning of inventive thinking. You let go of predetermined patterns and see things new.

It is taught that a person should enter a room or a situation as if they had never encountered it before no matter how many times they have in the past. Things change and it helps to notice whether you are going by your memory of the thing, or the actual thing itself.

Try turning around and noticing something that you cannot say for certain if it were there in that location before or not. I mean like a chair or a house! That'll play with your head.

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

but jamais vu, is french for: Never seen before?

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

I get dislocational experiences frequently like seeing a word like “but” and not recognising it, not recognising my reflection, like Tharlam, not recognising a well-known route as I drive along.

The Greeks referred to this experience as Metanoia; seeing something afresh and hence unrecognised. Eventually, metanoia came to mean “redemption”, ones senses redeeming the world. Then the Christians got hold of the word and by the Dark Ages, it referred to holding a pass to get into the Church Club, which it still does to bible belt bouncers.

Gurdjieff said that we should unlearn so that we could be astonished by everything we see.

Thanx for posting this question.

jon

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

Wow. I have this all the time and I never realized it actually had a name & history. I just thought it was me!

It often come over me in a kind of dreamlike quality, and I recall it happening all the time as a kid where I would sit and stare at these 'familiar' things that seemed to have no connection to me in the physical world. It almost felt like falling or flying. As an adult, I just chalked it up to ADD or any numerous labels that are so popular these days.

I also often experience Deja Vu that I can directly relate back to dreams I've had in mundane but vivid detail. Now, recognizing that this happens at least a few times each year, I can wake up and remember the dream and know that at some point in my life I'll experience what I just dreamt, even if I don't understand it at the time.

I wonder if these Vus are related in a psychological/spiritual way? I may need to look into this more deeply.

Cool question!

Re: Ever experience Jamais Vu?

Yes indeed … I call it 'vu jà dé' which shows how the French language also became unfamiliar to me after a head trauma ;-)

The feeling that nothing even remotely similar to this moment has ever happened ever before.  A skipping of the cosmic record, somehow fragmenting the continuum.  I find it spooky as merde … think it may have to do with ego-formation outside of previously connected neuronal paths … a quantum phenomenon of sorts.

Interestingly enough, I find that embracing jamais vu actually resolves presque vu; by recognizing that my retrieval of a particular word, name, or whatever is misfiring, I let go and suggest that I don't know which invites the part of me that does know to reroute the information to consciousness just to prove itself.

From Wikipedia: