The Eternal Return

[Ulf]

I have a lot of déjà vu. 4 or 5 times a month. Often when déjà vu occurs for me I'll remember having dreamed it. Often I tell my wife about those dreams if I remember them. Several months later I'll usually have déjà vu in which I'm doing exactly what I dreamed. Most times it's mundane things in life, but just last night I had déjà vu while sitting on the sofa with my dog and wife.

My opinion is that déjà vu is some sort of memory of your last life. I do feel we do this life ad infinitum, but each time it is different, if only slightly. Those moments of déjà vu could be moments in your past life that are exactly the same as now, and despite never having done or been around where your déjà vu occurs you seem to be remembering it as it happens.

I'd love some input on my 'theory' it's just something I've come up with to help myself explain why I always get déjà vu. Some people say they almost never have it. Maybe I just have a messed up brain.

[Psychonaut]

I'd love some input on my 'theory' it's just something I've come up with to help myself explain why I always get déjà vu. Some people say they almost never have it. Maybe I just have a messed up brain.

I've experienced severe déjà vu a few times in my life, but it was always during a semi-lucid dream, never during a fully lucid dream or during waking life. Each time I was more confused and frazzled than anything else.

[Ulf]

I've experienced severe déjà vu a few times in my life, but it was always during a semi-lucid dream, never during a fully lucid dream or during waking life. Each time I was more confused and frazzled than anything else.

I'll dream about say, going to the store with my wife. I'll go to the store 5 or 6 times with my wife and no déjà vu, but it seems eventually that all events sync up to how my dream was on, say, the 7th time. It will be exactly how I dreamed it and usually lasts for ~30 seconds. I just go about my business but saying "déjà vu, déjà vu...". Which I don't do in my dream but doesn't remove me from the feeling.

All the dreams I have are during normal sleep, I don't meditate or lucid dream. Although my wife wishes I would, but that's for another thread I suppose...

Also: The weirdest place I had déjà vu was in a noodle shop in Hong Kong... wtf

[Revenant]

With the dejavu, I get like a sea sickness. It's something I really don't like. I don't get it more than a few times a year though.

What do you think of this idea of the Eternal Return? To me it seems to be a very useful myth in that it forces us to confront our lives and judge whether it is truly being lived. It is a myth that affirms life and implores us to live for the sake of this life, not some imagined afterlife. What say ye?

I'd say you're correct Psyc, it's certainly thought provoking and more than likely that's the way it was intended. To trigger introspection.

Still makes me wonder, Life isn't so black and white with many circumstances beyond control. Some people have quite nasty things happen to them and it isn't their fault. I wonder if he factored those people into this idea of his. I haven't read much Nietzsche, so there could be a obvious answer to this, something I'm missing here.

[Oresai]

I always wondered if deja vu wasn`t simply an awareness of the `illusion` of time?
Meaning, imagine if we could step outside time, and look in at our existence.....it would be encapsulated in a bubble of what we call `time`, whole, start to finish, every single moment.
But say for sanity`s sake, we never get to view life that way.
However, maybe there`s a tiny part of our awareness which pokes out feelers, curious, enquiring, and touches briefly the `overview` we would see from that outside view?
And also aware that it may destroy our minds, our sanity, to have total awareness and clarity of vision, it retracts in an instant, snapping back into us so that we become aware of it as deja vu, because we have seen, outside of time, the whole of our life...and as the feeler comes back to the point it ventured out, it resonates with what it touched and thus gives us the impression of been there, done that....

okies...making little sense and probably sounding very much like a bad sci fi pulp novel.
I do know what I mean though. And get deja vu an awful lot.

[Lyfing]

I think the Eternal Return can be seen from several different perspectives. On an individual, societal, and metaphysical level it can be looked at.

As individuals where “life itself is Will to Power” we are responsible for making our own sandwiches and eating them as well. If we don’t like the one we are eating then we make another one that tastes better and is easier for us to swallow. There is an inherit creative quality. What this “myth” can activate in us is a notion of “No Regrets” where if everything hadn’t been exactly like it was we would not be exactly who we are and that to be otherwise would be a shame as it is great to be who we are. ( The Norns decree )

As individuals in a society it is us who create it. Not only did Nietzsche focus on the Superman, but also a society of Supermen. He said “the task is to breed an animal able to keep promises.” I think this is a very important notion that ties right in with Eternal Return and amplifies it to this next level of society. A society eternally returning because of the creative quality in its oaths continually kept. You know, everyone swears by this just like in the beginning was the word. ( Wyrd )

Then there is the metaphysical notion of whether or not if we roll the dice we will eventually roll the same thing. Just because it can only be “as if” doesn’t mean we aren’t closer ( to our truth ) than we think. Here I am reminded of Joseph Campbell’s words..

Kant, in his Prolegomena to Every Future System of Meta-*
physics, states very carefully that all our thinking about final things*
can be only by way of analogy. "The proper expression for our*
fallible mode of conception," he declares, "would be: that we*
imagine the world as if its being and inner character were derived*
from a supreme mind" (italics mine). 14*

Such a highly played game of "as if" frees our mind and spirit,*
on the one hand, from the presumption of theology, which pre-*
tends to know the laws of God, and, on the other, from the bond-*
age of reason, whose laws do not apply beyond the horizon of*
human experience.*

I am willing to accept the word of Kant, as representing the*
view of a considerable metaphysician. And applying it to the*
range of festival games and attitudes just reviewed from the*
mask to the consecrated host and temple image, transubstanti-*
ated worshiper and transubstantiated world I can see, or be-*
lieve I can see, that a principle of release operates throughout the*
series by way of the alchemy of an "as if"; and that, through this,*
the impact of all so-called "reality" upon the psyche is transub-*
stantiated. The play state and the rapturous seizures sometimes*
deriving from it represent, therefore, a step rather toward than*
away from the ineluctable truth; and belief acquiescence in a*
belief that is not quite belief is the first step toward the deep-*
ened participation that the festival affords in that general will to*
life which, in its metaphysical aspect, is antecedent to, and the*
creator of, all life's laws.*

Primitive Mythology

Anyhow..I hope that made some sense..*

...

When it comes to the emphasis being on this life..I do know that I have this life and I do not know if I will live any other after this one. I'm going with that.

Later,
-Lyfing

[Psychonaut]

Still makes me wonder, Life isn't so black and white with many circumstances beyond control. Some people have quite nasty things happen to them and it isn't their fault. I wonder if he factored those people into this idea of his. I haven't read much Nietzsche, so there could be a obvious answer to this, something I'm missing here.

I think that it's less geared towards interpreting events that are out of our control and more about defining our lives purposefully through the choices that we can make.

[Oresai]

think that it's less geared towards interpreting events that are out of our control and more about defining our lives purposefully through the choices that we can make.

Do you ever wonder about Fate and Free Will? Most folks tend to think of it as, either/or. But why not a mixture of both? There ARE certain inevitables in life...we are born, and we will die...and I think most folks, looking back at intense or huge events in their lives may even see that there was no way they could be avoided.
I tend to the notion, that there are certain life events we cannot avoid...Fate..our destinies bring us to them regardless of what we would want. These will be the life changing events, the often awesome things which change forever the way we think, act or which impact on us so massively, they imprint on the rest of our lives til the end. The serious, heavy stuff.
Our free will lies, I believe in the mundane, but not so lightly, for each choice we make, though it might still direct us to the Fate events, dictates the experiences we perceive and go through for much of our lives.
We can surely choose to approach life with a certain level of ethics and values, and choose for example, to stubbornly dig our heels in about life and issues, which then has the knock on effect of snarling knots in the skein of our wyrd, or we can use our instinct and intellect to spy out the landscape and take the most profitable route.
I like to see life precisely as the Norns woven tapestry...they might have the Fate issues already set into the pattern, but we`re free to add the colour, the richness of the thread, and yes, even the knots.

[Psychonaut]

Do you ever wonder about Fate and Free Will?

I certainly do, so much, in fact, that I started a new thread about it right here.

[HawkR]

I have a theory about these so called dimensions and stuff, what if there's alot of different dimensions, it's the future, the present and the past, all at the same time, lying on top of eachothers, at the side of eachothers, inside eachothers. And as these are all at the same time, there's a reason why we get "deja vu" and stuff. Since we live right now both in 5 minutes and for 5 minutes ago. Understand?