Sunday, 20 January 2008

Déjà vu and the spiral of time

I believe it was Charles Dickens who said:
"We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it!"

I was pondering the idea of seeing the future and was reminded of what my old friend said to me.
"Think of our travel through time as a spiral, like the grooves of a record. We may see across to other grooves, but time ways they are far off."
As we can see forward and backward, as we see across grooves maybe we get a feeling of déjà vu. Life may look like a set of furrow in a field, but as a spiral they are connected.

Further we may have the same vision again and again as the record rotates, and depending on the angle of view we can see more or less of the detail in each furrow, and the time order can be distorted as we look over our shoulder at an inner furrow.
As we get closer to the centre what do we see? Is it more of the future, or just more.

Maybe life is a spiral such that we may get tantalizingly close but never meet, or maybe we will.

And then one has to ask if a traumatic event can force a jump to the next groove or possibly a bounce back.

So should we look? Should we seek coincidences? And what will we gain?

I think to marvel at how we can perceive such things is fascination enough in itself.