Jared Chan's video: Carl Jung s Mind-Bending Insights on Deja vu

éjàvu Carl Jung's Mind-Bending Insights on Déjà vu Carl Gustav Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist famous for concepts such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, and synchronicity, among others, has some interesting insights on the phenomenon of Déjà vu. Déjà vu, a phenomenon in our modern times perceived as - a glitch in the matrix - was perceived by Carl Jung as an indication of pre-cognition and foreknowledge, as found in dreams. In Jung's famous text entitled On Synchronicity, he writes: "The sentiment du déjà-vu is based, as I have found in a number of cases, on a foreknowledge in dreams, but we saw that this foreknowledge can also occur in the waking state." - C. G. Jung, On Synchronicity, Para 974. In this statement by Jung we can see that he believed that dreams can consist of content that contains foreknowledge - that is knowledge of the future. And that Déjà vu, in this case, is a conscious remembering of the foreknowledge previously experienced in a dream prior to the event happening in real life. This is why deja vu can sometimes feel as if you have dreamed this before. But it would seem like there are different kinds of Déjà vu, as sometimes we may feel we have dreamed this before but other times we may feel a sense that this has actually happened before. A further look at Jung's insights on Déjà vu may illuminate our understanding. In Jung's famous text, Answer to Job, he writes: "As always when an external event touches on some unconscious knowledge, this knowledge can reach consciousness. The event is recognized as a déjà vu, and one remembers a pre-existent knowledge about it." - C. G. Jung, Answer to Job, Para 640. We can see from this that Jung sees deja vu as a point of correspondence between the external event and unconscious knowledge. This points to the synchronicity of the unconscious knowledge with the consciously lived experience... So it is as if we are living out a pre-existing narrative structure, previously unconscious, now conscious as a kind of destiny or pathway. This experience was highlighted in Jung's recount in Africa, where he writes: "I was enchanted by this sight, it was a picture of something utterly alien and outside my experience, but on the other hand a most intense sentiment du déjà vu. I had the feeling that I had already experienced this moment and had always known this world which was separated from me only by distance in time. It was as if I were this moment returning to the land of my youth, and as if I knew that dark-skinned man who had been waiting for me for five thousand years." - C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page. 254 This hints at Jung's insight that some aspects of the unconscious psyche are not governed by space and time, allowing for the possibility of a synchronicity between foreknowledge and lived experience. Jung explicitly outlines this idea in his letter to Stephen Abrams, where he writes: "We conclude therefore that we have to expect a factor in the psyche that is not subject to the laws of time and space, as it is on the contrary capable of suppressing them to a certain extent. In other words: this factor is expected to manifest the qualities of time- and spacelessness, i.e., "eternity" and "ubiquity". Psychological experience knows of such a factor; it is what I call the archetype, which is ubiquitous in space and time, of course relatively speaking." - C. G. Jung (1957), Letters of C. G. Jung, Vol 2, Pages 398-400 We can see here that Jung's idea of the archetype is what makes this timelessness and spacelessness possible, as archetypes have a narrative structure, a definite beginning, middle, and end, and if one knows the narrative at the beginning they can know the end, or vice versa. This is significant because it not only outlines Jung's ideas on how the archetype mediates foreknowledge but it hints at the nature of archetypes and how they influence our lives. This idea is made clearer when Jung later writes: "These experiences show that the factor in question [the archetype] is one and the same inside and outside the psyche. Or in other words: there is no outside to the collective psyche. In our ordinary mind we are in the worlds of time and space and within the separate individual psyche. In the state of the archetype we are in the collective psyche, in a world-system whose space-time categories are relatively or absolutely abolished." - C. G. Jung (1957), Letters of C. G. Jung, Vol 2, Pages 398-400 From Jung's insights surrounding the operation of the archetype, we can see that the experience of deja vu is a conscious insight of the point at which the unconscious archetype is being lived out in actuality - where psyche and matter are found in one and the same experience. This opens up a radical understanding of the nature of the psyche and our experiences within it. What do you think the significance of the Deja vu experience means?