Past Lives - Hints, Clues and Signposts, Part 3
Sometimes we can experience a sense of déjà vu where a place or events seem eerily familiar, either creating a feeling of comfort or fear. Déjà vu can manifest as a vision or it can involve intuition, a sense of knowing that we have already been in a similar situation, to a specific location or experienced an event before.
There are a few theories about déjà vu but consensus about this phenomenon remains elusive. One theory is that déjà vu is an example of parallel time where a person can subconsciously see moments before an event happens, which then feels like it has been experienced before. Psychics who have clairvoyant abilities work in a similar way. This would not explain, however, how some can visit a city for the first time and instinctively know their way around. Interestingly, in the book mentioned below, Mrs Smith had frequent déjà vu experiences. She explained her thoughts in the following way, “I just keep slipping out of time as we know it, that’s all…Past, present and future are all part of an infinite time. Here and now is just an infinitesimal part of it.”
Mrs. Smith is the focus of a book called Cathars and Reincarnation (1970). Written by psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Guirdham, the book chronicles the dreams, conscious remembering and déjà vu experiences of his patient, Mrs. Smith. At one point she describes a visit to the French town of St-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Midi region where she instinctively made her way around the streets and even described the interior of one particular house. This information was validated upon entry to said building. Mrs. Smith remarked that she could barely manage navigating with a map, and yet here she was, making her way around as if she was very familiar with the place. Through a strange confluence of synchronicities and “uprush” of far memories imparted by Mrs. Smith, both she and Guirdham come to realise that they were intimately connected 700 years ago in a past life as Cathars. Guirdham, a man of medicine and science, maintained a diary and meticulously noted Mrs. Smith’s journey of discovery as well as his own experiences that grew from their continued interaction. He was able to validate, in great detail, the information provided by Mrs. Smith through reputable historians and his own research.
In Rabbi Yonassan Gershom’s book, From Ashes to Healing (1996), one entire chapter is dedicated to the story of Swedish woman Lena-Marie Broman. Dating back to her childhood, she described flashbacks that hinted at being an Austrian Jew who suffered terribly during the Holocaust. She gathered clues and insights over many years through a combination of dreams, hypnosis and moments of recognition. This led her to believe that she used to be Anna-Maria Kellerman, a Viennese mother-of-two, whose family was torn apart during the war. In later years, she had an extraordinary déjà vu experience upon her first visit to Vienna. She found the streets familiar and had no need for a map. She continues, “First, I saw swastikas and flags all over town…I could hear the boots of the soldiers walking in the streets….It was as if I were wandering around Vienna in two time periods at once. My body was still in 1993, but my spirit was back in Nazi time.”
Déjà vu might very well be our psychic abilities coming to the fore. Whether they are giving us a glimpse of far memory and a past life or opening a window into our subconscious, déjà vu is a gift into our deeper self….and that is always worth exploring.
By Elaina Curran, HPD, DSFH, DPLR, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Past Life Regression Therapist
Published in BS35 Local magazine, December 2017 issue
