DMT and Déjà Vu: How Bergson and Cognitive Science Explain Familiarity, Premonition, and Revelation

DMT experiences can produce an unusually intense and prolonged sense of déjà vu: users may feel they have returned to a familiar realm, encountered its entities before, or are approaching a profound revelation. The discussion compares Henri Bergson’s view that déjà vu reflects simultaneous perception and memory with cognitive accounts involving implicit memory, spatial resemblance, split perception, brain glitches, and activity in the rhinal cortex. Research by Anne Cleary suggests that déjà vu can create an illusory sense of prediction without improving accuracy, offering a possible explanation for the premonitory quality reported during DMT states. The piece also considers jamais vu, presque vu, and the noetic quality of rapid psychedelic experiences. It argues that memory and perception provide more parsimonious explanations than hidden dimensions or survival after death, while noting that direct brain-imaging research under DMT would be needed to test these possibilities.