It s Déjà Vu All Over Again: Mind Trips, Brain Flips and Time Slips

Transcription

1 For Immediate Release Media Contact: Simon Warwick Smith (707) It s Déà Vu All Over Again: Mind Trips, Brain Flips and Time Slips Does the feeling ever come over you that you ve been here before or done this before, even if you know you haven t? San Francisco, CA (June 1, 2010) A new book by the best selling author, Marie D. Jones, and paranormal researcher Larry Flaxman, lays out intriguing new theories about the phenomenon of déà vu, a feeling that all of us experience thoughout our lives. The Déà vu Enigma: A Journey Through the Anomalies of Mind, Memory and Time explores the eerie yet common sensation of remembering an experience or a situation that never occurred. You engage in a conversation and suddenly realize that you have spoken those same words before... to the same person. Yet, you re absolutely positive that it s the first time you ve ever met. The Déà vu Enigma delves into scientific research as it relates to short term memory misfires, neurophysiological disorders, and theories suggesting the paranormal, such as glimpses into parallel realities. Now, how could Jones and Flaxman fans resist that? Déà vu is only one of the many mysteries of the mind. The Déà vu Enigma also explores: Memory lapses, missing time and fugue states The brain as both receiver and transmitter of reality Altered states of perception and consciousness, from hallucinations to religious visions Contagious thought, curses, demonic possession and mass hysteria Dream states, lucid dreaming and precognitive dreams The grid and parallel universes as travel routes for mind trips, brain flips, and time slips The Déà vu Enigma is a et propelled ourney through the inner universe of the human mind. more

2 Page Two/ The Déà vu Enigma One of the most well known researchers and authors on the subect of metaphysics and the paranormal, Jones has appeared on Coast to Coast AM and many more popular radio and TV programs around the world. She has written hundreds of articles, reviews and essays, and is the author of several best selling books, including: The Resonance Key (with Flaxman) 11:11 The Time Prompt Phenomenon (with Flaxman) 2013: The End of Days or A New Beginning? PSIence: How New Discoveries in Quantum Physics and New Science May Explain the Existence of Paranormal Phenomena Supervolcano: The Catastrophic Event That Changed the Course of Human History A paranormal researcher and investigator for more than a decade, Larry Flaxman is the founder and president of ARPAST, the Arkansas Paranormal and Anomalous Studies Team. He has written dozens of articles and has been featured in numerous newspaper, magazine, radio and TV interviews. Flaxman and co author Jones are the founders of ParaExplorers.com. # # # # Title: The Déà vu Enigma: A Journey Through the Anomalies of Mind, Memory and Time Pub Date: June 2010 Authors: Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman Publisher: New Page Books, a division of Career Press EAN: Format: Trade paperback, 256 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 20 images List Price: $15.99 (Can. $19.95) Distributors: New Leaf, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Bookazine, Brodart, Nutri Books, Partners Information: (for electronic press kit) Career Press Turns 25! Career Press was founded in 1985 as a niche publisher of career directories which since has grown into one of the best known independent publishers of its kind. Career Press boasts an active, strong selling backlist of nearly 300 titles spanning careers, personal finance, business management, and study skills.

3 About the Author Marie D. Jones Marie D. Jones is the best selling author of the popular and highly regarded book, PSIence: How New Discoveries In Quantum Physics and New Science May Explain the Existence of Paranormal Phenomena. Marie is also the author of 2013: End of Days or a New Beginning Envisioning the World After the Events of 2012, and co author with her father, geophysicist Dr. John Savino, of Supervolcano: The Catastrophic Event That Changed the Course of Human History. She is coauthor of 11:11 The Time Prompt Phenomenon: The Meaning Behind Mysterious Signs, Sequences and Synchronicities and The Resonance Key: Exploring the Links Between Vibration, Consciousness and the Zero Point Grid, with Larry Flaxman, her partner in ParaExplorers. She has an extensive background in New Science, metaphysics and the paranormal, and worked as a field investigator for MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) in Los Angeles and San Diego in the 1980s and 1990s. She currently serves as Director of Special Proects for ARPAST, the Arkansas Paranormal and Anomalous Studies Team. Marie has also co authored of over fifty inspirational books for Publications International/New Seasons and has published hundreds of reviews, short stories and essays. She is also a screenwriter with several proects currently in development, a regular contributor to TAPS ParaMagazine, New Dawn, and other paranormal publications, and is a popular radio show co host with Dreamland Radio. Marie has been appeared on television, most recently History Channel s Nostradamus Effect, and 30 Odd Minutes Television, and has been interviewed on hundreds of radio talk shows including Coast To Coast, NPR, KPBS Radio, Dreamland, All Things Considered, X Zone Radio, The Jeff Rense Show, and the Shirley MacLaine Show. She has been interviewed in dozens of newspapers, magazines and online publications all over the world. She lives in San Marcos, California.

4 About the Author Larry Flaxman Larry Flaxman is the best selling author of 11:11 The Time Prompt Phenomenon: The Meaning Behind Mysterious Signs, Sequences and Synchronicities and The Resonance Key: Exploring the Links Between Vibration, Consciousness and the Zero Point Grid. He also has a screenplay in development and is a regular contributor to TAPS ParaMagazine, New Dawn, and other paranormal publications. Larry is the President and Senior Researcher of ARPAST, the Arkansas Paranormal and Anomalous Studies Team, which he founded in February of Under his leadership, ARPAST has become one of the nation s largest and most active paranormal research organizations, with over 150 members worldwide dedicated to conducting research into the paranormal using the most stringent scientific methodology. ARPAST is also now a proud member of the TAPS family (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). Larry supervises a staff of fully trained researchers and over $250,000 worth of top of the line equipment. Larry also serves as technical advisor to several paranormal research groups throughout the country. Larry has appeared in numerous print interviews, including newspapers, magazines and online publications and has appeared on television, most recently on Discovery Channel s Ghost Lab, and on JustIn TV s In Search of the Paranormal. He has been interviewed on hundreds of radio programs, including Coast to Coast AM, X Zone, Ghostly Talk, Eerie Radio, Crossroads Paranormal, Binall of America, The Jeff Rense Show, and Haunted Voices. In addition, Larry is co creator of the popular new ParaTracker software program for documenting data from paranormal investigations. He is a highly requested speaker at maor paranormal conferences educational seminars across the country, and is partners with Marie D. Jones in ParaExplorers. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

5 Interview Questions The Déà vu Enigma By Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman What is déà vu and are we any closer to understanding how a déà vu experience occurs? What are the potential connections between déà vu and parallel universes, alternate dimensions and other realities? What is our current understanding of memory and how the brain stores and recalls it? Are the brain and the mind two separate things? What evidence is there for pro and con? Does the mind have the power to kill or heal? What is the role of belief in the perception of reality, both individual and collective? How does the brain perceive time, and is this perception accurate? What might be happening to us during missing time, a fugue state, or even amnesia?

6 Interview Questions Is there a part of the brain responsible for the perception and experience of paranormal phenomena? How does our brain access and process information, and where might that storehouse of information be? What is the concept of the Grid and how is the brain, mind and consciousness tied into the Grid of reality? Is reality the same for all of us? How do we alter our consciousness to experience other levels of reality? Are we any closer to truly understanding how our minds work, and what can we learn from the ancient philosophers, sages and teachers? What does the most cutting edge research into Noetics and consciousness tell us about the power of thought and intention? What is your newest proect, The Trinity Secret about and what else are working on for your ParaExplorers venture?

7 The Déà vu Enigma: Doing It Again for the Very First Time By Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman I t comes on without warning. It can happen at any time, in any place, with any one. Suddenly, you get that eerie feeling of I ve been here before. Yet, you are certain that this is the first time you have ever set foot in such a place. Maybe you are in the midst of a conversation, and realize that you have spoken those very same words before, to the very same person now standing before you. But there is no possible way you could have. Déà vu anyone? French for already seen, déà vu is one of the most widely reported, yet least understood, anomalies of the mind. Theories run the gamut from a neural glitch, to a brain slip, to a glimpse into a parallel world, to a backwards memory of something happening in the present instead of the past. But how could you remember something happening now? Yet that is exactly what déà vu appears to be the memory of something that is happening in the present moment. Impossible, yet every day millions of people experience ust such a phenomenon. Also known as promnesia or paramnesia, which implies an amnesia of the very near or present, déà vu gives the distinct and often unsettling sensation of remembering something that is happening in that very same moment, an utter contradiction in terms, for you cannot remember something as it is happening, as in instantaneous memory. I could swear this happened before, in ust the same way, we hear people say as they scratch their heads in wonder and amazement. I did this before. I said this before. I saw this before. Yet those who have experienced this baffling phenomenon know without a doubt that they indeed did not do, say, or see this before. The most common theories into déà vu involve the brain and memory. The latter part of the 20 th century has led to some serious scientific study of the

8 The Déà vu Enigma phenomenon as an anomaly of memory recall. To validate this explanation, researchers point to the fact that the sense of recollection of a déà vu is actually stronger than the actual details of the recalled event itself. It is this sensing that the focus is placed upon. Some people, studies claim, actually will go on to have déà vu of past dea vus! While this sounds incredible, the emphasis here is on a glitch in the brain s short term memory processing. This software bug in our brain s programming gives an almost precognitive feel to the experience, like we are getting a peek into the future. Perhaps there is an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short term memory and those responsible for long term memory. Some scientists suggest that déà vu is simply one eye perceiving an event in a fraction of a second before the other eye does. The idea is that one eye might record the stimuli fractionally faster; creating the sense of recollection once the other eye kicks in and makes the same perception. But this theory has been disproven by research showing that people with only one functional eye still report déà vu! Obviously, when an anomaly is presented to science, the result is often to immediately categorize it as a disorder, and déà vu is not immune. Some researchers have associated déà vu with everything from anxiety to multiple personality disorder to epilepsy. Of all of the possible syndromes, temporal lobe epilepsy, which is the result of improper electrical discharges in the brain, seems to have the most in common. In 1955, American born Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield conducted his now famous experiments stimulating the temporal lobes of the study participants with electrical charges. Penfield, a pioneer in research into the human mind, found that only approximately 8% of the participants experienced such déà vu type memories afterwards. Could déà vu be ust such a neurological anomaly that only occurs in a select few? More current research by such noted scientists as Chris Moulin, a psychologist in the Cognitive Neuropsychology Dept. at the University of Leeds and his former PhD student Akira O Connor (now at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri) has pointed to the use of hypnosis to trigger déà vu experiences in subects, as well as a connection with the temporal lobe. Interestingly, many people with temporal lobe epilepsy do report more frequent déà vu, leading OʹConnor to posit that déà vu may actually originate in this part of the brain.

9 The Déà vu Enigma But you don t have to have a temporal lobe disorder to experience déà vu. In a December 2008 report published by Current Directions in Psychological Science, researchers from Colorado State University studied the parallels between déà vu and theories of human recognition memory. Headed by Anne Cleary, the research team s findings suggest that déà vu occurs when a current situation resembles a situation that has previously occurred in one s life. A sort of situational overlap leads to the feeling of familiarity. The parts of the brain involved are the same parts involved in memory retainment and recall. Cryptamnesia, the unconscious recollection of material that sometimes spontaneously rises to consciousness as memory, might also explain déà vu. Perhaps it is true that learned information is never really forgotten, but instead stored away in the brain, and when a similar occurrence invokes a need for the knowledge learned in the past, suddenly, we remember it NOW, leading to the feeling of familiarity. Multiple personality disorder, now more formally known as DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, hints at the spooky possibility that we all have fractured minds, and when one experiences the same thing as another, within the same time frame, we experience classic déà vu. Same body, different mind, so to speak. This might explain why we always sense our presence in both worlds, yet know we are only operating fully in one (or are we?). Schizophrenia may also be linked to déà vu, as a disease of a split mind that could account for the dual recognition of a single event. Skeptics will argue that we are really ust remembering a similar event, or the actual event itself, but one that indeed really occurred many moons ago. Or that we are recalling an event from childhood, or a forgotten situation we barely paid attention to the first time around. The very definition of the word skeptic as someone who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions really says it all. One has to wonder, though, what the skeptics would say if they ever had had an intense experience of déà vu, one that shakes the foundation of what they believe reality to be. An experience that forces them to consider if there is truly some deeper, more implicate meaning to their existence. Not everyone agrees that déà vu is an anomaly of the memory, or even some kind of simple brain slip up. Some suggest that déà vu is a doorway, or rather, a peek inside the keyhole of a door that leads to other worlds. Or perhaps a

10 The Déà vu Enigma fleeting vision of a past life or even a parallel life in another dimension, another universe. Think of the incredible possibilities! Are we indeed living double lives? And is déà vu the connective link between those lives? There is also the opposite of déà vu, known as amais vu, which is the sensation of not recognizing a familiar situation. In this case, someone sees something they have seen dozens, maybe even hundreds of times before, yet, they fail to recognize it for a short time. It could be a word, a person, a place, or a skill. Jamais vu could be the reason behind the popularity of games like Trivial Pursuit, which require quick recall of trivia we all should, but often don t remember (most likely because it IS trivia and thus not important or meaningful enough to be stored in our long term memory bank). The mind is still a mystery, and the way that memory is stored and recalled still eludes complete explanation. Déà vu is one of many anomalies of the mind, memory and time that continues to fascinate both scientists and paranormal enthusiasts alike, both of which see clues to their own pet theories in a phenomenon that occurs with more frequency than any other. When in the middle of a déà vu experience, many people report being able to literally mentally anticipate the next word of the conversation they are recalling a fraction of a second before they speak it. Could this be because the brain works in mysterious ways we have yet to discover? Or are we seeing and experiencing ourselves in another universe, one that exists alongside our own, ust for that brief period of time when we know exactly what comes next? We know it because we said it before, did it before, experienced it before. Even when logic and reason tells us we are saying it, doing it, and experiencing it for the very first time. Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman are the best selling authors of The Déà vu Enigma: A Journey Through the Anomalies of Mind, Memory and Time. They can be reached at