Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight: The Experience of Meeting in Dreams before Meeting in Life
Autor Daniel Bourke Cuvânt înainte de Gary Lachmanen Limba Engleză Paperback – 26 feb 2026
• Explores visions and dreams that foretell love encounters, highlighting the way these experiences draw people together
• Presents hundreds of romantic and other precognitive dreams from legendary, historical, and modern sources, compiled for the first time in one place
• Documents numerous dream-related folklore practices from different cultures, including charms and spells to induce prophetic dreams of a future lover
Déjà rêvé, meaning “already dreamed,” is a widespread phenomenon related to, though distinct from, the more popularly known déjà vu. More than just a familiar sense, moments of déjà rêvé are tied directly to specific dreams, often inspiring profound life changes for the dreamer.
In this book, Daniel Bourke compiles the most comprehensive record of this mysterious phenomenon to date, presenting hundreds of romantic and other precognitive dreams from legendary, historical, and modern sources, collected for the first time in one place. Highlighting in particular the experience of dreams that foretell love encounters, Bourke explores the way these dreams and visions draw people together.
Illustrating just how extensive and deeply human this phenomenon is, Bourke delves into folk practices from different cultures, including charms and spells to induce prophetic dreams of a future lover, such as placing cards or herbs under a pillow, looking into a candlelit mirror, or praying to the moon. Dreamers can learn the exact name of their future lover or spouse, though they may not encounter them until years after the dream.
Showing how déjà rêvé spurs people to real world action, Bourke features stories of saints, shamans, religious figures such as the Buddha, and other visionary mystics as well as mentions of déjà rêvé in the memoirs of authors, politicians, and ballet dancers. These dreams can be astonishingly literal or deeply veiled in symbolism but are commonly specific and highly memorable—one of the hallmarks of the déjà rêvé experience.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9798888502716
Pagini: 320
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Destiny Books
Pagini: 320
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Destiny Books
Notă biografică
Daniel Bourke is the author of Telepathic Tales and Apparitions at the Moment of Death. A poet and songwriter, he also has a background in the natural sciences, the arts, and the video game industry. He has been published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, New Dawn Magazine, and the journal Darklore. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Extras
INTRODUCTION
Déjà Rêvé and Precognition
The Phenomenon of
“Already Dreamed”
The crucial issue about the paranormal is not the
mechanism through which it operates—which might
perfectly well be in itself entirely material—but its
irreducibly uncanny, unheimlich quality, the threat it
poses to ego boundaries, which therapists often find at
least as hard to bear as do their clients.
Nick Totton
It would be impossible to simply turn our attention to the kinds of fascinating dreams, visions, fateful encounters, and adventures (worldly and otherworldy!) with which these pages will be filled without mention of the rarely explored category of phenomena under which they most often and easily fall, that being déjà rêvé. Deja reve translates directly from the French to “already dreamed”1 and the term is often applied to cover a number of related experiences. Fundamentally, and how the term will be made most accurate use of here, deja reve is the conviction that after encountering a moment in life, be it a person, place, or thing, one has dreamed of it before, though meetings with people ahead of time will be the focus. As defined, it is often related to the absolute certainty that the moment or something specifically presaging the moment has definitely been dreamed of before. It is in this sense that deja reve differentiates itself most starkly from the more popularly known déjà vu phenomenon (which speaks to novel experiences that feel only generally and not specifically familiar). Neuroscientist and philosopher Vernon Neppe, in what seems to have been the first book dedicated to the deja vu experience, touched on this, noting the importance of delineating between the various types of “deja experience” for the simple reason that deja vu, meaning “already seen,” was not a term accurate enough to account for the numerous kinds of these deja experiences. Neppe came up with déjà entendu (already heard) and déjà recontre (already met), a term that would, in fact, neatly or partly cover the majority of the accounts in this present work. With that said, and as was pointed out by Harvey Irwin in his review of Neppe’s monograph, the variety of permutations often warrants the adoption of the broader and more general term déjà experiences.2 Here, and in the same helpful spirit, we similarly adopt the broader term déjà rêvé to describe the majority of the accounts, many of which include aspects of some of those latter mentioned
Deja vu has been most helpfully and acceptedly defined as “any subjectively inappropriate impression of familiarity of a present experience with an undefined past.”3 In the experiences with which we will be dealing, however, there is a defined past; there is a dream or visionary experience pointed to from the outset in almost every case. This truth is certainly the prevailing rule in the literary and legendary accounts, as we will see, although not only there. In many more recent accounts, too, the individuals even knew or assumed during or just after the dream that it portended future events. The sense that the experience was uniquely meaningful among other dreams often turns up during or right after the dreams themselves, setting them apart from others before even their fulfillment. In many cases, they have acted on those dreams. They have been impelled to significant movement or great change. It is for this reason among others, in fact, that deja reve has sometimes been considered precognitive. If one is convinced they have dreamed of or otherwise envisioned a person, place, or thing before the encounter, it is entirely understandable that the individual might consider this some form of legitimate future sight when those very events play out before their eyes, even to the extent that they themselves seem to preempt them in real time. A typical example, recorded in the Philadelphia Telegram and reported in 1888, was the case of a Pennsylvania lady who dreamed that she was met by a “peculiar looking man” while she was visiting various points of interest in London. He would always ask her, “Are you ready?” The dream recurred, and she remarked to a friend before its truth was discovered that she could never forget the face of that man. Some time later, having returned to the States and while staying in a lodge, she entered an elevator after breakfast to return to her room. The man in charge of it suddenly turned to her and asked, “Are you ready?” Being very much struck by these words, she looked at the man and “instantly recognized the hero of her singular dream.”4
It should be noted early that there are many examples of deja experiences in which the dream was recorded or told before the event unfolded, a number of which will be presented. Psychotherapist Arthur Funkhouser considered that such instances “support the notion that at least some occurrences of deja vu result from precognitive dreams.”5 Funkhouser himself gives an example in which he, having been playing a game of hide and seek at the age of fourteen, was suddenly, and in his own words, “seeing all this for the second time, and I had the impression that I had been through this experience once before while asleep. I felt I knew what was to come—I could ‘remember’ what was to be.” Of interest here, Funkhouser noted that he knew what was going to occur next according to his memory of a dream, and according to him, this came to pass when he saw a quarry laying down his bike in the front yard. Funkhouser noted this was “just as I knew it would be.”6 Strange indeed. These ideas were entertained over a century before, with W. Sander suggesting in 1874 that experiences of paramnesia (a term that references a group of pathological and non-pathological memory anomalies) could instill the conviction that the future could be foretold.7
It would, of course, be challenging to prove that such impressions are not quickly formulated in the seconds during or after the event and remembered as if they had happened before. Likewise, some form of “telepathy” might as easily be invoked in many cases (if the new reader will allow for its existence, at least insofar as this has been genuinely posited). Le Lorrain, in fact, long ago argued that paramnesias that presented with ostensible premonitions should be classified as telepathic phenomena.8 Again, while these do not specifically reference deja reve and are more to do with deja vu, it is the case that historically, the attitudes toward one affected by those toward the other, and their conflation, runs surprisingly deep. Thankfully, outright discerning whether such things are either actually the case or possible is not the primary goal here.* It is enough for us to know that, regarding the accounts to be found throughout these pages, everything is on the table. These are strange, enduring, and often profound occurrences with a long and impressive pedigree regarding (which we do not in the historical and cross-cultural sense have) some grand trove of synthesized literature to appeal to or some great annals attended and upkept by historians of religion and other scholars. It should nevertheless be made clear that if deja reve is defined as primarily the conviction—if perhaps sometimes the feeling (later being confirmed) that something occurring in the moment has been dreamed of before—then it is a major, and to this point, fairly hidden historical and social phenomenon. Although limited, the research, including the work presented here, supports this notion.
While very little work has been done at all pertaining to the incidence of deja reve among the general population, the indications are that these are not overly rare events. Certainly, they are not rare enough to warrant the distinct lack of work that has been done regarding, at the very least, their clinical significance. Eranimos and Funkhouser found in one survey of 500 participants done in India that most reported having the experience, with 32 percent claiming this was something that happened often.9 Funkhouser and Schredl’s 2010 study of students in Gemany found that only 4.8 percent said that they had never had a deja vu experience.10 These tentative suggestions that the experience is surprisingly common might speak to the impressively large number of accounts that one may with relative ease find scattered in online forums all across the web and across the gamut of nonfiction and popular fictional works. It was for this very reason that psychologist David Ryback wrote the following:
The larger the number of people who report such dreams, the less confidently the dreams can be explained by chance alone. Also, the
more the details of the dreams coincide with the details of the actual events, the less plausibly such concurrence can be explained as random.11
With this said, there is no great collected literature where disparate accounts of deja reve may easily be found, but rather they are notably scattered, something that will be addressed for the first time in this volume. Indeed, up until 2018 Curot et al. suggest their own work as being the very first scientific study to focus solely on deja reve at all.12 While the accounts are out there to be found, they are often not specifically labeled or categorized in this way—there is much work to be done.
Déjà Rêvé and Precognition
The Phenomenon of
“Already Dreamed”
The crucial issue about the paranormal is not the
mechanism through which it operates—which might
perfectly well be in itself entirely material—but its
irreducibly uncanny, unheimlich quality, the threat it
poses to ego boundaries, which therapists often find at
least as hard to bear as do their clients.
Nick Totton
It would be impossible to simply turn our attention to the kinds of fascinating dreams, visions, fateful encounters, and adventures (worldly and otherworldy!) with which these pages will be filled without mention of the rarely explored category of phenomena under which they most often and easily fall, that being déjà rêvé. Deja reve translates directly from the French to “already dreamed”1 and the term is often applied to cover a number of related experiences. Fundamentally, and how the term will be made most accurate use of here, deja reve is the conviction that after encountering a moment in life, be it a person, place, or thing, one has dreamed of it before, though meetings with people ahead of time will be the focus. As defined, it is often related to the absolute certainty that the moment or something specifically presaging the moment has definitely been dreamed of before. It is in this sense that deja reve differentiates itself most starkly from the more popularly known déjà vu phenomenon (which speaks to novel experiences that feel only generally and not specifically familiar). Neuroscientist and philosopher Vernon Neppe, in what seems to have been the first book dedicated to the deja vu experience, touched on this, noting the importance of delineating between the various types of “deja experience” for the simple reason that deja vu, meaning “already seen,” was not a term accurate enough to account for the numerous kinds of these deja experiences. Neppe came up with déjà entendu (already heard) and déjà recontre (already met), a term that would, in fact, neatly or partly cover the majority of the accounts in this present work. With that said, and as was pointed out by Harvey Irwin in his review of Neppe’s monograph, the variety of permutations often warrants the adoption of the broader and more general term déjà experiences.2 Here, and in the same helpful spirit, we similarly adopt the broader term déjà rêvé to describe the majority of the accounts, many of which include aspects of some of those latter mentioned
Deja vu has been most helpfully and acceptedly defined as “any subjectively inappropriate impression of familiarity of a present experience with an undefined past.”3 In the experiences with which we will be dealing, however, there is a defined past; there is a dream or visionary experience pointed to from the outset in almost every case. This truth is certainly the prevailing rule in the literary and legendary accounts, as we will see, although not only there. In many more recent accounts, too, the individuals even knew or assumed during or just after the dream that it portended future events. The sense that the experience was uniquely meaningful among other dreams often turns up during or right after the dreams themselves, setting them apart from others before even their fulfillment. In many cases, they have acted on those dreams. They have been impelled to significant movement or great change. It is for this reason among others, in fact, that deja reve has sometimes been considered precognitive. If one is convinced they have dreamed of or otherwise envisioned a person, place, or thing before the encounter, it is entirely understandable that the individual might consider this some form of legitimate future sight when those very events play out before their eyes, even to the extent that they themselves seem to preempt them in real time. A typical example, recorded in the Philadelphia Telegram and reported in 1888, was the case of a Pennsylvania lady who dreamed that she was met by a “peculiar looking man” while she was visiting various points of interest in London. He would always ask her, “Are you ready?” The dream recurred, and she remarked to a friend before its truth was discovered that she could never forget the face of that man. Some time later, having returned to the States and while staying in a lodge, she entered an elevator after breakfast to return to her room. The man in charge of it suddenly turned to her and asked, “Are you ready?” Being very much struck by these words, she looked at the man and “instantly recognized the hero of her singular dream.”4
It should be noted early that there are many examples of deja experiences in which the dream was recorded or told before the event unfolded, a number of which will be presented. Psychotherapist Arthur Funkhouser considered that such instances “support the notion that at least some occurrences of deja vu result from precognitive dreams.”5 Funkhouser himself gives an example in which he, having been playing a game of hide and seek at the age of fourteen, was suddenly, and in his own words, “seeing all this for the second time, and I had the impression that I had been through this experience once before while asleep. I felt I knew what was to come—I could ‘remember’ what was to be.” Of interest here, Funkhouser noted that he knew what was going to occur next according to his memory of a dream, and according to him, this came to pass when he saw a quarry laying down his bike in the front yard. Funkhouser noted this was “just as I knew it would be.”6 Strange indeed. These ideas were entertained over a century before, with W. Sander suggesting in 1874 that experiences of paramnesia (a term that references a group of pathological and non-pathological memory anomalies) could instill the conviction that the future could be foretold.7
It would, of course, be challenging to prove that such impressions are not quickly formulated in the seconds during or after the event and remembered as if they had happened before. Likewise, some form of “telepathy” might as easily be invoked in many cases (if the new reader will allow for its existence, at least insofar as this has been genuinely posited). Le Lorrain, in fact, long ago argued that paramnesias that presented with ostensible premonitions should be classified as telepathic phenomena.8 Again, while these do not specifically reference deja reve and are more to do with deja vu, it is the case that historically, the attitudes toward one affected by those toward the other, and their conflation, runs surprisingly deep. Thankfully, outright discerning whether such things are either actually the case or possible is not the primary goal here.* It is enough for us to know that, regarding the accounts to be found throughout these pages, everything is on the table. These are strange, enduring, and often profound occurrences with a long and impressive pedigree regarding (which we do not in the historical and cross-cultural sense have) some grand trove of synthesized literature to appeal to or some great annals attended and upkept by historians of religion and other scholars. It should nevertheless be made clear that if deja reve is defined as primarily the conviction—if perhaps sometimes the feeling (later being confirmed) that something occurring in the moment has been dreamed of before—then it is a major, and to this point, fairly hidden historical and social phenomenon. Although limited, the research, including the work presented here, supports this notion.
While very little work has been done at all pertaining to the incidence of deja reve among the general population, the indications are that these are not overly rare events. Certainly, they are not rare enough to warrant the distinct lack of work that has been done regarding, at the very least, their clinical significance. Eranimos and Funkhouser found in one survey of 500 participants done in India that most reported having the experience, with 32 percent claiming this was something that happened often.9 Funkhouser and Schredl’s 2010 study of students in Gemany found that only 4.8 percent said that they had never had a deja vu experience.10 These tentative suggestions that the experience is surprisingly common might speak to the impressively large number of accounts that one may with relative ease find scattered in online forums all across the web and across the gamut of nonfiction and popular fictional works. It was for this very reason that psychologist David Ryback wrote the following:
The larger the number of people who report such dreams, the less confidently the dreams can be explained by chance alone. Also, the
more the details of the dreams coincide with the details of the actual events, the less plausibly such concurrence can be explained as random.11
With this said, there is no great collected literature where disparate accounts of deja reve may easily be found, but rather they are notably scattered, something that will be addressed for the first time in this volume. Indeed, up until 2018 Curot et al. suggest their own work as being the very first scientific study to focus solely on deja reve at all.12 While the accounts are out there to be found, they are often not specifically labeled or categorized in this way—there is much work to be done.
Cuprins
FOREWORD In Your Dreams by Gary Lachman
PREFACE Dreams Come True
INTRODUCTION Déjà Rêvé and Precognition
The Phenomenon of “Already Dreamed”
1 Déjà Rêvé, Belief, and the Power of Dreams
Meeting in Dreams Before Meeting in Life
2 The Old, the New, and Beliefs That Move
Déjà Rêvé as a Cross-Cultural Experience
3 Healers and Saints, Sufis and Sheiks
Eastern Religions and Other Visions of
Esteemed Teachers
4 Divination and Dreams
Rhyme, Verse, and the Folklore of Finding Love
5 Dream Visions and Real Decisions
Love and Déjà Rêvé in Antiquity and
the Middle Ages
6 Love at Second Sight
How Lovers Still Meet in Their Dreams
7 God of the Gaps
Finding Religious Meaning in Déjà Rêvé
8 I Knew That Person Would Come
Mysterious Knowledge of Unknown Arrivals
9 Picture Perfect
Visions Confirmed Through Photography
and Art
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
PREFACE Dreams Come True
INTRODUCTION Déjà Rêvé and Precognition
The Phenomenon of “Already Dreamed”
1 Déjà Rêvé, Belief, and the Power of Dreams
Meeting in Dreams Before Meeting in Life
2 The Old, the New, and Beliefs That Move
Déjà Rêvé as a Cross-Cultural Experience
3 Healers and Saints, Sufis and Sheiks
Eastern Religions and Other Visions of
Esteemed Teachers
4 Divination and Dreams
Rhyme, Verse, and the Folklore of Finding Love
5 Dream Visions and Real Decisions
Love and Déjà Rêvé in Antiquity and
the Middle Ages
6 Love at Second Sight
How Lovers Still Meet in Their Dreams
7 God of the Gaps
Finding Religious Meaning in Déjà Rêvé
8 I Knew That Person Would Come
Mysterious Knowledge of Unknown Arrivals
9 Picture Perfect
Visions Confirmed Through Photography
and Art
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
“In my work, I’ve seen how synchronicity guides people into unexpected intimacy. Here, in Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight, the bridge between dream and reality becomes a pathway to love.”
“An extraordinary exploration of how dreams shape destiny, Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight reveals the mysterious phenomenon of meeting in dreams before meeting in life. Rich in historical accounts, cross-cultural lore, and contemporary testimonies, this book illuminates the uncanny power of dreams to guide love, friendship, and fate. Daniel Bourke has gathered compelling evidence that dreams are not mere illusions but doorways into future encounters. His meticulous research and captivating stories demonstrate how déjà rêvé has profoundly shaped lives throughout history—and continues to do so today. A fascinating and inspiring read that blends folklore, parapsychology, and modern dream studies, this book shines light on one of the most mysterious dimensions of human experience: precognitive dreams. Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight is both deeply researched and highly readable—a groundbreaking work on the hidden influence of our dream life.”
“Dreaming about future life turning points is an important but sadly under-researched part of human life. Its most magical manifestation is dreaming of future encounters with people who are destined to change our lives. Daniel Bourke has made a valuable—and fascinating—contribution to the study of precognitive dreaming across time and cultures.”
“If you have ever doubted that dreams and visions instruct us, read Daniel Bourke’s book Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight. The profusion of examples he offers will convince you that, inexplicably, the future—as recorded in dreams and visions—comes toward us. I personally can attest to having met both my teacher and my husband through clear visions and dreams that guided me to them. It is a common phenomenon that is not talked about a lot. Bourke’s new book fills the gap.”
“In his lively book, Daniel Bourke shares fascinating accounts of those who dream about life events before they occur. Exploring other times and cultures, as well as our own, Bourke reveals how such dreams can shape our destiny—wars won, treasures found, mysteries solved, soul mates at last embraced. Not so important is the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of this, but that the encouraging dream comes, inviting us to steer our path more knowingly into the future.”
“An extraordinary exploration of how dreams shape destiny, Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight reveals the mysterious phenomenon of meeting in dreams before meeting in life. Rich in historical accounts, cross-cultural lore, and contemporary testimonies, this book illuminates the uncanny power of dreams to guide love, friendship, and fate. Daniel Bourke has gathered compelling evidence that dreams are not mere illusions but doorways into future encounters. His meticulous research and captivating stories demonstrate how déjà rêvé has profoundly shaped lives throughout history—and continues to do so today. A fascinating and inspiring read that blends folklore, parapsychology, and modern dream studies, this book shines light on one of the most mysterious dimensions of human experience: precognitive dreams. Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight is both deeply researched and highly readable—a groundbreaking work on the hidden influence of our dream life.”
“Dreaming about future life turning points is an important but sadly under-researched part of human life. Its most magical manifestation is dreaming of future encounters with people who are destined to change our lives. Daniel Bourke has made a valuable—and fascinating—contribution to the study of precognitive dreaming across time and cultures.”
“If you have ever doubted that dreams and visions instruct us, read Daniel Bourke’s book Déjà Rêvé and Love at Second Sight. The profusion of examples he offers will convince you that, inexplicably, the future—as recorded in dreams and visions—comes toward us. I personally can attest to having met both my teacher and my husband through clear visions and dreams that guided me to them. It is a common phenomenon that is not talked about a lot. Bourke’s new book fills the gap.”
“In his lively book, Daniel Bourke shares fascinating accounts of those who dream about life events before they occur. Exploring other times and cultures, as well as our own, Bourke reveals how such dreams can shape our destiny—wars won, treasures found, mysteries solved, soul mates at last embraced. Not so important is the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of this, but that the encouraging dream comes, inviting us to steer our path more knowingly into the future.”
Descriere
Dreams of destiny across cultures and history