Another client, Ida, remembered trouble at there conception: "It wasn’t right then," she said. "Mother was not in the condition for me to come in. She was drunk. It didn’t seem right. It was not a hold time; it was a bad time. She didn’t want to be there with my dad. She was made at dad, forced to be there. She didn’t want me there; it was just an accident. I could see that the time wasn’t right for me to come in; I knew. Funny, that I would know that it wasn’t right."
Ida said she did not take up residence in her mother for three weeks and spent the interim floating in a comfortable place hard to describe and hard to leave. There we special swirls of light that felt good. "It’s real peaceful," she said. " I wish I could share it with you. It makes me want to cry because it feels so good." Later she said this was the greatest religious experience she had ever had.
Earl, early memories like this present us with two interesting problems: 1) we run completely out of any physical material that might somehow be considered a basis for memory, and 2) we run into the very same duality of self-awareness, thoughtfulness, even virtue, that we have seen in all other memories regardless of age.
Running out of physical material for memory is certainly the ultimate test for theories of memory storage. However, after seventy years of intensive research, no one has ever been able to say where and how the brain stores memories . Karl Lashey sought for three decades to find the location of "memory traces" but ultimately gave up, saying, "It is not possible to demonstrate the isolated localization of a memory trace anywhere within the nervous system" .
In the 1960s scientists thought they had found memory in RNA "memory molecules", but with new information that nerve cells are constantly changing and molecules are turning over in a matter of days, weeks, or months at most, RNA did not seem like a very good explanation for memories that might remain intact for the better part of a century.
Neuroscientists believe they have come close to finding the storehouse of memory by surgically removing parts of the brain or severing vital connections, testing for memory loss, and then setting things right again. Such tinkering with a television set dramatically interferes with pictures and sound, and, sure enough, reinserting or reconnecting parts brings back the lost sound and picture. But does anyone believe that these sounds and pictures are stored in or retrieved from the set?
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake , who points out the fallacy of this approach to the brain, favors the hypothesis that brains, like televisions, are tuning devices, and the storage is outside the brain and body. This makes memory itself nonphysical, an idea that receives strong support from research with nonordinary states of consciousness ; .
Of particular interest to me are the reports of persons who have left their brain and body behind during a near-death (clinical death) experience. During the time that they are away from their bodies (which are often heavily anesthetized or traumatized), they are quite comfortable, entirely lucid, and have the ability to perform impressive mental feats. For example, they are able to review their lives in seconds, carry on important conversations, learn new facts, and sometimes even change their values and goals in life—all without body and brain. That these people were actually away from their bodies is shown from the information they bring back, information not available in the geographic location where the body lay. Many such cases have been documented ; ; ; .
Cardiologist Michael Sabom has published the detailed memories of four patients who clearly viewed their own surgery from some point above the operating table while they were surgically draped, anesthetized, and had there eyes closed. Form these reports, we learn something surprising about the nonphysical dimension of the ordinary senses. More dramatically, Sabom reports the case of a soldier with sever injuries from a boobytrap explosion that perforated her eardrums and burned his eyes so he couldn’t see for weeks. Nevertheless, he was able to describe in detail what he saw while hovering over the battlefield and over the operating table, and he later identified the surgeon’s voice, having heard it in surgery .
Similarly, Raymond Moody tells of a seventy-year-old blind woman who went out-of-body during her heart attach and resuscitation. Afterward, she described everything as if with full sight, including the…doctor’s blue suit .
In addition to the fact that damaged senses work perfectly when out-of-body, not the anesthetics have no effect, and memory is excellent—showing that memory and other cognitive functions lie in a protected sphere outside the body. Further evidence of this remarkable fact comes from very young children who not only remember their birth experience but recall how they died, where they lived, and who their parents were in a previous life. Ian Stevenson compared the pastlife recall of 266 Indian and 79 American children and was able to validate many of these memories. In 77 percent of the Indian cases, a deceased person was found whose life correctly corresponded to the child’s statements. Stevenson tells us that in Asia it is common for families encountering this memory in children to search for the pastlife family. In many cases, the search is successful, and the two families meet and verify the child’s statements, most of which are found to be correct .
What is so important in these cases of pastlife recall is that there is no physical connection whatever between one lifetime and another meaning that memory must be nonphysical, metaphysical, or spiritual in nature. If some part of our personal consciousness is alive and well outside the physical body-brain, then there is no reason why we may not remember conception, gestation, abortion attempts, or birth events. Over the last hundred years, great efforts have been made to tune into consciousness beyond the body, with some notable breakthroughs ; .
This larger perspective helps us answer the second big question about the unexpected maturity found in early memories, namely, how is it that, as we move back in time, we found no shrinking of the self or lack of identity, no obviously compromised thought, learning, or communication? As a hypnotherapist, I have always been impressed by the fact that memories, at whatever age you tap into them, always show mature and humane qualities. Critics are quick to say it is because the person remembering is an adult, and it is adults who think like this. This theory hardly explains the wisdom of little Jason at four years of age comforting his mother who was grieving over the death of her mother. "Don’t cry; you don’t’ have to cry," he told his mother. "Granny’s okay. I’ve been there before. This happened to me. I used to drink and drink, and got very sick…"
The tabula rasa of John Locke is a misunderstanding. Infants do not wait for us to fill their minds; they are already thinking persons, ready to influence us, if we are ready to enter into dialogue with them. Perhaps the word for what we "share" in common with infants in consciousness, human consciousness, something ageless. This commonality struck me as I read Sabom’s accounts of people who, while clinically dead and out-of-body, were trying to communicate with their loved ones . I immediately thought of reports of the same words coming "out of the mouths of babes". Can you tell which is which?
Mom’s still crying a little bit but not like before. I knew I was okay. I tried to tell everybody but they wouldn’t listen. (A twenty-three-year-old, remembering birth)
I was able to see that I was not there. I had left. I said, "If anybody can hear me, I am going to be okay." (A fifty-one-year-old, dying)
I think it was my mother screaming because she didn’t want them to take me away. I wanted to say something but I couldn’t. (A thirty-year-old, remembering birth)
In these examples, newborns and adults are alike in their compassion and care, but each is hampered by not having full use of the physical body at the time. Note, however, they area not handicapped in their thinking; thinking seems to be a universal language, unlearned, innate, something that all humans share.
One woman, Marybeth, expressed herself this way while remembering her birth: "I felt warm, safe, content, a self-assured child, but very wise; a wise person in a child’s body."