draft FAQ: If I had past lives why can't I remember them?
fiziwig
Another question for the draft FAQ
As awlays, comments and suggestions welcome.
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If I had past lives why can't I remember them?
When we try to answer this question we need to be sure to distinguish
between memory and recall. To remember something is to file it away for
future reference. To recall something is to pull that piece of information
out of memory for use. We might jot a phone number on a scrap of paper for
future reference (memory), but finding that scrap of paper when we need it
is a whole different thing (recall). Likewise experiences can be remembered
but not recalled when there is no chain of connecting memories to lead us to
the memory we seek. We have all experienced the feeling of being unable to
recall the name of an aquaintence until some association is made that forms
a mental link to that name. Locating a link to a memory is what happens
when we suddenly say "Oh, that reminds me...". Memory courses that claim to
train you to have a better memory actually teach you to use conscious and
deliberate mental links to help you to recall remembered items in the
future.
In our normal day-to-day life everything we encounter is connected to
everything else in some way. You may not realize it consciously, but when
you set off for work in the morning arriving at a certain intersection
reminds you that you need to turn right, and entering the elevator reminds
you that your office is on the 9th floor. The process is so automatic that
we only notice it when it breaks down. An example of this is when the chain
of linked memories is suddenly broken. Upon awakening from a dream and
finding yourself in your bedroom you have also been suddenly jerked away
from the setting you were in within the dream. Unlike a walk from the
living room to the bedroom, which is continuous and unbroken, there is no
continuous chain of links from that dream world into your bedroom. The
chain is broken, the associations lost and the dream cannot be recalled.
Yet later in the day you might chance to see a motorcyle drive past and
suddenly recall that your dream was about a motorcycle. This single link
might even reconnect your train of thought to the whole chain enabling you
to recall the entire dream. More often, the dream itself contained jumps
and discontinuities that broke the chain even within the dream and only
parts of it can be recalled. In any case it would be quite incorrect to say
that you had not remembered the dream. In truth you remembered its every
detail, but you cannot recall it at the moment. The dream was recorded in
your memory but you've just misplaced the links that would enable you to
find it and pull it back out of memory.
Clearly death and rebirth represents a drastic discontinuity in our physical
existence. Not only are we reborn to a different family in a different
city, but we are born into a different body with a different brain. We
can't even glance at our hands and think "Oh, that reminds me...". They
aren't the same hands. It is no surprise that this break in the chain of
continuity leaves past-life memories unlinked, and hard to locate.
So even if past lives are remembered we may not be able to recall those
memories without some artificial aids. One example would be the experience
of familiarity upon entering a strange city for the first time. If it so
happened that you lived in that city in a past life the sight of "familiar"
streets might reconnect those missing links in the recall chain. You would
have the "Oh, that reminds me..." feeling. Another artifical aid to recall
is hypnotic past-life regression.
This brings us to a couple unsettled philosophical questions. Are we unable
to recall past life memories just because that's the way memory works, as
described above? Or do we fail to recall them because while still in spirit
we choose to forget them? Or are they taken away from us by some "higher
authority" because it is better for us to not remember while we are
incarnate? These questions don't have any pat answers. There may, in fact,
be a combination of influences at work. It may be that as we become "more
advanced" as souls we will be capable of greater recall. It may be that
past-life memories are naturally hard to recall because of the discontinuity
problem, AND that our teachers or spirit guides would rather we did not
recall until we are more advanced. Or it may be that our teachers and
spirit guides would love to have us remember everything while incarnate but
it's just to darn hard to accomplish, again because of the discontinuities.
About the only evidence either way is that when people begin seeking past
life memories either through regression, meditation or other means, they are
very often able to recall fragments of those memories. In some rare cases
they may recall a great deal about the past life. But in any case, it could
be argued that if some "higher authority" really didn't want us to know our
past lives then such attempts to recall them would always fail. That they
do not fail is evidence that there is no objection to our remembering from
any "higher authority".
These are questions that will require further research to answer.
CAndersen (Kimba)
fiziwig
Don Bowman
"fiziwig" <fiz...@epud.net> wrote in message
news:uv7ud8n...@corp.supernews.com...
That is excellent. It is a good description of the difference between
memory and recall.
Sometimes I put something 'on the back burner' because I can't recall it. A
little while later the answer leaps into my consciousness. Often there is
no obvious trigger. Probably there is one but it gets pushed out of the
way.
This sounds like it might be contradicting your other references to the work
of Stevenson. It seems easier for young children to recall past lives.
My feeling is that the information or memory is there but it gets pushed
into the archive as we take on more immediate information as we get older.
It then needs some help to recover it.
Don
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fiziwig
Don Bowman <don.b...@nospamzoom.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3df52e29$0$24259$afc38c87@vipnews...
>
<snip>
>
> This sounds like it might be contradicting your other references to the
work
> of Stevenson. It seems easier for young children to recall past lives.
> My feeling is that the information or memory is there but it gets pushed
> into the archive as we take on more immediate information as we get older.
> It then needs some help to recover it.
>
> Don
Good point. I may be jumping to conclusions in what I wrote. I think it
needs more thought and definitely more research to gather clues about how it
works.
--gary