Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Some have proposed alternative paranormal explanations for announcing dreams and birthmarks. Seeking to avoid the idea of a surviving conscious entity sending the announcing dream, Griffin (1997, p. 200) proposes that a person, Tom, while still living, could communicate to another person, Mary, his intention to return in another life. After Tom dies, the mother in whose womb he will take birth gets knowledge of his intention telepathically from Mary, who is still living. Alternatively, the mother could acquire such knowledge from Tom’s own disembodied mind content, floating out in the ether. Again, this idea, of mind content existing after death, like some ethereal computer file, is meant to avoid the concept of a surviving conscious element, or soul. In any case, with the knowledge acquired from Mary or Tom’s disembodied mind content, the mother subconsciously manufactures an announcing dream. In some cases, the knowledge is also communicated by the mother to the child in the womb, who after taking birth might announce he had intentionally taken birth after a previous existence, when in fact he had not existed before. His past life memories are not his at all. As for birthmarks, knowledge of them, obtained by telepathy, could be impressed on the fetal child by the mother through paranormal psychokinetic powers. Such explanations seem quite strained. Why, Griffin (1997, pp. 201–202) asks, would the mother herself not report a past life memory? Why would she communicate information to the child?

If past life memories are nothing more than living people accessing the mental impressions of dead persons, preserved somehow in some ethereal element, then there should be no memories extending beyond the death of the departed person. But Stevenson and others have recorded past life memory cases which contain events occurring after the death of the deceased. These “intermission memories” point towards reincarnation as the best explanation for the past life memories. Apparently, such memories are common. Out of Stevenson’s 230 past life memory cases from Burma, 52 involved intermission memories. Out of 38 cases from Thailand, 21 involved intermission memories (Griffin 1997, pp. 202–203). An example of such a memory would be seeing one’s own funeral, or observing one’s new family before taking birth in it.

Many intermission memories are not verifiable, but some are. A four-year-old boy in India, veer Singh, reported that he had in a previous life been a person named Som dutt Sharma. Sharma had died eleven years before. Singh spoke about many events that had taken place in the Sharma family during those eleven years, including lawsuits and the birth of one male and two female children. Singh, upon first meeting these persons, immediately recognized and identified them (Griffin 1997, p.

203). A Burmese subject, Maung Yin Maung, said that after he died he was seen by someone at a particular place before he took his present birth (Griffin 1997, pp. 202–203).

furthermore, if past life memories are created simply by reading the surviving mental content of a dead person, then it would seem that the subject should be reporting multiple existences, or existences containing mixed material, whereas subjects very consistently speak of only a single past life. After all, there should be a lot of mental content out there waiting to be accessed and incorporated into past life memories (Griffin 1997, pp. 206–207). All in all, the existence of a conscious self that survives one physical embodiment and moves into another physical embodiment seems the best explanation of reincarnation memories, and the associated phenomena of announcing dreams and birthmarks.

Fetal memories

In her book Changes of mind, published by the State University of new York Press, developmental psychologist Jenny Wade states that consciousness has been neglected in developmental psychology, and in science generally. But, according to Wade (1996, p. 2), recent developments in science are “introducing a new concept of reality more congruent with the Eastern and ancient mystical worldviews.” She also believes that “a cosmology that accounts for the phenomena of consciousness may be the rightful paradigm of psychology” (1996, p. 4).

According to currently dominant ideas in psychology and the neurosciences, consciousness exists only in association with a pattern of neurons in the brain. But Wade says there is a body of evidence that challenges this assumption. “It comprises,” says Wade, “empirically validated data of human consciousness functioning independent of a physical substrate ” (1996, p. 18, her italics).

Included in this body of evidence are the ndE accounts and past life memories we’ve already discussed, but Wade, drawing on the research of d. B. chamberlain, Helen Wambach, S. Grof, and others, brings to our attention a new category of evidence—fetal memories. About research in all of these areas, Wade (1996, p. 19) says, “These results are very new, and their implications are not fully understood; nevertheless they present a consistent pattern in the aggregate, suggesting that an individual’s mature consciousness predates birth—in some cases, even conception— and survives death.”

According to mainstream developmental studies, the pattern of neuronal development supporting conscious awareness appears rather late in the human fetus. Brain waves normally associated with the conscious state occur only in the seventh month of pregnancy, at 28–32 weeks (Spehlman 1981; in Wade 1996, p. 28). Even at that time, brain activity would be quite limited, because the neuronal connections between the brain cells develop mostly after birth. But there is, says Wade, compelling testimony for prenatal memories, memories indicating that conscious awareness is present in the fetus before the brain is properly organized.

Wade (1996, pp. 42–43) proposes that there are two kinds of fetal consciousness. The first is a limited consciousness, facilitated by the state of neuronal development in the fetal brain. The second is a more complete consciousness, experienced by a transcendent self associated with the fetus but not limited by its state of sensory and brain development. The two kinds of consciousness are related. As Wade (1996, p. 44) puts it, “These two sources of consciousness are clearly experienced as a continuity of the same self.” One might therefore propose that consciousness is primarily a property of the transcendent self, and that it is sometimes channeled through the brain of the fetus, child, or adult, expressing itself according to the biological limitations of each stage of development. According to Wade (1996, pp. 13–14), the transcendent self associated with a fetus is an aspect of a larger conscious self. This would reflect the vedic view that the individual atma is a permanently existing particle of the permanently existing param atma, or supreme self.

S. Grof (1985) and d. B. chamberlain (1990) have reported prenatal memories, recovered by hypnotic regression, extending as far back as conception. These memories, according to Wade (1996, p. 44), have been verified by “information provided by the mother, relatives, obstetricians, and medical records.” In addition to conception events, memories include attempted abortions. In most cases, it is unlikely that the subjects would have learned about the reported abortion attempts after birth, because, quite understandably, mothers and fathers would generally not wish to inform their children of such things. But in many cases parents would confirm the subjects’ reports after they were recovered during hypnotic regressions. Here is one such report (chamberlain 1990, p. 179): “I was hardly formed and my mom is using some kind of remedy to wash me away. It feels real hot . . . I know she is trying to get me out of there. I’m just a little blob. I don’t know how I know, but I know. My aunt seems to be giving my mom directions. I can hear her voice and another woman in the background. She is not supposed to get pregnant. She doesn’t know me . . . It didn’t work either. It had a strong harsh smell, almost a disinfectant smell, like ammonia, strong, a vile strong smell. I can see where I was too; I was way up there, just teeny. I knew nobody really wanted me then. . . but I was determined. I was a fighter even then. Poor mom would die if she knew I knew all this stuff!”