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

Another category of memory is visual memory of the actual birth process. According to Wade (1996, p. 47), such accounts provide “one of the strongest arguments for a materially transcendent source of awareness.” Physiologically, such accounts should not be possible because the infant should be unconscious. furthermore, the fetal eyes are normally shut, and even when open an infant’s eyes, right after birth, are not capable of normal sight.

Some birth memories come from hypnotic regressions, but others come spontaneously from very young children. Most of the spontaneous accounts come from children between two and three years old. Jason, at age three and a half, gave a birth account to his mother. He said he heard his mother crying and recalled trying hard to come out of the birth canal, in the midst of sensations of tightness and wetness. He felt something wrapped around his neck. Something hurt his head, and he said there were scratches on his face (chamberlain 1988, p. 103; in Wade 1996, p. 48). chamberlain (1988, p. 103) noted: “Jason’s mother said she had ‘never talked to him about the birth, never ,’ but the facts were correct. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, he was monitored via an electrode on his scalp, and was pulled out by forceps. The photo taken by the hospital shows scratches on his face.”

In evaluating reports of birth memories obtained by hypnosis, chamberlain compared reports of children to those of their mothers, and found they matched. Before hypnosis, the children, averaging sixteen years old, could produce no birth memories. Regarding the reported memories obtained during hypnosis, Wade (1996, p. 49) said, “narratives included accurate reportage of the time of day, locale, persons present, instruments used, position of delivery, and the medical personnel during the birth. Reports extended over the next several days, including correct feeding sequences (water, formula, and breast feedings), room layouts, details of discharge and arrival at home.” chamberlain found some disagreements between the reports of mothers and children, but they were of a minor nature, with no serious contradictions. could the recollections of children have been derived from information passed on by mothers and later forgotten? chamberlain thought not, because the children often gave details not known to the mothers.

Here is one set of memories (Wade 1996, p. 50). The mother recalled: “They sort of put her on my stomach but they’re still holding onto her. . . lots of blood and white stuff. She’s crying. I can see the umbilical cord. My hands are fastened down because I can’t reach out and touch her. I would like them to move her, wrap her up. I’m talking to the doctors. . . . I think they had a white cap over my hair. They finally undo my hands and the nurse brings her over on my left side. But she doesn’t hold her close enough so I can touch her. I really feel frustrated. I do say ‘Hi!’ to her. . . . I talk to the doctor about her weight.”

The child recalled: “They put me on her stomach, sort of dumped me on her. He’s talking to my mom. Everything seems to be okay and she’s all right. . . . I feel bigger and heavier. I can see her but I’m not by her. Her hair is wrapped up, like in curlers or something. She looks tired, sweaty, nobody’s talking to me. They’re talking about me, I think, but not to me. They act like they know I’m there but like i don’t know I’m there. . . . The nurse kind of wiped me. Then they brought me over next to my mother. She wasn’t crying but something like that. She’s the first one that talked to me. She said ‘Hi!’ nobody else seemed to think that I was really there. Then she talked to the doctor a little bit and they took me away again.”

In another account, the subject, deborah, tells how at birth she at first felt she was existing consciously apart from her infant body and then soon thereafter experienced her consciousness identifying with the body: “Then all of a sudden there was this yellow room and these people.

That’s when I was beginning to figure out what was going on. not very happy about it. . . . I didn’t realize right off that I could make noises [cry]—that seemed to just kind of happen. . . . Starting to breathe was pretty strange, too. I had never done anything like that before. . . . I thought I was an intelligent mind. And so when the situation [of being born] was forced on me, I didn’t like it too much. I saw all these people acting real crazy. That’s when I thought I really had a more intelligent mind, because I knew what the situation was with me, and they didn’t seem to. They seemed to ignore me. They were doing things to me—to the outside of me. But they acted like that’s all there was” (chamberlain 1988, pp. 155–157).

Helen Wambach (1981) hypnotically regressed over 750 subjects, and their reports of fetal life and birth are consistent with Wade’s hypothesis of two sources of consciousness. Wade (1996, p. 52) says of Wambach’s subjects: “They did not identify with the growing fetus or its stream of consciousness, although they accepted that the fetus was ‘theirs.’ Instead, they identified themselves with the physically transcendent source of consciousness, and tended not to become involved with ‘their fetus’ until six months after conception. In fact, many were extremely reluctant to join ‘their consciousness’ with the body-bound awareness of the fetus. Wambach’s subjects characterized themselves as disembodied minds hovering around the fetus and mother, being ‘in and out’ of the fetus and having a telepathic knowledge of the mother’s emotions throughout the pregnancy and birth. . . . Subjects ascribed their reluctance to join with the fetus to negative feelings about being born. Approximately 68 percent expressed antipathy and anxiety about being embodied. Their attitude was resigned toward physical life as an unpleasant duty they must perform in response to an unidentified imperative.”

Taking into consideration reports of past life memories, the complete sequence of conscious development posited by Wade includes events consistent with the existence of a transcendent self before and after the present embodiment. According to some researchers, says Wade, the transcendent conscious self, during the process of conception and birth, comes to identify with subtle energy fields surrounding the gross physical body and finally with the body itself. “Broadly speaking,” says Wade (1996, p. 243), “the theory emerging from this group seems to be that the individual’s essence—his enduring consciousness as a form of life energy

—including his karmic accumulation, ‘steps down’ from the outermost layer of the energy field surrounding the body to the one closest to the body and then into the body itself through cellular structures, when translated into incarnate life. . . . If karmic patterns are not resolved, more energy builds up during life to sustain the source of consciousness with highly charged material. Since it is not dissipated, this energy aggregate persists in time and incarnations.” Wade’s formulation mirrors the devolution concept, whereby a conscious self is gradually covered first with mind and then matter.

Summary of Chapter 6

Any scientific explanation must begin with certain axioms or assumptions that are not proven. If we demand proof of initial assumptions, then we fall into an endless regress of proofs of assumptions, and proofs of proofs of assumptions, and proofs of proofs of proofs of assumptions. So it is generally taken that initial assumptions should simply be reasonable on the basis of available evidence. Today, most scientific explanations of human origins begin with the assumption that human beings are composed solely of ordinary matter, the commonly known chemical elements. And this assumption, although not proved, is considered reasonable in terms of the available evidence. But in making this assumption scientists are not confronting all of the available evidence. I am, of course, speaking of the kinds of evidence described in this chapter. Even the highly skeptical carl Sagan, who in his book the Demon-Haunted World attacked many claims for the paranormal, said therein, “At the time of this writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers, (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images ‘projected’ at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation” (Sagan 1995, p. 302). There are, I am convinced, other categories of such evidence worthy of study. And when all of this evidence is considered, the assumption that humans are composed of three substances—matter, mind, and consciousness, as I have defined them—becomes reasonable enough to serve as the foundation for an alternative research program for explaining human origins.