Possible?
Let me preface this by saying I have not had this feeling for probably about 5-10 years (late 30’s now agewise).
I would get a feeling occasionally when I was half awake/half asleep… of a hardness… a hardness of maybe a surface… of noise that was not loud, but to me was REALLY loud… a feeling of extreme openness…
I wonder if this could possibly be a remembrance of my birth.
Background: Developed early… self- taught to read… etc.
This feeling was so intense, but is really difficult to describe.
Cecil, for one. The column is about near death experiences, but he refutes the idea that NDE’s are “Reliving the birth experience” by noting that “[British psychologist Susan] Blackmore ridicules it, pointing out that the infant brain is too immature to retain any memory of birth.”
Well, if you believe people can remember their births, more power to you, and them. I find it easier to believe that these memories are just the results of random synapse firing and that they might resemble birth in some superficial way is meaningless. Until we build a machine that can read a person’s memories and distinguish them from hallucinations and dreams and whatnot, the question is unanswerable.
OK, I’ll bite. What are Purkinje cells? I’m especially interested right now as my boss and I were bullshitting Friday about whether the brain is binary. Opportunity to dispel some ignorance here!
Cecil was kind to near death experiencers. I like that. Susan Blackmore is assuming the brain is responsible for creating the person. She says nothing about veridical NDEs. These experiences clearly show the brain does not create the person, that the person can go on living without the brain. A couple of Scientific studies have come to the same conclusion.
There are a lot of NDEs features left out of comments like Blackmore’s. Her statements have been challenged and shown lacking by many researchers because of these omissions.
This is one, actually there are many web sites on the subject.
As the evidence unfolds showing we are spiritual beings, more experiencers will come forth to post their experiences. This is very good, soon the skeptics will have their evidence in such large amounts denial will no longer be possible.
Below is an example of a veridical NDE. There are hundreds of them in print.
These are experiences that have been verified by persons on the scene at the time the experience happened. Usually doctors, and health care workers.
“Around 2001, a young Dutch girl (now 5 years old) told her mother how she had ‘voted’ to be a boy when she used to be in heaven. However, she was supposed to become a girl and she really disagreed with that heavenly decision.”
This is evidence that pre-birth memories exist?
People don’t say ‘making up’ err, sharing their experiences aren’t the problem. What that site doesn’t give is anything about how whatever your suggesting happens happens. Actually that site doesn’t prove much of anything at all. The ‘memories’ I looked at were one or two-sentences long and are mostly the memories of children (sometimes memories being reported much later), and those aren’t exactly reliable.
Sensorimotor functions develop in the first two years of life, with long-term memory functions developing afterwards. Purkinje cells are the those in the cerebellum which “encode” inputs in long strings of dendrites to form memories. Direct observation of memories being formed on a molecular level is possible.
If we do have pre-birth memories, and do choose who our parents are (as so many of the cosy stories on the above site would have us believe), then why do so many children make such a poor choice? Why are some saying “Yes, I’ll have the rotten mother and abusive father, please.”? or “Can I be the tenth child for the third world poverty stricken mother with only the 25% survival rate past the first birthday?”
Because frankly, I can’t imagine any kind of answer you can give to this puzzle that doesn’t take us into very dangerous territory indeed. (i.e. these children are getting exactly what they asked for.)
When i’m ill with a fever or sometimes just if im in the right mood (particularly stoned ??), i get a v odd feeling - normally as i am trying to get to sleep. Its as if my eyes are pressed up against a surface soooo close i cant see it, but i am fascinated to know what it is. My face is pulled in closer to this “feeling” - i can feel my eyes are crosseyed, trying to focus on something that is far too close.
During this experience i also can get other “feelings” - something wrapped around my right ankle or squeezing it, also biting on something BIG.
Now these are all a bit random and i never told anyone about them untill my 27th bday when i mentioned them at a dinner party with my mum there. After hearing me explain these “feelings” she told me something which gobsmacked me - i was a forceps birth - headfirst, face down and i was stuck in the birth canal
for ages. Now it doesnt take a scientist to realise that these odd feelings i get are related to me being very distressed during the birth process. I believe i am “remembering” the stress of being stuck in the birth canal, face down, pulled out by foreceps. Is not the standard procedure once a baby is born, to hold it upside down ( by the ankle ? ) to clear the lungs of any fluid and make sure the mouth is free of debris ( witha finger )?
So, to the OP. I 30 now and if i try hard i can bring on this state. I must be tired and in bed in the dark. I am NOT remembering being born, but remembering the feeling of stress of being born. I was not an early learner, but the " hard surface " comment is interesting. I cant recall any noises - but will listen next time i get it.
I only get this about once or max twice a year - and as i say never told anyone before my 27th bday - i just put it down to small hallucinations due to fever or semi-conciousness.
As an aside - a also remember inhaling a coin when i was about 10 mnths old and being held upside down by my mum and banged on the back. She said i had a confused look and my lips were blue !
Often our early childhood exploits become a “family legend”, much retold throughout our life. These can become so engrained that we almost feel as if we remember them. But we don’t. They’ve just been stories we’ve been told for as long as we can remember. So often that we’ve built up a mental picture that’s almost like a memory.
Your coin story sounds like exactly one of these stories. I’ve got a few of my own and I suspect so do most people. But they’re not memories.
For your follow-up question, TYM, the brain really cannot be said to be binary. Even neural synapses (connections) are not merely “on” or “off” - the connections between neurons in a ‘chain’ are merely strengthened or weakened according to how ‘reinforced’ the particular memory is.
