My Theory on the Memory of a Soul

A soul is a conscious form of energy that inhabits a human body and possibly many other entities as well.
Today I am going to talk about the memory of a soul, and I am going to propose to why we don't have much memory of our past lives and etc.

Quiet a while ago I read an article that scientists believed that the "soul," relies within a small part of the brain in quantum material. This led me to ponder about what happens when we die. In most common belief, the soul separates the body and moves on. Considering the brain has a destined location to retain memory (the hippocampus), memory is retained within the body.

In this case, whenever the soul leaves the body, it leaves all the contents behind it. Since my assumption states that memory is a working part of the body, the soul leaves behind the memory within the body and when we enter the new body, we enter a state of tabula rasa or a partial form of it.

Now I understand this argument is flawed with certain children have extraordinary talents at a young age, and especially the kid who remembered all the pilot names and etc from WW2. But the hypothetical what if can state that the soul might be able to retain information which it wants to retain into the next life so it doesn't have to start anew.

I made this conclusion (the last paragraph) with my own personal belief of the soul wanting to experience and to reach certain experiences it either unlearns what it wants to learn or relearn to get into a situation and it keeps the information it has already learned to not waste time.

In this case, the soul is nothing more than pure consciousness, other than the resources it drags along with it to the next life to experience.

reply to post by prolific

We won't know the answer until we die.
Your guess is as good as anyone else's.

I do not believe in reincarnation though.

I always thought the human brain acts as a filter in regards to the soul. I believe the soul retains all memories of past lives. I also believe ESP is filtered through the brain. Sometimes (in the case where the kid remembers being a WW2 pilot) the filter allows more out than normal. I also thought about the moment you die and are reincarnated, what if you remember the life you just left? As the new brain ages, the filter gets stronger til you only regard your new life now.

I think the amnesia we experience during our incarnations here is a product of the human brain, similar to why we don't remember particular dreams moments after they've occurred, spiritual amnesia in a sense.

We wouldn't benefit from our experiences here on earth if we had total recall of everything we've ever experienced, hell just KNOWING there's life after death is enough to spoil our experiences a little. Our apparent mortality is almost the lifeblood of our experiences, our existence being perceived as temporary adds a sense of urgency and realism that is essential for us to make the most of particular experiences and lessons.

The reasons given for the forgetfulness have been many, from if we actually remembered everything we did we couldn't function because of past trauma's or that we have chosen not to because we need to focus in the now and the past is just that .

Think about it for a second, if we have lived lots of lives and suffered, or had really happy lives it would disturb our current state of being and life.

Let's say you were tortured or were a bad person, and paid for your bad deeds, but in this life have a family and are doing good, would you really want to remember the things you did?

Or let's say in this life you chose to be a loner, but in your past life had a very large and loving family, do you think it would change the lonely life your currently leading?

I always looked at it as, the soul leaves the body but only retains the important information. Kind of like, keep the good stuff, get rid of the bad stuff. We most likely won't know in our next lifetimes, because we would have forgotten it .

What if we were all one soul, one living entity, living out hundreds and billions of different lives to learn more about our self? We might not ever know, but that doesn't mean stop questioning! Good thread.

Its my opinion that if we have souls and if they reincarnate then there are only a few reasons for the lack of past-life memory on the greater part of humanity.

First and most obviously would be that most of us are in our first incarnation. There would be no extra memories to retain yet for the majority.

Secondly I believe it would have to do with nurturing of those memories as a child. While some cultures do have religious beliefs pertaining to past lives, a large percentage do not. Especially western cultures. Those cultures that do have reincarnation beliefs may not nurture those memories in young people to really bring out what memories may be there. Therefore even the cultures closest to some reincarnation reality may not really "get it." That goes without saying for western cultures that ignore it or even admonish those that do bring up the idea that they have lived before.

As to why some people remember past lives despite all this I believe it has something to do with a memory trigger. James Leninger, the boy who has been alleged to have the memories of a dead War War II pilot claims in his past life that he also had the same first name, James. Being given the same first name in two lives may be enough to trigger the memories of that specific past life. Arthur Flowerdew, the man who claimed to have lived in ancient Petra had memory triggers as a young child when he went to sandy areas and when he finally saw the ruins of Petra on a BBC television documentary. That basically means that unless there is some strong memory trigger, most humans will simply never remember past lives. Especially in a civilization that does not actively nurture those memories when they may be able to be harnessed.

Energy is a projection of consciousness, and our memories are what we have created, as opposed to what has created us. Our self is something that is the basis for our actions, our behaviours, our sense of self, it always remains, even if we forget what we had for breakfast on August the 12, 1959.