Congruent consciousness

Imagine a childhood summer's day on the beach, the sun glinting off the waves; or a walk in a pine forest with your parents, or staring at a toyshop window just before Christmas, snow falling gently on the rushing shoppers. Can you feel those memories strongly? Can you conjure up your precise awareness of that moment? Do you sometimes (or even often) get memories of your past - be they from childhood, or from last month - popping into your consciousness unbidden, *paff!* just like that - and then disappearing, leaving a vague though pleasant aftertaste in your mind?

Do you get other memories that appear in exactly the same way, feel just as familiar when they occur, yet you find yourself unable to pin them down or relate them to a past event in your life?

I've been using the term 'flashback' to refer to this phenomenon of mind, whereby a memory suddenly pops up (either unbidden, or triggered, or summoned). The most intriguing ones are the unbidden ones which I cannot place within my life's history, and yet are just as familiar as the identifiable ones. Given that I've been experiencing these anomalous memory events since childhood, and they continue with me, I feel that they deserve more study. When experiencing these anomalous memory events, I feel the same comfortable familiarity with them as when current life flashbacks occur; the mechanism by which both occur I feel is the same or similar. What it is, however, defies my understanding.

The other day while out walking, I coined the phrase 'congruent consciousness' for this phenomenon of the mind. Just as triangles of a different size sharing the same angles as each another can be defined as congruent, so these flashbacks are a identical short-lived replica of the precise experience of my consciousness at another time and place. They vary in strength (vividness) and duration, when they happen, I've taught myself to catch them and reflect upon them. Projected for an instant into my consciousness, before fizzling away, they leave a summonable aftertaste, like the memory of a vivid dream. These anomalous memory events leave me grasping for metaphors - echo is one; I am picking up an echo of consciousness, a feeling that once was, a perfect replica of a state of mind, that has returned for a brief instant from... the past? Is there such as thing as the past in the mind?

The river of consciousness (there's a neat metaphor) means that you can track back to the thoughts you've just had, but running your mind in reverse, although possible, is as difficult as swimming upstream. When your mind is freewheeling, try going back through the chain of thoughts you've just had - it's not easy! Similarly, when a *paff!* moment occurs, before the smoke's blown away, I analyse it on the spot, so as not to lose that feeling. Once gone, it's difficult to get back. How does it feel? What's it associated with? What might have triggered it?

My search for a better understanding of this phenomenon will take many years, and though I'm sure I'll get closer, I doubt if I, or indeed neuroscience, will get anywhere near it.

In the meanwhile, I've just read a book recommended by my brother Marek, Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives, by neuroscientist David Eagleman.


Above: ul. Poloneza this morning, temperature -6C. Frosty air, strong sunlight. *Paff!* There's that congruent consciousness moment. Below: Jeziorki, this evening, near the railway station. *Click!* Suddenly another time, another place. The American Midwest, 1950s with different cars and roadsigns?