If knowledge and experience accumulate across multiple lifetimes, perhaps they do so in forms that don't depend upon conventional memory. Perhaps each successive life contributes to a gradual development of understanding, compassion and awareness. A soul moving towards greater coherence, towards some eventual completion; from Zero to One.
Of course, I cannot prove this is true, either scientifically or even philosophically. But, in trying to make sense of the reality that I currently inhabit, I do have intuitions that this is indeed true.
Consciousness can recreate an approximation of bygone times, collapsing the intervening decades, as you summon up qualia memories. A childhood trip to the seaside is a fairly universal one, A.A. Milne's Sand Between the Toes, the seagulls' cries, the sound of the waves, the warm sun and the cold water, the smell of suncream, shivering in a towel after a dip in the sea. Meditate upon those, and yes, you are experiencing those qualia memories with a congruence that closely matches the original experience, 30, 40, 50 years ago, or longer.
In waking life, I experience a familiar atmosphere which appears to belong to a time before my birth. In dreams, I find myself participating in events set within that same historical world.
The waking experiences are brief, joyous moments of recognition, tinged with a slight sense of regret at my inability to revisit those times. The dreams may be pleasant, mundane, frightening or morally disturbing. Both seem to arise from the same well of subjective familiarity; both have been with me all of my life.
I cannot prove that they are memories from the earlier existence of another human being. Nor can doubters prove that these are entirely products of imagination, assembled from historical knowledge, sensory impressions and a lifelong fascination with America.
The experiences themselves are real. Their interpretation remains open. I am struck by how consistently they have accompanied me throughout my life, from the first flashes of recognition in early childhood to my present years. The phenomenon feels the same.
And I wonder about the future...
Might there someday be a boy, born after my death, who finds himself strangely drawn to London in the second half of the 20th century and Warsaw in the first half of the 21st century? Who experiences unexpected moments of recognition when looking at photographs of old British railway stations or Polish orchards? Perhaps he'll dream of riding an old motorcycle along a country lane, or of being followed home through the woods by a procession of cats. Perhaps he'll have an inexplicable affection for the music of the 1960s and 1970s, or feel something akin to homesickness and nostalgia for an era with which he has no physical contact.
Would that still be me? I don't know.
This morning, beside the hedge, with the autumn sunshine streaming through the trees, there it was again – that sweet/bittersweet recognition, tinged with the faintest regret; the sense of a lost something, yet somehow still present, abiding.
I have been before.
But who, or what, is this I that remembers?
Marchin' again
Ealing and West Ealing memories
This time 12 years ago:
The autumn sublime in Jeziorki
This time 13 years ago:
Enduring Ealing – Victorian and Edwardian klimats
This time 14 years ago:
Krokowa, Poland's former northern borderlands
This time 19 years ago:
Aerial photograph of Central London
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