Stephen sez: >> Perhaps in ten or twelve more lifetimes I'll get the >> hang of it. ;-)
> Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way; there isn't > any "practice effect" among incarnated beings. > > Memory is organic, mediated by the hippocampus and > related brain "hardware". Consequently at the end of > your life, you'll leave that all behind; in your next > life you won't remember anything about Steve Johnson, > and, considering how outnumbered humans are among the > sentient creatures, chances are you won't even > remember anything about what it's like to be human. > You'll just have to start over from scratch, and make > the best of it as a gerbil or whatever your > consciousness happens to be stuck in next time around. > > How we're supposed to get anywhere with a system like > this beats me. Hey! Don't disrespect all my past gerbil friendships! ;-) IMO, I'm not sure the essence of what is behind memory is "organic." I suspect many NewAgers would counter this POV with the premise that if we all truly left behind all of our "memories" each time we died none of us would have progressed past the intelligence of the precursor to anaerobic bacterium. There are plenty of documented accounts of individuals who have memories of times past. Even Carl Sagan expressed his suspicions. As for me, and IMHO, the essence of growth is not to remember who or what one's name used to be, or where one might have lived, what one's social status was, or whether one was male or female. All that is trivial fluff that only has superficial significance during our very temporary life spans. "Memory" as I interpret it is that we learn the essence of what works and what doesn't. As played out in a basic analogy: I kill you. Next time around you kill me... well, ok, we've both done that now, maybe there's a better way to interact with each other... What can we try next? Maybe we can eventually end up actually liking each other precisely because we are so different from each other. Who wants to remember all that drama time after time. No wonder most of us don't. (Emphasis on the word: "most.") I'd rather start out fresh with the illusion of a clean slate. I did like our final argument: "How we're supposed to get anywhere with a system like this beats me." Beats me too! I suspect one of the reasons I come here is to be constantly confronted with unexplained mysteries. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
