NDE memories of rebirth: Rawlette excerpt #16

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette writes in her essay, Beyond Death: The Best Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness—Accounts from NDErs in which they retain consciousness between the time of death and the time at which they attempt to enter a new body lead naturally to what is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that past-life memories indicate actual survival of consciousness: the fact that many children with past-life memories also retain memories of the intermission period between the old life and this one. If consciousness were wholly dependent on the brain and these children were just psychically accessing the past consciousness of the deceased, we would expect the consciousness they were accessing to end abruptly at the moment of the previous death, and yet many of their memories continue far beyond that moment. They not only correlate with NDErs’ experiences of the period immediately surrounding death but also contain accurate observations about funerary events, other deceased people they remember meeting while in a disembodied state, and events that happened in their future family’s life before their birth, or even their conception. As we’ll see, some of those with intermission memories even remember having contact with their loved ones after death, by coming to them in dreams or manifesting as apparitions or poltergeists.

According to two studies, memories of the period between death and rebirth show up in about 20% of cases of past-life memory, though researchers Ohkado Masayuki and Ikegawa Akira suggest they may be underreported. An analysis of Burmese cases of past-life memory conducted by Poonam Sharma and Jim Tucker shows that intermission memories are significantly correlated with a higher number of verified statements about a previous life, including names. As Sharma and Tucker put it, “their reports of events from the intermission period seem to be part of a pattern of a stronger memory for items preceding their current lives.” In other words, the fact that intermission memories correlate with verified statements about previous lives lends credibility to the intermission memories, which often can’t be verified (but sometimes can, as we’ll soon see).

It’s worth mentioning, too, that memories of the intermission period aren’t only found among people with past-life memories. Anecdotes regarding “pre-birth memories” abound, and books dedicated to the topic include Elisabeth Hallett’s Stories of the Unborn Soul, Sarah Hinze’s We Lived in Heaven, and Wayne W. Dyer and Dee Garnes’ Memories of Heaven. Ohkado and Ikegawa compared stand-alone intermission memories with those that accompanied past-life memories and found no notable differences in content.

It’s also true that some adults retain detailed memories of a pre-birth existence. Two book-length first-person accounts written by adults are Toni Maguire’s Memories of the Light and Roy Mills’ The Soul’s Remembrance. And, as with memories of previous lives, many apparent memories of the intermission period have been evoked in adults through hypnotic regression. However, all the memories I’ll describe in this essay occurred spontaneously without hypnosis. 

 

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette has a PhD in philosophy from New York University and writes about consciousness, parapsychology, and spirituality for both academic and popular audiences. She lives in rural Virginia. She received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “Beyond Death: The Best Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts.