SOUL memory according to Theosophy is referred to as reminiscence, and it is this memory that assures every human being, whether they know it or not, of their having lived before, and having to live again.
To fully grasp the idea, we first have to study the complex relationship between the human and transcendental aspects of mind (represented physiologically by the brain’s left and right hemispheres.)
The differences were experienced directly by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor PhD, described in her book “My Stroke of Insight.” Our recent post Dance of the Hemispheres is about her experience, and which she describes in dramatic detail at a TED Talk.
These consciousnesses are termed first “the spiritual, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego,” (Key to Theosophy, Section 8, On Individuality and Personality). Second, are the intellectual/rational states
“which inhabit the ever-changing bodies, or the series of personalities of that Ego.”
The higher mind fully knows and remembers all its lives, Blavatsky insisted, “as well as you remember what you have done yesterday. The real Ego has not forgotten them, and the personal never experienced them. “Shall the new boots on the feet of a boy who is flogged for stealing apples, be punished for that which they know nothing?” Blavatsky asks.
That which is called “the divine man,” is the “real Individuality,” who like the elegant elephant, never forgets. But its vehicle the personality has no access to that history as it corresponds to “a new suit of clothes.” There are however, importantly, “modes of communication between the Spiritual and human consciousness or memory.”
Evidence for such modes lies in powers of intuition, conscience, premonitions, & etc. and, most powerfully, from recent research into the so-called NDE or Near Death Experience. But such states “have never been recognised by your scientific modern psychologists,” Blavatsky wrote. That may be changing today.
“Stay in this World”
This clip comes from an original documentary produced by Norman Van Rooy called “Shadows – Perceptions of Near Death Experiencers.” It was made available on YouTube by the producer. Below the the photo is a partial transcript of what Anne Horn remembered.
“He looked down at me and he said, ‘you’re not supposed to be here. It’s not time for you to be here.
“And I remember looking up at him and saying, ‘but I want to be here’… With all my heart, I wanted to be there. I wanted to go home. I was happy.
“And he took a pause and… you could see him thinking about something and deciding whether to say something. And with that… there was a picture placed in my head of a memory of my original agreement of why I had come to Earth to begin with. It was like I remembered and I went, ‘Oh, right. Right…'”
The Life Review
H. P. Blavatsky quotes “the fine spiritual perceptions of Coleridge, who shows how intuitional he is in some of his comments. Hear what he says with respect to the probability that ‘all thoughts are in themselves imperishable:'”
‘If the intelligent faculty (sudden ‘revivals’ of memory) should be rendered more comprehensive, it would require only a different and appropriate organization — the body celestial instead of the body terrestrial — to bring before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence (existences, rather).’
And this “body celestial,” wrote Blavatsky, “is our Manasic EGO,” [Spiritual Mind]. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” sang the poet Wordsworth of rebirth:
“The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath elsewhere had its setting,
And cometh from afar.”
§
While providing many accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) from men, women, and children of all ages and backgrounds, says the reviewer, “Lessons from the Light” is much more than just an inspiring collection of NDEs.
In his book, near-death expert Kenneth Ring extracts the pure gold of the NDE and with a beautiful balance of sound research and human insight reveals the practical wisdom held within these experiences.
As fellow researcher Stanley Krippner says, “In this remarkable book, Ring presents evidence that merely learning about the near-death experience has similar positive effects to those reported by people who actually have had near-death experiences. Kenneth Ring is one of the few authors whose gifts include the capacity to transform their readers’ lives.”
In the following interview Kenneth Ring, one of the world’s foremost experts on near-death experiences, provides an informative (and inspiring) overview of what is currently known about near-death experiences. Kenneth Ring is the author of Lessons From The Light: What We Can Learn From The Near-Death Experience, Heading Toward Omega, and Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind.
A Master’s Teaching
“The experience of dying men — by drowning and other accidents — brought back to life, has corroborated our doctrine in almost every case. Such thoughts are involuntary and we have no more control over them than we would over the eye’s retina to prevent it perceiving that colour which affects it most.
“At the last moment, the whole life is reflected in our memory and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners picture after picture, one event after the other. The dying brain dislodges memory with a strong supreme impulse, and memory restores faithfully every impression entrusted to it during the period of the brain’s activity.
“That impression and thought which was the strongest naturally becomes the most vivid and survives so to say all the rest which now vanish and disappear for ever, to reappear but in Deva Chan [after-death dream]. No man dies insane or unconscious — as some physiologists assert.
“Even a madman, or one in a fit of delirium, tremens will have his instant of perfect lucidity at the moment of death, though unable to say so to those present.”
“The man may often appear dead. Yet from the last pulsation, from and between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body — the brain thinks and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds his whole life over again.
“Speak in whispers, ye, who assist at a death-bed and find yourselves in the solemn presence of Death. Especially have you to keep quiet just after Death has laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest you disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of the Past casting on its reflection upon the Veil of the Future.”
(Mahatma K.H., Letter 23b, No.17)
Internet Info
For more information about the current state of near-death experiences, go to the following links:
How Near-Death Experiences Are Changing The World
Part One & Two:
http://www.youtube.com/user/nhnemultimedia
NDEs Absolutely, Positively NOT Caused
By Malfunctioning Brains:
http://nhne-pulse.org/ndes-absolutely…
Pulse Resource Page on Near-Death Experiences:
http://nhne-pulse.org/resource_pages/…
Theosophy Watch 
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Does the after-death Life Review go from one’s birth to one’s death or from death back to one’s birth? Also, how detailed is it? Are we shown every event, every action, every thought, etc.?
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The process is a “review in reverse” from death to birth. “At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden,” Blavatsky says in The Key to Theosophy (162), “sees the whole of his past life marshaled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing Ego. She refers to the illusion of time in near-death experiences in her article Memory in the Dying, as she puts it:“A long life, perhaps, lived over again, in the space of one short second!”
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There are some great books written by Dr. Raymond Moody Jr about this subject. Actually I am reading one of them now – “The Light Beyond”
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Hi Paulo, yes Moody is still the go-to person on the subject. We did three other NDE posts which included him, the last was December which has a video: http://theosophywatch.com/2012/12/05/what-its-like-to-die/
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