Anamnesis

In philosophy, anamnesis is the idea that humans possess knowledge from past incarnations and that learning consists of rediscovering that knowledge within us.

Sometimes I will wake up and remember I dreamed during the night. I may remember the dream in detail. I may remember only a part of the dream, but with the knowledge there was more to the dream even if I can’t remember it.

And sometimes I wake up and know that I dreamed a dream, but I can’t recall anything about it. As I think about it and try to recall it, it seems that the dream is on the verge of remembrance. But in the end, all I know is that I dreamed a dream.

When I was young – no more than six years old – that is how I felt about my existence. I was certain my existence did not begin with my birth. I was certain I existed somewhere before I was born. And when I thought about it, I seemed on the threshold of remembering that previous existence, but in the end all I could ever access was the certainty that I had existed somewhere before my present life.

Though I could not do so, some children are able to tap into a past life memory. For example, there is this news story about a boy from the Midwest who claims he had been a movie extra and, later, a powerful Hollywood agent. He provided many details of this previous life.

And there is this news story about a five year old Ohio boy who remembers details from a previous life in which he had been a 30 year old black woman named Pam who died in a fire. It is normal for these previous-life memories to fade as the child grows older.

Childhood recollections of past lives are not uncommon. Dr. Jim Tucker, associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, has studied the cases of more than 2,500 children, usually between the ages of 2 and 6 years old, who say they remember a past life. In his book, "Return to Life," Tucker details some of these cases.

The eighteenth century French novelist and philosopher François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name, Voltaire, said, “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.” I agree; being born once is a mystery, so why not twice? Why not a hundred times or a thousand times? There is much we do not know about consciousness. We cannot dismiss the possibility that consciousness is immortal and that the majority of us are born with an amnesia of those prior existences.

In Buddhism, the cycle of rebirth is called samsara. I knew the word long before I knew its meaning. My encounter with samsara is described in a previous post you can read here.