«When the past no longer illuminates the future, the mind walks in the darkness. »
Alex de Tocqueville
Now we would like to look at some clues supporting the
existence of a pre-birth.
This hypothesis is less often evoked than that of an afterlife, commonly cited in religions and philosophy.
However innate skills, astrology, reincarnation, intuition or even synchronicity argue partially in this sense.
11.1 Innate
At birth and in its early years, the child possesses unique physical and mental abilities, some of which will fade away.
Certain skills and knowledge being present from birth, they must have been acquired during the gestation.
A newborn has the innate sense of numbers, is pre-programmed to speak and is born with a certain moral sense.
As he acquires new skills, the young child also loses some growing up, such as archaic reflexes or phonemes* recognition of other languages.
Learning begins at the 5th month of pregnancy, at the 7th the foetus has memorized the voice of his mother. An hour aged newborn reproduces mimics and at 4 months reads on the lips.
Summary
The child is born with various skills and knowledges and this without having been directly exposed to the outside world.
11.2 Astrology
The frequent match between the personality and the
astrological sign of an individual is troubling.
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Especially since it is independent of the culture, social origin, education or genetic background of the person.
For example, there are more talkative fish natives, meticulous virgos, extroverts in aquarius, or impulsive aries.
As if the characteristics of the Western or Chinese astrological signs were universal.
In this case, we have to admit that the place and the birth date have a significant impact throughout the life.
Summary
According to astrology, the place and the birth date affect our personality and consequently our behaviour.
11.3 Reincarnation
The reincarnation undoubtedly pleads for the existence for a before birth mind.
The most famous story is that of Shanti Devi, born in Dehli in 1926, briefly:
- At the age of 4 Shanti said his real home was in
Mathura.
- She used words from the region dialect, which no one
spoke in her family or at school.
- She named her husband Kedar Nath.
- The principal of her school, discovering the existence of a merchant of this name in Mathura, wrote to him.
- The stunned merchant told him that his wife had died
ten years earlier at the birth of their son.
- One of his cousins sent to Delhi was recognized by
Shanti who asked him about his son.
- Kedar Nath then went to Delhi with his own son.
- Presenting himself under a false identity, Shanti
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immediately told her that he was her husband and
hugged her in tears.
- As soon as her son a little older than her entered the room, she kissed him as a mother would.
- Shanti answered her husband’s questions correctly and
precisely.
- Gandhi then sent her to Mathura with trusted
witnesses.
- On her train ride into the crowd, Shanti identified her former family and named and ran to her grandfather.
- During her stay in Mathura, she recognized dozens of
people and different places.
The reincarnation has been the subject of numerous studies, including one of the Ian Stevenson’s team, which identified more than 2.500 cases.
Where children remember lives before birth, between the ages of 2 and 4 years, stopping talking about it at the age of 7.
Given the details and accuracies of their memories, Ian
Stevenson and Jim Tuckler confirmed the truth of the facts reported for twenty of them living in Asia or in United States.
Summary
It is clear that some children are born with knowledge of past events or lives.
But from where this past information comes, is its access limited to few people.
11.4 Intuition
Larousse defines the intuition as the immediate perception of truth without the help of reasoning or as the ability to predict.
For Plato, the intuition is the immediate grasp of truth by the soul, for Sartre, all knowledge is intuitive and for Einstein, the 84
intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational one a faithful servant.
The intuition is related to the feeling that something is going to happen or understanding a situation without thinking about it, pushing us to adapt our behaviour.
Mechanism
For some psychologists, the intuition results from our need for causal links, for others, it covers very fast mental processes such as the idea association.
The intuition would develop in the consciousness according to heuristic, empirical methods developed in the unconscious.
Psychiatrists Assagio and Jung support Spinoza’s hypothesis that intuition is a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious.
Summary
The intuition is related to the feeling that something is going to happen or to understand a situation without thinking about it.
It would be developed in the consciousness according to
unconscious empirical methods.
11.5 Synchronicity
The synchronicity results in the occurrence of simultaneous independent events whose association has a meaning for the one who lives them and/or for its witnesses.
Frequent cases
Here are some classic situations illustrating synchronicity:
- To receive a call or SMS from someone just before
contacting him.
- To talk about a common knowledge that we have no
news of and come across him at this time.
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- To read a book describing the situation you are
experiencing.
- Finding the solution to a problem without looking for.
- Orderly sequence of independent events.
- To be offered a good job at the very beginning of a job search following a dismissal.
- Finding a solution to a problem when dreaming.
The synchronicity is based on two concepts of the analytical psychology: the collective unconscious and the archetype.
Collective unconscious
Jung divides our unconscious between a personal and a
collective part:
- The personal unconscious is the product of our own
experiences,
- The collective one has been nourished by human
experiences since the dawn of time.
The collective unconscious thus represents the psychic memory of humanity where the universal symbols called archetypes have crystallized.
Archetype
The archetypes represent themes, myths, images, uniting a symbol with a strong emotion.
They would promote instinctive behaviours, our psychological state influencing our interpretation of events.
The collective unconscious would stimulate the synchronicity that manifests itself through telepathy, intuition and
premonitory dream.
Mechanism
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Carl Jung speaks of a unity of phenomena not related by causality, representing the unity of being.
Arthur Schopenhauer speaks of a simultaneity without causal link, Paul Kammerer of the law of series and Hubert Reeves sees in it a manifestation of the universe unity.
Summary
The collective unconscious would represent the psychic
memory of humanity encompassing our experiences since the dawn of time.
The archetypes symbolize universal themes that promote
instinctive behaviours, linked to our psychological state.
The collective unconscious would stimulate the synchronicity that manifests itself through telepathy, intuitions and
premonitory dreams.
11.6 Conclusion
We are born with certain knowledges, skills or characteristics that do not depend on our genetic material or on our
environment.
Children between the ages of 2 and 4 years remember events or lives before they were born and stop talking about them at 7.
The intuition can be defined as the immediate perception of truth without the help of reasoning or as the ability to predict.
It would develop in the consciousness according to
unconscious empirical methods, forming then a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious in part collective.
The collective unconscious represents the human psychic
memory, it would include the archetypes (universal models) and promote the synchronicity of certain events.
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