• Thank you to Carol and Steve Bowman, the forum owners, for our new upgrade!

The difference between "remembering" and "experience"

Very much so I would say. That would certainly be an intense spontaneous experience and no mistake. I have heard of such experiences, but have never had one myself (drat). Would it be an experience of a memory??
 
tanguerra said:
Very much so I would say. That would certainly be an intense spontaneous experience and no mistake. I have heard of such experiences, but have never had one myself (drat). Would it be an experience of a memory??

Sounds to me that would be experiencing a memory. I can't think of any better validation than that.

John
 
Deborah said:
But what about spontaneous memories, when someone is walking (for example) and walks through the veil; the hologram -for lack of a better word. What about when the time, the place, the body, the experience is not a current life, and the awareness lasts for several minutes? Every detail - as if you stepped into a movie? (The person is still walking - let's say - out to a parking lot in day light)?

To me that is an experience, not a memory. ;)

Experience is a good word to describe flashbacks like that. To me, intead of a movie, it is like time-travel. Instead of just looking at what's going on, hear it, you feel it, smell it, taste it, and know what you were thinking and feeling.

I've had a few of those and to me, it's like being trapped in another time and place. My flashbacks usually loop, so I experience it over and over until somehow I break out of it. Usually by doing something to distract myself.

And those flashbacks are no different in 'texture' from the flashbacks I've gotten of events in this life. Just ickier.

Phoenix
 
wow its odd i would read this post today, i dont know how i missed it, but anyways, i think something like this happened to me today. On my lunch break I walked down the to the barnes and nobles to buy a drink. I work at BBB which is at the very end of the strip mall, and B&N is a few stores down. anyways it was kinda of drizzling but cool, not cold. and as i was walking i felt very idk. Like for a few seconds it felt i was walking down the sidewalk in a city, with shops along the side of me, and a busy street to the other side. i felt like i had a scarf on, and coat down to my knees, and other people walking too (felt kind of like 1964. early 60's, but 64 seems to fit best) idk. Its hard to explain. it was different from just a flash back thats all in my head, this was all around me. then it faded. I tried to get it to happen on the way back, but it didnt.

Then i read this thread and it was exactly what happened today. actually i only read the first post, and skimmed the rest, cause i was excited to post. but now ill go back and finish reading. also the same thing happens if i go check the mail in bare feet, when the grass is damp(or warm). Im transported to the 1800's, and picture myself in a long dress, thats wet and dirty on the ends, and like walking up a prairie, and theres just all woods around. its also weird, cuase the flashback is very powerful and "comes to life" rather than stays in my memory. hmm.

very interesting thread.
 
Not a new member. But I think this is a good question and makes me realize some oddities occuring sometimes. Because English is not my first language, when I used here to remember,to me it was a mix of both a memory and the fact to experience it. Most times it's the mix of both of them. Sometimes I just recall what happened but my feelings are not there as I would state facts about what happened to me in the past.
If I take an example, it would be my memory of me and my rickshaw father. I knew I was hungry, cold and wet, and the way I looked and what I was holding in my hands. Yet at the same time I was experiencing part of the memory: I felt myself turning slightly to my left and looking over my left shoulder to see faintly ( because the rain started to pound hardly down, like a rainshower, those Mosun types I encountered once.) my father heading off to the destination set by the client.
And, I felt this huge pride of having such a father and the wish to become a good rickshaw "runner" (don't know what the people pulling such a vehicle are called) as well. A pride that filled my whole being, making me feel warm, despite the fact I knew I was shivering from the cold. It made me feel really happy standing there in the rain.

What i experienced was when i moved and those feelings (like the pride and happiness).
But the memory part makes things like the cold or hunger just a fact i recall without experiencing it then, it somehow steps into the background, as if to say "it's there, but for now not important enough for me to experience it. That way I will experience other feelings which seem more relevant for me at that time then. Perhapst if i have this memory again will it focus more on what was left aside like the cold and will become more than the knowlege of it. Perhapst then I 'll actually experience it".

That's how I would define it!! But your post made me gain that knowlege. I was kind of wondering why some details were there, like the cold but I barely felt it, when i dreamt about it .
 
I think I understand what you mean Rynen. Sometimes you might remember the visual details - and sounds and smells - sometimes the physical feelings (cold), sometimes the emotions (happy) sometimes not everything?

In my experience though I remember everything about the experience - how I felt (emotionally and physically), what I was thinking, what happened before and after (why I was there).

I don't actually 'experience' it though, as others have done. I don't lose track of where I am now, I don't see it with my 'real' eyes, just in my mind's eye. I just remember being somewhere doing something and what I was up to and why.
 
Unfortunately I haven't had any experience or dreams about my past life. I wish I did... :(


The only thing that I can say my mind remembers is my almost, "Military" personality traits. I'm still new to all of this...
 
For the most part I experience what is seemingly being termed "PL experiences" when I have recalls. They are spontaneous & all-encompassing.


In fact, they function exactly like flashbacks do. I lose all sense of myself & am within a different time, place, mind-frame, etc. I honestly cannot think of a recall, or any of my past lives, in which I "simply viewed things" as though I were watching a movie. It is always much more involved than that. Sometimes I wish I could have that type of detatchment during recall. :(


Sincerely,


Laurasia
 
Laurasia said:
I honestly cannot think of a recall, or any of my past lives, in which I "simply viewed things" as though I were watching a movie. It is always much more involved than that. Sometimes I wish I could have that type of detatchment during recall.
I think that what is meant, when comparing past-life recall to watching a movie, is that when you watch a movie more than once, you know what's going to happen, the movie doesn't change with each viewing. The same thing applies to a past-life memory, the same events occur in the same sequence, over and over again, nothing changes. This happened to me with a nightmare I kept on having for over 25 years.
 
Yes, it is not so much like a movie - although there will be a mental movie going on, just as when you remember something from this life - there is also usually an emotional element to it and this other dimension where you understand everything that was going through your mind at the time.


I was trying to explain it to a friend of mine the other day who was expressing some curiosity. I told him to remember some powerful memory from childhood. He talked about a fond memory of sitting on his grandmother's knee one Christmas, getting a present. While he was describing it, he was smiling and his eyes danced about as he was recalling the event. He got quite sentimental about it and even had a little tear in his eye towards the end.


Then I said, OK, now imagine being up in an hot air balloon, and seeing the ground below, etc. (something he has never actually done). When describing that he was mostly looking upwards in the same direction (a sign of using imagination usually - and often a good indicator of someone telling a lie/making something up - referencing a different part of the brain).


He said, yes, the two experiences were quite different. I said, yes, that's how you know it's not 'just your imagination'. The two experiences feel quite different. Memory is much more detailed and richer than imagination, for most people anyway.
 
As someone who has experienced both pastlife memory and experience I thought this was a thread well worth bringing back up for discussion.
 
Hi Kay,


I happened upon this thread and found it very interesting.


On two occasions, I have had what I feel are PL experiences. The reason that I am sure that they are experiences is that, like Deborah, I felt like I was actually there at that moment. I was experiencing the world around me in that time and thinking the thoughts of the other me? in that time. Not like a memory at all. I have often tried to remember something from my current past to see if I can experience the memory all over again and I haven't been able to do that. Remembering to me is just recalling how I felt or how the world around me was, while the experience was actually the act of "being".


The spontaneous reliving of those two events was real to me. The strange thing about those two events is that a moment before I became that person, I saw them as if I was standing or perhaps hovering near them and then I was the person and seeing the world through their eyes and their body was my body and their thoughts were my thoughts and I was that person. I could feel the sun on me or the cold wind blowing. I could hear and see the ocean waves. I could hear another person talking to me and I answered back. I was no longer the me in this current life but instead was the me in a past life without knowledge of the current me. I believe both events happened in an instant of time but it didn't seem like an instant of time during that PL experience-- it felt like minutes there. Very strange thing to try and understand.
 
I think it entails both.. both being different and both being essential to the soul growth process.


When I am remembering something I did earlier , there is that thread of my world being the same.. I see it from a perspective of all that had so far made me soulfreindly in this life. That memory of me remains sort of static as compared to regression to a past life. I need that memory in order to grasp the threads of a past life


When I do a regression , I can be in a different state and am experiencing that other personality. I did a regression just last week , where I could feel myself as a totally different personality. In this life I am shy , female and not good socially . IN this regression I was the opposite. IT was a very affirming experience. As that man , I felt that everyone loved me for my sociability. I was always kind of cheery to my now pessimistic ,introverted personality. It was a wonderful changing experience .


And now that I have had this past life experience , it will be a memory ,unless I go and revisit other parts of that life as that man. Now that I have experienced myself as that man, that experience will always be with me as a memory, just as in this life. Experiencing the regression leads sometimes to a permanent shift in my soul . I would say it does take this shift to make it an experience.


But there is also memory in past life work. I had a flashback once, which was different from a regression. After this flashback , my feelings were rearranged, not changed= It uncovered feelings that were already there, but now thinking about it, it was not an experience. The me , soulfreindly was looking down on my body from the point of the end to a life. I did not experience the personality and soul contents of that life I was just leaving. It felt more like a memory-- a very haunting memory that propelled me to do regression in order to claim its experience . Having that memory was the motivating thing/ experience which made me want to dig deeper and unlock that person. I needed to reexperience that time in order to unblock that horror.


It takes doing regression work to really get to the heart of making peace with that person I was then. It was like I wanted it to remain a memory, rather than make it an experience. It has been very difficult to resurrect some of those experiences from my past---


soulfreindly
 
Hmmm - another synchronicity - I've been thinking about this - it's a very interesting question.


As for experiencing a past life, it has happened to me only once, but it was fleeting, just a few seconds. I tried to "stay" there but I couldn't, the "place" vanished. It is obviously different from remembering. A memory is post experience, obviously, not experience itself.


I would love to be able to travel to another dimension in reality, but it just doesn't happen :( .
 
For me it is a memory. But its of something I know I have never done before-in this lifetime.


Like the flash of insight I got as a 12 year old on my first ever trip to the mountains. Walking on the pine needles in moccasins I had a flash of a memory of being a native American male.


And then a fear of fire. Its the only thing that can cause me to really panic-well that and spiders. LOL


But they come few and far between. But then too I haven't done the regression, I figure if I am supposed to remember I will. And if I am supposed to go back then the opportunity will present itself. Kinda like when your ready the teacher will appear.
 
The way I remembered some of my last life is literally like time switched from this life to that one. I relived the whole thing, emotional trauma, physical trauma, it wasn't fast forwarded in any way. Time moved along at the same pace there/then as it would here. I was there as far as perception matters. Then it would switch back. That was they way the more emotionally charged memories came. The rest were memories no different, and no less clear than the ones I have from this life. I wrote on a different thread that I'm still trying to separate the memories to which life they belonged to. That's how similar they are.
 
I’ve literally read this thread through twice now and has given me so much to think about, especially after my recent experience with the ‘image in the middle of the Light’ during my last self-regression. So far I wouldn’t say I’d ‘experienced’ a past life as an all-encompassing, holodeck, surround-sound experience. Mine have definitely been ‘memories’, a bit like I’m trying (usually too hard) to remember something from this life, they have a similar feel, but a bit distant, like viewing them through frosted glass. If I concentrate, and keep the rational mind out of the way, I can get impressions of what was happening, although the context can be a little lacking or hard to pin down at first, but they’ve panned-out historically and there is residual emotion, but it isn’t my ‘here and now’ like others have posted about. Maybe I’m just trying too hard or am not in a deep enough meditative state, which acts as a block. I suppose that past life dreams could be described as ‘experiencing’, because in a past life dream that life is my ‘here and now’, but there is always a part of me that is ‘current me’ in there, and past life dreams still feel like dreams in a way, despite their comparative clarity.


In her studies, Helen Wambach found that those who felt they were making their experiences up usually weren’t ‘under’ enough; another try with more relaxation into a deeper hypnotic state usually fixed this and they experienced their PLs more fully after that. She also found that those with a deep desire to experience/remember their past lives were much less likely to experience/remember anything than those who were less intent; desiring a PL experience/memory seemed to act as a very effective block. I’ve found this too – some of my best PL information has come when I wasn’t expecting it! Wambach also described past life experiences as a tree with many fruits, each fuit being a past life; entering a hypnotic or deep meditative state allowed consciousness (ie the Soul) to move from one fruit/life to another fruit/life, to fully experience what was happening in a different area of space-time. This sounds a lot like what others have experienced and posted about in this thread.


When I had the recent experience in meditation, of the Light with an image in the middle, it felt like it could have been the start of an ‘experience’ as others have written about if only I could have gone through the little hole in space-time (in the first post Deborah described her experiences ‘as if I stepped into and through a veil in time’). Maybe, in order to fully ‘experience’ in holodeck/time travel style, we must first loose our ‘desire’ to experience? (at least, maybe for some of us :rolleyes:). Practice probably comes into play as well, the more you practice self-regression/meditation etc, the easier it is to cross the veil of space-time/move between the ‘now’ of different lives? Of course, this leads onto other topics, such as meditation practices, inner silence, consciousness, non-linear/simultaneous Time and the nature of PL experiences/memories and their relative healing power, which are probably too much to cover in a single thread!


Postscript:


Since I had this all typed out a few days ago, ready to post when I had time to sign in, I’ve had an experience that has helped me to truly understand what everyone else has posted about regarding the difference between ‘memory’ and ‘experience’. The other night I had my first lucid dream, it was based on real things that were happening the next day but the facts were wrong (wrong location, wrong times for booked trains) which got me questioning the dream, I even commented to someone there that I really hoped it was all a dream and that I would wake up in a minute and none of this would have happened! But, as I said it I looked round and thought it had to be reality, everything was as crystal clear and unbelievably real, down to the warmth of the sun on my face, at which point I saw a ‘sign’ that it was a dream, became fully lucid and floated away back into my real body without a break in consciousness. Without getting into the subject of lucid dreams, I now understand what people mean when they have had an ‘experience’; that dream was very much my ‘here and now’, it was almost hyper-real in its vividness, full of colour, texture, emotion, sensation. Now, I am remembering that experience as a memory. All very exciting, am so glad I experienced it, the difference between ‘experience’ and ‘memory’ is now so much clearer to me!
 
Thanks for the topic. You've described what I've tried to describe myself about the difference between flashbacks and memory.

For me I experience my PLs. The only difference between being there and reexperiencing it is that part of me is viewing events with one foot in my modern mind, So there's a battle between what I've done and how I feel about it now. But the actual PL experience is just the same as being there.

I haven't had a PL experiance in a year though, thankfully.
 
I am wondering - Do you agree that there is a difference between memory and experience? Or disagree? What are your thoughts about how people recall past lives? Should the language used be more specific?

Very interesting topic. I just read it entirely but probably will read it again later on.
I think I know what you mean by mentioning the difference between memory and experience. I think it might be even more complicated than that.
I noticed I also view images that are symbolical for an event (symbols from that timeframe) or sometimes images freeze and turn into drawings, as to create distance.
For example, when I get spontaneous recalls of past lives, I often end up in scenes that are not related. This starts when I feel the urge to close my eyes and in a rapid tempo, all kinds of images and scenes come along before some consistency starts and one particular life gets all the attention. So, several times I've seen scenes from the perspective of a native American Indian. First like I was really galloping on a horseback, as experience. That was a great feeling. (But I was aiming to reach another life and dismissed this). On other occasions, those flashes came back. I was in a wide and flat landscape. I went in a great circle around a group of traveling people, my people. I saw women and children walking, in small groups. Then in another flash, I was in a fight for life with a man with paint on his face, a face full of hate. And just when he was about to smash my head into two pieces, his face froze into a cartoon-like drawing. So weird, going from an experience like memory into a drawing.

Another problem is that I tend to change perspective in memories. Mostly, I switch from the first perspective to an outside perspective (30-50 cm around that body). So one moment I look through their eyes, next they move quicker than my awareness and I follow them like my nose is just behind their shoulders. This slight separation doesn't mean I can't feel their feelings. But I am mostly always hyper-aware of my actual self as well.

One time, I tried to trick myself. There are also repetitive flashes of me being a woman dressed in black (for more than ten or twelve years I get those flashes). Mostly seen in the first perspective. I just feel her anger, frozen in time. Once I deliberately tried to separate from the first perspective, I tried to look at her from a slight distance, and in a nanosecond, I was back to the first perspective, but... I could look at the place where my awareness had distanced and... I looked at my very self (the one I am today). Wow! Such a shock!
This 'shocking' experience really made me wonder and think about what's really happening when we remember past lives.
It's not the same as remembering last Christmas in this life. It's almost like moving in a holographic storage of past events.
Maybe it's because those memories are not stored in the brain. Maybe they are stored in our energetical field, maybe in an astral realm. Maybe it's not always the same kind of storage. Sometimes the images are vague and not reluctant to show themselves and sometimes my vision is so clear that I can zoom in and zoom in as if I would be able to see any insect or bacteria walking around.
 
@fireflydancing, I can totally relate to most of the experiences you wrote. And it's weird because my only source of PL memories are dreams (not counting a few different ones from early childhood).
When you mentioned the fight with the man that looked so realistic, yet the face of that man turned into a cartoon the moment things turned a bit bloody, I had the same experience with a scene I mentioned in an other thread. It was in an office room and me and an other SS officer stared at each other, the mood was tense, I could feel it, even though we didn't say a single world. The other SS officer had a bandage on his right cheek. When I stepped to him and for some reason, I started to slowly lift up the bandage to look under it, there came a cut and the scene suddenly ended. I didn't add in that other post (because I always found it stupid), but just before the scene ended, all of a sudden, a crystal started to gow out of the bloody wound. "It's disgusting", I thought, then the scene fell apart. And when I had two dreams about the same past life when a narrator tried to say sensitive informations about that PL persona, there was always a weird sudden change in the topic in the end. It was like talking about my grandma's death and then I suddenly continued how good I can swim. It was not the way how our logical self would tell a story, I'm sure. The subconscious can be quite a riddle.

And the switching between first person and a very close outside perspective happens to me too. In my very first post I added on this forum, when I was in the buildings used by the Gestapo, I was always in first person when I was inside the buildings and their terraces. But when I was walking on the street to reach that other building, I changed perspective a few times and that's why I knew it was my present self, but in an SS uniform.

What I noticed too is that when I have an actual scene that looks like a short PL memory, it feels real, I know some background informations or build-up feelings in the scene, but when I wake up, I still feel quite confused. A part of me understood the scene, the other part - my current self - didn't fully. Sometimes it almost feels like having more personalities and switching between them.
 
Thank you Deborah. It's very interesting. As english is not my first language it's not easy to really express what I mean. If only I could remember the fluent English I spoke in my last past life. ;)
I think I had both memories and experiences. Under regression I was there, I was him. I was feeling emotions, weather conditions, physical issues. It was much more than being an actress in a movie even if I knew what I had to do, what I had to say and what was going on.

Nowadays when I hear a song or see pictures it brings back memories sometimes.
 
Back
Top