Catseye,
You make an interesting point. Forgetting it and being free of it aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Deborah,
I’ll start off by saying that this is a great site, and that Bowman’s books are DEFINITELY a step in the right direction. I have reservations about encouraging memory though, because of what can happen if a child retains memory. Of course I could be wrong in relating the two, since total recall can happen independent of prodding, or not happen in spite of it.
At any rate, here is the problem I have with encouraging too much memory.
I guess it could depend on the child, however, if past lives are real and people retain real memories, that which they experienced in their former lives could be as potentially damaging now as psychological trauma in the present. This would be especially true of kids who retained total recall past the regular cut off age for memory retention.
Such individuals might NOT see this new life as an opportunity to be children again, especially if they saw the entire endeavor as pointless. I’m not talking about children who are kids first, but who happen to have some specific memories that fade over time, but about people like Shanti Devi, for whom the present life is just a continuation of the past. They simply pick up where they left off, exhibiting xenoglossy and retaining some visages of the ability over time. Of course, such kids would eventually lose their native tongues, as many people do when they spend a significant portion of their lives totally immersed in another language. The point though, is that they could still remember the grammatical rules and the simplest visages of their former language even into adulthood.
If kids like that experienced a traumatic event in a past that was still so alive to them, western society doesn’t have any recourse for them BUT to forget. There aren’t too many counselors out there who would seriously talk to a 12 year old about his civil war experiences in order to deal with post traumatic stress disorder etc. Sometimes even those who aren’t skeptical merely consider the past as an appendage to the present, but for someone who always knew and never forgot, it is simply the past, as alive to them as a past of loss and grief are to people in their present lives.
My personal theory is that recall is natural, but that total retention isn’t. If kids who have this problem aren’t dealt with in a serious manner when they’re young, it can come back around and overshadow every aspect of their lives. That doesn’t even begin to address the issue of how kids like that end up fitting into a society which won’t even recognize half of their lives as even having existed.
What about those kids who were NEVER interested in slumber parties or the playground, who didn’t play with toys, and later, didn’t go on dates (partly because they couldn’t figure out which gender they’d prefer), and were always that wise but downcast friend in university, who everyone knew, but no one knew anything about.
Maybe I’m not so much against encouragement of past life discussions with kids, as I am encouragement without proper support. It must be really neat when a parent discovers a child knows more than they should (for those who aren’t afraid of the idea). There are also those parents who believe in it, aren’t mystified by it, and ignore it, leaving the kids to deal with it themselves. Some knowledge exacts a toll though.
Yes, children who remember know full well who they are (of that I have no doubt), but knowing this could be the problem.
I watched a show about a year ago or so that seemed to see the same point as I do; imagine a world where everyone remembered their past lives. In fact, the memories were so clear that, like those rare people with total recall, people knew their stuff well enough to put down their previous skills on job resumes. They were just as ugly to one another as they would have been had they not known who they were, figuring that the law of cause and effect (something more simplistic than what I believe to be the case) meant that everyone got what they deserved, and so there was little sympathy for those who were suffering. Life took on LESS meaning, because people knew that they’d be coming back, and instead of making the most out of each day, they squandered their time en masse. People went to a hynotherapist to forget.
In India where reincarnation is pretty much taken as a given, it gave birth to the caste system. Granted, that system allowed India to deal with a series of invaders without being culturally assimilated themselves, but it’s also one of the most undemocratic and unfair social systems on Earth (even today, though formally not recognized by the Indian government).
Total recall is a serious enough situation that it merits special attention. They are essentially adults in children’s bodies, especially by the time they hit nine or ten. When kids are encouraged to unearth things from their pasts without a support system or recognition of their age, it could be a problem too. Like everyone else, there are good, bad, and maladjusted among them. They come with their habits, beliefs, and language intact. It would be alright if you were a housewife in Ireland, or amusing if you believed yourself to be famous or well liked, but there’s little enriching about it for a child who isn’t one, who can remember things like war and imprisonment while everyone else is talking about the muffins for the bakesale, or telling them to go play outside when they haven’t felt like playing for so long that even THEY can’t remember when the feeling struck them last. It tends to lose it’s appeal when the night terrors follow them right from pre-school to adulthood.
Most parents of kids who can remember things would never have to contend with this. Even those whose children have nightmares or talk about things beyond their comprehension, can almost always be assured that some day, all his past will be is a reassuring family story, or chalked up to imagination. I guess coming to a place and discussing strategies for dealing with the subject in relation to their children is a lot healthier than the dirty little secret mentality of 20 years ago, nor is it good for the kid to think they’re weird or have to hide it, but maybe the attempt to unearth these things should be taken in moderation. It can’t prevent the total recall phenomenon, but maybe it would blunt it a bit.
Or maybe not.
[This message has been edited by Schuldige (edited 03-28-2001).]
