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Photographs that trigger memories

PowerofSoul

PowerofSoul

New Member
Much credit to flickr, I've found an old photographic collection of Boston from the late 1890s to the early 1900s. Seeing these photos, for me, rings alot of memories I remember having at a very young age. But if I observe the photograph without trying to analyze it, I can "feel" the environment...as sort of a mental projection of all five senses.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/2884592143/sizes/o/in/set-72157607471461913/

Who here can relate? :thumbsup:
 
Yes I can relate to that PowerofSoul, when you are able to locate some photos of a place where you suspect that you lived in a past life, it does send chills down your spine when you get that "feel" for the environment that activates all of the senses. This may indeed trigger some more memories of the place.
 
I can relate =] I've found pictures of the house where I lived in in one of my past lives and the town,its such a spine tingling feeling!
 
Same here. Pictures of WWII era Dresden before the war brings back memories. So does pictures of Grindelwald, Switzerland.


It's like you know you've been there, but you don't know when.
 
It hasn't happened to me, since i tend to block the emotions and brutally analyze what remains of them. I'm more attached to the place itself rather than the picture. For example, I've seen lots and lots of different pictures of Rome, Italy and felt nothing, but when I went there it felt like my own city, like I knew it whole my life. I didn't feel like a stranger at all, Rome felt like it was my city. Just for the comparison's sake, I traveled a lot and haven't felt like this in no other place. Even though I felt great, I was always a stranger, a foreigner.... those places never felt "mine".
 
triggers CONT....


Can images of / and actual samples of vintage coins/paper money act as triggers?


Thank-you
 
I think anything can, music, smells, dreams... you name it.
 
Last year I was going through some of my old things collected over the years, but long forgotten; and I came across some old Vietnamese Piastres (currency) that somehow managed to follow me home some fourty-three years ago. They still bore the blood stains of an incident, and the sight of them suddenly threw me into a flashback which affected me for a few days afterward.


If something as mundane as old currency can have such an effect within this lifetime, I would think it fair to assume that the same could happen over the span of a few lifetimes, especially if the memory was a poignant one.
 
I find I am more easily stirred to emotion when I see images of Italy, specifically Rome, or when I see old Greek monuments or Architecture. Also, music with Latin chants elicit greater responses from me than any other type of music. They are a very narrow set of triggers.
 
I can totally relate. Show me the scummy side of a major city and as much as it repulses me (having lived in pretty much nothing but barrios most of my life), it also feels like home to a depth that goes beyond what I knew growing up. My barrios were not in the inner-city of any metropolis, but an inner-city slum sings to my soul. I know the pulse. I know the beat. I have a few books of photography from the early 20th century and I just lose myself in the images of old New York. In face to face meetings I have been mistaken as a Brooklynite by actual Brooklynites, one of whom insists to this day that I am lying about having only rarely left the western United States. I'm more inclined, however, to think that it's a matter of me not fitting the California stereotype. You know, we're all mellowed-out surfers out here, right?
 
Photographs can trigger memories, but they can also validate them. I found an image of slaves houses in South Carolina a few years ago. They appear very similar to what I remember and posted about in 2005.
Slave-Houses.jpg
 
Like Totoro, I believe anything can act as a trigger (you got there first, Totoro!). I have been taken back by locations, clothing, pictures, smells, artifacts, people, behavior...even a turn of phrase. I think it is a matter of how in tune one is to the stimulus being presented...and how open one is to the thought that "I don't know that from this lifetime, so where could it have come from?" With that question put to my subconscious I am often presented a memory at some later point in which a description is presented to clarify my previous inquiry. It isn't always that smooth, but I'm working on it. I sense when it is a real memory as opposed to a running imagination when the memory is accompanied by emotion and a feeling of context.


MaritaMari, I too know Rome and likewise had no real sense of familiarity until I arrived there in person. Complete familiarity and comfort...I have spent alot of time there in previous iterations. I wrote in a previous thread (which I will try to place in this thread) an example of a feat of inebriated nocturnal navigation through the streets of Rome on a moonless night which ended in finding my hotel and my wife's utter amazement.
 
In the past, I had mentioned about my prior life as a Native American male. I actually found a painting of the person I had been in that life. I was still living in America at that time and working the graveyard shift at a hospital. Someone had left an Art Magazine lying around so, out of boredom, I picked it up and flipped through it. I came across a painting of a Native American male riding on a brown and white painted horse. The feeling hit me like an electric shock. I remember thinking to myself, "Oh my God! It's him...it's me...I can't believe it!"


The hawk feathers in his hair, the arm bands, no fancy "chief" clothing - just ordinary, plain leggings and adornments. He had lost his wife so he had no woman to sew and bead a nice shirt or leggings for him. And the horse in the painting - his beloved horse had been massacred during Washita so I think he found himself another similarly marked pony. It was the oddest, most amazing feeling to actually "recognise" myself from a painting.
 
Please help me find this picture again!


I found a picture taken by Jenny Mccullough by accident a couple months ago on the internet while looking for Irish posters for my room on 'fine art america.com'. It was a picture of a small old Irish cottage that looked exactly like my old home from my past life in Ireland. When I saw it, it made my heart skip a beat and I couldn't take my eyes off it, it brought back the memories. I saw this thread and got excited to post it here and show you all, but the picture has been removed from fine art america and I cannot find it anywhere now, and it was not saved to my computer, only in my favorites, which is now a bad link. :( I have cried all over again missing my old home...If anyone could PLEASE help me find this picture again (I don't know if it's possible or not) but I would really, really, really, really appreciate it!
 
Photographs/triggers -- One's photos/movies of their childhood!


Hello,


Can viewing pictures/movies of one's childhood (up to age 7 or 8) act as triggers to possible past-life memories?


Up to the age of 7 or 8, is the time when children are most likely to remember their possible PLs; that is adults viewing images of their childhood may provide some subtleties (a psychological bridging of memories of sorts) that evoke those deja-vu memories of interest!


Marc
 
That's a very interesting question actually. I think it depends on the context of the picture and the person. So far pictures of myself have never triggered any memories, except for one past life picture that triggered a memory related to what I was living at the moment.


So, if in this life we were kids who actively remembered past lives, if we look at a picture from the times we were having those memories, we might get more , but if we didn't really remember besides having strong interests and such, I think there are high chances that we won't remember more just by looking at a picture.
 
Cont...


Owl,


Thank-you for your response. Many childhood pictures contain background features e.g, items that convey the styles/fashions, and places of the time.


If one's incarnation between two lives was only a few short years, then the styles of the time may remain quite similar amongst both past and present lives.


Personally, I feel that my present life began less than five years after my PL died.


Marc
 
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