Posted on 29 January 2024, 10:19

While sorting through boxes of old papers and photos not long ago, I came upon a stack of letters I wrote to my parents between 1958 and 1961, while I was in the Marine Corps. My mother saved everything. In one of the letters written from Quantico, Virginia in 1958, I informed my parents that I had attended a football game with two friends and that I had car problems after the game, requiring me to call Triple A for service.  I was puzzled by the comment as I have no memory of attending any football game during my nine months in Quantico or of the mechanical problems.  I have a clear recollection of attending the horse races at Pimlico race track in Baltimore that same year, as well as the fact that I lost $12 that day, but the football game does not register. Why the horse races and not the football game? I had been to many horse races before that one, so it had no special significance.  On the other hand, I had been to a number of football games before 1958 and could picture the stadiums and name the home teams in all of them. Why not this particular 1958 game?

All that prompted me to wonder about the memories of spirits of the dead as they communicate with people through mediums. In the 1937 book, Personality Survives Death, by Dr. Florence Elizabeth Barrett (republished by White Crow Books), there is a record of much communication between Dr. Barrett and her late husband, Sir William Barrett (top left photo), most of it through the medium Gladys Osborne Leonard (top right photo).  Sir William, a renowned physicist when in the physical body and a pioneer in psychical research, attempted to explain the difficulties he had in communicating through the medium. “Sometimes I lose some memory of things from coming here,” he told Lady Barrett. “I know it in my own state but not here….In the Earth body we have the separation of subconscious and conscious. Consciousness only holds a certain number of memories at a time. When we pass over they join – make a complete mind that knows and remembers everything, but when one comes here to a sitting the limitation of the physical sphere affects one’s mind, and only a portion of one’s mind can function for the time being.”

If there is truth in Sir William’s statement, I should know the details of that football game I attended in 1958 after my subconscious merges with my consciousness following my departure from this realm of existence, but if I attempt to communicate the details of the game to someone through a medium, I’ll probably fail. Perhaps the question should be: How much of this earth life do we remember when still alive? Were it not for photographs, I would have very few mental pictures preserved from earlier years.  I have some flashbacks that might go to age four, possibly three, the most painful being having ether gas administered before a tonsillectomy. I can still smell and taste the gas and feel the struggle when the anesthesiologist placed the nose piece on my face. 

I can recall moments from my first day of kindergarten at 4 years, 9 months, but that is earliest event I can put an actual date on. I call them little mental snapshots.  I can picture my mother leaving me there at the door of my classroom and telling me that she would return and pick me up, then walking away.  It was a traumatic experience.

Baseball Memories

In further pondering on the football game, I began thinking about all the baseball games I had attended during my youth and realized that there was not a single play – not one home run, not one game winning hit – or moment in time that I could remember or call a mental snapshot, except for two, only one of them on the field. The off-field memory involves getting the autograph of Jackie Robinson, my boyhood idol, outside the ballpark in 1951, while the only on-field memory has to do with a game at the Polo Grounds in New York between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants during 1949.  I was 12 at the time and sitting in deep centerfield right next to the exit players used to go to the clubhouse.  Don Newcombe (lower left photo) was pitching in his second game with the Dodgers and was relieved in about the seventh inning. As he left the field, he walked through the exit just below me with a very disgruntled expression. For some reason I took a mental snapshot of that moment and can still picture it today. I can also recall thinking that he was really a big mean-looking guy. That mental picture of Newcombe walking below me often popped into my conscious mind whenever I heard his name in the years following.

Then, about 1992, I met Newcombe and talked with him in my Honolulu office for an hour or longer (lower right photo). He visited with me a year or two later on another trip to Honolulu and we again had a long talk about baseball and the old Brooklyn Dodgers. I wondered if that vivid picture of Newcombe walking just below me at the Polo Grounds was some kind of cosmic consciousness in a timeless universe. My autograph book from my younger days includes some famous ballplayers, including Bob Feller and Larry Doby, but I have no recollection or mental pictures of them signing my autograph book. That mental picture of Newcombe is the only snapshot in my conscious mind from the dozens of baseball games I attended before 1960. Everything else is a very abstract picture, nothing specific, except perhaps for watching Ernie Lombardi, said to be the slowest man on the planet, lumbering to first base as my friend and I laughed at his laborious trot.  That memory is not as distinct as the Newcombe one. 

Malaysia’s Darkest Day 

In 1969, I experienced what has been called “the darkest day in the history of Malaysia,” a day in which around 200 people were slaughtered on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital.  I was in a movie theater with my two daughters and then-wife when rioters broke in the theater and started swinging machetes and bolo knives at people on the ground floor.  Fortunately, we were in the upstairs section and the attackers never made their way up the stairs.  They chased the ground-floor movie viewers out the front door to the streets.  Until a few days ago, I was certain that the title of the movie was “Three Faces of Eve.”  I would have bet my house on that title, and would have sworn so on a stack of Bibles, but I recently came across a link on the internet in which a journalist, Johan Fernandez, was in the same theater that night and reported that movie title was “Rachel, Rachel.”
 
As Joanne Woodward was the “star” in both movies, I can understand that I may have been mistaken, but, then again, there was a time when movie theaters would show two movies for the same admission price. I don’t recall if those days extended to 1969.  The fact that the “Rachel” movie was produced in 1968 and the “Eve” movie in 1957, makes it more likely that my memory failed me if there was only one movie shown that night.  I would have lost my house in the bet. So much for my conscious memory! 
I do have a snapshot in my memory bank of Omar, my driver in Malaysia, coming into my office with a large tank of propane on his shoulder.  I had given my office boy, called the office peon, some money and asked him to take it downstairs and give it to Omar to get “gas.”  I should have instructed him to get “petrol” for the car.  Gas to him meant propane. 

Sir William further explained that it was much easier for him to communicate an idea than a detached word, such as a proper name.  “When I am in my own sphere I am told a name and think I shall remember it,” he communicated. “[But] when I come into the conditions of a sitting I then know I can only carry with me – contain in me – a small portion of my consciousness. The easiest things to lay hold of are what we may call ideas; a detached word, a proper name, has no link with a train of thought except in a detached sense; that is far more difficult than any other feat of memory or association of ideas.”

Remembering Your Self-Image

One of the most intriguing aspects I’ve encountered in my study of mediumship has to do with one’s memory of what the spirit trying to materialize looked like when in the earth life. Researchers reported that some of the materializations didn’t look like the person it was supposed to be and therefore it was considered fraudulent. In one study a communicating spirit told Professor Charles Richet that he was unable to materialize because he did not remember what he looked like when alive.  However, he later materialized without a face.  In another case, the communicating spirit told the researcher he had to quickly visit his old home to view a portrait of himself there as he could not recall his face.  As I understand it, the materializing spirit had to focus on an image of his old self and project that thought into the ectoplasm if the materialization was to be successful.

Think about it.  Would you know what you looked like as a child if you never had photos or portraits of yourself to visualize?  It makes sense that materialization of people who lived before photography became popular in the late nineteenth century didn’t always look exactly like living people remembered them, as they didn’t have a clear picture of themselves while living.  I doubt that I’ll ever have a need to materialize for anyone once I transition to the larger world, but if I do, I hope I can recall the image of my 30-year-old self and not the one I saw in the mirror when I shaved this morning.

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Michael,
An interesting discussion on memory.

I have a retentive memory (this was picked up by a CSIRO scientist as I continued our discussion on the phone conversation from six months before - his wife was similar). I had assumed everyone was the same but changed their version of events to promote some hidden reason. When I met people at conferences sometimes years apart I would repeat the salient information (wife’s name, what they were up to etc). My memory would upload trivia. They sometimes didn’t remember meeting me and walked away. I put it down to the person having a poor memory.

Spirit messages use a different path so these are written down to avoid relying on memory. I have found false memory in people where the brain reaches and substitutes a variation of the events. A different construct. The various early memory recollections are interesting. If people can only remember back to two has the long term memory mechanism just developed? Is there a short term memory in operation while long term memory develops?

William James referred to the sensory-perceptual world of infants as a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” I would also apply this term to the spirit world.
Thanks,
Bruce

Thanks Mark for the link to the Sheldrake video.  He is always very entertaining to watch, not that I subscribe to his theories of Morphic Resonance though.

Most of us don’t have complete memories of all of our years of life.  My memories are like vignettes or snippets of memory.  Like Michael, I do remember going to Kindergarten at 5 years old and that the teacher from England was not certified to teach in the U.S. and we had to have a replacement.  I also remember my first grade teacher Mrs. Neubauer when I was six and my second grade teacher Mrs. Strubinger when I would have been seven. And I remember the boxes of watercolor paints that were handed-out.  Ah, and Miss Webster who taught cursive writing which isn’t taught any more.  From there on I do remember all of my grade school teachers and some sense , feel, image of their classrooms and some things I did in each class.  And I remember the man on the street corner of the school ground who sold yo-yos, and I am still triggered by the colors of cars that remind me of those yo-yos.

Highschool is somewhat of a blur for me. which surprisingly should have been more memorable than grade school. - AOD

Amos I believe we are not able to form memories before age two and a half although I’m sure I remember sitting in a pram at my grandma’s gate before I was two. Also we are supposed to forget most things that happened to us before we were seven and a half years old according to recent research.

You might try looking into Rupert Sheldrake and his Morphic Resonance theory.

Rupert Sheldrake on “How Morphic Resonance affects our memories, families, rituals and festivals.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d6_H9IPlUc

Why don’t we remember things that happened to us when we were an infant or a small child?  For example; few, if any people remember being born and that has got to be a very traumatic experience for us.  Was cutting of the umbilical cord painful?  Being slapped on the butt!  What about circumcision?  And why don’t I remember having my diapers changed? or being submerged in water for a bath.  I must have been crying a lot.  What was I upset about?  Why don’t I remember that?  What about being potty trained?  Eating solid foods for the first time?  I could go on and on. These are all very important things and probably generated a lot of emotions for the new being.

Maybe we don’t remember because our soul or spirit was not fully incarnated in that body during those early years.  As Michael suggested maybe we were off doing other things. I think this is an important idea to consider especially in view of the current discussions about abortion.

Just when does the soul fully incarnate and at the other end of life, when does the soul actually leave the body.  On the morning I sat with my father when he was dying, it was apparent to me that his spirit was no longer in his body even though his heart was still beating; it stopped about an hour later.  It is reported by NDE-ers that they are off and away from their body when their body may still be “alive” on the operating table or at the scene of an accident.  And some people report leaving their body without any traumatic event happening at all and their body was “sleeping” in bed.

I think our belief system about a spiritual life needs to be coherent and logical.  We either are a spirit inhabiting a physical body or we are not! If we are a spirit then life becomes more of a play in which we put on different costumes and play our parts and then, take off the makeup and costume, go to the cast party and eventually audition for another part.  That costume (body) is really not that important and in fact we have had many costume changes over a lifetime especially if that lifetime is a long one.  - AOD

I’ve never paid much attention to Kit Kat candy bars and am not sure I’ve ever had one, but yesterday I saw an advertisement on TV in which there was a hyphen between the two words, although it showed a picture of the candy bar without the hyphen. I wonder if the hyphen is used only when it precedes “candy bar” as an adjective.

It all brings to mind the test that one of the NDE researchers planned a few years ago. I think it was Dr. Sam Parnia. It involved putting a number or sign of some kind over a high point in the surgery or Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, so that if the patient were out-of-body, he or she might record the number in his memory and give it as evidence later.  However, as previously discussed here, what might be “seen” might not be registered.  As an example, I mentioned passing a service station almost daily.  There is a large sign in front of the station indicating the cost of gas (petrol) per gallon. The numbers are well over a foot high and can be seen from a distance. However, even though I pass it and “see’ it, I rarely record the number (cost) in my memory bank.  I assume it is that way with many others.

Amos’s “snapshot memories” are certainly much earlier than mine and suggest a “loose” soul, according to one reference. Amos was probably off doing other things while his infant body slept in the crib.

One snapshot memory came to me yesterday when I saw the word “judgment” spelled with an extra “e”, i.e., “judgement.”  I realize that the latter spelling is acceptable in England, but the American way is to spell it without the “e”.  I can recall sitting with my boss and going over one of my investigative reports with him about 1963 and he mentioned to me that I had misspelled “judgment.”  I can picture sitting there in his office and see him telling me that I had misspelled a word. Strange that I would have a snapshot of that seemingly small experience in my life. However, I think I see that snapshot every time I see the word spelled “judgement,” and so it is a recurring memory.

I’d just like to mention one more thing about the Mandela Effect I mentioned in my last post. The main cause of the Mandela Effect has been put down to false memories because this is the best and most obvious scientific explanation for it happening or Occam’s razor might be a better way of attributing it to the simple fact of people mis-remembering something that didn’t happen or didn’t exist in the way they rembered it. This is because it doesn’t fit into that little scientific box and it goes beyond the mind boggle threshold so science must therefore be right and thousands of people are just plain stupid and are having mass delusions on a huge scale. As we all know the scientific world will not accept things beyond the scope of their general laws and theories so anything that falls outside this is considered nonsense and absurd. Obviously we can’t go back and check something at a certain point in time to verify we did indeed remember it right or wrong so we have to look for some other way to back up our memory of it. Many Mandela Effects may indeed be false memories but regardless it is not the case with certain ones.

This brings me back to my memory of the Fruit of the Loom logo in which I have a distinct memory of buying T-shirts for my business and looking at the logo on the labels and thinking to myself what the horn thing was on the label and also making a joke about it to a friend of mine. This was not mis-remembering or false memory, imagining, hallucination but 100% certainty that this happened along with hundreds of other people who have a memory of the cornucopia (horn of plenty) on the logo with the fruit. But the cornucopia has never existed in any shape or form on any Fruit of the Loom logo in the history of the company (this has been verified with the company). So either myself and a few hundred (possibly thousands) or so other people have been reality shifting in and out of another dimension very similar to this one or we need another explanation which has yet to be offered on how this could happen. Obviously many people just remember the fruit on it’s own so they are all right and we are all wrong.

What is so interesting and mystifying about the Fruit of the Loom Mandela Effect is that it has what is called ‘residue’ meaning that there is something left over from the original memory of the Mandela Effected person.

There is an album by Frank Wess called ‘Flute of the Loom’ (google it and you’ll see the album cover) came out around the 1970’s. The artist that did the art work for the album cover was a guy by the name of Ellis Chappel and his son Reed was contacted about five year ago and asked about where Ellis got the inspiration for the cover.

This was Reed’s reply;

  This is Reed, Ellis’s son, responding for my dad here.  I remember the cornucopia specifically, as does my dad.  This is the second time we’ve been contacted about this album cover and Ellis (and I) are more than happy to answer any questions you have about it.  I was a little kid when Ellis painted the Flute of the Loom cover and I remember specifically this album being a reference to the cornucopia in Fruit of the Loom’s original logo, which is where my dad says he specifically got the inspiration for the design (when I talked to him about it he said, “Why the hell else would I have used a cornucopia?”).  The food coming out of the flute is soul food, actually, a ham hock, cabbage, black-eyed peas, etc.  I remember when (in my mind) Fruit of the Loom quit using a cornucopia in their logo and switched to just using fruit by itself.  It impressed me because I thought the logo looked better with a cornucopia in it.  In my memories this was roughly around 1978 when I was in second grade.  So, anyway, feel free to ask away.

Thanks a lot!

Reed and Ellis Chappell

Ellis also remembers the cornucopia and remembers it changing to just fruit but no it’s always been the fruit period. So that is an example of residue and for me it enforces what I remember or should I say what I truly believe I remember it is not a false memory or mis-remembering but actually happened. There is no explanation and it defies all our current understanding of reality but I think reality is far more complex and unfathomable than we dare realise. Oops sorry slightly longer than I meant it to be.

Michael,
I am glad to see familiar names returning to comment such as Mark. The section (shown below) you mentioned is very important.
Sir William further explained that it was much easier for him to communicate an idea than a detached word, such as a proper name.  “When I am in my own sphere I am told a name and think I shall remember it,” he communicated. “[But] when I come into the conditions of a sitting I then know I can only carry with me – contain in me – a small portion of my consciousness. The easiest things to lay hold of are what we may call ideas; a detached word, a proper name, has no link with a train of thought except in a detached sense; that is far more difficult than any other feat of memory or association of ideas.”

The platform work in a Spiritualist Church is to link a spirit to an audience member. Usually first time for both parties. So the level of message transfer (having no background with either party) is low. Names are very difficult but ideas are better as symbols can be used. I taught Disnet style animation (I was multimedia IT teacher) and showed students of how we have a symbol library already built in to our minds.

I worked with international students and started my lecture with my kneeling on one knee. Depending on the culture it was seen as marriage proposal. Some thought I was having a stroke. Other symbols were discussed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols

The reason was the to lead towards clear design to get the clear marketing message across. The animation for Kit Kat might reach in to the cat symbols. Remember cat videos get eyeballs. (My daughter runs social media marketing - her food client say 3,000 views her blind cat views 37,000).

To return to my point platform work is giving a message at the poorest (in terms of communication) level. It is the highest in love. There are more advanced forms of communication. Elene’s spirit friend used an image known to her to get the message across.
Thanks
Bruce

Michael,
I was born on May10th and my first memory was being in a crib placed next to an open window.  I experienced a warm very comfortable breeze coming in through the black-screened window with white lace-like curtains which were popular at that time.  I had no sense of a body then but it was more like an experience, not something I perceived through a body.  I surmise I must have been one or two months old.
 

Another memory I have is standing up in a crib and calling for my mother.  My mother had gone out shopping for the evening and my father was in the living room. I was in my bedroom and called for my mother.  My father pretended to be her and I said, ”That’s not mother!” and threw my bottle of milk out into the room.  (That was the last time I got a bottle.)  Apparently, I must have been less than two years old then.  - AOD

Mike’s anomalous memories reminded me of something impossible that I “remembered” from when I was a small child, a meteorite falling into a suburban backyard and lying there glowing in the grass.  Here’s the story: https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2017/10/22/it-couldnt-have-happened/

Science has learned a lot in recent years about how unreliable our memories actually are and how the past constantly gets remodeled in our minds.  It’s vexing and disorienting to realize this.

As to our appearances to ourselves and others in the next world—well, I’ve often thought that I’d be disappointed to have to keep these thighs!  But it seems likely that images of the bodies we wear on earth will be like costumes we can put on or take off according to our needs.

I do have a message from the other world related to that.  The other day I was reading something about parallel lives and alternate realities in the comments to another of Mike’s posts, and had the opportunity to ask my main spirit contact how he saw the matter, and how or if he experienced his larger, multiple self.  He showed me an image of standing in the Sandia mountains (a few miles from here) and looking down at the broad vista of Albuquerque and its surroundings.  He could see the entire landscape of lives at once, he told me.  A useful metaphor.

Regarding alternate realities and whether we can choose between them, he said, “You get the reality you need.”  I didn’t particularly like that answer!

Elene

Sir William Barrett’s observations during mediumistic communication of the way memory seems to work can at least partially be understood via the interactional dualist transmitter/receiver or filter model of consciousness. This model can reconcile many observations of the apparent dependency of consciousness on the physical brain, with the existence of spirit.

This theory of consciousness holds that the human spirit manifests in the physical via intricately occupying and utilizing the brain as its interface mechanism. In this model human consciousness is drastically limited or filtered down by having to operate through this physical interface. Various disruptions of the physical neural interface can damage this neural machinery such that memory information in different ways is not available to the embodied spirit consciousness (or cannot be stored), as if the memories were actually being carried by the brain rather than as in fact they really are, held in immaterial spirit.

Hence the cases of “terminal awareness”, resumptions of consciousness where moribund Alzheimer’s patients or brain tumor victims - people with massive irreversible brain damage - can spontaneously “wake up” for a brief period and speak to caregivers as if their brains were suddenly healed. This is evidence that consciousness is not a function of the brain and that memory ultimately isn’t carried by the brain, and that spirit can in extraordinary circumstances bypass portions of the brain/spirit interface. Veridical NDE OBE accounts also indicate that memories are not carried by the brain, since during the experiences the physical brain is usually dysfunctional.

Corrections & Clarification:

“On the other hand, I had been to a number of football games before 1958 and could picture the stadiums and name the home teams in all of them.”

I should have clarified that statement. There is no way I can say for sure that I can remember all of them. How would I know if I forgot about one or two?

Also, there is a possible reason I remember the $12 betting loss at Pimlico. A week or so later, a fellow Marine officer living in the same BOQ and just a few rooms from me had his wallet stolen from his room. NCIS investigated and interviewed every person who resided on that floor.  I was asked if I gambled.  I admitted I lost $12 at Pimlico the prior week.  I think that made me an immediate suspect as I was called back for a second interview, the focus being on my “gambling habit.”  However, I’m not really a gambler.  I just liked the horse races.  A large pencil drawing of the mighty Citation, which I have had for the past 72 years, hangs on the wall over me as I type this.

Good question, John. I recall reading somewhere that we recognize each other by our auras, but so much of this is beyond human comprehension, at least mine.  The same with language.  There apparently is no sound.  It is telepathic communication.

It doesn’t seem right that we should take our physical appearance into the afterlife, at least if we have the same standards of physical attractiveness there as we do here.  Why should some person who is not especially attractive in this life carry his or her appearance over to the next life if that person transitions with a high moral specific gravity?  Then again, maybe earthly standards don’t apply there. We are often told not to apply our 3-D standards to the larger life.

My father passed over in August of 1983.  Every member of my family clearly remembered his last Thanksgiving in the flesh, at my brother-in-law’s parent’s home that they had just bought.

After a few years, my brother-in-law pointed out to us that his parents did not move into their new home until after August of 1983 (but before Thanksgiving).

I think we all conflated remembering him during that Thanksgiving of 1983 with him being there.

I forget where I read it, but someone who was having hallucinations of little men around him as he was (temporarily) dying, reported later that when he slipped out of his body, he could sense his brain having those hallucinations a few feet away, while he could see and experience everything clearly and realistically from a vantage point that was free of his drugged-out brain.

Once I realized that so much of the brain is used in filtering experience, reports of afterlife-connected phenomena started to make so much more sense.  Apparently, the brain is also used to fill in gaps in our experience here on Earth, to be better able to cope with situations that arise when we don’t have all the data.  When it goes overboard filling in gaps, that’s when you get hallucinations.

Or memories of a departed father in a house he never (physically) stepped into.

Hi Mike,

It has been my experience of over 50 years attending spirit communication sessions and of others who do so that, whether in the material or spiritual world, we remember most the persons and events, etc. that are MOST meaningful to us.

Generally, details become fuzzy and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things when we become more fully ourselves in the spirit world. There are more important things there for us to learn and concentrate on.

Our priorities change to more spiritual and moral matters, as well as duties there, when we return, especially for those with more knowledge of spiritual matters.

Remember too, every time our body sleeps, our spirit is already participating in that life. We may be working on much more important projects than what we may be concerned about here on earth.

Let us not forget the moral and spiritual power of the superior spirits that can be exerted upon us, and they can help us to remember, whatever we may need and DESERVE ...if for a good purpose.

The miniscule and truly unimportant details of material life will seem small and inconsequential before the immensity of the new knowledge we can explore and learn.

Moral progress and spiritual evolution is the purpose of life and the top priority of all spirits, whether they realize it our not.

Respectfully,
Yvonne

Hi Michael,

Thanks for giving the email address to enable contact. I have been unable to post comments on your blog due to the problem that has been mentioned by various posters on there but I have been reading your articles with much interest as always and lets hope things can be remedied.

I was interested to here about you mentioning, on your lates blog post, about how you were convinced you remembered something only to find that it wasn’t the case. You might have heard of the Mandela Effect it’s where peoples memory of something is not what is currently stated about that memory. For instance the KitKat chocolate bar I have a distinct memory of it (along with many thousands of other people) having a dash between the KIt and Kat as KIt-Kat but this dash has apparently never existed. The Dick Dastardly & Mutley cartoon I remember as ‘Catch the pigeon’ and also the tune but it’s now ‘Stop the Pigeon’. Not everyone is affected and some remember one version and some another but which memory is correct? Without looking do you remember the Fruit of the Loom logo? Have a good think about what you remember it looking like. Now go and look for it by google or whatever and see what you find you might be surprised or maybe not. I know what I remember of it and it certainly isn’t what it is now but apparently it has always been like that and many thousands of people remember it the way I do. There are many Mandela effects of all sorts of different things from the names of products, films, song lyrics, car logos etc etc. Anyway just thought you might find it interesting and I think our reality has far more going on than we think afterall there’s 90% of stuff that we can’t see in our universe but it is there.

Incidentally I’m presently reading ‘Modern American Spiritualism a twenty years record of communion between earth and the world of spirits by Emma Hardinge Britten and is available on ‘Archive’ if you haven’t read it. This is a great book covering the development of Spiritualism in America in the 20 years or so after the ‘rappings of Rochester’ although there is also mention in that book of things happening a few years before the Rochester knockings. I think it was incredible just how much things took off and there were hundreds of circles and a lot more mediums than I was aware of. The amount of revulsion and antagonism to Spiritualism initially is also recorded in numerous chapters along with the various ‘Crackpot Spiritualists’ movements that were set up.I particularly found the chapter that covered the spirit rooms of Koons and Tippy where it was reputed that they were in communion with spirits that were around on the earth way before the Adam of the bible. The fact that they had very large families most of them having mediumistic abilities especially the younger members of the family meant that they had increased power to achieve many varieties of phenomena from trance through to the playing of musical instruments and direct voice and on numerous occasions many voices at the same time as well as the usual verifiable evidence given at their circles.. This book has left me quite astounded to be honest and it gives such a good description of the overall atmosphere at the time these incredile things were happening almost like a commentary of events and by written by someone who was deep in the heart of it all.

Anyway I have rambled enough but guess it makes up for all the comments I’ve been unable to make. Great article once again and look forward to your next one.

Many thanks.

Mark

Hi Michael,

How nice it was to read about your long-term investigation of your own personal memory.
I have known you for a long time and have a reasonable appreciation of the origins of your weltenschauung (sp?). Your principal sources are the utterances of mediums and scholarly research pertaining to such soothsayers.

One of my favorite sources is hypnotic regressions, including those that pertain to both present and past life recollections. Most of my academic sources are scholars from California who are experts in altered states of consciousness and parapsychology. Some of the most amazing insights have resulted from in utero consciousness, in which state the embryo recorded prenatal memories. In such circumstances the memories are pre-verbal, and thereby often refer to tactile sensations and an awareness of the emotional tone of conversations heard prenatally.

My favorite scholar and long term acquaintance is Jenny Wade who authored Changes of Mind, a book
I would commend to you. She is a trans-personal and developmental psychologist.

Hope you are well and happy.

Kindest regards,

Dave

For what it’s worth, in August 2021 I launched a documentary entitled “The Afterlife Views of Sir William and Lady Barrett”. You can see it here. It adds to what Michael has reported in his blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqHkq8hUknU&list=PLLB-82YMhiPFPKSm2Ke69aK0DKTftpvo0&index=43&t=2s

Keith P in England.

If in spirit we can’t recall what we looked like, how will people we knew recognize us and how will we recognize them?