Just this afternoon a few hours ago, I was at a nearby shop looking at some fruits to buy when I have the good fortune of overhearing two sweet and charming elderly ladies, one a Malay, the other a Chinese, both probably in their early 70’s standing beside me, the Chinese lady telling the other about her husband past life.
Initially I thought she was talking about another lady in her hubby’s life. As her story drifted minutes later, it was apparent she was talking about her husband's previous life in this world where he could recall memories of who he was. Naturally such a subject interests me greatly. I remained silently listening, the Chinese lady telling how her husband could describe places he has never been and have met people who have since died centuries before he was born. He seemed to have very vivid recollections of past history and events though he was not very educated. Uncannily, some two weeks earlier I have thought of such possibilities.
But before I write further, let me tell you what my parents told me when I was a boy in school. They advised me to study hard to secure a future for myself, and that whatever I learn shall remain with me forever, and that no one can steal that knowledge and information from my body I gained by studying hard even if I die.
They explained that money and wealth can be stolen and used up at any time, and taken away from us on death, but not those valuable information through education, the knowledge gained and memories of our life experiences. They remain in our brains or bodies forever.
Of course, I turned a deaf ear to their “fairy tales” and went my way as usual as all children do, playing tops, kites, catching small crabs in the mud and fish in the drains, not to mention fighting spiders. Naturally engaging in these activities did not help me do well in school.
In fact, I couldn’t even be bothered with studies. I only wanted to be a clerk, a general worker or just a teacher on leaving school. I have no confidence in getting even a simple school certificate to earn just a few dollars. I could never understand why my parents told me these “fairy tales” that knowledge and memories remain with us permanently as wealth when we study diligently till death, unlike money and wealth that can be stolen and left behind. It was not until I had the good fortune to enter a university that I began to understand a little better and took my study more seriously.
Those two charming ladies I accidentally met jolted the memories my parents told me decades earlier – truly were reminiscences that had not faded, especially those nostalgic experiences that flashed back like someone searching out some very old previous information stored in a computer years and years earlier.
Having said that, let me now explain very briefly in the simplest language how we store memories of events we experienced, information and knowledge we learnt and stored in schools and universities years ago.
Neuroscientists have mapped out three areas of the brain where memories are stored. They are the hippocampus, the neo-cortex and the amygdala. Our memories are inextricably associated with our individualities, memoirs of our childhood, our school and college days, our working experiences, our marriage days, remembrances of bringing up children and our reminiscences and experiences with them…all down memory lane till we retire and even till very old age.
Memories may be fleeting and short-term, and others ever-lasting till death. These are explicit memories we can consciously recall. Explicit memories can be episodic relating to an experience or, they may be semantic, meaning remembering facts and information we gained through education and learning. These memories are stored in some 90 – 120 billion neurons in the brain, depending on how intelligent we are, like a computer storing loads and loads of data in its memory banks that are easily recalled instantly at the tap of a few fingers on the keyboard. Explicit memories are affected by neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, but stored knowledge may be less so.
Scientists think that long-term episodic memories of specific events are stored outside the hippocampus. They believe these recalls are stored in the neocortex, the part of the brain that are also responsible for cognitive functions such as attention and planning. Most people can remember events they experienced decades ago. However, as they get older, dementia and memory loss may or may not manifest itself. For instance, Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia. Even though dementia affects more commonly among older individuals, it is not a part of normal aging.
Nonetheless, there are conditions resulting in total loss of memory (amnesia). There again there are many types of amnesia such as retrograde amnesia where there is loss of existing memories, anterograde amnesia, transient global amnesia, dissociative amnesia, post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) and even amnesia induced by drugs. PTA for instance may be temporary after a period of unconsciousness, such as due to a cardiac arrest.
In a cardiac arrest which is different from a heart attack or an angina-on-effort, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) followed by defibrillation needs to be instituted immediately to re-establish blood and oxygen perfusion into the brain within 5 minutes before permanent brain damage begins to set in, principally cessation of cerebral cortical function, depending on factors like body temperature, oxygen & blood sugar levels at time of the arrest.
Actual brain death, with loss of lower functions, may take longer. Memory may be lost on total brain death. That said in a nutshell let’s look at events less understood
So far, we are talking about medical events from the medical-scientific point of view. What we do not quite know is, whether or not all the memories stored in our brain throughout our lifetime have a “backup” to be transferred into our unseen soul similar to all those files and documents stored in a computer being transferred and stored into a massive gigabit thumb drive or into another hard disk of another computer before an old and aging computer begins to fail and thrown away.
The rest of a computer hardware (physical body), may be destroyed or damaged, but the software (liken a soul) may still be there and functionable unless deleted and burned. This is the question I ask myself.
Let us now look at science. Science is a systematic study of matter and energy where scientists can derive data as evidence (evidence-based data) through observation and experimentation. We call this as empirical evidence. This holds true for all physical observations in this physical world of ours. What we can see, feel, touch and be able to measure with our instruments we know is real and they exist. We may even make an indirect inference through a set of theories and hypotheses such as in theoretical and particle physics using the “Standard Model” based on what we already know as springboards. We can then extrapolate new findings theoretically using mathematical models in ways we cannot see or measure by experimentation.
However, this hypothesis can be much more complicated when we attempt to apply them in life sciences where, in the first place we cannot even define life in an acceptable way, let alone know what is it that causes something living to crawl, breathe, feeds and reproduces by itself, respond to a stimulus, among other definitions prescribed by the acronyms MRS GREN (Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition).
The disturbing question I asked myself over the last two weeks before I met these two charming ladies today, one telling the other about her husband's past life. Our question is, do we die and live again like Jesus, and if we do, are we able to recall some of the memories of our previous life?
Are our souls able to copy and remember every bit of our life experiences here in this world before we die a physical death, and carry with them as evidence of our doings here to the next world, or back again to this world upon reincarnation – the recycle of life and death events.
This is likened to a temporary RAM or a more permanent hard disk of a computer containing all the files, documents and previous photos being transferred into a new hard disk inside a new computer with a new casing (body)? That’s what I want to know
As a former research scientist myself, I am very obsessed with data, especially mathematics and statistics being my pet subjects as the queen of sciences. So, scientists may demand us showing evidence through experimentation and data? But how do we experiment and carry out measurements on spiritual entities that are not material and physical?
Science depends on evidence-based data, and these data can only be derived by measurements into units as in nanogram, milligram, gm, kg, meters, km, speed and time, direction, energy as Joules, watts, calories, or as Newtons for forces…etc. But there are also areas of existence in science such as health, life, soul, spirit and entities existing in the spiritual world that are unseen and beyond scientific measurement.
For instance, we know, and can clearly feel health and life exist, but as scientists we have no way of measuring either health or life.
They are unmeasurable entities, till even such an authoritative world body like the World Health Organization with all their elite experts and their expertise there could only define health in its Constitution as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
See this powerpoint presentation on meaning of health here:
https://docs.google.com/
(If you are unable to click or access to the above site, just copy it and paste into Google search, and click there)
WHO has never attempted to measure health using any instrument. How would it be possible to measure physical, mental, and social well-being using any scientific instrument even though we know optimal health exists only in a few individuals in a population. Not all are endowed and bestowed with optimal qualities of life for sure.
If we cannot measure health, then how are we going to measure life, into “units of life” such as expressing them in milligram, Joules or in Newton for “life force” whatever, let alone measure or just detect the presence of a soul in a living body?
Yet most people believe, if not totally know if a soul exists from the behaviour of something living inside a body, including all living creatures, and living plants too.
Some like myself are convinced these forces exist, and they are a master force that controls the chemistries of life from the way they tick specific signalling pathways without interfering with each other’s chemical corridors. Fascinating!
Read the answer to this question, and also does a soul exist here:
A Spiritual-Scientific Poser: How Can Life Rise Again from Ashes, Someone Asked?
https://scientificlogic.
The Body and Soul
Scientific Logic: Search results for dna as soul
Does a soul exist? Under “Does A Human Soul Travel Faster than the Speed of Light?”
https://scientificlogic.
Having asked myself these very disturbing questions, allow me now to show you what others scientists have to say, and those who died, only to return to tell their stories of their past memories
A replay of life: What happens in our brain when we die?
https://blog.frontiersin.org/
Life after death: Study finds thousands who remember 'past life' and details of death:
Do memories survive after death? - The Sunday Guardian Live
https://www.
Advice to parents of children who are Spontaneously Recalling Past Life Memories
Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives.
Let’s see what the Bible has to say here. But I am unsure if that was what was meant in the Bible interpreted by others? I leave this to your good judgement.
When we go to heaven will we remember our life on Earth?
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them”.
(Rev. 21:3)
“and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
(Rev. 21:4)
“Perhaps we will remember past disappointments without sorrow. Nevertheless, we can say that though memories persist into Heaven, sadness and mourning do not” (quote).
Sometimes I wonder if life, whether a plant or an animal scientists thought have gone extinct long ago resurfaced again could be their same soul re-joining the soil millions of years or centuries later to make their surprise appearances once again, and if they do, they remember their same form and structure when they were first created (not evolved as scientists believe) with their DNA being copied and remembered as they were millions of years ago like the transfer of all the files, photos and data from an discarded computer to a new one years later without any addition or deletion into the new memory disk.
I strongly believe everything we see, think, write, say or do in our lives are already copied and duplicated instantly into our souls long, long before we die just like what I think right now is already written out and transferred into my mobile phone and stored there
Here are just two examples of ancient life – one a fish, the other a plant that sprung back to life from their ‘graves’
The Coelacanth – The Fish That Came Back from Extinction
Ancient ‘miracle plant,’ believed extinct, said rediscovered in Turkey
I credit this information about this plant - silphion or silphium recently sent to me by Ms. Violet Ho, a school friend of mine
Give this a thought even if we are scientists who are obsessed by the rules and regulations and those “fixed laws” of science!
Lim ju boo
1 comment:
Thank you Dr Lim for your sharing. Yes I agree life exists beyond ours.
I often ponder on the fact that we are energy beings in a physical body and when we die our spirit or life force is integrated into the Universe. The vastness, the unseen world exist like the spectrum of light. Most parts are not seen by the naked eyes. We know what we can see. We do not know what we cannot see. Thus our knowledge is very limited and is based on what we have heard, learned and experienced.
I believe as a human being when we practice goodness, nurture humility and pursue compassion our spirit is evolving and upon death it will transform to light, expansion and rebirth in different beautiful existences or dimensions.
On the other hand if one lets one's ego take centrestage and dwell in fear, in control one's spirit then gets trapped and the energy transformed with heaviness when one passes on. And when it does take on a physical form the heavy energy can possibly be manifested in physical imbalances, like past trauma, diseases, ...
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