Before discussing Howell Vincent's retrieval insights, I will present this consensus of Classical Channeling, Swedenborg {ES], and some NDEs and OBEs as to what is permanently or temporarily "lost" during postmortem transitions.  Somne of this material is reposted from my ADC memory thread.

CLASSICAL CHANNELING: WHAT IS LOST IN THE TRANSITION FROM THE SUMMERLAND [FOCUS 24-26] TO THE FIRST HEAVEN?

“The usual picture of life after death as a passage from one sphere to another, each more refined than the preceding one [is inaccurate]....It is more accurate to think of the process of passing through a mumber of layers of consciousness, and of man as not yet fully aware of himself as a many-levelled being, and who at these early stages is much less than his full self (Paul Beard, "Living On."
108).”

“...The former consciousness will gradually melt away as irrelevant.  This is an aspect of the putting away of childish things of which St. Paul  speaks.  To a certain degree the traveler can move up and down within these layers of consciousness.  As he progresses, more and more of his attention rests in his more refined levels.  But a part of him may still belong to a lower level of
himself which he may not yet have shaken off (Paul Beard, 110)."

WHAT IS LOST IN THE TRANSITION FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND HEAVEN?

“Now he has to get ready to shed a large part of this more familiar self....The traveller must face the...demise of the personal self, because it is becoming no longer tenable to live within its limitations...What is meant by the `personal self?’  It is the sum of all the person’s memories of the experiences, thoughts, and feelings which made up his sense of himself...during his past life on
earth...It is a kind of oblivion, but a conscious oblivion...The man leaves his desire body.  He is perfectly conscious.  He passes into a great stillness...He cannot think.  No faculty is alive, yet  he knows that he is...and his soul is filled with a wonderful peace (Paul Beard, 123, 130-31).”

Independent corroboration from Swedenborg’s astral trevels challenges the assumption that discarnate spirits have access to their full earth memory in higher planes. The  reader must ask himself how ADCs and channeling from these planes remains possible in light of this problem.  Certainly these troubling insights shed light on why our deceased loved ones so rarely contact us
in an impressively paranormal and verifiable way.   I am not trying to discredit ADCs.  But integrity requires us to come to terms with evidence that contradicts our preferred astral explorers and their comforting insights.   We must come to terms with the incoherence of the overall evidence from astral exploration and seek a fresh synthesis.   Here is a sampling os some ES quotes about the status of memory in “the World of Spirits,” a realm “below” the Heavens:

“We have two memories, an inner and an outer, or a natural one and a spiritual one. We are not aware that we have this inner memory.  How much better the inner memory is than the outer one!  The contents of our outer memory are in the world’s light, while the contents of our inner memory are in heaven’s light.  It is because of our inner memory that we can think and talk intelligently and rationally.  Absolutely everything we have thought, said, done, seen, and heard is inscribed on our inner memory....Things that have become second nature to us and part of our life and therefore have been erased from our outer memory are in our inner memory (HH #463, note b)."

After death, adult memory “stays fixed and then goes dormant; but it still serves their thinking after death as an outmost plane because their thought flows into it.  This is why the nature of this plane and the way their rational activity answers to its contents determines the nature of the individual after death (HH #345)."

".All that remain are the rational abilities that now serve as a basis for thinking and talking.   We actually take with us our entire natural memory, but its contents are not open to our inspection and do not enter into our thought as when we were living in this world...To the extent that our spirit has become rational by means of our insights and learning in this world, we are rational after
our departure from the body (HH #355).”
   
“The reason our outer memory goes dormant as far as material things are concerned is that they cannot be recreated.  Spirits and angels [= discarnate people] actually talk from the affections and consequent thoughts of their minds, so they cannot utter anything that does not square with these...I have talked with any number of people who were regarded as learned in the world
because of their knowledge of such ancient languages as Hebrew and Greek and Latin, but had not developed their rational functioning by means of the things that were written in thos  languages. Some of them seemed as simple as people who did not know anything about those languages; some of them seemed dense, though there still remained a pride as though they were
wiser than other people (HH #464).”

“I have also talked with some people who had believed in the world that wisdom depends on how much we have in our memory and who have therefore filled their memories to bursting.  They talked almost exclusively from those items, which meant that they were not talking for themselves, but for others; and they had not developed any rational functioning by means of these
matters of memory.   Some of them were dense, some silly, with no grasp of truth whatever (HH #464).”

“Our rational faculty is like a garden or flower bed, like newly tilled land.  Our memory is the soil, information and experiential learning are the seeds, while heaven’s light and warmth make them productive...There is no germination unless heaven’s light, which is divine truth, and heaven’s warmth, which is divine love, are let in.  They are the only source of rationality (HH #464).”   

“One particular spirit lamented the fact that he could not remember much of what he had known during his physical life.  He was grieving over the pleasure he had lost because it had been his chief delight.  He was told, though, that he had not lost anything at all and that he knew absolutely everything.  In the world where he was now living, he was not allowed to retrieve things like that.
It should satisfy him that he could now think and talk much better and more perfectly without immersing his rational functioning in dense clouds, in material and physical concerns, the way he had before, in concerns that were useless in the kingdom he had now reached (HH #465).”

“Since the natural objects that reside in our memory cannot be reproduced in a spiritual world, they become dormant the way they do when we are not thinking about them.  Even so, they can be reproduced when it so pleases the Lord (HH #461).” 

Consider, then, how George Ritchie's NDE and ES's astral insights challenge common New Age perspectives about the ease of contacting our deceased loved ones in higher planes and finding them with their earth memories intact.  Christ takes Ritchie on a tour of an astral educational plane below Heaven:

“WHATEVER ELSE THESE PEOPLE MIGHT BE, THEY APPEARED UTTERLY AND
SUPREMELY SELF-FORGETFUL--ABSORBED IN SOME VAST PURPOSE BEYOND
THEMSELVES.  Through open doors I glimpsed enormous rooms filled with complex equipment.  In several of the rooms hooded figures bent over intricate charts and diagrams, or sat at the controls of elaborate consoles flickering with lights....I felt that some vast experiment was being pursued, perhaps dozens and dozens of such experiments [69-70] .”

Ritche's NDE description seems incompatible with the chatty ease with which mediums interrupt the lives of discarnates and seek confirmation from their memories of their earthly lives.  His description hints at the insight thst the inhabitants of this educational plane have an altered state of consciousness that cuts them off from their normal earthly memories.  His reports cohere nicely
with Robert Bruce’s OBE insights into memory problems created by shifts in focus from one astral plane to another. 

In "Astral Dynamics." OBE adept, Robert Bruce, claims to have discovered a reason for this  troublesome memory loss:

“When present, the base level.. replaces any higher levels of consciousness and overwrites any memories gained independently by those levels of consciousness on higher planes.  ..The higher level memories still exist after the event, but they are driven into inaccessible levels of the subconsicious mind and memory.  The overall effect is that a projection continues from that moment on as if it had just started.  ...The lowest level of consciousness always replaces and overwrites any higher level of consciusness and effectively wipes out all trace of its memories at the moment of reintegration (75).”.

‘Memories from higher levels of consciousness may not even be in sync with what the physical brain is capable of recognizing and storing as viable memories. ...The only parts of high-level experiences that are storable as recallable memories are those parts the physical brain is capable of recognizng and converting inot base-level format...The above factor accounts for the...symbols, images, and feelings that are sometimes remembered after high-lveel OBEsand dreams, instead of more recognziable OBE and dream memories.  This, if true, goes a long way toward explaining the...metaphorical nature of prophetic OBEs, visions, and dreams, and why these areso difficult to
understand and interpret (77).”

This theory fits well with Robert’s observations about the memory problems of discarnate spirits who "descend” to the Healing Center to be with their loved ones.  In my view the need for such a “descent” already implies the imadequacy of the implied Monroe reduction of “Heaven” to Focus
27.  On the other hand, these descending spirits must have some ongoing memory contact with their loved ones on Earth.  Otherwise, why would the former be prompted to descend for a visit?   And how elsde do they discover the new arrival of their loved ones to the Healing Center?   Robert’s OBE observations about spirits descending to the Healing Center seem most significant.  He reports:

“Many of the people/ spirits I have met there seem to be quite real.  All are visiting or waiting for a patient in the hospital...Spirits I have spoken to in this situation do not seem to be aware of the length of time that has elapsed since they passed over, or of many details concerning the afterlife since that  time. MEMORIES OF THEIR EARTHLY LIFE ALSO SEEM VAGUE, MUCH LIKE HOW A HALF-FORGOTTEN DREAM IS REMEMBERED  BY A LIVING PERSON."

“Many spirits only seem to be aware of their present reality, that of being in only the hospital scenario for an indeterminate length of  time.  Some spirits, however, do have vague memories of their earthly life, and of coming from other dimensional areas; but have so far given only very sketchy details.  Often they will speak of a warm, brightly-lit, interesting place where they have
many friends and loved ones, but with little more details than this.  The most common response I get from asking spirits what it’s like where they come from is: `It’s really lovely there and everyone is so nice.  I don’t understand this.  I’m very sorry.  I know it well and can picture it in my head, but I just can’t describe it to you.’”

Evidently, descending spirits encounter the same memory problems that earthly astral explorers do upon returning from higher astral planes.   So here is my queston for readers?  Are not these memory problems inconsistent with ADCs from higher planes and especially with the chatty ease mediums have in channeling deceased loved ones on demand from higher planes?   Perhaps, we
need a mew model for understanding ADC and channled contacts.  Perhaps, the mmories of discarnatel loved ones can be tapped and experienced as direct communication, when in fact these loved ones are unaware of the contact.   

Don

Don:

Does this mean if a person dies and tries to share memories with a former beloved grand parent, his or her grand parent won't be able to remember he or she? Would the grand parent ask: "Who in heaven are you? We don't remember nuttin around here? What's this World you keep talking about? What have you been smoking? Smoking? What's smoking? Man I'm losing it. My memory doesn't work like it used to. Used to? What do I mean by used to?"

And this is how it goes in the land of dementia.

Or on the other hand  , perhaps spirits take care of memories in a manner that supports their spiritual development. Their earth based memories are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

You wrote the below about George Ritchie:
'WHATEVER ELSE THESE PEOPLE MIGHT BE, THEY APPEARED UTTERLY AND SUPREMELY SELF-FORGETFUL--ABSORBED IN SOME VAST PURPOSE BEYOND THEMSELVES."

I read George Ritchies's book and didn't get the same impression. "Forgetul" doesn't mean they couldn't remember their former lives as humans. It simply means that they were completely engrossed in their work. People in the physical can do the same thing when they really dedicate themselves to something. Certainly they can remember about the rest of their lives when they change their focus of attention. The fact of how you're using the above statement as a basis for your argument makes me wonder how objective you're being about this issue.

DocM wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 6:03pm:

The memory loss theory is B.S. I agree, with you Matthew..

[Duh Bears:] "The memory loss theory is B.S. I agree, with you Matthew."

It seems like most of yoiur replies are mindless echoes of views that reinforce your prejudices.  The consensus of Swedenborg's astral insights, Classical Channeling, Robert Bruce's OBEs, and some NDEs will not be routed by your dngmatic posturing.   But let's press you to actually frame an orignal thought.
Why are ADCs so rare are the first year of a loved one's passing?  

Don

Don,

Berserk wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 7:57pm:


  I don't see how the lack of repeated and unmistakable communication from a deceased person to an earthy loved one demonstrates anything that could be described as "one of the best arguments AGAINST an afterlife."  Lack of such communication only demonstrates that one of the two people involved in such communication, the dead person OR the physically living person, is for some reason unable to participate, but, it doesn't "prove" which of the two participants lost the ability.  It could be as simple as something about our existence within physical reality makes it extremely difficult for us to be aware of the deceased person's attempt to communicate.   What could that thing be?

Perhaps someone on the other side of the Afterlife/No Afterlife debate could say:

If incarnate souls retain the same consciousness and sensibilities that they had when they existed in the Afterlife/Prelife, they would repeatedly and unmistakably communicate with their departed loved ones.   Their failure to do so is one of the best arguments AGAINST the possibility of maintaining the same consciousness and sensibilities during incarnation within physical reality --unless they are prevented from doing so by loss of memory (temporary or permenant), by a limited astral consciousness that prevents such contacts, by a lack of knowledge about how to make such a contact, or by strong spirit teaching that such contact is ill-advised.  

Maybe it is we the physically living who have lost something at birth Here?  

Maybe which hypothesis we side with says more about how our own beliefs color and distort the meaning of whatever the evidence might prove?  

Bruce

Don:

You make it sound like they would have no choice in the manner. If you crossed over would you continually try to make contact with the people you used to know, or would you allow them to live their lives while you continued with your own?

Even when they do try to make contact not everybody is able to communicate with them. I didn't always have the ability. It wasn''t until my energetic system and chakras were developed  that I obtained the ability.  

Does Flushing New York mean anything to you? These words might be a random occurence.

Berserk wrote on Apr 19^th, 2007 at 7:57pm:

Oh yes - I forgot to add, that Bruce' Book Five is available. It tells you how to find the barn.

My copy was even autographed!

d

I Just now was going to post up an article somewhat related to this topic I'm reading here. thought it was more than coincidence. I'll call it Emotions and DNA. no, maybe I should call it spiritualized DNA.
this idea to bring the logic of biological science to marry the emotional spiritalized human to see this is a concept of connections of Pantheism. (my new word I have to look up)

love, alysia