Adult Memories of Prebirth

Elisabeth Hallett

See Elisabeth’s site and books at Light Hearts

Today’s email brings a letter from a physician. After visiting my website devoted to pre-birth communication, he writes: “I wonder if you’re familiar with the teaching that the fetus does NOT have a nervous system suitable for either long term complex memory or any type of communications beyond the most basic protective reflexes. So I wonder how much of ‘pre-birth communications’ is wishful thinking?”

Luckily, one doesn’t have to go in a single dizzying leap from this view of the fetus to the possibility of pre-birth communication. We can go step by step, back through research uncovering evidence of mind and memory at an ever younger stage, until we arrive at the frontier of conception. And here we find cases of people who appear to remember events from before they were conceived. At this mind-stretching point, the capabilities of the fetal nervous system are no longer an issue. For example, one of my correspondents, a Brazilian gentleman, experienced an apparent pre-conception memory in his late sixties, while undergoing therapy with psychologist Renate Jost de Moraes. He describes it almost poetically.

“I saw myself floating in space, seeing my mother and father in their living room, quarreling on a subject of little importance. I could hear and understand all they said. As if they were influenced by me and by an ineffable light coming from above that illuminated us, their quarreling attitude changed and a look of love and tenderness appeared between them. Then I saw them walking side by side toward the bedroom, while I, taking the appearance of a transparent star of five points, like a bright jelly floating in space, gently conducted them to the bedroom, embracing their shoulders. Asked by the therapist why I did such a thing, I heard myself saying “to make what I do not have yet, my body!”

In an article on “The Expanding Boundaries of Memory” (1990), Dr. David Chamberlain presents examples from among his own clients. Ingrid, for instance, remembered her mother and father making love on a couch, before they were married. “The doorbell rang to announce that Grandmother and Aunt had come back from shopping when they weren’t supposed to.” The encounter sent shock waves through all present. Ingrid says, “Mother was beside herself. She knew she got pregnant. She was ashamed. She didn’t want to do it in the first place….She blamed me for her trouble.”

Such early memories, says Dr. Chamberlain, “present us with two interesting problems: 1) We run completely out of any physical material which might somehow be considered a basis for memory, and 2) We run into the very same quality of self-awareness, thoughtfulness, even virtue, that we have seen in all other memories regardless of age.” These memories have their counterpart in stories that suggest preconception communication, for there are parents who have sensed the presence of a mysterious “other” before the time when they conceived a child. “It was as if there was another person in the room,” one woman recalls. The presence can be quite impersonal, or it may impress the experiencer with definite qualities of feeling and personality. A mother writes: “I remember startling at the feeling that there was someone in the room with my husband and me. I clearly felt the impression of an adult male figure standing at our feet. I jerked up, almost expecting to see someone there. As I felt surrounded by great love, I almost felt it would be like Jesus standing there. Though I’m not religious in the traditional sense, still those figures and images from my Catholic upbringing carry much symbolism for me. To me, this feeling of Jesus was of the love of someone for us as we conceived our son.”

One couple were surprised by their simultaneous awareness of a presence. Jill describes the experience: “My fiancé and I were lying in bed a few months ago and were simply relaxing. We began kissing and were both inspired to move on to bigger and better activities. All of a sudden, I had the most beautiful, warm, and tingly feeling. I knew that I had felt a child, our child, in the room with us. I immediately stopped my fiancé and said, ‘If we make love right now, we are going to have a baby.’ I was surprised when he said, ‘I know.’ Jill adds that although it was amazing, “it wasn’t a foreign feeling at all. In fact, we both agreed that the feeling was familiar and totally unique at the same time. It was literally like a wash of a loving, powerful and familiar presence over us. From what we can determine in words, we felt very similar things and at the same time. At that moment, we chose to wait. Since then, we have talked about that spirit who visited us. We both agreed that it was a girl…”

For some potential parents, the presence conveys a sense of urgency, as if encouraging them to hurry up and conceive! Kim’s experience is especially interesting because she has a cardiac condition that makes pregnancy hazardous, and after two difficult (but successful) pregnancies, she did not intend to have any more children. However, one night she was awakened by “a very strong presence in our room.” She writes: “I described it as ‘light, joy and female.’ I woke my husband up and told him we needed to make love as this soul was there and wanted to be in our family. He told me to go back to sleep and reminded me that we couldn’t go through another pregnancy. We talked for about five minutes, me quite urgently as I had no doubt that this needed to happen. I told Gordy that if I didn’t get pregnant that night (which was not the usual time in my cycle to conceive), I would never think about having more children and I would understand this whole situation as an illusion. So we made love and we did conceive our third child that night! A daughter was born the following October, quite full of light and joy.”

A future father may be the one who gets the message, as in the following story: “One night, at two or three in the morning, Bruce awakened me and wanted to make love. He said it seemed like someone woke him up and told him to make love to me. We were both sleepy and groggy and we made love. This is so amazing to me, because we just don’t do this‹wake up in the middle of the night to make love‹never before, and not in the fourteen years since then! So it all felt sort of odd to us, but we went with it. It turns out that I conceived that night.”

Visions of light sometimes accompany the mysterious presence. Susan was told by her doctor during a routine checkup that she was at the perfect time of her cycle to conceive. She relates, “I went home that night prepared to seduce my husband and get pregnant with my child. Well, it was one of those days for him and off he went to sleep without having been ‘seduced.’ I prayed and meditated in the bed with him asleep, asking that if a spirit was out there that wanted to come into my body, please come to me. “The room was filled with miniature white lights dancing around. I was sitting up in the bed looking at the mirror of our dresser. I had a bowl of flowers on the dresser, and one particular light landed near these flowers and between candles I had lit. Then the whole end of the room became lit as if from a Hollywood Opening type of searchlight. The light started as a beam of many colors and kept going back and forth in an arc for at least an hour. Throughout the whole episode I felt such a presence in the room and just knew I would become pregnant with this being. I could feel a warmth and a playful presence. I conceived two days later. Now my daughter is nineteen months old and she IS the feeling of that spirit I saw dancing in the bedroom.”

Of course it’s easy (and probably for most people the preferred option) to dismiss each story as the product of wishful thinking. I have no doubt that wishful thinking and creative imagination do play a part in some percentage of these experiences. But what if a pre-conception memory is really what it seems to be? What if the presence in the bedroom is, in fact, a future child coming to take part in its own conception? When we take any one account seriously and try to imagine a reality that might “fit” such an experience, we confront a version of ourselves that extends beyond the limits of body and brain. It’s surprisingly difficult to get a “feel” for such a reality. Something in us seems to resist that mental shift, and keeps us stuck in our concepts. Who knows, maybe this is the very reason why events that don’t fit our standard view of reality seem to be multiplying. Maybe it’s time for our concepts to come unglued!

Announcement: I am preparing a new book on pre-birth communication, and welcome correspondence about experiences, including those of siblings, grandparents, adoptive parents, and others. Memories of pre-conception are also welcome! Your contributions to future installments of this column are invited as well. Please contact me by email at soultrek@montana.com or by snail mail: Elisabeth Hallett, Box 705, Hamilton MT 59840