Psychic Memory Transcends Time, Space and the Limits of the Present Lifetime

Because psychic memory is not restricted to a particular lifetime, it is possible for there to be a series of experiences, revelations, openings that constitute moments in the growth and development of the soul that transcend the time frame of a particular life. Just as physical memory is restricted to the one physical body, and vital energy to the one vital formation that has developed, we find that the more subtle the form of the consciousness, the more free it is to go outside the framework of the specific formation which is working at that moment. Mental thoughts, for instance, are not restricted to just one individual mind, but circulate in what Teilhard de Chardin called the ‘noosphere’. Thus, anyone able to receive those thoughts, anywhere in the world, could pick them up, express them and act upon them. This is one of the reasons why certain inventions seem to develop in totally diverse places around the same time without direct communication or connection. Thus, the mental space, and with it, the mental memory clear transcends spatial limits, and if we look carefully enough, even across spaces of time. When we come to the psychic consciousness, we find that it is neither bound by time nor by space, and may pick up streams of development that may represent some past lifetime experience, even if not directly in their own stream of consciousness.

It is easiest for a particular stream of development to tap into its past stages, which is why there may be glimpses of past circumstances, experiences, revelations that feel connected somehow to some past. But it is also possible to misinterpret what this implies when we set the mind to work trying to understand a form of consciousness that is so much subtler and wider than its own capacities.

Psychic experiences, psychic memories need not be dramatic. Awakening of the soul’s awareness happens sometimes very naturally. There are instances where an individual tells of walking in a forest of old growth trees and feeling suddenly a sense of a sacredness that touches him deep inside. This experience is so deeply felt that some cultures actually promote the idea of “forest bathing” for people to decompress from the pressure of their external lives and get in touch with their deeper spiritual truth.

The Mother observes: “These minutes of contact with the soul are often those that mark a decisive turn of our life, a forward step, a progress in consciousness, and that frequently corresponds with a crisis, an extremely intense situation when there comes a call in the whole being, a call so strong that the inner consciousness pierces the layers of unconsciousness covering it and is revealed all luminous on the surface. This call of the being, when very strong, can also bring about the descent of a divine emanation, an individuality, a divine aspect which joins with your individuality at a given moment in order to do a given work, win a battle, express one thing or another. The work done, the emanation very often withdraws. Then one may retain the memory of the circumstances that were around those minutes of revelation or inspiration: one sees again the scenery, the colour of the dress that one had put on, the colour of one’s own skin, the things about you at that time — all that is fixed indelibly with an extraordinary intensity, because the things of the ordinary life revealed themselves then in their true intensity and their true colour. The consciousness that reveals itself in you, reveals at the same time the consciousness that is in things. At times, with the help of these details you may reconstitute the age in which you lived or the action that you did, find out the country where you were; but it is very easy also to make a romance and take imagination for reality.”

“Yet you must not believe that all memories of past lives are those of moments of great crisis, of important mission or of revelation. Sometimes they are moments very simple, transparent, when an integral, a perfect harmony of the being was expressed. And that may correspond to altogether insignificant external situations.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 4 The Afterlife and Rebirth, pg. 154