[kirklancaster]

I have witnessed my own children when they were very young babies, and now my granddaughter, having 'Nightmares'.

It is accepted by the experts that children can have 'Night Terrors' from the age of one month, and that by the age of one year old, they can have 'Nightmares'.

I do not agree with their opinion on the difference between these two 'experiences', but for the purpose of this post, I will accept that the two mean different things.

My point is this; a baby who is but a few month's old has no life experience, no 'memories', and most certainly - though they are 'conscious' - are bereft of knowledge and not even 'aware' of their environment in the true sense of the word.

What is it then, that can cause a two month's old baby to scream or cry out and wake it from a deep sleep and leave it upset and frightened with heart racing and often sweat soaked - all the symptoms of having experienced a Nightmare.

I do not accept for one moment the 'experts' view that such 'Night Terrors' are caused by a conflict between the body's 'Drive' to sleep and its 'Drive' to wake – a condition which they call a 'Confusional Event' – or are probably caused by 'disorientation due to incomplete awakening'.

In my opinion – and some notable scientists – the baby is experiencing a nightmare.

This being so, I ask; what event, person or entity can so frighten a baby who has no life experience or awareness, and therefore NONE of it's own stored MEMORIES of such things?

A baby is hardly reliving REAL memories – like the time it was chased through a town centre by a mob of knife-wielding louts, or remembering in a deep sleep cycle, the time that Great Aunt Maude nearly caught it stealing a fiver from her handbag.

Nor has it the ABILITY or MEANS to imagine any 'Nightmare Scenario', when even the most vividly and bizarrely convoluted of imagined nightmares are either dependent upon the memories of REAL direct experiences (or 'autobiographic episodic memories') or indirect acquired knowledge for their existence.

So here we have a baby whose mind is a virtual 'Blank Canvas' experiencing SOMETHING which gives it nightmares.

There can be only be two possible explanations for such an enigma – Reincarnation or perhaps the baby's mind is unconsciously accessing SOMEONE ELSE'S memories.

As crazy as both the above may seem to my dear friend LT and some others on here, the evidence for Reincarnation is now so extensive that it cannot be easily dismissed, and there is also a growing field of scientific thought – which experimental conclusions support – that actual Memory does not simply reside within the brain, but is, instead, rather stored OUTSIDE of it in some type of 'electro magnetic field'.

Extensive research into 'Memory' has been carried out independently by numerous scientists over many decades, and some of the findings are surprising;

Celebrated psychologist and behaviourist,*Karl Lashley – one of the world's most respected 'Brain' experts – carried out an experiment on 'Lab Rats' in which he first taught the rats tricks before removing half of their brains.

The rats REMEMBERED the tricks.

Lashley then used another set of rats which he taught the same tricks to before removing the opposite hemisphere of the brain to the first set.

The rats STILL remembered the tricks.

It seems, that if memory is truly housed within the brain, then where exactly – when memory is still extant when the complete brain had been removed – is a great mystery.

I first came across controversial Biologist, Researcher, and Author, Rupert Sheldrake when I was a young 'dreamer' searching religion and philosophy for 'answers' to the 'meaning of life', and he actually proposed certain theories which not only made sense to me, but also 'crystallised' some of my own 'scrambed' thoughts.

Sheldrake has a theory – which he calls 'Morphic Resonance' – that memory need not be stored specifically or exclusively within the brain, but rather in a type of 'Morphogenic Field' (similar to Kirlian Light Auras) which surrounds an organism (the body AND brain in humans) and that each individual member of a species (not just humans or animal life) inherits a 'collective' memory from 'past members' of the species' who then adds his contribution to this collective memory through living his life, which is then 'drawn upon' by other members of the species in the future.

I have neither the time or inclination to expound upon this here, but I recommend giving Sheldrake a good read for those interested in this fascinating subject.

Anyway, Sheldrake's theories loosely parallel my own thoughts, and goes some way to explaining why people have very real 'memories' which are NOT their own, as well as the phenomena of 'ghosts' – if you think about it.

It can also explain why babies with no 'episodic memories' of their own can have nightmares.

Reincarnation is another post.