Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Thursday, October 10, 2013, 12:15 (4061 days ago)

I came across this article a couple of days ago on the Internet, but now I can't find the reference. I'm reproducing it in its entirety, but what interest me particularly are the stories at the end. It turns out there are lots of these incidents happening now. They raise huge questions over the nature of identity, which we are looking at again under "Emergence". -
"Transplant Phenomena Suggests Cellular Memory 
Ever since doctors in Boston successfully transplanted a living human kidney in 1954, and Dr. Christian Bernard replaced a human heart in South Africa in 1967, there has been a boom in the business of organ transplants.
 
While it is not the perfect solution to solving worn out body parts, the business of transplanting hearts, livers, kidneys, lungs, eyes and even fingers has become big business, with over 500,000 successful cases worldwide.
 
And as more and more patients recover from these surgical procedures, a strange thing has been happening. Some report having foreign memories, eerie new personal preferences and even unexplained emerging talents.
 
The Discovery Health Channel recently explored this occurrence in a program titled "Transplanting Memories." In the show various experts explained why they believe cellular memories are transplanted with organs.
 
Dr. Candace Pert, a professor at Georgetown University, said she believes the mind is not just in the brain, but also exists throughout the body. This school of thought could explain such strange transplant experiences.
 
"The mind and body communicate with each other through chemicals known as peptides," she said. "These peptides are found in the brain as well as in the stomach, muscles and all of our major organs. I believe that memory can be accessed anywhere in the peptide/receptor network. For instance, a memory associated with food may be linked to the pancreas or liver, and such associations can be transplanted from one person to another."
 
Indeed, a German neurologist, Leopold Auerbach, discovered over 100 years ago that a complex network of nerve cells, very like those of the human brain, exists in the intestine.
 
Professor Wolfgang Prinz, of the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich, recently wrote about this "second brain" in Geo, a German science magazine.
 
Prinz said the digestive track is made up of a knot of about 100 billion brain nerve cells, more than found in the spinal cord. The article suggested the cells may save information on physical reactions to mental processes and give out signals to influence later decisions. It may also be involved in emotional reactions to events.
 
Prinz joked that the discovery gives a new twist to the old phrase "gut reaction."
 
"People often follow their gut reactions without even knowing why, its only later that they come up with the logical reason for acting the way they did. But we now believe that there is a lot more to gut feelings than was previously believed," Prinz wrote. He said he thinks the stomach network may be the source for unconscious, or possibly even subconscious decisions.
 
The television show, Transplanting Memories, recorded a variety of stories in which cellular memory altered lives.
 
In one amazing story, an eight-year-old girl who received the heart of a murdered 10-year-old, began having nightmares in which she relived the crime. Her dreams helped police solve the murder.
 
In another story, a shy, reserved woman has vivid dreams about the donor, even though she never met this person. She also develops a more assertive personality. A third heart recipient strangely picks up his donor's musical taste.
 
Research with the human cell has taken science on molecular adventures and beyond into the DNA, which is, in effect, the Cabalistic Tree of Life. The discovery is that each individual holds within every cell a memory of ancestral history that reaches back to his or her origins.
 
From all indications, the cells communicate with one another, passing new memories on throughout the body when foreign cells are adhered to the body. This might explain why some humans have vivid memories of past lives, especially when under hypnosis, that were never lived. They are reacting to cellular memory, not reincarnation."