I am sixty years old and all my life I have carried a memory. I have had this memory since I was a small boy.

As it begins, I seem to be hovering or floating a few feet off the floor. I am spherical in shape. I know this because I can see my shape from inside. It is like a mist inside, where I am, yet I can see everything outside clearly.

I see two people holding a baby up by its ankles. They are wearing surgical masks, gowns and caps so I cannot tell if it is two doctors, or a doctor and a nurse. But it is not they who interest me, it is the baby. I begin to move towards the baby and then the memory ends.

I have always known that the sphere was me, and that the baby is the body that I now inhabit. I believe that, for some reason, I was allowed to remember what I saw, my own birth.

I had this memory before we owned a television, and even though I recognize the complexity of the human brain, I cannot bring myself to accept the idea that the brain could create such a detailed and defined scene without having prior experiences or material to draw from. I have always known the truth of what I witnessed, and I accept it as a gift, a blessing.

John Vater
johnvater@sbcglobal.net

[John's response:]
You are right. But it was not the brain which created this memory. Remember, you were inside the sphere looking at your body which was still at a distance from you. You had not yet entered the body to activate the brain. You were seeing this scene with your spiritual eyes, and your spirit is as old as God. So it is your spiritual self which has caused your current brain to remember the scene.