Babies Are Cosmic: Signs of Their Secret Intelligence

Babies Are Cosmic

Signs of Their Secret Intelligence

Elizabeth Carman and Neil J. Carman, PhD

This book is an informational guide.

Approaches and techniques described herein are meant to supplement and not to replace medical advice or otherwise. The authors disclaim responsibility and shall have no liability for any damages, loss, injury, or liability whatsoever suffered as a result of the reader’s reliance on the information contained in this book.

Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Carman and Neil Carman, PhD.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the written permission of the publisher. For information, contact BabiesAreCosmic.com.

Material in this book is derived from interviews and personal communications with mothers, doctors, and therapists except where attributions are listed for the reference materials.

Credits

Illustrations by Paul James Morehead, Jr.

Illustration (Ch 1) Radhika Hersey

Editorial Reviews by Jan Bocskay, Elisabeth Hallett, Hayley, Judy Kew, Nina Lary, Dr. Jeane Rhodes, Barbara Rivera, Hormuz Siodia, Krystal Trammell, Laura Uplinger

Layout by Noémi Zillmann

Table of Contents

Babies Are Cosmic

Foreword

Real-World Babies Make Textbook Babies Obsolete

About the Authors

Chapter 1 - Babies Display Signs of Secret Intelligence

5 Types of Children’s Memory

Babies as Myth Busters

Chapter 2 - Children of the Cosmic Cradle

Spiritual Sunshine from Yanni

My Brother Is Waiting in Heaven

Isabella’s Messages

Indicators of Children’s Memories

Chapter 3 - Children as Spiritual Beings

Mommy’s Broken Back

Noah’s Spiritual Gifts

Baby Seed Land

Moon Memories

Memories of Heavenly Realms

Brothers Remember Heaven

Prebirth Planning

Starting to Forget

Homesick for the Souls’ Room

Respecting Children as Spiritual Beings

Chapter 4 - Memories of Selecting Parents

I Loved You Before I Was Born

I Forgot to Say Goodbye to God

Are There Cosmic Computers in Heaven?

My Two Mothers

Valentine’s Day Baby

Children Love Their Mothers’ Colors

I Zipped Down the Portal to Birth

Telepathic Twins Chose Parents

Together Again

Cosmic Law of Affinity

Children Redefine Early Parenting

Chapter 5 - Children Spark Healing in Mothers

Angel Sent from Heaven

I Want to Be Her Baby

Healing Words for Mom

Unexpected Pregnancy at 40

Deep Spiritual Connection

I Came to Make a Difference

Waiting Seven Years for My Baby

The Spirit Lives, the Body Dies

Chapter 6 - Motherhood: Timing Is Everything

I Helped You and Dad Meet

You Have a Little Boy and Girl

When Mom Was a Little Girl

Grandma Evelyn

Waiting for Birth

Siblings Plan Birth Order

Chapter 7 - Travelers from the Light

Ari’s NDE

Ten-Year-Old Is an Old Soul

Parallels between NDEs and Before-Conception Experiences

I Am Fresh from the Light

Chapter 8 - Babies Teach Doctors I Am a Conscious Being

Pioneer in Infant Memory Research

Secret Life of the Unborn Child

Myths about Babies from Conception to Birth

Obstetrician Researches Children’s Memories

First Large Study on Children’s Memories

What Is a Baby?

Interface of Flesh and Spirit

Chapter 9 - Prenatal Memories of Inside and Outside the Womb

Doctors Should Not Play God

Time Travel in the Womb

Visits to Mummy in Heaven

Womb Memories

Untrained Experts in Telepathy

Lost Twin

Chapter 10 - Signs of Prenatal Intelligence

1. Personality and Behavioral Traits

2. Listening and Learning

3. Pain Sensing

4. Sensitivity to Diet and Chemical Exposure

Consciousness Matters Most — Size Matters Not

Chapter 11 - The Psyche of the Unborn Child

Psychic Adults — Psychic Prenates

1. Unborn Babies See Inside the Womb

2. Unborn Babies See Outside the Womb

3. Telepathy

4. Love Sensing in the Womb

Love is the Most Crucial Curriculum

Chapter 12 - Doctors Talking to Babies Is Revolutionary

Dolto’s Intuitive Genius: We Arrive as Conscious Babies

Talking to Babies Who Need Healing

Babies Remember Everything

Talking to Babies During Birth

Healing a Twin with Words

Do Babies Worry?

Ready Or Not, Here I Come

Falling in Love Before Birth

Nurturing the Psychic Umbilical Cord

Enhanced Prenatal Education

Smiling Newborns

Inspiring Virtue in the Womb

World’s Oldest Prenatal Research Center

The Peaceful Womb

Healing and Preventing Trauma

Chapter 13 - Babies Remember Birth

Cesarean Birth Memories: A Veridical Case

I Came Through a Light into Your Belly

Pins and Needles, Cold and Blinding

I Pushed to Come Out

Memories of C-Section Birth

Birth Memory Vignettes

Chapter 14 - Signs of Secret Intelligence of Newborns

Participating in Birth

Meeting Mom at Birth

Listening, Analyzing, and Responding at Birth

Smiling Newborns

The Newborn’s Breast Crawl

Chapter 15 - Love Sensing at Birth

The Sacred Hour

Rescuing Hugs

More Pain Sensitive than Adults

Remembering Pain

Empathy is Key to Healing

Greater Love Ability

Chapter 16 - Conception Memories Are Rare

Sperm Race

I Won!

Ayano’s Egg, Sperm, and Uterus Memories

Finding the Egg

Memories of Embryological Development

Whoosh!

Conception and Before

Are Children’s IVF Memories Real?

Babies’ Love Sensing and Conception

Chapter 17 - What Babies Remember When They Grow Up

Who Fell into the Wedding Cake?

Psychology 100

Prenatal Memories Inspired a Surprise Trip

Memories of a Nine-Month Old

Teen Encounters Religious Skepticism

Love on the Beach of Goddess Aphrodite

The Universe Has a Glass Ceiling

Prebirth Memories and Phobias

Spiritual Beings in Tiny Bodies

Chapter 18 - Children’s Memories of Birth Loss and Healing

I Came to Cleanse Your Heart

Babies Opt Out

Memories of Birth Loss

Mothers Opt Out

You Can’t Come In Right Now

I Came to Heal

My Name Is Om

The Power of Love

Babies Connect after Birth Loss

Mom, Look at My Hands!

Spirit Is Eternal, Earthly Life Is Temporary

Chapter 19 - Return from Heaven

JennyBugs

Captain Oatmeal

Baked Potato Soup

Nanna Came Back

You Were My Baby

Big Pete

Adoption and a Past-Life Connection

Granny’s Nine Brothers

Engagement Ring

Memories of Two-Year Olds

Chapter 20 - The Only Life that Matters

Mom, Where Is My Coffee?

I Don’t Like Avocadoes

Three Precocious Children

My Other Mommy

Did You Know that I Was a Chinese Rice Farmer?

Graceland

Now Is All There Is

Chapter 21 - Doorway to the Next Life

We Are All the Same on the Inside

Double Birthmark

Water Make Me Die

Memories of a Ten-Month-Old Child

Clemmie

Remembering My Past-Life Death

Friendship Rekindled

Leaving One House For Another

Chapter 22 - Babies Appear Before Conception

Maternal Intuition of a Zulu Warrior

Prebirth Contact at the Adriatic Sea

Why Our Daughter Picked Us

A Father’s Vision

Knocking on the Door to Motherhood

Preparing Mom for an Undisturbed Birth

Cosmic Orgasm

Chapter 23 - Mother-Baby Love Thought Channel

Pregnancy as a Love Encounter

The Psychic Link Between Mother and Baby

Motherly Guides

Sleep Talk

Love Thought Communication

Preparing for Preemie Sister

Baby Rozalyn

Bibliography

Reviews for Babies Are Cosmic

Endnotes

Foreword

A DEEP-SEATED SENSE OF SELF, integrity, and compassion imbue the strength and intelligence of adults who were warmly welcomed at the start of their arrival on Earth.

Carl Jung suggested that psychology will greatly evolve when it begins addressing the times preceding birth.¹ Throughout the pages of this book echoes a invitation to listen to the intelligence of babies and honor their altruism and joy at loving us. Elizabeth and Neil’s approach to these dimensions illumines an essential resource for our terrestrial existence: the love our children bring to us. Even before being born, they see us, know who we are, and want to help us.

It happens to all of us: we start from the union of two cells, and in 10 moon’s time, the cells multiply into trillions as a myriad of events usher us into babyhood. To study embryogenesis is to enter a land of wonderment: we meet cellular intelligence at its prime, orchestrating exquisite, decisive, and interactive events so that one day a child can be listening to a story, singing a song, or climbing a tree.

And what presides at this prodigious accomplishment? Does consciousness take part? Is the memory of it lost to oblivion and never to be retrieved? Where were we prior to being conceived? These dynamics are addressed in Babies Are Cosmic.

Much is to be harvested from understanding what is at play during our prebirth experiences. Throughout the ages, ruling classes often saw marriage as an advantageous union between families. Women bore children in submission to strict mores, often secluded and fraught with anguish at the thought of dying in labor, dreading their baby being the wrong sex or not surviving infancy. They seldom surrendered to the joys of being with child. After giving birth, they weren’t supposed to take care of their little ones, who were often entrusted to wet-nurses who breastfed and looked after them into toddlerhood. These children did grow up to be well-educated, but were quite illiterate in the languages of self-esteem, intimacy, empathy, and reverence for life. No wonder history depicts powerful leaders striving to excel at war and domination. Their need to exploit, coerce, and enslave in order to assert their superiority reveals an abysmal insecurity.

Fostering a secure attachment with one’s children is finally starting to shape our Western parenting values. I hope couples will explore this royal avenue to communion. The day we welcome this awareness is the day we embark on a more fraternal, joyous, and fruitful trajectory.

— Laura Uplinger

international proponent of

prebirth parenting and conscious conception

What Babies Are Teaching Us: Introduction

An infant arrives fresh from the spiritual realms and depends on his parents to honor and actively nurture his virtuous soul nature from the beginning of his life.¹

— CARISTA LUMINARE-ROSEN, PHD

WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A REVOLUTION in understanding unborn babies and newborns — their extraordinary memories, broad sentience, love sensing, and other amazing abilities. These are examples of what we call the secret intelligence of babies. We invite parents to ask, Does our baby harbor a previously unrecognized intelligence? Answering this question is the primary reason for writing Babies Are Cosmic.

Over 100 years ago, one of the pioneers of modern psychology William James theorized the flowering of consciousness, the consciousness that is becoming evident even in babies. In the first American textbook on psychology Varieties of Religious Experience (1890), James wrote about unexplored areas of human potential that have continued to remain a blind spot in psychology.

Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite discarded.²

This unrecognized potential that William James theorized is what parents are seeing in babies. Others are seeing this, too. Leaders in an ongoing global paradigm shift that began five decades ago include: Françoise Dolto, MD; David Chamberlain, PhD; Thomas Verny, MD; and Akira Ikegawa, MD, PhD, among others. In the USA, Drs. Verny and Chamberlain co-founded the American Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Association and Health (APPPAH) in 1983 to help unravel the riddle of a baby’s secret intelligence. APPPAH is one of two professional organizations dedicated to research and education in pre- and perinatal psychology and medicine. The twin European organization of APPPAH is ISPPPM.³

Our previous investigations resulted in two books on the extent of consciousness before birth: Cosmic Cradle: Spiritual Dimensions of Life before Birth (2013) and Cosmic Cradle: Souls Waiting in the Wings for Birth (1999). These books focus on.

Adults (and a few children) with an extraordinary consciousness who have spontaneous lifelong memories of their journey from the spiritual world to conception, life in the womb, and birth itself.

Parents who report subtle contacts with their unborn children via dreams, visions, an inner voice, feeling the child’s presence, telepathy, and a host of other announcing signs. These mysterious communications occur before or after conception and establish a new parent-child relationship.

Prebirth reports collected from philosophical, religious, ethnological, and anthropological sources indicating a universal phenomenon interconnecting cultures and spanning centuries.

Babies Are Cosmic, our third book, was inspired by new stories and mounting evidence. Parents submitted thousands of comments on our Facebook page about children’s memories that aren’t found in textbooks: birth, womb, conception, preconception, and past-life memories. These firsthand reports indicate that real-world babies, known by their mothers for their essence and character, are different from the textbook babies of academic psychology and medicine. Interviews with parents were conducted between 2013 and 2018.

Real-World Babies Make Textbook Babies Obsolete

In a world where science is dominated by empiricism and cut-and-dried behaviorism, our challenge has been to present evidence of the secret intelligence of babies. To do so, we used a two-pronged approach:

testimonials of children’s 5 types of memory and

scientific evidence from psychology and medicine.

As you will discover, children naturally recall and articulate accurate, or veridical (the correct comprehension of what is authentic and real), memories of preconception, conception, womb, birth, and past-life.⁴ The 5 types of memories are poorly recognized around the world. As revealed in Babies Are Cosmic, the theory that babies don’t remember anything before the age of 3 is not based on science.

Anecdotal data are especially precious because they are human experience, pointing the way for fruitful exploration and warning us of realities 10 or 20 years before any confirmation we can hope to get from formal experiments.⁵

— Dr. David Chamberlain

Some of the earliest reports of children’s memories come from Thomas Verny, MD,⁶ (1981); David Chamberlain, PhD, (1988); and Ian Stevenson, MD. The largest surveys involving thousands of children have taken place in Japan by Akira Ikegawa, MD, PhD, (2005) and Masayuki Ohkado, PhD, (2014).

Children, in certain cases, retain their deep memories into adulthood. Twenty-five adults serve as examples. As with children’s memories, our objective was to investigate natural, unprompted recollections retained in full consciousness, and not memories elicited via hypnosis, regression, or other means.

Children’s memories are further supported by experimental results and clinical findings from birth psychology, developmental psychology, and medicine. Pioneers paving the way for cultural, medical, and social acceptance of the idea that babies are conscious beings from conception to birth and even before include: Françoise Dolto, MD; Thomas Verny, MD; David Chamberlain, PhD; Carolyn Rovee-Collier, PhD; Akira Ikegawa, MD, PhD; Marshall Klaus, MD; Phyllis Klaus, CSW; William Emerson, PhD; Marcy Axness, PhD; Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD; Raymond Castellino, DC; Graham Farrant, MD; Mary Jackson, RN, LM, RCST; Rima Laibow, MD; Frederick Leboyer, MD; Carista Luminare-Rosen, PhD; Wendy Anne McCarty, PhD, RN; Gladys McGarey, MD; Beatriz Manrique, PhD; Olivier Marc, PhD; Varenka Marc, PhD; Yoshiharu Morimoto, MD, PhD; Masayuki Ohkado, PhD; Gerhard Schroth, MD; Frederick Wirth, MD; Rebeccah Slater, PhD; Nitika Sobti, MD; Myriam Szejer, MD; Ian Stevenson, MD; Jim Tucker, MD; Karlton Terry, MSW; and Jenny Wade, PhD.

Babies Are Cosmic offers new perspectives on the way we look at unborn children, pregnant women, newborns, unseen helpers, and even ourselves. In essence, we need to be much kinder to babies because, as we will explore, every baby is no less a human being than any adult. They come into this world sentient and already deserving of love and tender care. When babies are birthed into this world consciously, safely, and naturally, with love and compassion, they will express more secret intelligence right from birth rather than expressing negative imprints of a stressful prenatal or birth experience. Research presented in this book may very well reinvent the parent-child relationship and foster a more compassionate world.

Babies have a lot to teach us. Babies Are Cosmic is an invitation to learn more about their multidimensional nature. If every incoming baby is welcomed as an infinite spirit embarking upon a sacred journey, life here on earth will shift from mundane to spiritual.

A summary of each chapter follows.

5 types of memories: preconception (ch. 2–7); womb (ch. 9); birth (ch. 13); conception (ch. 16); adult (ch. 17); birth loss (ch. 18); past-life (ch. 19, 20, 21).

Research and supporting memories: ch. 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15.

Telepathy and love sensing: ch. 11, 12, 15, 16, 22, 23.

About the Authors

Preparation for writing Babies Are Cosmic came from studies in major universities where we taught and researched. The field of consciousness has captured our interest for more than 50 years, and we’ve pursued it through scientific and personal inquiry. Our university studies came in the 1960s–1970s when consciousness was emerging as a new field of investigation from physics to humanistic psychology, to physiology, to neurobiology, and sociology. Science was the validating right hand, and inner growth was the insightful left hand. Our curiosity about consciousness was stimulated by new evidence from people who cultivated increased intelligence and inner peace. Based on laboratory studies, these improvements did not rely on drugs or hypnosis, but rather on a daily meditation practice. Transcendental states of consciousness yielding more creativity, less stress, and a more sublime happiness were identified beyond the basic states of waking, sleeping, and dreaming.

Elizabeth’s background includes a BA in psychology and an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies. In the 1970s, she worked with minority families in Chicago and did social service work in adoption and foster care. She later spent years teaching inner development courses and meditation. Prebirth research began in 1989 when Elizabeth conducted interviews with mothers who were more in touch with their intuition. In 2002, Elizabeth received an honorary PhD for her research published in Cosmic Cradle: Souls Waiting in the Wings for Birth.

Neil’s love of nature led him to obtain advanced degrees including a doctorate in the biological sciences. After a research position opened his eyes to global pollution, he was led to pursue an environmental career. He taught in the biological sciences and also created a new university course on the growing evidence of how meditation techniques unfold our consciousness beyond what is generally recognized.⁷

CHAPTER 1

Babies Display Signs of Secret Intelligence

Memories, Sentience, and Abilities

Search diligently for intelligence. Expect intelligence. Celebrate intelligence wherever you find it — the intelligence that is in us, and in our babies; the intelligence that we are.¹

— DR. DAVID CHAMBERLAIN

BABIES ARE NOT BORN AS BLANK SLATES, as we once thought, and they want us to know their true intelligence hidden behind their blissful giggles and sparkling eyes. Babies enter life with a full slate of consciousness, as aware, thinking beings capable of memory and learning, disguised with tiny bodies and lack of speech. And not only are babies fully aware at birth, but they are also conscious before birth. This more complex consciousness demands a new standard of medical care that includes the power of love.

The blank-slate theory of babies, which suggests that they come into the world with no built-in mental content, is a long-debated topic. This idea is known as tabula rasa, Latin for blank slate, coined and popularized by the western philosopher John Locke (1690). Today, over 300 years later, his medieval theory still survives. On top of that theory, in 1916, Freud added a new twist — infantile amnesia, the inability to retrieve memories from infancy and childhood — a theory that persists today.

New findings about babies challenge these long-held theories still prevalent in medicine and psychology. Little ones come down the chute bearing secrets of their souls’ journey and purpose, and some researchers and parents are listening. Many toddlers feel moved to tell their parents about their experiences with God in heaven, selecting their parents, and what they experienced in the womb and at birth.

They are barely old enough to find the words to express their memories, yet they make natural, unprompted, off-the-cuff revelations. Parents expect to hear simple baby chatter and are blindsided when their 2- and 3-year-old children begin to spout spiritual and philosophical concepts. If they listen closely, they may be gifted with their children’s recollections, which are often more precious than their first utterances. Wisdom and hidden gifts run through these prebirth memories. In many instances, the truths children share elicit wonder and healing in their parents.

Here are a few golden nuggets to give a flavor of what their memories entail.

1-year-old Samantha’s preconception memory: Samantha held her mother’s face in her hands, looked deep into her eyes, and said, I picked you to be my mommy.

4-year-old Jasmine’s preconception memory: Mom, we met before, when we were with God in heaven. (ch. 2)

34-year-old Kirsty’s preconception memory: When I was 5, I told my mum, ‘I saw you getting married.’ Mind you, my mum got married five years before I arrived. I was accurate with everything I described about the wedding day. My mum never had wedding pictures out. Everything I said came straight from my own memory.

3-year-old Issui’s conception memory: I became like a long worm. There were hundreds of us, bumping shoulders. In the end, I was the only one left. (ch. 16)

5-year-old Kaku’s womb memory: Mom, why did you do that? A needle came in when I was in your tummy. It was very scary. (ch. 11)

4-year-old James’ C-section memory: I remember a man in white, cutting an oval in Mommy’s tummy. (ch. 13)

3½-year-old Ella’s birth memory: Mom, the doctor took me out of the cave early. I wasn’t ready to go. Then he checked me, but I wasn’t sick. I just wanted to give you and daddy hugs.

A 13-month-old adopted boy chose out of hundreds of toys a plastic doll to play with that looked like his birth mom when he had last seen her at 2 weeks old. (ch. 15)

3-year-old Catcher’s past-life memory: Mom, did you know that before you were my mommy, I had two brothers and a daddy, but you weren’t my mommy?

Stacy replied, Where was I?

You were in heaven. You were waiting to be born. (CosmicCradle)

The idea that children retain memory of events before conception and during gestation and birth may sound farfetched. The challenge is that most of us have been brought up in social, educational, and religious systems that teach nothing about life before birth. Psychologist Gwen Dewar, PhD, founder of ParentingScience.com, refers to the modern Western belief that babies can’t remember as outlandish. In a 2012 article ‘Babies Can’t Remember’ Is Bunk published in Psychology Today, she emphasizes:

When adults discount the abilities of babies to remember, they might find themselves treating babies more like objects and less like people. And that can’t be good for babies. The claim that babies don’t remember is unscientific — and potentially harmful.²

Children’s memories comprise just one of many revolutionary aspects of the secret intelligence of babies explored in this book. In addition, a growing list of complex functions involving perception, learning, emotion, and communicative skills is increasingly apparent in prenates and newborns. These adult-like abilities challenge basic theories of developmental psychology, which say that all complex behaviors must start as simple behaviors and then develop gradually. In fact, many behaviors start out complex.

The secret intelligence of babies heralds a spiritual and scientific wake-up call.

Here are signs of babies’ keen awareness in the womb and at birth.

Unborn babies sense the difference between being loved and unloved. (ch. 11)

University and hospital studies reveal that unborn babies are interactive with their world, watching, listening, and learning. (ch. 10)

Unborn babies are able to observe events inside and outside the womb. (ch. 11)

Medical imaging reveals that twins in the womb socialize in diverse ways. They display consistent behaviors towards each other, before and after birth. (ch. 10)

Newborns are more sensitive to pain than adults; baby boys may recall circumcision. (ch. 15)

Experiences in the womb and at birth imprint a baby for the rest of her life. (ch. 8, 11, 12, 15)

Babies, unborn and born, share with us the gift of consciousness, as evidenced by scientific data and memories divulged by children to parents. The above diagram summarizes their memories, sentience, and abilities. Skills such as telepathic communications, clairvoyant sensing, and love sensing refer to extrasensory abilities whereby information is apprehended through consciousness rather than through the physical senses or logical deduction.

Telepathic communications: ability to send information to others and receive information from someone else’s mind without using known sensory channels or known forms of physical interaction.

Clairvoyant sensing: ability to see people or events happening at a location beyond sight or that are not visible using normal sight, as when babies’ eyes are fused shut in the womb.

Love sensing: ability of an incarnating soul, prenate, and newborn to know whether parents desire, welcome, and love them.

5 Types of Children’s Memory

Preconception, Conception, Womb, Birth, Past-Life

Parents submitted hundreds of children’s memories via social media and in response to our online networking. In nearly all of these submissions, toddlers and young children had blurted out their memories without being prompted. We include with each story the child’s name and the age at which they first shared their memory.

Preconception memory includes details of the stage of life prior to biological conception, such as descriptions of existence in a spiritual realm and selecting parents. Preconception memory is also called prebirth, prelife, before-life, preconception journey,³ soul memory,⁴ heaven memory,⁵ and premortal memory.⁶ Past-life memory researchers, such as Dr. Ian Stevenson,⁷ Dr. Jim Tucker,⁸ and Carol Bowman⁹ acknowledge preconception as an important phase of life-between-life existence. Dr. Tucker reported that 19.6% of the 1,107 cases of children’s past-life memories entered into a computerized database at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies included life-between-life memories.¹⁰

Conception memory (prenatal, prebirth) involves descriptions of the circumstances of their parent’s sexual act during conception, conscious awareness of the sperm journey, and references to in vitro fertilization (IVF). Type 2 memories are not unknown in psychiatry and counseling where clients reveal conception memories. Isidor Isaak Sadger, MD, affirmed the possibility of being able to remember existence as a sperm penetrating the ovum. His ideas were presented as Preliminary Study of the Psychic Life of the Fetus and Primary Germ at a psychoanalytic conference in 1927 and later published in the Psychoanalytic Review (1941).¹¹

Womb memory (prenatal, fetal, gestational, prebirth) encompasses recall of events taking place inside and outside the womb. The prenatal mind can perceive impressions from pressure or constriction inside mother’s womb, auditory memories (voices, words, stories, and songs heard outside the womb), mother’s emotions, and visual images impossible to obtain during the period before the fetus’ eyes are developed. For example, prenatal twins know that they have a partner with them and similarly sense if their twin leaves (miscarriage).

Birth memory (perinatal, delivery) entails memory of delivery positions (C-section), instrument-assisted births, umbilical cord issues, medical surgeries (e.g., circumcision), participating in birth, doctor’s appearance, rough handling by doctors, bright lights, loud noises, cold temperatures, experiences in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), delivery room conversations, and people present at birth.

Past-life memory (life before life) stretches back to a previous life where children recall parents, another home, or even a tragic death. In some cases, children recall enough details to identify themselves as the return of a deceased family member.

In addition, children recalling a previous existence in the womb ending in miscarriage, abortion, or stillbirth can be included. They are often reborn to the same mother, a family member, or a friend.

Memory combinations involve two or more Memory Types. Issui remembers preconception, conception, womb, and birth (ch. 16). Yanni (ch. 2 and 20) and Juna (ch. 20) recall preconception, womb, birth, and past-life. And Jesse recalls preconception, womb, and birth (ch. 13).

Indicators of Genuine Memories

A parent may wonder how to discern whether their child’s memories are genuine. Chapter 2 highlights indicators that point to a memory being real, or veridical (meaning truthful) and includes the characteristics of real memories, such as a matter-of-fact tone of voice, consistency over time, and knowledge beyond experience. In addition, the number of similar-to-identical stories from around the world reveals patterns that help to establish a story’s credibility.

In the majority of cases detailed in this book, children spontaneously speak out about their memories. Drs. Ikegawa and Ohkado who conducted surveys in Japan found that an even greater number of children volunteer memories if they are questioned. A third researcher Yoshiharu Morimoto, MD, PhD, a pioneer in prenatal education in Japan since 1989, invites parents to ask: Do you remember the time before you were born? or What was it like inside Mommy’s tummy? or How did you come out of Mommy’s tummy? A good time to broach this subject is when the child is taking a bath. The warmth and wetness of water suggests a return to the womb.¹²

If your child has revealed secrets of life before birth, you will find great comfort and validation in these stories. Even though they might appear a little strange or foreign, they also might help you rethink your current beliefs and expand to a broader and more sensitive understanding about babies and what they know and understand.

Babies as Myth Busters

Dismissing the Belief That Babies Don’t Remember

Myths about babies still cloud our beliefs, for they are woven into scientific facts that remain active within our families and our religious, educational, and medical institutions. Baby myths are part of a materialistic worldview built on the assumption that the brain is required for conscious awareness and that the brain is the storehouse of memories. They affect how medical care providers treat pregnant mothers, women trying to conceive, prenates, newborns, and children. Unfortunately, the result is unnecessary misery and suffering for babies and less fulfillment for parents.

Babies are the most unlikely group to be myth busters. We, too, were once skeptics. One prominent myth is that children are unable to remember anything before age 3. For over 100 years, psychiatry, psychology, obstetrics, pediatrics, and surgery embraced this idea known as infantile amnesia. Sigmund Freud forged this concept based on observations that most adults are unable to recall the first years of life. Indeed, limited surveys of adults conducted in recent years do support the average age of the earliest identifiable memory as being 3 to 3½ years.¹³ Yet, the fact that most adults forget events before 3 doesn’t mean that children lack the ability to remember.

Beginning five decades ago, researchers began busting this myth by questioning the infantile amnesia theory. The major pitfall of memory research was that psychologists ignored children’s memories in their studies, as Patricia Bauer, PhD, Emory University, points out:

Strikingly, until the middle of the 1980s, explanations as to the source of childhood amnesia were advanced without reference to data from a seemingly critical study population — children! Conclusions about memory in children were drawn nonetheless.¹⁴

Dr. Chamberlain, a pioneer in birth psychology, reached the same conclusion:

Memory experts have continued to overlook the prima facie evidence provided by 2- and 3-year-old children spontaneously recalling specific aspects of their birth when they are first able to use language (Linda Mathison, 1981). This evidence, published in magazines for childbirth educators and parents, was not taken seriously in scientific circles. Ironically, for almost two decades, we have had memory experts denying birth memory at the same time that new waves of 3-year-olds were proving them wrong!¹⁵

Based on the fact that no studies backed up Freud’s infantile amnesia theory, Dr. Ian Stevenson, a noted psychiatrist in children’s past life memory research, said:

I feel sure that Freud will one day be considered a figure of fun. After his first book, which was clinically based, he became involved in theoretical musings and practically lost interest in investigation. He ended up inventing an inverted cone of theory supported by a tiny base of data.¹⁶

Freud now appears to me to have been an emperor without clothes, and I am less surprised that he developed the concepts he espoused than that he succeeded in persuading so many persons to accept them.¹⁷

Drs. Verny, Emerson, Chamberlain, Ikegawa, Ohkado, Dyer, Stevenson, and our own limited survey found ample and significant evidence of children’s prebirth and birth memories, thereby refuting the theory that no one remembers their earliest years.

Vision of our Primary Nature

Scientists have led us to believe that the mind is the brain and that consciousness and memory arise from sites within the physical brain. Thus, memories from the stages of life when the physical brain does not exist or is developing are in direct opposition to the brain-matter theory, which says that brain matter defines when we become persons. This theory is part of the legacy of the old Newtonian worldview that denies the existence of our spiritual essence before conception, during pregnancy, and at birth.

Foremost brain scientist and Nobel Laureate Sir John Eccles, PhD, challenged the brain-matter theory of consciousness as flawed. He calculated the odds against the idea that self-awareness originates with the brain. To paraphrase Dr. Eccles: The odds are ten to the power of 10,000 against the belief that each person’s unique individuality is derived from the combination of his parents’ genes that built his brain. Further, he postulates a supernatural origin as the source of our individual uniqueness.¹⁸

When we apprehend the idea that memory can function before the first brain cell, we might open to a version of ourselves that extends beyond the limits of body and brain. Illustrative of this version is Jen’s account of her 2-year-old daughter Evie’s remarks about becoming a tiny seed in her mother’s belly:

Evie is very attuned and has told me many times, I remember being all around and everywhere before I became the seed in your belly — which she did not like.

She began telling me this as soon as she became vocal, around the age of 2. She is now 4½ and still says it. She’s never changed that story, and it’s a pretty unusual thing for a little girl to say.

Evie equates her prebirth state with being all around and everywhere, like a galactic-sized quantum field. She seems to know and take for granted that her being is a larger, expanded consciousness that exists independently of her brain and body.

A supporting memory comes from a little girl in Australia. Lottie began talking about her past lives at age 2. At 4, she related what happened between her past-life death and her life as Lottie. In a conversation with her mother Jenny Wren, Lottie made such statements as, I drifted up into thin air and I went up into the sky, breaked yourself up into bits of dust. Her mother asked, What happened to the dust?

Lottie said, It floated all over the place.

What did it feel like when you broke up into dust? her mother asked.

I was lying still because I was dead.

Did you see any other people?

When I was dust, other people made friends with me.

What did the other people look like?

Dust as well.

And what did you do while you were dead?

I was getting ready to be Lottie.¹⁹

Dr. Ikegawa cites an analogous memory of 4-year-old Asahi Nakahara who claimed: I was a light. I had many friends of lights. Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma came to me and said, ‘The Nakahara family house is that one, over there.’ So, I came.²⁰

These memories from children display knowledge beyond their years of experience. They are consistent with adults’ recollections of existing as a unique conscious entity before birth. Memories include awareness of being everywhere as Evie sensed, or feeling microscopic and everywhere similar to Lottie’s perception of being a dust particle floating in space. In our interviews reported in our second book Cosmic Cradle, Lorenzo told us, Imagine all your senses just rolled up into one sense of being. Summer described it this way, All my senses were unified. Cheryl said, I was with little Light beings like myself. We were the Light, yet distinct from the Light. Bev recalled, I remember being spat out, pushed out like a projectile of light.

Preconception memories align with theories of leading quantum physicists who began studying the tiniest, invisible parts (quanta) of the universe 100 years ago. They sought a deeper understanding of the body-consciousness connection and went beyond current psychology and brain-matter theories.

Max Planck, PhD, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and father of quantum theory, asserted: I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. (British newspaper The Observer, January 25, 1931)

Another quantum physicist worthy of mention is David Bohm, PhD. In the 1960s, he met with J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama to discuss Eastern concepts of reality and to figure out the nature of consciousness (thought, feeling, desire, will, etc.). He concluded that consciousness is a field which is everywhere and in everything.²¹

Astrophysicist Sir James Jeans also viewed consciousness as primary to matter. In a 1934 talk, he stated, The Universe begins to look more like a great mind than a great machine. ²²

Based on quantum physics theories such as these, we should expect that somewhere, deep inside us, we all have these transcendental memories, even though only a few of us appear to access them.

Correspondingly, there has been a growing interest in integrating birth psychology with quantum physics. As early as 1990, Dr. Chamberlain argued that memory is possible without cells, and memory endures while the cells do not.

Memory boundaries are enormously expanded by evidence of prenatal memory, gestation memory, and past-life memory, which require radically different explanations . . . Memory does not begin at age 2 or 3 but stretches back to birth; newborns have led us to this truth. But memory does not begin at birth; it stretches backward to include prenatal memories as well. In crossing this boundary, it is the unborn who are teaching us.²³

Jeane Rhodes, PhD, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health²⁴, elucidates further,

Consciousness and awareness were attributed only to adults until well into the 19th century. Then in the early 20th century, children who had become verbal were recognized as possessing these mental capabilities. Only in more recent years are we daring to explore and speak about the possibility that these abilities might not require verbal capacity and, in fact, that they might transcend the body entirely.²⁵

Consciousness reflects an innate and permanent endowment of intelligent awareness that has a meaning similar to the word soul.²⁶

— Dr. David Chamberlain

The opinion of Jenny Wade, PhD, professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, is equally myth busting. In her journal article titled Two Voices from the Womb: Evidence for Physically Transcendent and a Cellular Source of Fetal Consciousness, she proposes a physically transcendent source of consciousness — or, at the very least, one that functions outside any known physiological processes²⁷ to explain memories from preconception to birth. She writes,

Prenatal research has demonstrated that fetuses are far more sophisticated than previously thought, [which are] findings generally ignored by the medical and psychological establishment, in part because the neurological structures traditionally associated with mentation were not believed to be functional. Recent research on memory gives evidence that consciousness may not be dependent on the central nervous system, or even on the body.²⁸

Babies Are Cosmic invites you to explore a deeper realization of consciousness through the 5 types of children’s memories and research in prenatal and perinatal psychology.

We have been fooled into believing that these small beings have little awareness, when, in fact, they have access to a larger consciousness.

CHAPTER 2

Children of the Cosmic Cradle

Babies come bathed in mystery, genius wrapped in swaddling clothes, wearing their baby disguises.¹

— DR. DAVID CHAMBERLAIN

FOUR CHILDREN describe themselves as coming from the world of Spirit. Yanni, Jasmine, Julian, and Isabella seem to know the truth that we as adults may have forgotten.

Spiritual Sunshine from Yanni

3-year-old Yanni, USA

I am a child of God.

Do not look down upon my young body and think I do not know the heavens.²

— Shelley Lemaire

Flávia Mytilineos DeSouza-Mouroulis, a Brazilian-born mother, shared with us her son Yanni’s preconception, womb, birth, and past-life memories. At age 3, without any provocation, Yanni told his mother what it was like to live in her tummy. He described floating and hearing her heart bumping. Your heartbeat sounded like an angel, he said.

Later, at age 4, after seeing a diaper commercial on television, Flávia said that Yanni added more details.

Mama, I wish I was a baby again, Yanni said.

Why, silly? You want to wear diapers again? I asked.

No, I want to live in your tummy some more.

What was it like in my tummy?

"I liked it, [it was] warm and I was floating. I heard bumping all day, made me sleepy. It looked like Candy Land, because it is pink and blue and gray, and sometimes a big white light came and I was dancing. I was squished sometimes, but it was soft. I heard you laughing. My heart stopped working in your tummy, but the ‘light’ came and helped me.

There was something stuck to my head pulling me out and it hurt [forceps and vacuum suction]. He motioned with his hands, as if something was pulling his head. I felt cold, but the ‘light’ came and I wasn’t afraid. I felt pain in my head and in my hip [he pointed to the area] when I landed on the cold section.

Flávia described Yanni’s birth:

The delivery was chaotic. I remember them poking me to pop my water, and that’s when his heart stopped. Since Yanni was so big (10 lbs, 4 oz) and had stopped breathing, they needed to get him out quick. I was covered and couldn’t see everything. I do remember that they tried to pull him out with a vacuum suction. The doctor also used a tool that looked like a giant shoehorn [forceps].

I next asked, Can you remember where you were before you lived in Mama’s tummy?

Let me think so hard about it. Ten minutes later, he told me, I was glowing, floating. I chose who my mama and papa would be in a big room with helpers who were very bright.

My husband, our older daughter, and I were entranced. What was most fascinating to me was the help Yanni had received in choosing us as his parents and the light he continued to see in my belly. Knowing that my son chose me gives me purpose in being the best that I can be. Knowing that a being of light helped Yanni choose me makes me feel that I truly am connected to this amazing universe and that there is nothing to fear.

In another conversation with Yanni when he was 5, he told me, I know I come from a star. We all come from stars. We are made of stars. There were tall people on the star, but they were so bright that I couldn’t see their faces.

Yanni divulged more womb memories at age 5: A white light visited me when you were sick with me in your tummy. It was hard for me to breathe, but the ‘light’ stayed in my chest [he pointed to his chest] to help me feel better. My son’s memories make sense. I had pneumonia twice in my third trimester.

At 4, Yanni made statements regarding rebirth: When we turn to ‘light,’ we come back to earth again. We die and come back, like 100 times. You get different. I get different. Daddy gets different. Last time, we were sisters.

One striking aspect of children’s memories is their impact on parents.