Three Levels of Practice > Moral Living and Fundamentals > Buddha Dhamma and Buddhism > Recent Evidence for Unbroken Memory Records (HSAM)

Revised October 6, 2018; May 18, 2020; August 27, 2022

1. A normal human can remember some “significant events” even from the early days of this life. And these memories are not just a “summary,” but we recall a significant event in detail. It is like playing back a videotape. We recall the scene with pictures, sounds, the background, everything. Just recall some past events, and one can verify that for oneself.

▪Many cases of “memories from past lives” are reported mostly by children. But there are also accounts by some adults under hypnosis; see “Evidence for Rebirth.”

▪There is scientific evidence that our memory records are kept in minute detail and can be accessed at a moment’s notice. Such “detailed records” are “nāmagotta” in Buddha Dhamma. See “Where Are Memories Stored? – Viññāṇa Dhātu” and “Nāma Loka and Rūpa Loka – Two Parts of Our World.”

▪However, an average human can recall only a small fraction of past events.

2. Strong evidence is beginning to emerge that there is a “complete record” of one’s past (in this life) just like a videotape. These studies started with Jill Price, who contacted a team of scientists in the early 2000s about her ability to recall anything from 1974 onwards. Here is a video of her with Diane Sawyer on an ABC News program:

WebLink: YOUTUBE: The woman that never forgets

3. Note that she says she can “see” what happened that day. It is not like she is recalling a “summary” or the gist of what happened. She can recall the whole episode in detail. Even the day and date come out effortlessly.

▪A team of scientists has studied her for five years and published a paper providing their findings: A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering-Parker-2006

▪She has written a book about her experience: “The Woman Who Can’t Forget”, by Jill Price (2009).

▪Jill Price’s story led more people to come forward with their experiences, and ten more such individuals have been studied in detail recently: WebLink: Behavioral and neuroantomical investigation-LePort-2012.

4. These individuals have “highly superior autobiographical memory,” or HSAM. According to those two papers above, they are not any smarter than average people,. The ability to recall their past much more extensively is a “puññā iddhi” of a special kamma vipāka in Buddha Dhamma. They can focus on any date in the past and “watch” what happened. Then they can say what the weather was like, who they were with, whether any significant world event took place that day, etc.

▪This phenomenon is also known as Hyperthymesia; see, WebLink: WIKI: Hyperthymesia. Several other cases of HSAM are mentioned here.

5. Scientists believe that our memories are “stored” in the brain and synapses between neurons. I firmly believe that they will be proven wrong. This research is still in its infancy, but there has been an explosion of activity within the past 15 years.

▪While it is true that synaptic wiring is responsible for habit formation (see “How Habits are Formed and Broken – A Scientific View”), it is a stretch to assume that “video-like recordings” of all past events are somehow embedded in neural connections!

▪People without HSAM have false memories (or no memories) of past incidents that were insignificant to them. But their memories about significant/traumatic memories are astoundingly accurate.

6. There are a couple of key significant facts that come out of these studies on HSAM subjects:

▪They can instantly access a “time slot” from many years back that is arbitrarily chosen by someone else. They “re-visit” that time slot and describe, in real-time, what took place in detail.

▪Since it has been confirmed in 11 subjects, it is not a “random event.”

▪It is a stretch to assume that all such details for over 20 years can be stored in biological membranes that regenerate change continuously.

▪It is not a matter of being able to remember. Jill Price describes extensively that it is hard for her to remember any “learning material”; she was an average student.

▪Rather, it is a matter of having a “correctly wired” brain to access the “video recorder-like” memory stream in viññāṇa dhātu. It is not something one can develop by studying hard.

7. In Buddha Dhamma, the life of a sentient being is not restricted to the current life. As described in the previous post (“What Reincarnates? – Concept of a Lifestream”), any given sentient being has been born an uncountable number of times, with no “traceable beginning.”

▪And a record of each of those lives is kept intact in the “mind plane” and can be accessed to different degrees by different people.

▪And people who develop abhiññā powers via jhānā (need to get to at least the fourth jhāna) can develop Jill Price’s capabilities and more; they can go back hundreds to thousands to billions of years depending on the level achieved.

8. According to Buddha Dhamma, the brain is just like a computer that helps extract these memory records from the “mind plane.” The mechanism is similar to a television extracting a broadcast signal; I will write a post on this later.

▪These memory records are called “nāmagotta” (pronounced “nāma goththā”) and they go back for eons and eons, and even a Buddha cannot see a beginning; see “Memory, Brain, Mind, Nāma Loka, Kamma Bhava, Kamma Vipāka.”

▪We can recall only bits and pieces even during this life because our minds are covered by the five hindrances (pañca nīvaraṇa); see “Key to Calming the Mind – The Five Hindrances.”

▪ Ancient yogis who could get to the eighth jhāna could see all past lives in the present eon or kappa. But the Buddha could see numerous eons within a short time.

▪This is why it is mostly children who can remember past lives. As they grow up their minds get “contaminated” more and more, and these memories are lost. And those cases are different from the HSAM subjects.

▪It appears that those individuals with HSAM have some of the capabilities of those who have developed abhiññā powers. Since those with HSAM have been reported to have somewhat different brain structures, it will be interesting to see whether those with abhiññā powers have similar brain structures as people with HSAM. I believe that it is a matter of the brain wiring to be able to “receive” more information from the “mind plane.”

9. Here is a video on the amazing accounts of a few people with memory capabilities.

Superhuman Geniuses (Extraordinary People Documentary):

WebLink: youtube: Superhuman Geniuses (Extraordinary People Documentary)

▪More than anything else, they confirm the fact that memories are held intact in the mano loka or the “mind plane”; see, “The Amazing Mind – Critical Role of Nāmagotta (Memories).”

▪The brain is the interface between the base of the mind (hadaya vatthu) and mano loka; see, “Brain – Interface between Mind and Body.” It is just that a few people’s brains can do better in recalling those memories compared to others.

Next, “Buddhism without Rebirth and Nibbāna?”, ………