Larry Dossey - Cellular Memory

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Transplants, Cellular Memory,and Reincarnation

i carry your heart with me . . .

. . . and whatever is doneby only me is your doing . . . .—E.E. Cummings1

“i carry your heart with me”

In 1995, Sonny Graham, a 69-year-oldresident of Vidalia, Georgia, andformer director of the Heritage golf tournament at SeaPines,was suffering

from congestive heart failure. He receiveda heart transplant from 33-year-old TerryCottle of Charleston, South Carolina,who had killed himself. Graham did well

following surgery and began to write let-ters of gratitude to the donor’s family. In1997 he met his donor’s widow, fell inlove, and married her. In April 2008, 12years following his transplant, Grahamdied the same way his donor did—from aself-inflicted gunshot wound. He wasfound dead in a utility building in hisbackyard from a single shotgun wound tothe throat. The Georgia Bureau of Investi-gation found no evidence of foul play.2,3

CELLULAR MEMORY

Following Graham’s suicide, the blogo-sphere lit up with chatter. Some wagscruelly observed that, since both the do-nor and recipient had married the samewoman, she must have driven them bothto suicide. The fact that she was a compas-sionate, caringhospice workerdidn’t seemto matter.

Most commentators, however, offeredthe popular “cellular memory” hypothe-sis—the speculation that memories, habits,interests, and tastes may be stored not

only in the brain, but in all the cells of the

human body. An extension of this idea isthat these traits may be transferable fromoneperson to another viaorgan transplan-tation. According to this reasoning, Cot-tle’s donor heart was a vehicle for transfer-ring his suicidal depression to Graham. If true, Graham got not only a living heart,but a death sentence as well.

In 2000, Pearsall et al4 published aninfluential paper, “Changes in HeartTransplant Recipients that Parallel thePersonalities of Their Donors.” Their study consisted of interviews with 10 pa-

tientswhohad received heart transplants—seven males and three females, aged fromseven months to 56 years old—and their families and friends. They also interviewed10 heart-lung recipients—five males and fivefemales, aged 16 months to 34 years—andtheir families and friends. Also inter-viewed were the families and friends of thedeceased donors.

One donor was a 16-month-old boy, Jerry, who drowned in a bathtub. Therecipient of his heart was Carter, a seven-month-old boy diagnosed with tetralogy

of Fallot, a congenital heart defect. If uncorrected, 70% of patients are dead byage 10.

The mother of Jerry, the donor, was aphysician. She reported:

The first thing is that I could morethan hear Jerry’s heart. I could feel itin me. When Carter first saw me, heran to me and pushed his noseagainst me and rubbed and rubbed it.It was just exactly what we did with

Jerry. Jerry and Carter’s heart is 5

years old now, but Carter’s eyes were Jerry’s eyes. When he hugged me, Icould feel myson. I mean I could feelhim, not just symbolically. He wasthere. I felt his energy.

I’m a doctor. I’m trained to be akeen observer and have always been anatural born skeptic. But this wasreal. I know people will say that Ineed to believe my son’s spirit isalive, and perhaps I do. But I felt it.My husband and my father felt it.And I swear to you, and you can ask my mother, Carter said the samebaby-talkwords that Jerry said. Carter is 6, but he was talking Jerry’s babytalk and playing with my nose justlike Jerry did.

We stayed with the [recipient fam-ily] that night. In the middle of thenight, Carter came in and asked tosleep with my husband and me. Hecuddled up between us exactly like Jerry did, and we began to cry. Carter told us not to cry because Jerry saideverything was okay. My husbandand I, our parents, and those who re-ally knew Jerry have no doubt. Our son’s heart contains much of our son

and beats in Carter’s chest. On somelevel, our son is still alive.

The recipient’s mother reported:

I saw Carter go to her [the donor’smother]. He never does that. He isvery, very shy, but he went to her justlikehe usedto run tomewhen hewasa baby. When he whispered “It’sokay, Mama,” I broke down. He

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EXPLORATIONS



called her Mother, or maybe it was Jerry’s heart talking. And one morething that got to us. We found outtalking to Jerry’s mom that Jerry hadmild cerebral palsy, mostly on his leftside. Carter has stiffness and someshaking on that same side. He never did as a baby and it only showed up

after the transplant. The doctors sayit’s probably something to do withhis medical condition, but I reallythink there’s more to it.

One more thing I’d like you toknow about. When we went tochurch together, Carter had never met Jerry’s father. We came late and Jerry’s dad was sitting with a group of people in the middle of the congrega-tion. Carter let go of my hand andran right to that man. He climbed onhis lap, hugged him, and said“Daddy.” We were flabbergasted.

How could he have known him?Why did he call him Dad? He never did things like that. He would never let go of my hand in church andnever run to a stranger. When I askedhim why he did it, he said he didn’t.He said Jerry did and he went withhim.

The authors found parallels betweendonors and recipients “in food, music, art,sexual, recreational, and career prefer-ences, as well as specific instances of per-ceptions of names and sensory experi-

ences related to the donors (eg, one donor was killed by a gunshot wound to the face;the recipient had dreams of seeing hotflashes of light in his face).” They foundfrom two to five posttransplant parallelsbetween donors and recipients per case.They concluded, “The effects of the immu-nosuppressive drugs, stress of the surgery,and statistical coincidence are likely insuf-ficient to explain the findings. The plausi-bility of cellular memory, possibly sys-temic memory, is suggested.”

The event that catapulted cellular mem-

ory into the national conversation, how-ever, was the case of Claire Sylvia, a 47-year-old professional dancer from NewYork City. The publication of her 1997book A Change of Heart: A Memoir 5 waslike calling down lightning. Sylvia, alovely, articulate, andtalented woman,de-scribed how she underwent a successfulheart-lung transplant at Yale-New HavenHospital in 1988 for primary pulmonaryhypertension. She believed she got morethan new organs. Although she had never

liked foods such as beer and chicken nug-gets, she began to crave them followingher transplant. She assumed a masculinewalk and began to swear, which previouslydisgusted her. For no apparent reason shetook up riding motorcycles very fast,which was totally out of character. Follow-ing a revealing dream, she made an endrun around the medical authorities andsought out the family of her donor Tim, ateenage boy who died in a motorcycle ac-cident. Tim’s family verified that her newtraits had been typical of him. She evenlearned that Tim had chicken nuggets inhis jacket when he fatally crashed his mo-torcycle. Sylvia’s story resulted in a made-for-TV movie, Heart of a Stranger, starringactress Jane Seymour.6 After her story wasfeatured on 60 Minutes, other transplantrecipients came forward with similar sto-ries. Several books followed, almost all in-voking the concept of cellular memory asan explanation of the “new” Sylvia.

SKEPTICS

Skeptics have strenuously attempted tostem the tide of belief in cellular memory.Robert Todd Carroll, author of the onlineSkeptic’s Dictionary, has explored the ori-gins of this idea. He suggests it came notfrom science but possibly from the mov-ies. He cites the 1971 award-winning TVmovie Brian’s Song, in which Brian Piccolo

(played by James Caan), a white ChicagoBears football player, receives a transfu-sion from his black teammate Gale Sayers(played by Billy Dee Williams). Piccoloremarks that the transfusion explains hissubsequent craving for chitlins.7

Or perhaps, Carroll says, the idea camefrom Les Mains d’Orlac, an Austrian silenthorror film of 1924 based on a story byMaurice Renard (1875-1939).8 In it, a con-cert pianist loses his hands in a train acci-dent. When he receives the hands of anexecuted murderer in a transplant opera-

tion, he develops the urge to kill. Severalvariations of the story have been madeinto movies, including the 1960 thriller Hands of the Strangler.9 Another version isthe 1991 horror movie Body Parts, inwhich a prison psychiatrist loses an arm ina car accident and receives the arm of anexecuted serial killer, after which the trans-planted arm develops a mind of its own.10

A more recent literary variation is Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edna Buchanan’s1999 thriller Pulse, the story of a heart

transplant recipient who learns the iden-tity and mode of death of his donor.11

Disbelievers of cellular memory aboundwithin medicine. Most consider it a fan-tasy. As cardiologist John Schroeder of Stanford University Medical Center says,“The idea that transplanting organs trans-fers the coding of life experience is un-imaginable. Most scientists believe psy-chological experience is stored in thebrain. This is just not something the [med-ical transplant world] accepts.” Schroe-der’s opinion is based on the hundreds of heart transplants that have been per-formed at Stanford, the first one in 1968.He believes that medications commonlyused during and after transplantation alter taste and thereby change dietary prefer-ences. Some psychologists say that thebest explanation for changed tastes andnew behaviors is wish fulfillment, self-ful-filling prophecy, and suggestion, when re-cipients suspect or actually learn the iden-tities and personalities of their donors.12

Surgeon Jeffrey D. Punch, MD, chief of the Division of Transplantation at theUniversity of Michigan Health Systems inAnn Arbor, agrees. He says:

Organs are not capable of transfer-ring memory to a person’s mind inany conventional sense . . . . There

are several possible logical explana-tions for why people might assumecharacteristics of their donors: Sideeffects of transplant medications maymake people feel weird and differentfrom before the transplant. For exam-ple, prednisone makes people hun-gry: The recipient of an organ trans-plant develops a love of pastry andfinds out the person that donatedtheir organ loved pastry as well. Theythink there is a connection, but reallyit is just the prednisone making their body crave sweets.

It could also be pure coincidence:

The patient watches a TV show whilerecovering from a transplant thatshows older adults rollerblading anddecides that it looks like fun, butdoesn’t make a conscious decision todo anything about it because they arestill recovering from the transplant.Months later they are shopping andthey see rollerblades and decide togive it a try since it was somethingthey were incapable of doing for heath reasons before the transplant.They like it and get good at it. Later

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they find out that the donor was ayoung person that liked to roller-blade. It is easy to understand howthe patient and family might believethat the new organ had something todo with Mom’s new-found love of rollerblading. In actuality, the onlything the new organ gave her was the

health to try rollerblades. The ideacame from a TV show she forgot sheever saw.

A transplant is a profound experi-enceand the human mind isvery sug-gestible. Medically speaking, there isno evidence that these repor ts areanything more than fantasy.13

Another perennial complaint from skep-tics about posttransplant changes is confir-mationbias. AsTom Reesof the British Hu-manist Association (BHA) Science Groupsays in a critiqueof theaboveposttransplantstudy by Pearsall, Schwartz, and Russek,4

If you look at enough things, you willalways find a ‘coincidental’ match.The problem is, you need to take intoaccount all the possible ‘coinci-dences’ that could have occurred butdidn’t. There’s an easy way to getround the problem of confirmationbias. First, you add in some controls—pairs of people who never had a hearttransplant, but are otherwise similar to the people you’re studying (age,gender, etc.). Then you anonymisethe dataand give themtoan indepen-dent reviewer. It they can pair up thetransplant donors and recipients, thenyou know you’re on to something.Otherwise it’s just balderdash.14

There are problems with this point of view. The fact that scientists are the review-ers does not make the review process fool-proof. As skeptic Marcello Truzzi acknowl-edged, “Scientists are not the paragons

of rationality, objectivity, open-mindednessandhumility that many of them might likeothers to believe.”15 The conclusions of independent reviewers frequently dependon who is selected, how they are chosen,and who selects them. What is their belief system? Are they open to the possibility of posttransplant parallels between donorsand recipients? If not, they will probablynever identify any such parallels eventhough they may exist, but will toss every-thing in the coincidence bin.

As the executive editor of a peer-re-viewed journal and a frequent peer re-viewer for other scientific publications, Ihave seen reviewer bias work both ways—sometimes reviewers are too gullible,sometimes too closed. Any journal editor knows that independent reviewers can be

as bigoted and prejudiced as anyone else,even in their areas of expertise. As Arthur C. Clarke said in his 1963 book Profiles of the Future, “It is really quite amazing bywhat margins competent but conservativescientists andengineers canmiss the mark,when they start with thepreconceivedideathat what they are investigating is impos-sible. When this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their prejudices and are unable to see what liesdirectly ahead of them.”16 As one reviewer boasted in rejecting a paper dealing with

remote perception, “This is the kind of thing that I would not believe in even if itexisted.”17

Prejudice is particularly likely to surfacewhen independent reviewers are asked toassess phenomena whose existence chal-lenges the conventional view of the brain-mind relationship. For devotees of thedominant view, that all mental phenom-ena are produced by the brain and areconfined to it, posttransplant parallelsare impossible by definition. Anythingbordering on “ESP” or “parapsychology”

must be condemned. Sometimes skepticsconcede this. As psychologist Ray Hymanof the University of Oregon, an arch-criticof parapsychology, acknowledges in ASkeptic’s Handbook of Parapsychology, “Thelevel of the debate [about parapsychol-ogy] during the past 130 years has been anembarrassment foranyonewhowould liketo believe that scholars and scientists ad-here to standards of rationality and fair play.”18 This leads to an uneven playingfield and shameful double standards whenphenomena such as posttransplant paral-

lels are considered.Critiques such as that given by BHA are

woefully uninformed. They are obliviousto the existence of substantial researchin telesomatic phenomena, in which per-ceptions and physical symptoms are ex-changed between normal people re-motely, beyond the reach of the senses.19

These events manifest as shared thoughts,identical sensations in various parts of thebody, a profound sense of connection,and so on. David Lorimer, of the United

Kingdom–based Scientific and MedicalNetwork, calls thesephenomenaexamplesof “empathic resonance.”20 The BHA cri-tique wrongly assumes that these ex-changes between normal individuals sim-ply do not occur, but research saysotherwise. Since telesomatic phenomenaoccur between normal individuals, there isno reason in principle why they could notalso occur between donors and recipients,in which case they would appear to beposttransplant parallels.

What about coincidence? Some skep-tics accept “mere chance” as the preferredexplanation for posttransplant phenom-ena with breathtaking insouciance. For them, no event is so unusual that it can-not be explained by coincidence. Someevents, however, are so uncanny that onewonders if coincidence is being asked toshoulder more than it can bear. Consider,for example, the following case, reportedby a psychiatrist, of an eight-year-old girlwho had received a heart transplant from a10-year-old girl who was murdered:

Her mother brought her to me whenshe started screaming at night abouther dreams of the man who had mur-dered her donor. She said her daugh-ter knew who it was. After several ses-sions, I could not deny the reality of what this child was telling me. Her mother and I finally decided to call

the police and, using the descriptionfrom the little girl, they found themurderer. He was easily convictedwiththeevidencemypatient provided.The time, weapon, place, clothes hewore, what the little girl he killed hadsaid to him . . . everything the littletransplant recipient reported wascompletely accurate . . . .21

Einstein said, “Everything should bemade as simple as possible, but not sim-pler.”22 The breezy way chance is invokedby many skeptics may in some instances

crosses over into the“too simple” domain.One of the reasons posttransplant

phenomena have such a difficult timegaining traction in the medical-scientificcommunity is the assumption that thesehappenings violate the laws of nature andtherefore cannot possibly be valid. Mostskeptics who hold this point of view, Iregret to say, are simply not well informedabout developments in experimental para-psychology and theory development inthis field. As Dr Kit Pedler, the British




medical scientist who for many years washead of the Electron Microscopy Depart-ment at the University of London, andwho, interestingly, was the unofficial sci-entific adviser to the BBC Doctor Whoradio series, said bluntly,

A scientist would have to be either massively ignorant or a confirmedbigot to deny the evidence that thehuman mind can make connectionwith space, time and matter in wayswhich have nothing to do with theordinary senses. Further, he cannotdeny that these connections are com-patible with current thinking in phys-ics, and may in the future becomeaccepted as a part of an extended sci-ence in which the description ‘para-normal’ no longer applies, and can bereplaced by ‘normal.’23

These arestrongwords,but they expressthe understandable frustration manyclini-cians and researchers in consciousness-related fields feel toward the perennialstonewalling of uninformed critics.

Some critics reject posttransplant phe-nomenabecause they are inexplicable. Or-thopedist andresearcher RobertO. Becker points to the arbitrariness that is involvedin accepting some mysterious phenomenawhereas rejecting others. He observes,“Following the curious dogma that whatwe don’t understand can’t exist, main-

stream science has dismissed psychic phe-nomena as delusions or hoaxes simply be-cause they’re rarer than sleep, dreams,memory, growth, pain, or consciousness,which are all inexplicable in traditionalterms but are too common to be de-nied.”24 I agree with Becker, but wouldalso argue, as have others, that psychicphenomena are not rarer than any of thecategories he mentions; they merely ap-pear that way because they operate mainlyin the unconscious domain, off the stageof awareness.25-27

As I’ve explored the literature surround-ing posttransplant phenomena, I’ve beensaddened by the viciousness of this de-bate. Those who attempt objectively tostudy these phenomena are often sub- jected to ridicule and savage ad hominemattacks. “Outrageous,” “fantastic,” “un-imaginable,” “pseudoscientific,” “NewAge,” “balderdash,” “delusional,” “gull-ible,” “naïve,” “junk science,” and “ab-surd” are commonly used to denouncethese reports. These terms have been used

for years by many skeptics to discreditparanormal phenomena in general. Somecritics despise the idea of these phenom-ena so intensely that they are apparentlywilling to die for their beliefs. For in-stance, the prominent philosopher DanielDennett, of Tufts University, is reported

by paranormal researcher Dick J. Biermanto have said that he would “commit sui-cide if paranormal phenomena turned outto be real.”28

This debate is deeply visceral becausethe supremacy of conventional science isbeing called into question. Cultural criticNeil Postman got it right ina speechto theGermanInformatics Society in 1990whenhe said, “George Orwell . . . about 50 yearsago . . . remarked that the average persontoday is about as naïve as was the averageperson in the Middle Ages. In the Middle

ages people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, webelieve in the authority of our science, nomatter what.”29

Believing in science is one thing; it’s the“no matter what” that is troubling. Whendevotees of a particular perspective in sci-ence begin to prefer suicide to a change of view, it’s time to take stock and ask what isgoing on. Posttransplant phenomena, likeparapsychology, have the power to causecritics to adopt inflexible, “no matter what” positions. This strategy is traitorous

to science and medicine and should beresisted by all who care about science. Thestatesman Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr. advo-cated a preferable approach: “If we valuethe pursuit of knowledge, we must be freeto follow wherever that search may leadus. The free mind is not a barking dog, tobe tethered on a ten-foot chain.”30

Several excellent books have appearedrecently that address the dreary com-plaints of skeptics. Among them are phi-losopher Chris Carter’s Parapsychologyand the Skeptics,31 researcher Stephan A.

Schwartz’s Opening to the Infinite,32

award-winning science fiction writer DamienBroderick’s Outside theGatesof Science:Why

It’s Time for the Paranormal to Come In from the Cold,33 geophysicist Robert M.Schoch’s and Logan Yonavjak’s The Para-

psychology Revolution,34 physician RobertS. Bobrow’s The Witch in the Waiting Room: A Physician Investigates ParanormalPhenom-

ena in Medicine,35 and researcher Dean Ra-din’s The Conscious Universe 36 and Entan- gled Minds.37

WHY THE HEART?

If cellular memory is real, why should itinvolve mainly the heart, as the burgeon-ing accounts seem to indicate? Kidneytransplants and skin grafts have been donefor decades longer than heart transplants.Why haven’t we heard about cellular

memory in these cases? Xenografts and xe-notransplants—cells, tissues, and organsfrom another species, such as pig heartvalves—have also been implanted in hu-mans for some time; why don’t these re-cipients take on characteristics of their donor animal? What is special about myo-cardial cells that would make them a better vehicle for memory transfer than liver,kidney, skin, or blood cells?

No one knows the answer to this ques-tion, but clues may have surfaced in exper-iments that researcher Rollin McCraty

and his colleagues at the HeartMath Re-search Center in Boulder Creek, Califor-nia, published in 2004.38 These studieswere based on a series of now-classic “pre-sentiment” experiments by researcher Dean Radin, which he began at the Uni-versity of Nevada in 1993. I discussed Ra-din’s experiments in this column in a re-cent editorial about premonitions.39 Withyour indulgence, I’ll repeat this discussionfor those who missed it earlier, because of the relevance of Radin’s findings to thepresent topic. For those who are familiar

with my earlier essay, you may wish to skipthe following seven paragraphs to the dis-cussion of the experiments of McCratyand his associates.

Radin took advantage of the well-known “orienting response,” which is dis-played by an organism in a fight-or-flightsituation. When humans face a crisis or anunknown, fearful situation, there is a char-acteristic response of the autonomic ner-vous system: the pupils dilate, the brainwaves alter, there is an increase in sweatgland activity, an increase in the heart

rate, and blanching of the extremities asblood vessels constrict. These physiologi-cal changes make biological sense,becausewhen we are in danger these modificationssharpen our perceptions, increase our physical strength, reduce the danger of ex-ternal hemorrhage, and in general make itmore likely that we’ll survive whatever threat we face.

Subjects in Radin’s experiment40 sat infront of a computer screen. On the subject’s left hand, Radin and his team mea-




sured three physiological responses thatindicate physiological arousal: heart rate,the amount of blood in a fingertip, andelectrodermal activity or skin conduc-tance, which is an indicator of sweating. Intheir right hands, the subjects held a com-puter mouse. When they pressed the

mouse, the computer randomly selectedan image from a pool of 120 high-qualitydigitized photographs that were of twotypes, calm and emotional. The calm pho-tos were pleasant images of natural scenes,landscapes, and cheerful people. Emo-tional photos were disturbing, shocking,or arousing, such as erotic, sexual picturesand grisly autopsies. After the mouse waspressed, the computer waited five secondswhile the screen was blank and thenshowed the randomly selected image for three seconds. Then the screen went blank

for five seconds, and this was followed bya five-second rest period. Then another trial would begin. Twenty-four subjectsparticipated, viewing a total of 900 pic-tures. During the five seconds after thesubjects pressed the mouse and the screenwas blank, their electrodermal activity be-gan to rise in anticipation of the subse-quent photo; nothing surprising there.The stunning finding, however, was thatthe electrodermal activity increased moreif the future picture was going to be emo-tional. In other words, the participants

“preacted” to their own future emotionalstates before the emotional pictures wereseen and before their computer had se-lected them. Radin and colleagues calledthis a presentiment effect, as mentioned,to indicate a prior sentiment or feeling.

By the late ’90s, Radin had concludedfour separate presentiment experiments.40

Overall, the odds favoring a true presenti-ment effect in these studies were 125,000to one. The studies are a profound chal-lenge to commonsense because they dem-onstrate, under double-blind conditions,

that when the average person is about tosee an emotional picture, he or she willrespond before that picture appears. Thefuture, it seems, is now.37

Radin also hypothesized that the greater the emotional content of a picture, thelarger or more robust the presentiment ef-fect would prove to be. He tested this pos-sibility and found it to be true: the morethe emotionality, the greater the presenti-ment effect, with odds against chance of 125 to one.37

The electrodermal activity or galvanicskin response that Radin measured is, of course, only one aspect of the body’sfight-or-flight mechanism. Would other aspects of this emergency reaction patternalso reflect presentiment? To test this, Ra-din measured the diameter of the pupil,

which dilates when the body is gearing upfor fight or flight. He found the same pat-tern. As with electrodermal activity, pupil-lary dilation significantly increased severalseconds prior to being shown randomlyselected images of sex, violence, or may-hem, when compared to peaceful, serenepictures.41 This suggests that the body’sentire autonomic system may be capableof apprehending future events.

Might this include the heart, which isrichly endowed with connections fromthe autonomic nervous system? Even to

ask the question is heresy, because of thepresumption that knowing takes place inthe brain and only in the brain. Radin’sfindings, however, which have been repli-cated by researchers in various laborato-ries, challenge this conventional wisdom.

McCraty and his HeartMath colleaguesdecided to find out if the heart is capableof sensing future events. Following Ra-din’s protocol, they showed emotionallyarousing or calming pictures to 26 subjects who were experienced meditators or skilled in emotional management tech-

niques popularized by the Institute of HeartMath. Unlike the subjects studiedbyRadin, the HeartMath subjects did notdemonstrate a presentiment effect in skinconductance (galvanic skin response). Thereason, the researchers suggested, was thattheir subjects had been trained throughmeditation and other techniques not toreact to stressful stimuli.38

The HeartMath subjects, however,showed a significant presentiment effectin the behavior of the heart. Around fiveseconds prior to viewing the image, the

subjects’ heart rates began to deceleratebefore being shown stressful images, butnot if calming images followed. Somehowthe heart “knew” what lay ahead in thefuture, even though the subjects were con-sciously clueless about it. The HeartMathresearchers also found significant gender differences. Women demonstrated a greater cardiac presentiment response to futureemotional stimuli than did men.

Could the brain have been sensing thefuture and relaying the information to the

heart? The HeartMath researchers say no.They were able to show that the heart reg-isters future events before the brain does,and that the slowing of the heart rate orig-inates within the heart, not in the brain.This goes against the conventional notionthat the brain is in charge of how the heartresponds to emotional stimuli, by sendingsignals via the autonomic nervous system.

The HeartMath researchers concludethat “recent work in neurocardiology [sug-gests that] the heart is a sensory organ andan information encoding and processingcenter with an extensive intrinsic nervoussystem, enabling it to learn, remember,and make functional decisions indepen-dent of the cranial brain.”38(pp133-143)

Is this research the missing link that ex-plains how the heart might be a carrier for memories from a donor to a transplantrecipient? It’s too early to make this con-clusion, as I’ll explain. Still, these are tan-talizing findings that may one day revo-lutionize our basic concepts of time,consciousness, and memory.

WHY NOW?

There is a plausible reason why transplantrecipients have only recently come for-ward to reveal their experiences: it hasonly lately become respectable to talk about them.

A similar situation existed with near-

death experiences, which were largelyunknown until psychiatrist RaymondMoody sparked interest in them in 1975with his book Life After Life.42 Soon after-ward, it seemed they were everywhere.Now, the Gallup Poll finds that aroundeight million Americans say they’ve had anear-death experience.43 Who knew? Aparallel situation may well exist with post-transplant experiences.

REINCARNATION

The posttransplant phenomenon is being

embraced as something new, but it is es-sentially an ancient idea whose origins arelost in history. It is a variation of reincar-nation—the concept that someone whohas died can reappear as a living person.The new twist is organ transplantation,which did not exist in the annals of rein-carnation until the development of mod-ern surgical technology.

Can memories and personality traits betransferred from one individual to another without organ transfer? If the answer were




yes, this would suggest that the transfer of an organ may not be required in the abovecases andthat a more fundamental processis at work. The answer to this question, itturns out, appears to be affirmative.

In the field of research dealing with thepossibility of reincarnation and past lives,

one name towers above all others—the lateIan Stevenson, MD (1918-2007), CarlsonProfessor of Psychiatry and director of theDivision of Personality Studies at theHealth Sciences Center, University of Vir-ginia. No one else has approached thisarea with the scholarship, thoroughness,and dogged devotion to detail as he.Stevenson has combed the planet, fromthe back roads of Burma and the remotevillages of India, to the largest cities onEarth.He hasdevoted decades to scouringevery continent except Antarctica, investi-

gating always the same quarry—childrenwho appear to remember past lives. Thescope of his work is breathtakingly univer-sal, and the thousands of cases he hasamassed generally awe even skeptics. For example, arch-critic Carl Sagan concededthat there is an area that “deserve[s] seri-ous study— . . . young children . . . [who]report the details of a previous life, whichupon checking turn out to be accurate andwhich they could not have known aboutin any other way than reincarnation.”44

As Stevenson describes in his book

Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect,45

these cases occur in every culture, includ-ing our own, and they demonstrate astrong internal consistency. Typically, achild between the age of two and four willbegin to speak about experiences he or shehad in a previous life, usually with intenseemotions. This usually makes no sense tothe parents. Nearly always the child de-scribes his or her death in the previous life,which is usually violent. This is one rea-son, Stevenson states, why remembering aprevious life is almost never a pleasant ex-

perience for a child. In addition, “Too of-ten the children are troubled by confusionregarding their identity, and this becomeseven more severe in those children who,conscious of being in a small body, canremember having been in an adult one, or who remember a life as a member of theopposite sex. To these tormenting aware-nesses may be added a tearing division of loyalties between present and previousfamilies.”45(p9) Between the ages of fiveand eight, the child generally ceases to

speak about a remembered life, as memo-ries fade.

In addition to memories, Stevenson hasaccumulated evidence suggesting that be-haviors may be carried over from life tolife. For example, children often experi-ence phobias consistent with the mode of

death of the remembered personality. Achild recalling a life that ended in drown-ing may be afraid of being immersed inwater. One who remembers a life termi-nated by a shooting may demonstrate aphobia for guns and loud noises. If deathinvolved an auto accident, the child maybe phobic of cars, buses, and trucks. Thesephobias often begin before the child canspeak, and there may be no model for them in the family that might explainthem.

“Philias” also occur. These may take the

form of a desire for particular foods noteaten in the subject’s family or for clothesthat are entirely different from whoseworn by family members. For example,there may be craving for tobacco, alcohol,and other drugs the previous personalitywas known to use. Claire Sylvia’s experi-ence following the transplantation of Tim’s heart and lungs into her body re-sembles these observations.

Some subjects show skills they have notbeen taught or have not witnessed, whichthe remembered personality was known to

possess. Children sometimes remember apast life of a person of the opposite sex.Such children almost invariably showtraits of the sex of the rememberedperson,such as cross-dressing, playing games of the opposite sex, and displaying attitudestypical of that sex. As with phobias, thesepreferences attenuate as the child growsolder, but a few children remain intransi-gently fixed on them.45(p11)

A promethean work that goes intogreater detail is Stevenson’s multivolume Reincarnationand Biology: A Contribution to

theEtiologyof Birthmarks andBirthDefects.46

Sometimes, Stevenson shows, the later-born individual appears to inherit actualphysical changes of the deceased, such asbirthmarks and birth defects. An exampleis Lekh Pal Jatav, born in December 1971in the village of Nagla Devi in the Main-puri District of Uttar Pradesh, India. LekhPal was born without the fingers of hisright hand, which were mere stubs.Shortly after he began to talk he men-tioned a few words about a previous life

and continually repeated the word “Tal,

Tal,” which made no sense to his family.

In due course a woman from the village of

Nagla Tal, about eight kilometers away,

came to Nagla Devi and noticed Lekh Pal

in his mother’s arms. This prompted her

to relate that a child in Nagla Tal had had

his fingers cut off in an accident, resultingin a deformity resembling Lekh Pal’s birth

defect.

Lekh Pal began to speak aboutthe life of

Hukum, the child from Nagla Tal, who at

about three-and-a-half years of age, stuck a

hand in the blades of a fodder-chopping

machine while his father was not looking

and had his fingers cut off. He described

to his older sister how, in a previous life,

he had stuck his hand in a fodder-chop-ping machine. He said he had a father and

mother, as well as an older sister and a

younger brother in “Tal.” Eventually LekhPal’s parents took him to Nagla Tal and

the distant families got together.

Was Lekh Pal’s memories and birth de-

fect evidence that Hukum had reincar-

nated in his body? Stevenson provides us

with suggestive evidence, but the conclu-

sions we draw must be our own.

Stevenson reports a wide spectrum of

physical deformities and birth marks, to-

gether with photographs—malformed fin-

gers corresponding to the amputation of fingers from a sword in a remembered

lifetime; birthmarks corresponding to

the entry and exit wounds of bullets in

the remembered personality; congenital

constriction rings in the legs of an indi-

vidual who recalled being bound by ropes

in a previous existence; the congenital ab-

sence of the lower leg corresponding to an

accidental amputation of the leg in theprevious personality; birthmarks corre-

sponding to burns, knife wounds, and var-

ious other traumas occurring in the re-

membered individual’s life.

Stevenson describes a variety of ways inwhich the images in the mind of a living

person might create changes in that per-

son’s own body. He singles out stigmata

and the physical phenomena associatedwith hypnosis as evidence that the

thoughts of an individual can create de-

monstrable, visible effects on their own

bodies. He discusses “telepathic impres-

sions,” through which consciousness may

bridge nonlocally between individuals at a

distance. These cases are not hearsay.




Stevensonhas investigateda great many of them firsthand.47

Many believe that current science canexplain all birth defects. Currently, how-ever, Stevenson states that only 30% to50% of birth defects can be explained bygenetic abnormalities, teratogens such asthalidomide and alcohol, and infectionssuch as rubella.45(p3) This leaves 50% to70% in the “cause unknown” category.Moreover, geneticists can’t tell us why onefetus and not another is affected followingidentical exposure to risk, nor why a birthdefect takes a particular form, nor why abirthmark occurs at a particular place onthe body. Genes, in Stevenson’s view, arebeing asked to explain far more than theyare capable of. They provide instructionsforproducing theconstituentsof proteins,yet they don’t tell us how proteins andother metabolites become organized intocells and the complex organs that make upour bodies. These limitations are notwidelyadmitted. “Some geneticists arenotmodest in assuring us that they will in duecourse supply all the information we needto understand embryology and morphol-ogy,” Stevenson notes. But “this amountsto a promissory note with no immediatecash value, and in the meantime we arefree to consider the possibility of other contributory factors.”45(p180)

The British biologist Rupert Sheldrakehas been among the most eloquent criticsof genes as a sufficient explanation for form and pattern in living organisms, asdescribed in his landmark book A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation.48

I owe a personal debt to Ian Stevenson.When I practiced internal medicine, I of-ten cared for parents who were dealingwith the death of a child. I recommendedthey read Stevenson’s book Children Who Remember Previous Lives.49 This was inevi-tably consoling because it provided themwith reasons for believing in the continu-

ation of their child’s existence in someform following death.

SO WHAT?

What difference would it make if reincar-nation were accepted? The most impor-tant consequence, Stevenson believes, isthat it would show us that our mind mightexist separately from the physical bodyand survive its death.

But how could a mind attach to a body,separate from it at the time of death, then

reattach to another body later when rein-carnation occurs? This, of course, remainsa mystery. But equally mysterious are theconfident claims of neuroscientists thatthe brain “somehow” produces conscious-ness in the first place. We forget that al-most any claim made by anyone about theorigins and destiny of consciousness iscurrently inexplicable. Which mysteryshall we align with? Just because we maybe more accustomed to one particular mystery does not make it correct. Famil-iarity is not evidence. If we were to ac-knowledgethatwe are all in the darkaboutthe essential nature of consciousness, wemight agree with Voltaire’s position on re-incarnation: “It is not more surprising tobe born twice than once.”50

In spite of the criticism they arouse,questions about the nature of conscious-ness and the possible survival of bodilydeath deserve our sincerest consideration.As Stevenson puts it, “It has been wiselysaid that the questionof a life after death isthemost importantone that a scientist—or anyone—can ask.”45(p186) Stevenson is notalone. To quote Orwell again: “The major problem of our time is the decay of belief in personal immortality.”51 C.G. Jungthought similarly. He held that immortal-ity was real and that for most people belief in it is vital to psychological health. “As adoctor,” he said, “I make every effort tostrengthen the belief in immortality.”52

NONLOCAL MIND: AN ALTERNATIVE

TO CELLULAR MEMORY

I believe the transplant phenomena we’veexamined are best accounted for by non-local mind, a concept I’ve previously de-scribed at length in this column.53,54Non-local mind is not localized or confinedto specific points in space, such as brainsor bodies, or to specific points in time,such as the present. Nonlocal mind isinfinite in space and time; a limited non-

locality is a contradiction in terms. I findthe evidence for this picture of humanconsciousness compelling, as do manyothers.19,32,37,55,56

Why is nonlocal mind a better explana-tion than cellular memory for posttrans-plant phenomena?

For one thing, it may be the best expla-nation for reincarnation, in which memo-ries and traits carry over from one life toanother in the absence of organ transfer.This suggests, as mentioned, that a trans-

planted organ may simply be unnecessaryfor the carryover of memory, and that thetransplant may merely be along for theride.

Moreover, there is no evidence that anycell in the body can actually produce aspecific thought. This is as true for brain

cells as for heart, lung, liver, or any other kind of cell. Even though the celebratedneurosurgeon Wilder Penfield (1891-1976) famously stimulated specific areasof the brain and caused thoughts and im-ages to appear in the mind of an awakeindividual,57 this does not mean that athought resides in a brain cell any morethan the image on a television screen livesinside the TV set. An image is not pro-duced by the TV set, nor is a voice pro-duced by a radio, but is extraneous to it inthe form of an electronic signal. This anal-

ogyhasbeen advanced by luminaries fromWilliam James to Rupert Sheldrake, andthere is no compelling counterargument. Just so, cells, tissues, and organs may sim-plybe a receiver of information and not itsoriginator. I doubt that a donated organretains cellular memory of the donor’s ex-periences, which are then “played back” inthe recipient following a transplant. Thiscould be called a “CD theory”—the do-nated organ being the compact disc con-taining the information, and the recipi-ent’s body being the CD player that

decodes or plays back the information.Attempting to anchor memories,

thoughts, and traits in cellular biochemis-try, which can be transferred by movingtissue from one person to another, mayreflect a longing for physically based ex-planations such as DNA and genes. EvenPenfield, the founder and director of McGill University’s world-famous Mon-treal Neurological Institute, reluctantlydiscarded this point of view. The year be-fore his death, in his book The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness

and the Human Brain, he said, “Mind mustbe viewed as a basic element in itself . . . .The mind seems to act independently of the brain in the samesense that a program-mer acts independently of his com-puter . . . . It will always be quite impossi-ble to explain the mind on the basis of neuronal action within the brain . . . .”58 Ihear skeptics shrieking in the wings, de-nouncing Penfield’s suggestion that themind may be capable of acting indepen-dently from the body. I prefer instead the




thoughtful response of the legendary No-bel neurophysiologist Sir Charles S. Sher-rington (1857-1952): “That our beingshould consist of two fundamental ele-ments offers, I suppose, no greater im-probability than that it should rest onone.”59

If Penfield is correct—if the mindcan actindependently of the brain, and if it is im-possible to explain mind on the basis of neuronal activity in the brain—why is notthe mind also capable of acting indepen-dently of the heart or any other trans-planted organ? Why tie its actions to myo-cardial cells via cellular memory, asmaterialists have tied the mind to braincells? Why not take a hint from giantssuch as Penfield and Sherrington: mindtranscends cells? Opting for cellular mem-ory seems a retreat, not the way forward.

We are not bereft of hypotheses abouthow the mind might transcend the body,as described in Dean Radin’s booksThe Unconscious Universe 36 and Entangled Minds,37 Rupert Sheldrake’s A New Science

of Life,48 already mentioned, models ad-vancedby Robert Jahn andBrendaDunneof the Princeton Engineering AnomaliesResearch Lab,60,61 and physicists RussellTarg and Elizabeth Rauscher.62

I suggest that the consciousness of a do-nor is fundamentally united with the con-sciousness of a recipient via nonlocal

mind, and that it is this connection thatmakes possible informational exchangesbetween the two individuals, which takethe form of posttransplant phenomena.Nonlocal connections normally exist be-tween all minds, but the recipient’s link with the donor is intensified because of the profound experience of impendingsurgery and possible death. When a recip-ient is facing heart transplant surgery, thedonor becomes the most important indi-vidual in that person’s existence, eventhough the donor’s identity is unknown.

Moreover, a heart transplant seems ex-traordinarily important because of thecul-tural and symbolic significance we investin the heart. In addition, we have onlyoneheart; if the transplant does not succeed,the recipient dies. It is different with other transplants. We have two kidneys, lots of skin, and billions of red blood cells. Con-sequently, the stakes of a kidney trans-plant, a skin graft, or a blood transfusionare not as high as with a heart transplant.For all these reasons, a heart transplant

concentrates our consciousness more thanany other type of transplant surgery. Thisintensification may be a primary reasonwhy posttransplant parallels are morecommon following heart transplants thanwith the transplantation of any other or-gan. The prospect of having our heart ex-

cised, discarded, and replaced helps usshift toward the nonlocal side of the mind,of which we are largely unconscious dur-ing ordinary, everyday existence. If braintransplants become possible, we shalllikely see that this procedure also has thepower to trigger posttransplant parallels,perhaps even more profoundly than hearttransplantation, and for the same reasons.

Proponents of cellular memory mustface an inconvenient, stubborn fact. Toreiterate, researchers in the field of anom-alous cognition and reincarnation have

documented that distant, normal indi-viduals can exchange highly complex in-formation, no matter how far apart.Moreover, these events display timedisplacement—ie, the information ex-change is not confined to the presentmoment but can happen into the futureand the past.60,63,64 So, if spatial andtemporal barriers for information ex-change are not absolute, there appears tobe no reason in principle why a deceasedindividual such as an organ donor can-not convey information nonlocally to a

living recipient, bypassing the transplantaltogether. The primary link between do-nor and recipient may therefore bethrough consciousness, not tissue.

Could both mechanisms be involved?Could donor-recipient informational ex-changes occur via nonlocal mind and cel-lular memory? Perhaps, although hypoth-esizing a double pathway violates theadmittedly overworked principle of parsi-mony in science called Occam’s razor.The burden of proof, I suggest, is on theproponents of the cellular memory hy-

pothesis to demonstrate that a trans-planted organ is required for the phenom-enon to occur.

None of these considerations rules outconventional factors in posttransplant ex-periences—the effects of medications,memory lapses, selective memory, wishfulfillment, self-fulfilling prophecy, sug-gestion, and so on. It’s just that these fac-tors do not appear sufficient to accountfor the rich variety of posttransplant par-allels that are now a matter of record.

Most of us are reluctant to honor our nonlocal connections with others. Weprefer to hang on to the idea that we aresolitary individuals who are isolated phys-ically andmentally from everyone else, be-cause this view is affirmed by culture andcommon sense. Throughout history, how-ever, humans have discovered a greatmany ways of realizing their mental con-nections with others. Sometimes physicalobjects serve this purpose. For example, aring, locket, poem, or photo can help lov-ers sense their unity.They understand thatthe physical object doesn’t contain the ac-tual memories and thoughts they have of each other; it is a symbol that triggers as-sociations in the consciousness of the per-sons involved. A part of the body—a do-nated heart, lung, or kidney—mightfunction in a similar way through nonlo-cal consciousness.

I suspect posttransplant experiencessuch as Claire Sylvia’s are more commonthan we think. Hopefully her case willcontinue to encourage organ recipients togo public with their experiences, as peopledid with near-death experiences.

These cases are a reminder that we areunited in deep ways—that consciousness isone, at heart. Pun intended.

—Larry Dossey, MDExecutive Editor

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Larry Dossey - Cellular Memory