In the July 2017 issue of Scientific American, Michael Shermer, in the article entitled Who Are You?, asserts that given our identity is tied to our memories, and that memories cease to exist when the brain dies, our identity is thereby mortal. However, it doesn’t consider the possibility that our memories and thoughts are not simply resident in our brains; rather, there is a collective, quantum memory that we interact with, with our brain acting similar to an intelligent laptop accessing cloud computing.  I coin this concept as Clairvoyant Memory, with its purposeful wordplay of simultaneously referring to both past and future. There is anecdotal evidence to support this Clairvoyant Memory; consider:

1. Near Death Experiences – Many people when facing death, or experiencing “clinical death” cite seeing their lives pass before them in a torrent of memories…could this not be a transfer interaction?
2. Telepathy – We have all experienced knowing what someone is about to say before they say it, and vice-versa. Typically this occurs with someone we have a strong emotional connection with. It would seem that thoughts can be simultaneously in more than one place. This quantum entanglement of the brain has been experimentally determined by scientists such as D. Radin.
3. Prodigies – It would seem improbable that a four year old can create complex symphonies, given the obvious lack of musical memory possible to that point. Yet, there are many cases, such as André Mathieu, where this has occurred. Many of these prodigies indicate “seeing” the completed work, rather than building toward it, as if it were separate from them, but somehow accessible.
4. Eureka – Famous and non-famous people alike have experienced eureka moments, sometimes in a dream, sometimes a flash of genius…seemingly unconnected to prior memories/thoughts of the beholder. Is there some other thought stream being accessed?

It also important to consider the potential difference between identity as Shermer discusses it from consciousness. As long ago as 1641 Descartes argued for dualism; whereby, the brain and consciousness are separate. As Henry P. Stapp, a pioneer of quantum mechanics noted “A scientist physically affects quantum systems by choosing which properties to study. Similarly, an observer can hold in place a chosen brain activity that would otherwise be fleeting. This shows that the mind and brain may not be one and the same.” Noted mathematician and scientist Roger Penrose took this further, and asserts his experiments in what he terms “orchestrated objective-reduction” demonstrates quantum activity within the neuron that interact non-locally with other neurons and, along with the quantum hologram, experience consciousness. Penrose’s conjecture based on this result is that this process serves as the foundation for the human soul.

“I believe that the findings of quantum physics increasingly support Plato (who taught that there is a more perfect, non-material plane of existence). There is evidence that suggests the existence of a non-material, non-physical universe that has a reality even though it might not as yet be clearly perceptible to our senses and scientific instrumentation. When we consider out-of-body experiences, shamanic journeys and lucid dream states, though they cannot be replicated in the true scientific sense, they also point to the existence of non-material dimensions of reality.” Professor Fred Alan Wolf

Intuitively Clairvoyant Memory seems as a universal palimpsest that we have the capability of accessing, and certainly contributing to, unknowingly, and in some cases, it would seem, knowingly. Knowingly or not, it is possible we are collectively moving toward a shared destiny, whose purpose is unknown, but certainly worthy of further thought and research.

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