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Do Our Organs Have Memories?
posted by Jurriaan
Kamp Feb 21, 2010 1:02 pm
filed under: Health & Wellness, News & Issues, On The Go, Spirituality, donor personalities,
heart transplant
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Transplant patients sometimes take on part of
their donors’ personalities.
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Glenda lost her husband, David, in a car crash. She made his organs available for
transplant. A few years later, as part of a study by neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, she met the young Spanish-speaking man
who had received her late husband’s heart. Filled with emotion, Glenda asked if she could lay her hand on his chest.
“I love you, David,” she said. “Everything’s copacetic.”
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The young man’s
mother, also present, was startled. “My son uses that word now,” she said. “He never said it before his
heart transplant. I don’t know that word; it doesn’t exist in Spanish. But it was the first thing he said after
the operation.”
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Her son appeared to have changed in other ways too. Before, he had been a health-conscious vegetarian;
now he craved meat and greasy food. He had loved heavy metal music; now he played nothing but fifties rock ’n’
roll. Glenda’s husband had been an ardent meat-lover and played in a rock ’n’ roll band.
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Does the
heart have a memory? Is part of an organ donor’s personality also transferred to the recipient in a transplant? Yes,
contends Pearsall in his book The Heart’s Code, which provides other remarkable examples of transplanted hearts with
memories.
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An 8-year-old girl received the heart of a 10-year-old girl who had been murdered. The recipient ended up
at a psychiatrist’s office, plagued by nightmares about her donor’s murderer. She said she knew who the man was.
After a few sessions, the psychiatrist decided to notify the police. Following the girl’s instructions, they tracked
down the murderer. The man was convicted on evidence she had provided the first clues about: the time, the weapon, the place,
the clothes he wore, what his victim told him. Everything the girl said turned out to be true.
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Pearsall’s book
is based on 73 heart-transplant cases in which parts of the donors’ personalities appear to have been transferred to
the recipients.
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Pearsall argues that the brain is not the only
centre of human intelligence. The heart, he says, carries equal importance. He posits that the body is made up of cells that
transmit “information.” Cells communicate this information to each other electromagnetically. Thus a transplanted
organ can continue to broadcast old information, something like amputees’ experience of pain in lost limbs. Phenomena
like these suggest cells have memories.
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Critics deny the existence of proof that memories can be transplanted along
with organs, and fear such assertions will cause donor numbers to fall. Some non-believers attribute personality changes in
transplant recipients to the heavy drugs they must take to prevent organ rejection.
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But what should we make of the
documented story of an 8-year-old Jewish boy who died in a car wreck? His death was the salvation of a 3-year-old Arab girl
with a dangerous heart condition. As soon as the girl woke up from the anaesthesia after surgery, she asked by name for a
type of Jewish candy she could not have known existed.
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Pearsall’s book raises fascinating questions that shake
the foundations of science.
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+++
What Makes A Real Holiday?
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Rest and happiness make a real holiday. Often
people go on a holiday and they come back tired and tanned, and needing a few more days to recuperate! A real holiday is that
which energizes and does not wear you out. Remember, nothing energizes you like Wisdom.
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- Doubts and complaints are
impediments for rest.
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- The moment you set out on your holiday, know that it has begun. Often people expect to find
a pinnacle of happiness. Enjoy every moment of the journey as children do, do not wait for the destination.
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- If you
cannot be happy in one place, you cannot be happy in any other place. If you do not know how to row one boat you will not
be able to row any other boat.
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- To get maximum satisfaction out of your holiday you need to do something creative
and engage in Seva > {Compassionate 'useful' Service}.
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- Do not ever forget to make meditation and
prayer a part of your holiday.
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If your days are Holy, then every day is a Holiday!
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- Sri Sri
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