Hi everyone,
My time-frame here in Rio is different to most here, I imagine, so please excuse me for only coming back to this thread today. It was getting late last night and I was getting a little too tired for long explanations. I have read your replies and questions, but rather than answer them one by one, I think it would be best to tell you about the events that happened to me from the beginning, and hopefully in this way answer at least most of your questions. What I am going to share cannot be summarised into just one post, so please have a little patience and hold your impetus to instantly come at me with your rebuffs. I think I pretty much know what they will be. It is not each individual occurrence that matters, but the combination of all of them, so please let me take it to the end. It will only truly make sense once I do.
As I said before here, it is not my intention to try to convince anyone, but to provide some food for thought. I am fully aware that what I will share cannot be considered as "proof" of any kind, but it will at least give you a picture as to why I came to believe in what I do, and hopefully provoke some reflections, which as I said is my only true intention here.
I was born in Scotland in 1960, but my parents moved to Brazil when I was three. As I was born in St Andrew’s, in the county of Fife in Scotland, and because my mother’s youngest brother’s name is Charles, my father’s youngest brother’s name is Edward, the Stuart middle name runs in my mother’s family and Boden was his surname, my father christened me by the name of Charles Edward Stuart Boden, after the 18th century Stuart prince known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Amidst the oldest memories that I have, from when I was still only a young child of four or five, I can remember that my father used to sing me a song composed for Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), whose lyrics began something like this:
Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling;
Charlie is my darling, the Young Chevalier.
T’was on a Monday morning,
The crowds all gathered near,
When Charlie came to our town,
The young Chevalier...
Even at such an early age, I could swear that to this day I can still remember that, whenever he did, I used to have “mental visions”, which most people would refer to as “mere imagination”. On one occasion, I “saw” a pair of army boots resting upon a stool beside a fireplace, while a minstrel sat playing this same song. On another occasion the vision was of a fair-haired young boy playing with a young girl in the backyard of a palace, placing a golden bracelet across a trickle of water, building an imaginary golden bridge, patting its extremities into the mud so as to keep the bracelet bridge in place and saying to the young girl:
“When I grow up and become King, I shall build a bridge made of gold just like this one especially for you...”
A maid-servant appeared at what seemed to be the kitchen door to summon us inside, as the overhanging clouds were turning dark and there was the threat of imminent rain. The golden bracelet got left behind, and was either lost in the mud or swiped by a servant to whom a probably greater need and use may have arisen. Then there was the feeling of fear of the right and proper scolding that I would most certainly get from my tutors and parents for having lost it.
Memories and mental visions are interesting topics. Where do they sprout from? Are they, as our modern scientists tell us, merely the results of electro-chemical activities of the human brain? Are they real, or are they mere products of our imagination? Indeed, what is this thing we call “thought” or “consciousness”? Who or what is this “I” who thinks, visualizes, feels and remembers?
Another particular “mental vision” I used to have was of an entrance to a small town. In my childhood imagination, I could “see” myself riding upon a dark horse ahead of a troop of Scottish soldiers, heading towards a row of houses at the entrance of this small town, the same town in which I had “imagined” the minstrel playing his song.
How can a child recall lives that could not possibly have been his own? How can a child have visions of what he has never seen? How can some children, as has been so vastly documented by researchers such as American psychologist Dr. Ian Stevenson, remember parents, relatives and events pertaining to another person that not themselves; or adults who seem to “remember” past lives under hypnosis, as has been so deeply investigated and widely divulged by the also American psychologist Dr. Brian Weiss? Where does this “imagination” come from? Where do children’s “play games” and “play friends” originate from? Where did
my imaginations originate from? Who can say for certain? All I can say is that they were there, and for some reason remained in my “memory” ever since.
To be continued...
