The Knowledge of The Womb
PART III
CHAPTER I

MEMORY OF INTRA-UTERINE LIFE

§83 It is my view that the pregnant woman's desires, fears and emotional disturbances are caused by biochemicophysical substances-factors (among them neurotransmitters and neuro-hormones) which are produced in her internal environment (in her neurons, for example). It is these biochemicophysical substances-factors which excite foetus R's nervous system and which his existential identity/self-preservation feels as messages-stimuli from the external (intra-uterine) environment. As a rule, the biochemicophysical substances-factors leave 'memory traces' within foetal neuronal elements: these remain preserved there in a latent state. When these 'memory traces' are reactivated after expulsion-birth by the psychedelic, the whole process of the original neuronal excitation is repeated and thus R relives his intra-uterine experience.

Emotions - fear, anger and such - result from the excitation of limbic neurons. It may be that the excitation of limbic neurons produces special neuro-hormones - fear-producing, anger-producing and so on. Thus, if a pregnant woman's limbic neurons generate fear-producing or other kinds of neuro-hormones, the latter enter her blood stream and, through the umbilical cord, reach the foetal blood stream, excite foetal limbic neurons and cause a subjective emotional state which is embraced either by the term 'rejecting womb' or by the term 'accepting womb'.

§84 How is it that in Sessions R can describe the experiences of a period (intra-uterine) during which he did not have the ability of language? When R describes his intra-uterine experiences, he is describing what he had felt as the foetus from which he developed and which he is now reliving. R's description is given with various acoustic and optic symbols which he learned after his expulsion-birth and which he feels are applicable to the revived experience. For example, when R10 shouted during her 20th Session 'The fire! The fire! she was describing with acoustic symbols (which she learned after her birth) what she had felt at the time her foetal existence was being bombarded by rejecting stimuli.

§85 R10's revival of the intra-uterine rejection of her female ancestors' sex may be explained as follows: The 'memory traces' - preserved within a neuron - of a stimulus which had excited that neuron may be transmitted through heredity to a descendant homogeneous neuron. The greater the biological significance of a stimulus (see ( 96), the greater the probability of hereditary transmission of its 'memory traces' to descendant homogeneous neurons. In other words, the 'memory traces' of stimuli of great biological significance are 'engraved' within the genes and thus are transmitted to descendants. (Homogeneous neurons are those neurons which are located anatomotopographically at the same point in two nervous systems and whose excitation produces the same qualitative result, eg. the limbic neurons of two nervous systems are homogeneous neurons.)

The experience of an ancestor neuron may be revived by a descendant homogeneous neuron thanks to the hereditary transmission of the 'memory traces' of that experience from the ancestor neuron to the descendant neuron, and to the reactivation of the 'memory traces'.