What if you were born knowing everything and life was just a process of remembering it?

Today I experienced déjà vu. I was sitting at work, talking to my coworker- someone I just met- when it hit me: Wow. I’ve done this before. I remembered that desk and that chair. And what my coworker was saying. And the way she was saying it. I remembered it all.

It got me thinking about the soul and an idea planted in my head many years ago in Philosophy 110 at the University of Delaware. My professor was talking about Socrates and the theory of recollection. According to Socrates, we are born knowing everything. Life is just a process of recollecting it all.

This theory blew my mind. Could it be true? Could we really know it all at birth?

At the time I cast Socrates’ philosophies to the back of my mind. But as time went on I found myself thinking about it again. I always hated Socrates because he always had so many questions and no direct answers. I’m an answers kind of girl. I like solutions. I like to think I’ve got it figured out. But as I get older, I wonder if anyone really knows.

And I am drawn back to this idea of recollection.

What if as we got older, we didn’t just get wiser, but we also got closer understanding our true spiritual self? What is a spiritual self? You may ask. A spiritual self is your ideal being- the person you were always meant to be. The life path you were meant to lead.

What if Socrates was onto something?

What if we were born knowing all of it; the trauma of birth wiped out our memory (Men in Black style) and then we spend our whole lives trying to remember it? What if the only moment you know it all- the moment you recollect it all over again- is the moment you die and pass over?

What if we already know all this? This is the stuff that boggles my mind.

And I guess we’ll never know.

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As original published by Suki Eleuterio on Sookton’s Space. 

Photo by Kitt Walker.