Who were you before you were born?

I was thinking of maintaining a separate blog to dedicate to esoteric matter much like Les Visible does with Visible Origami, but I don't blog enough as it is. Besides, what could be a better topic to discuss on a blog called "What They Don't Tell You" than the fact that we are much more than our physical body, and our consciousness will, in fact, survive our physical death.

Sometimes I liken humanity as an enormously wealthy immortal being suffering from Alzheimer's, being mercilessly abused by a greedy, coniving "caregiver." Think about it. What power would there be in immortality if you're stuck in a cycle of declining health followed by total amnesia every 70 years or so? But a benevolent God may have designed our lives this way if the object of life were, in fact, to learn spiritual lessons.

I've always believed in reincarnation (ironically only recently challenged on discovery of what may be a researchable past life). Over the years I've stumbled upon some otherwise baffling conditions that don't make sense if you accept the Western assumption that personality, talents and hang-ups come from only two things: Nature and Nuture.

Foreign Accent Syndrome:
Wherein people who have suffered damage to the part of the brain associated with speech suddenly acquire a foreign accent. The "scientific" claim is that this is simply due to the elongation of certain vowels making it "sound" like a foreign accent, but I beg to differ. I saw one (English)woman on youtube clearly speaking in a Jamaican accent, and another (American) clearly is speaking in a French accent. Both seemed genuinely embarrassed about this, but couldn't help it. And what do you make of this? -- Czech speedway rider knocked out in crash wakes up speaking perfect English

Gender dysphoria:
A "woman trapped in a man's body" or vice-versa. I would include transvestism in this category as well.

Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID):
This is a truly bizarre condition wherein the subject desires to have a limb amputated, and doesn't feel whole unless it is. Could this be the unconscious playing out of karma from another life? Dr. Ian Stevenson has done a lot of work correlating birthmarks and birth defects in children with injuries they claim to have incurred in a previous life. Check it out: http://www.sinor.ru/~che/birthmarks.htm (BTW, does anybody else see the similarity in the faces of Peter Stuyvesant and Gouverneur Morris? Both had wooden legs).

Savant syndrome and child prodigies
[For that matter, how does one account for the genius of Helen Keller, blind and deaf since she was a toddler, at perceiving and communicating her interpretations of the world? What about this painter who was born without eyes?]

Obviously, sexual dysphoria and BIID run counter to the Darwinian idea of "survival of the fittest." So nature should not account for these complex psychological conditions, both of which have compelled people to remove their own body parts. Both are *strongly* discouraged by our culture. This begs the question: are human beings motivated by something else outside biological and cultural imparitives?

Foreign accent syndrome and amazing, inexplicable skills by children and the severely handicapped are more benign conditions, but just as puzzling. These skills or attributes suddenly appear out of the blue. Is it possible to have access to resources outside the generally recognized realm of brain connections forged from years of habit and/or pratice?

I think it's possible to access memories, skills (and be bothered by neuroses) that stem from outside our current existence on Earth. But that's my take. If anyone else has a better explaination for these conditions, I'd like to hear it.