When my father and I were in Istanbul in 1962, we took a bus ride around the harbor and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. It was a beautiful day. The colorful little boats riding at anchor were a delight to see. My father and I were chatting amicably. But suddenly I felt shock waves all through my body. I had glimpsed the star and crescent of a Turkish flag fluttering from the top of a ship's mast. I felt a moment of sheer, blind panic at the sight.

There is no conceivable reason in my present life for such a reaction. The Turkish flag was certainly familiar to me even before we reached Istanbul, but although I admired its design, it had never made any emotional impression on me. Yet when I saw it fluttering from a mast, I nearly panicked. Perhaps it was the odd angle that triggered some long-lost memory from another life when the ships of Arab pirates struck terror into the hearts of their victims. I cannot say. My father and I laughed about it afterward and I tried to forget it. But I could not.

I also had a strong sense of familiarity at Delphi and again at Stonehenge. Many people do, of course, and it proves nothing. But then in ancient times many people were connected with both temples and these "many people" in contemporary incarnations may simply be tuning into those "far memories."

Jung wrote that we inherit archetypes and instincts and hold them in common as a race. I do not deny that this hypothesis may be accurate in some respects--after all, we are dealing with unknown forces and no one really knows what "memory" is. But, if I may give a simple example: my mother has an unreasonable terror of spiders. She has conquered herself sufficiently to be able to kill them, but it is always traumatic for her. Although I am highly suggestible and was exposed to my mother's fear from an early age, spiders do not bother me... Why then should I have inherited some remote ancestor's terror of a fluttering piece of rag? It makes no sense. It offends logic. Why should I inherit someone else's old fears when I did not even inherit my mother's? All right, so that Moslem flag made a terribly deep impression upon somebody. But what has that to do with me--unless that somebody was an earlier incarnation of my own....

I realize that all of this may sound tenuous, vague, grasping at straws. But it is, to my mind, more logical than an even more vague theory of a "collective unconscious."

--Kathleen Jenks

SOURCE: Journey of a Dream Animal by Kathleen Jenks (1975), pp.54-6

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