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Summary


People Of The Womb recounts the author’s vivid pre-birth memories. The author attempts to more broadly introduce you to the inner world of a gestating human. The book also talks about the sensations experienced in utero,  in the aquatic world of the womb.  The experiences of prenatal life are recreated and compared to our postnatal adult lives. 


In a world often obsessed with a pro-choice / pro-life debate this book may offer a different way of contextualizing this social division.The author suggests that the experiences we all broadly share from our time in our mother's wombs leave humans with a primal inclination to view the world from a spiritual, religious and perhaps artistic viewpoint. He also examines the ongoing interrelationship between two radically different pre and postnatal experiences of life and attempts to indicate the implications on early childhood development and human development more broadly.The nature of consciousness, and being a conscious being, is examined inside an exploration of fetal consciousness. 
 

Memories

The Symphony of the Heart" Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions." Edgar Cayce


Excerpt from People of the Womb ...


Probably the most striking surface feature of my memories is the awesome experience generated in the womb by the beating of my mother’s heart. The beat of our mothers’ hearts is a universal constant background sensation while we are in the womb. It is as regular as day following night. It is an ever-present backdrop of our sensory stimulus in the womb. The memories I have of my mother’s heartbeat always seems, as I look back on them, as the slow peaceful heartbeat of a sleeping person. I have no memory of faster heartbeats or other body sounds. It also seems to me, as if I were always remembering back to a specific moment, or quality of moment in the womb.
 
I was totally enraptured and captivated by the experience. A single heartbeat was like an eternity of perfection and an eternity of them would never be too much. This experience is perhaps like a drum symphony. You are completely surrounded by drums. They are so close you can almost touch them. The sounds and the vibrations permeate and reverberate throughout your entire being. Your spirit soars to a rhythm that is always the same and is always experienced as the first hearing of a timeless masterpiece. You are lost in exaltation and the sensations of the moment. You are totally focused inwards to your body, and outwards to the vibrating world. The effect is also hypnotic; it greatly magnifies your awareness. It does both at the same time. This experience has a cadence to it corresponding to the beat of your mother’s heart. The rhythm goes on and on. Imagine you are a small wisp of a developing human growing in your mother’s womb. Your mother is massive and completely surrounds you. Her heart pumps and circulates the blood throughout her body. You are a fragile being inside her. As the heart pumps, the veins and arteries fill with blood, then the arteries contract, pushing and forcing the blood to circulate” throughout her body. The blood is being forced into ever smaller and smaller spaces as it nourishes every cell of her body. You are a tiny wisp of a fragile and delicate being, living inside her in a liquid environment. Blood is moving everywhere in her body. What you experience is a throbbing, pulsating, and vibrating world. Every fiber and bone of your being resonates with it. At its height there is a world filling crescendo of sound and vibration which tapers off to nothing followed by a moment of utter sublime silence, then gradually rising again to a new climax as the full force of the blood surges through her body. The silence is the tiny moment when the blood stops moving between heartbeats and the arteries have finished contracting.
 
I clearly remember this and its powerful impact; it was an eternity in perfection. The physicality of this sound and vibration really is only the surface layer of the memory. More fundamentally, was the being I was in my life in the womb. The nature of this existence is an intense experience, beyond anything I have found in this world. I was totally enraptured and at one with everything. I experienced every moment newly, as if it were the first time. Life was a state of serenity, ecstasy, and perfection. There was no self-awareness. Everything in my world was me. There was no possibility of separateness in my world.
 
There also was no sense of time in this experience. Time does not even exist as a possibility yet. The nature of this experience of life, is that it has the same infinite quality in the experiencing of it whether it is one of those world filling silences between beats, or an entire day, with thousands of beats.


What a gem of a book! It isn't perfect--it's far too short, for example--but it's a mostly well-written and convincing account of and reflection on the author's memories of life in the womb. What he writes of life in the womb and afterward is often surprising yet also seems clearly right, on reflection, and it rings true for just this reason. Also, I find his insights regarding child development and religion extremely valuable (Richard is the authority here, but perhaps my assessment will mean more to readers if I add that I'm a religion-and-science PhD?). It provides a rare and clear glimpse into a fundamental human experience--one which surely has profound implications for everything which follows it, as the author claims. So I gave it ten stars for ringing so true and offering such valuable insights but knocked off five for being too short. I very much hope the author writes on this topic again, as I for one will gladly read anything he produces on it--particularly, if he writes as carefully and thoughtfully as he did here. I searched for his website and blog page (which he advertises at the back of the book) but found the links dead. Wish I could correspond with the author some. Thanks very much for your memories and reflections, Richard Blinn!


As I read the piece the first thing that struck me was the intense sincerity of the writing, not just because of the beautiful language & imagery but it was the tone and texture of the work that connected me to Blinn's experience. Yet, I am left wondering about one thing. Is it an experience he is communicating or communicating "being?" I like the idea that I am not sure. I enjoyed the interweaving of quotes and inferences to varying belief systems. A few things stood out for me:

The Abstraction of Language
"Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing or trying to figure something out?" Eckhart Tolle.

"The pure being I was, was irresistibly and instinctively drawn to the purity of its ‘prenatal conscious ’ life."
Blinn, Richard

"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth ." Ludwig Borne

"Language is the currency of this world." Blinn, Richard A.

I love Blinn's currency quote above, for me, it exemplifies, well, I am not sure what - it just exemplifies...
Even if you're not into the notion of "womb memory" Blinn's narrative is worth reading/exploring. It's a book that you will not forget.


In an era of self revelation this short book offers one individual reflection on the mystery of his feelings and sensations from the womb. Anecdotal, self reflective and open I felt that Richard proffers a certain understanding of the experience. My personal thoughts were drawn to two key perspectives; that of the sensations and feelings which he recounts long after the experience and his alignment with the notion that these influenced his active life. The book tries to provide an integrated thought pattern but fails in a number of places. If you have never given any thought to the original sensations developed during gestation this book provides an opportunity to reflect on your own experiences.

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