I asked a very old friend of mine at the end of her days how was her life, in general. She answered me: “Like entering on a door, staying for a time in the room and leaving to the opposite door.” Birth and death are two doors used by the Integrated Self through the observer (Transcendent Self) and the actor (Human Self). As W.A McCarty mentions: “Once incarnation begins, these two distinct vantage points of the transcendental Self and human self give rise to a holonomic, holographic spectrum of awareness and experience, as an evolving nonlinear dynamic self-organizing system of being, what I have called the Integrated Self.”

As Integrated Self we have the power to choose and create our life, our experiences and our body in order to fulfill our Missions. As Max Planck, PhD, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and father of quantum theory, asserted: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.” (British newspaper The Observer, January 25, 1931). In the embodiment process the transcendent self is chousing his parents (pre-conception phase), participate in his conception, co-creates his body & experiences (pregnancy & birth).

Spirit and matter, body and mind, are interconnected. The old Newtonian perspective denies the existence of our spiritual essence before conception, during pregnancy and at birth. They believed that the mind is the brain and the consciousness and memory arise from the physical brain. But as A. T. Still (1905/2005) states: Human form (matter) and function (spirit) are inseparably intertwined. And to make the assumption that the mind is an illusion created by an organ of that same body, is an intolerable and fatal philosophical accident and reduction of our reality. Apparently, brain activity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. (Jaap van der Wal, 2013)

According to Larry Dossey, in his book Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing, we are focusing on the second era in medicine which includes mind-body and looks at the impact of consciousness within the person on their health and well-being. Dossey favors a shift in medicine into what he has described as Era III Medicine. This era stands on the premise that we are primarily consciousness in human form and calls for the inclusion of a broader spectrum of human experience and therapeutic interventions.

The PPN (Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology) findings support this new era of medicine described by Dossey, because they “demonstrate that our transcendental awareness, our sense of ourselves as a person (sense of self), and many of our multidimensional abilities are present as we come into human life and throughout our lives.” (McCarty PhD RN, Wendy Anne). Also, the PPN specialists are reintegrating our primary nature as conscious, sentient, non-physical beings that exist prior to and beyond physical human existence into their theories, research and practice.

“Prenatal and perinatal psychology has brought a tremendous renewal to the exploration of our understanding of human experience from an integrated lens that honors our multidimensional nature. In this exploration, we have also discovered the unfortunate-to-tragic repercussions that result from the separation of our human perspective from our transcendent perspective in the ways we have come to view babies, birth, and our ways of being with babies that deny their capacity, sentience, and accompanying needs during their incredibly impressionable early period.“ McCarty PhD RN, Wendy Anne.

Many of my own explorations regarding the journey of embodiment gave me answers to the ways I was feeling, thinking about myself and the world. Most of the struggles, anxieties had a connection with my Little One, which was intimately connected but never seen or recognize. My voice, my thoughts were colored by the experiences from this journey. The untrusting myself and the other was the voice of My Little One who had hard experiences in the womb.

Altogether, healed, acknowledged, seen, listen to their voices, make me a better version of myself in the present. In order to have a holistic approach in the PPN work we must understand how Early Consciousness is different. According to Karen Melton (2020), Early Consciousness has the following characteristics: is relational; eager to communicate and connect; needs support, love, welcome, invitation, healing and repair; experiences isolation, stress, shock and trauma; often has a purpose/ intention; ready to connect and attach; requires/ benefits from consistent, authentic, loving and welcoming earlier parenting; seek balance/ healing; wants to be heard and supported.

I created a list of quotes from PPN specialists regarding the importance of consciousness to PPN field.

Early Consciousness & Communication

• "By relating consciously and lovingly to prenates, we create the potentiality of a new dynamic. The new being can be acknowledged and made welcome. A prenatal bond is forged between prenate, mother, and father, probably helping to ease the birth process. In this relationship paradigm, the mother and father deepen their feelings for each other and for prenates. They also promote in themselves and each other a greater sense of responsibility towards each other, the baby, and the birthing process. In so doing, they learn to challenge the unquestioned authority and power of the medical profession, which frequently treats pregnancy as illness. Thus a positive ecology of loving awareness can take the place of perpetual cycles of ignorance, in which growing babies are perceived as unfeeling objects. The knowledge that newly conceived infants and neonates are conscious beings can and will have growing effects on babies, parents, and the world. It will help to ensure our survival as a species, in a web of interdependency throughout the planet.” - William R. Emerson
• “The parents’ awareness of their child’s consciousness opens the door to a level of communication and relationship that profoundly changes what is possible between the unborn little one and her parents during pregnancy and birthing.” – Karen Melton

Early Consciousness & Memories

• “The content of birth memories suggests a sophisticated level of physical, mental and emotional consciousness at birth, beyond anything predicted by developmental psychology” - David Chamberlain
• “Babies, unborn and born, share with us the gift of consciousness, as evidenced by scientific data and memories divulged by children to parents. Skills such as telepathic communications, clairvoyant sensing, and love sensing refer to extrasensory abilities whereby information is apprehended through consciousness rather than through the physical senses or logical deduction.” -Carman, E. & Carman, N.

Early Consciousness & Relational Fields

• “In the practice of the PPN specialists they observed that babies and children grow, live, learn, adapt, and communicate within the interconnected holographic field of their family and personal environment from prior to conception forward.” - Wendy Anne McCarty
• “We begin this process merged with our parents, orienting to being human in our specific circumstances through our intimate connection to their experience while slowly developing our own ego-self, separate from our parents and our environment over time.“ - Wendy Anne McCarty
• “… as transcendent, sentient consciousness beings who exist beyond our time/space physical world, we need to learn to be oriented to and taught how to function in the human body, in human relationships, and in the physical world. We also need to learn how to be human, to think, to feel, be in relationship and how to deal with the range of human emotions and responses.” - Wendy Anne McCarty 
• “So long as we refuse to acknowledge the consciousness of the prenate, we cannot make the protective discrimination between what we as parents are feeling as compared to our feelings for and toward infants in the womb. This lack of awareness has also affected us when we absorbed the shadow aspects of our parents, grandparents, and so on through the generations. Unawareness of the generational nature of consciousness keeps our patterns of suffering and blindness in place; through it, we maintain the seemingly endless repetitions of behaviors that are reactive, governed by fear, grasping, and aggressive.” - William R. Emerson
• “In the nine months prior to our birth, we have formed perceptions of life, made many choices and decisions, and have beliefs in place that are often mistaken, but are nonetheless exerting their powerful influence over us. Everything that has happened to us, and the nature of our womb environment, has informed us about life, relationships, and our family of origin. These are deep, core, somatic, and energetic imprints. What we bring to our birth is going to strongly influence how we experience it.” - Karen Melton

Early Consciousness & Trauma

• “The most powerful themes echoed throughout the PPN literature are the myriad unfortunate-to-tragic repercussions from the denial or lack of understanding of our sentient spiritual nature and our sensitive-aware human nature. The PPN clinical reports consistently reveal harmful lifelong effects from Western biologically based medical interventions during conception, prenatal care, birth, and the neonatal period when carried out without the understanding and inclusion of our sentient nature and early needs. We see that such procedures have resulted in a rupture with our innate instincts and natural attunement with babies as parents, caregivers, and professionals.” - Wendy Anne McCarty

Early Consciousness & Therapeutic Work

• “Thus, when I speak of supporting wholeness in babies, I am focused upon the baby’s primary relationship with his or her SELF. When there is greater coherence and alignment (right relationship) between the Transcendent Self and human self, there is greater wholeness, higher levels of complexity, self-organization, well-being, and a fuller expression of the SELF in human experience.” - Wendy Anne McCarty
• “One of the distinct characteristics of PPN-oriented therapeutic work with babies, children, and families is that we work directly with babies and young children. We include them in the family’s therapeutic process, rather than the adults talking about them without acknowledging or including them. This is true for babies in the womb and after birth if they are present during the session.” - Wendy Anne McCarty
• “So whether I’m working with babies or adults revisiting their prenatal and perinatal experiences, I envision them as the Integrated Self and support their alignment and access to their holographic wholeness during their early experiences. Profound healing often comes when we connect their current life difficulties and their prenatal and perinatal experiences in which they were not related to nor considered as a conscious being and had unrecognized trauma, unmet needs, or limiting life-imprints.” - Wendy Anne McCarty
• “When I work with pregnant families, I educate them about their baby’s consciousness. Although we cannot prevent all trauma that may happen during a pregnancy, we can certainly lessen the affects of trauma when we are bonded with, and in communication with, our unborn child. From early on, they can be held in the well-established relationship with parents who are sensitive to their consciousness and who are including them.” - Karen Melton

“When we broaden the lens to include both the transcendental Self and human self, our models of early development and how to best welcome consciousness reconstellate into a model that has greater complexity, coherency, integrity, self-organization, and reflects the truer dynamic of the holonomic, holographic nature of the relationship. That is my belief. That is my vision.” McCarty PhD RN, Wendy Anne

Bibliography

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2. McCarty, W. A. (2012). Welcoming consciousness: Supporting babies’ wholeness from the beginning of life¬–An integrated model of early development. Santa Barbara, CA: Wondrous Beginnings Publishing.
3. Emerson, W. (2002). Somatotropic therapy. Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 65-90.
4. Melton, K. (2013). How Birthing Professionals Can Include Early Consciousness in Pregnancy and Birthing. Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health 27(4), Summer 2013
5. Jaap van der Wal. (2013). The Embryo in Us: A Phenomenological. Search for Soul and Consciousness in the Prenatal Body. Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health 27(3), Spring 2013
6. Carman, E.; Carman, N. (2019). Babies Are Cosmic: Signs of Their Secret Intelligence. Elizabeth Carman and Neil Carman.
7. Farrant, G. (1986). Cellular Consciousness. Keynote Address. 14th IPA Convention. Edited by Arnold Buchheimer, Ph.D. and Lance S. Wright, M.D.) 
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