What’s your earliest memory?  Probably it will be of an event that happened when you around the age of three, and then it will be more of a sensation – such as warmth or sunlight – than a detailed recollection.

Even after that time, memories will be of specific occasions, possibly separated by long periods, often weeks and, sometimes, even months.  Again, most of our memories are sensory – the distilled sensation from an event.

Yes, some of us do have very early memories – but most of us don’t.  And there’s a good reason for it: when we’re babies, there’s nobody there to remember!

I read the most extraordinary thing about you the other day.

According to biologist Rupert Sheldrake (The Science Delusion, Coronet, 2012), every cell in the human brain is renewed every four months or so.  This means that your brain is utterly different from what it was last November.

But although every cell has been renewed, your memory hasn’t been affected.  You can recall – as you could in November – your name, where you live, your marital status, your work, and so on.

And you can still remember the way you were bullied at school, or the time you scraped your knee in a nasty biking accident – and, since those times, your brain has completely renewed itself 90 times or more.

This is a real problem for the materialists.  It suggests that memory doesn’t sit in the brain at all – how could it?  The whole web of connected memories that create identity and self would also be somewhere else.

So where is it?  It can’t be somewhere else in your body – or even dispersed through your body – because that renews itself as frequently as your brain, and so the same issue applies.

The other day I met up with an old friend, who was naturally very anxious about his wife having chemotherapy for her cancer.  He described the cancer as an ‘alien force’ that was growing in his wife’s body.

Many of us see cancer in that way, and we’re encouraged to do so by doctors who talk about attacking the invader with chemotherapy and radiation.

But is that a good description of what really is going on?  Is that the best way of seeing cancer and, from that, achieving true healing?  In other words – where do ‘you’ end and the cancer begin?

If we change, can we change the world?  And have you noticed that everyone climbs Everest these days?

Surprisingly, these two questions are linked, and the second provides the key to the first.

The idea of personal transformation – enlightenment, if you will – is at the heart of all religions.  Jesus believed that his teachings would change the person, and the world, and bring heaven to earth.

But even if personal change is possible, how can we change the world at the same time?