Everything We Know About the Bene Gesserit: Other Memory

General Overview

Perhaps one of the Bene Gesserit’s coolest abilities is their Other Memory. The Other Memory allows Reverend Mothers to look into the genetic memories of all their female ancestors, up until the point that their most common ancestor was born. For example, Lady Jessica would have all the memories of her mother, her mother’s childhood, early adult years, and even the memory of Jessica herself being conceived, etc., up until the point that Jessica was given birth to. This is because, according to the science of the Dune books, whilst in utero, a baby would be exposed to its mother’s genes, which would actively be storing memory. Upon being born, the bodily connection between the mother and the baby would be severed, thus ending the genetic memories being passed down to the child.

So how exactly do the Bene Gesserit unlock their Other Memory?

Bene Gesserit sisters must go through the Spice Agony in order to unlock the Other Memory. If they survive the Spice Agony, they will automatically gain access to their Other Memory and become fully realized Reverend Mothers. The key word being “If.” The Spice Agony is the most painful thing described in the whole Dune Universe and can be potentially fatal for those attempting it (a possible allusion to childbirth?) We first get a look at the Spice Agony through Lady Jessica, which she undergoes to replace the aging Fremen Reverend Mother Ramallo. In this scene from Dune, Chani, who is herself training to be a Sayyadina, administers the Water of Life to Jessica.

"Chani lifted the spout toward Jessica, said: "Here is the Water of Life, the water that is greater than water--Kan, the water that frees the soul. If you be a Reverend Mother, it opens the universe to you. Let Shai-hulud judge now."
…
The stuff in the sack had a bitter smell subtly akin to many poisons that she knew, but unlike them, too.
"You must drink it now," Chani said."

Jessica, trained in oral analysis, begins trying to decipher the chemical composition of the Water of Life.

"This is a drug they feed me, Jessica told herself.
But it was unlike any other drug of her experience, and Bene Gesserit training included the taste of many drugs."

Very soon after ingesting it, Jessica begins to experience the hallucinogenic effects of the Water of Life.

"Whirling silence settled around Jessica. Every fiber of her body accepted the fact that something profound had happened to it. She felt that she was a conscious mote, smaller than any subatomic particle, yet capable of motion and of sensing her surroundings. Like an abrupt revelation--the curtains whipped away--she realized she had become aware of a psychokinesthetic extension of herself. She was the mote, yet not the mote.
….
Jessica focused her attention on the Reverend Mother Ramallo, aware now that all this was happening in a frozen instant of time--suspended time for her alone.
Why is time suspended? she asked herself. She stared at the frozen expressions around her, seeing a dust mote above Chani's head, stopped there.
Waiting.
The answer to this instant came like an explosion in her consciousness: her personal time was suspended to save her life."

In this instant, Jessica realizes that the Water of Life is poisonous, and it has essentially slowed down time for her so she may transmute the poison before it is too late. Just like how they are trained in oral analysis, advanced Bene Gesserit are also trained in poison transmutation. Through their training, Bene Gesserit adepts are able to identify and view the molecular structure of the poison within their own body and shift the atoms of the poison to render it harmless.

"She found it within the drug she had swallowed.
The stuff was dancing particles within her, its
frozen time could not stop them. Dancing particles.
familiar structures, atomic linkages: a carbon atom
a glucose molecule. An entire chain of molecules confronted her, and she recognized a protein . . . a methyl-protein configuration.
Ah-h-h!
It was a soundless mental sigh within her as she saw the nature of the poison.
With her psychokinesthetic probing, she moved into it, shifted an oxygen mote, allowed another carbon mote to link, reattached a linkage of oxygen . . . hydrogen.
The change spread . . . faster and faster as the catalyzed reaction opened its surface of contact. "

Upon rendering the poison within the Water of Life harmless, Chani takes a drop of the now safe-to-drink Water of Life from Jessica’s mouth. She places this single drop of ‘catalyst’ into the sack containing the original, unchanged Water of Life. Amidst this, as Jessica probes into her new awareness, the Reverend Mother Ramallo touches her neck, and her own consciousness makes contact with Jessica’s.

"Someone eased her to a sitting position. She saw the old Reverend Mother Ramallo being brought to sit beside her on the carpeted ledge. A dry hand touched her neck.
And there was another psychokinesthetic mote within her awareness! Jessica tried to reject it, but the mote swept closer . . . closer.
They touched!
It was like an ultimate simpatico, being two people at once: not telepathy, but mutual awareness.
With the old Reverend Mother! "

Upon meeting the Reverend Mother Ramallo’s “mote,” Jessica is able to see her as how she sees herself, a young girl.

"But Jessica saw that the Reverend Mother didn't think of herself as old. An image unfolded before the mutual mind's eye: a young girl with a dancing spirit and tender humor.
Within the mutual awareness, the young girl said, "Yes, that is how I am." Jessica could only accept the words, not respond to them.
"You'll have it all soon, Jessica," the inward image said. "

As the Reverend Mother’s awareness is probing into Jessica’s, the next paragraph is where she realizes that Jessica is pregnant.

"This is hallucination, Jessica told herself.
"You know better than that," the inward image said. "Swiftly now, do not fight me. There isn't much time. We . . . " There came a long pause, then; "You should've told us you were pregnant!"
Jessica found the voice that talked within the mutual awareness. "Why?"
"This changes both of you! Holy Mother, what have we done?" "

The Reverend Mother Ramallo’s horror about Jessica being pregnant whilst undergoing the Spice Agony stems from the consequences that will affect Jessica’s unborn baby. Without going into too much detail here, as it is irrelevant to this post about the Other Memory, a fetus exposed to the Spice Agony can be awoken to consciousness in utero. This phenomenon is called Abomination, a topic that I’ll explain in another blog post.

Despite Jessica being pregnant, the Reverend Mother Ramallo still needs to transmit vital information before the Spice Agony ceremony is over.

" "Time compels me," the Reverend Mother said within the awareness. "I have much to give you. And I do not know if your daughter can accept all this while remaining sane. But it must be: the needs of the tribe are paramount."
"What--"
"Remain silent and accept!"
Experiences began to unroll before Jessica. It was like a lecture strip in a subliminal training projector at the Bene Gesserit school . . . but faster . . . blindingly faster.
Yet . . . distinct.
She knew each experience as it happened: there was a lover--virile, bearded, with the Fremen eyes, and Jessica saw his strength and tenderness, all of him in one blink-moment, through the Reverend Mother's memory.
…
Too late, Jessica saw what was happening: the old woman was dying and, in dying, pouring her experiences into Jessica's awareness as water is poured into a cup. The other mote faded back into pre-birth awareness as Jessica watched it. And, dying-in-conception, the old Reverend Mother left her life in Jessica's memory with one last sighing blur of words.
"I've been a long time waiting for you," she said. "Here is my life." There it was, encapsuled, all of it.
Even the moment of death.
I am now a Reverend Mother, Jessica realized.
And she knew with a generalized awareness that she had become, in truth, precisely what was meant by a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. The poison drug had transformed her.
This wasn't exactly how they did it at the Bene Gesserit school, she knew. No one had ever introduced her to the mysteries of it, but she knew.
The end result was the same. "

Through the hallucinogenic properties of the Water of Life, The Reverend Mother Ramallo was able to open up Jessica’s awareness in order to receive the Reverend Mother Ramallo’s consciousness and memories. Though not Fremen herself, Jessica gains the genetic memories of the Fremen through the Reverend Mother Ramallo. From this passage, we see that the Spice Agony not only opens up one’s own genetic memories but allows them to be shared between people. This is how Lady Jessica became not only a Reverend Mother but a Fremen Reverend Mother, and this sharing between Reverend Mothers will be an important detail in the last few books of the Dune series.

"And the memory-mind encapsulated within her opened itself to Jessica, permitting a view down a wide corridor to other Reverend Mothers until there seemed no end to them.
Jessica recoiled, fearing she would become lost in an ocean of oneness. Still, the corridor remained, revealing to Jessica that the Fremen culture was far older than she had suspected."

Jessica’s description of seeing all the other Reverend Mothers that had come before her is one of the only true descriptions we get of the Other Memory. Earlier on than this passage, however, we see Jessica’s impression of the place within the Other Memory that her awareness cannot go, the place where the Kwisatz Haderach will be able to venture. It is never explicitly explained as to why the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers cannot look into this side of the Other Memory, only that they fear it instinctively.

"She focused on the psychokinesthetic extension of herself, looking within, and was confronted immediately with a cellular core, a pit of blackness from which she recoiled.
That is the place where we cannot look, she thought. There is the place the Reverend Mothers are so reluctant to mention--the place where only a Kwisatz Haderach may look."

Paul's Usage of the Other Memory

Warning: Spoiler for the Dune book.

Later, when Paul undergoes his own Spice Agony, he asks Jessica to show him the way to this inner darkness where she cannot look. Here, it’s described more in-depth as a place of darkness and chaos, wholly unwelcoming to Jessica.

"Paul's consciousness flowed through and around her and into the darkness.
She glimpsed the place dimly before her mind blanked itself away from the terror. Without knowing why, her whole being trembled at what she had seen -- a region where a wind blew and sparks glared, where rings of light expanded and contracted, where rows of tumescent white shapes flowed over and under and around the lights, driven by darkness and a wind out of nowhere."

Jessica asks what he sees in this space, and Paul describes why he can look into it, and why the women of the Bene Gesserit cannot.

"Paul said: "There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For woman, the situation is reversed."
…
"These things are so ancient within us," Paul said, "that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies. We're shaped by such forces. You can say to yourself, 'Yes, I see how such a thing may be.' But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your own life unshielded, you see your peril. You see that this could overwhelm you. The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives. It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking."
"And you, my son," Jessica asked, "are you one who gives or one who takes?"
"I'm at the fulcrum," he said. "I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without . . . " He broke off, looking to the wall at his right."

It is at this point that Jessica realizes that Paul is indeed the Kwisatz Haderach. However, before Paul became the Kwisatz Haderach, he still had limited access to his prescience through exposure to spice. After Jessica and Paul are accepted into Stilgar’s group, but before Paul kills Jamis, they travel to the Cave of the Ridges. Upon entry, Paul has his first taste of the Fremen’s spice-infused food and is quickly struck with the hallucinogenic properties of the spice.

"Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future . . . the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present and the one-eyed vision of the future--all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space."

Paul’s perception of how the past, the present, and the future all combine to form “time-become-space” sheds light on how Paul gains his ability of prescience through the Other Memory. His ability to see into the dark space, where Bene Gesserit women cannot, gives him the full view of his genetic past. This all-encompassing view of the past allows him to see the present clearly, which in turn gives him glimpses of the future. In Dune and its subsequent novels, this “science” becomes the basis of prescience, to see the future, one must understand the past. By using his knowledge of the past and recognizing the patterns of human history, Paul uses his newfound prescience to become the Kwisatz Haderach and the Lisan al Gaib, fulfilling both the Bene Gesserit and the Fremen prophecies.

As the first episode of Dune: Prophecy comes out this Sunday (11/17), my next blog post will be a review of the first episode. After which, I'll resume my deep dive into the Bene Gesserit and may potentially explore some topics from the new series.

Dutifully yours,
Mother Superior