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As I said, I'd be more inclined towards your idea if we didn't have the examples of Lost Road & Notion Club Papers. I think Flieger's approach probably is correct - certainly in those 'time travel' stories we have something like a 'higher' consciousness moving across 'time', & experiencing different lives. But this is not about remembering 'past' lives - in some sense all those lives, all those different 'times' are happening concurrently from the observer 2 perspective.
The question is 'who (or what) is this 'observer 2' that can pop up in one conciousness at one moment & another the next? Its not really reincarnation or 'racial'ancestral memory' but a different, & very interesting way of looking at the nature of time & consciousness. If I enter the 'consciousness' of a sixteenth century man, or an ancient Egyptian, & experience an event from their life 'as it happens', then in a sense it is happening concurrently with my life here in the 21st century - my consciousness has simply tuned into another 'place', to an event which is happening in some kind of eternal 'Now'.
Merry's consciousness had simply 'tuned in' to a different 'place' in what we expreience as serial time. We're not talking about an 'echo' or 'recording' of a 'past' event, something over & done with, but an event which is actually happening simultaneously with his own experience in the Barrow. The location & the clothing & 'jools' he is wearing creating a 'link' across 'space-time'. Just as Frodo's consciousness in his dream in the House of Bombadil is 'actually' his consciousness as it 'is' when he looks out from the Last Ship & sees the Undying Lands - because both 'events' are, from a 'higher' perspective, happening simultaneously - Frodo is in Bombadil's house & on board ship (& at the Sammath Naur, & in Lorien, & at Bilbo's Birthday Party & .....) all at the 'same time'.
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