Nature of memory and time - Split from "Why do we reincarnate without memories"

[lorenzop]

I'm asking more about the 'Why?' - our present (life) is more vivid and pertinent -why dig up the far distant past?
Perhaps the reason for not remembering is because the vectors of past lives is tiny. A whirlpool forms and naturally disintgrates - and perhaps portions reform another whirlpool downstream - why place attention on whirlpools of past?

[Cleric K]

I'm asking more about the 'Why?' - our present (life) is more vivid and pertinent -why dig up the far distant past?
Perhaps the reason for not remembering is because the vectors of past lives is tiny. A whirlpool forms and naturally disintgrates - and perhaps portions reform another whirlpool downstream - why place attention on whirlpools of past?

To see the answer you'll have to check your own opinion on whether the dynamics of the current whirlpool have any significance for the next reformation. When a seed is planted does it make any difference from what plant it comes? When we plant the seeds in our garden do we say "This is a nice spot to plant some tomatoes, this would be a good place for an apple tree" or we say "Why dig in the past of these seeds? They are vivid and self-sufficient in the present. I'll just throw them around my garden and let whatever grow."

Knowledge of reincarnation shouldn't in the least be concerned with some vain curiosity of the type "I've been such and such in my past life". It's all a matter of understanding the temporal dynamics of existence. As Ashvin said, there's no point to look at our destiny in isolation. It's not even needed to identify with anything from the past. It's about getting a feeling how the past grows into the present and how the present seeds the future. If we only focus on the present 'frame' of existence and say "This is what I care about, this is what is vivid and pertinent", then we're like a leaf at the mercy of the winds.

The understanding of reincarnation is not so much about digging in the past but to grasp how what the spirit was thinking and feeling before, is now our environment. In the same way, what we think and feel now are the seeds of our tomorrow's environment. This is true even from purely materialistic point of view. So spirituality branches into two here. One branch turns on its head everything we see as a fact from our ordinary life. Everything around us presents us with the continuity of existence, the flow of cause and effects, seeds and plants. Yet this kind of spirituality says that nothings of this has any significance, it's only Maya and only the momentary existence is real. The other branch acknowledges the reality of the now but also passes through it, as if through a portal, and finds the temporal structure of the Cosmos as a Thought-Being. In other words, the first branch simply dismisses Time as an illusion and remains in the void of the now, while the second turns inside-out through the now and finds the Consciousness which Thinks Time. The first recognizes the illusion and stops there. The second recognizes the illusion but also finds the Consciousness whose shadow is seen as an illusion from the ordinary state.

We often hear that a single person can't do anything of significance. But this is only because we imagine that everything must change in a snap. But it's not so. The World as we see it is the result of past spiritual activity which has reached mineralization today. It's too late to make any significant changes today. What we can do is transform our inner life such that future formations are healthier. Isn't it the same in biology? While the embryo is growing everything starts as a half-liquid, half-jello substance. From the flow of this substance gradually begin to mineralize the various tissues, including the bones. While the substance is still in a flowy state changes are easier to make. Once it has condensed into mineral structure we have to deal with it. If an embryo precipitates deformed spine, the person will likely suffer from this through the whole incarnation.

Now the question is - is it mere chance that the life forces of the growing whirlpool couldn't produce a healthy spine? Or it has also something to do with the qualities and forces of the former whirlpool which transforms into the new? I'm not saying that necessarily a bad spine is solely the result of the previous whirlpool. It is much more complicated than that. It's a complex interaction, with the parents' whirlpools, those of the environment and so on.

And this actually leads to the point - that what everyone of us does in their soul life, even though it has no power to change the mineralized picture of the world around us in a snap, is actually preparing the soil, waters and atmosphere into which the new seeds will grow. The contribution of an individual to this soul environment is far more significant than we're willing to image. And most importantly - we can't blame the rich, the politicians, the illuminati or whoever, for preventing us to contribute healthy formations to the soul environment. Nothing stands on our way except we ourselves.

So I repeat that the interest shouldn't in the least be directed in superficial curiosity about past lives. At the focus should be our interest to understand how the flow of existence metamorphoses, how the past is the soil, the present is the fruit, which seeds the future. If we get a feeling for this continuous metamorphosis, the question of reincarnation will become clear in a completely natural way. It won't be a matter of belief but of clear understanding of the way rhythmic temporality works.

In this sense, I can ask you the counter-question: what gives you the confidence that we can safely focus on our present state and see it as inconsequential for anything that happens in the world? I know that this is a highly convenient view to hold but what is it from our practical experience which suggests, which gives us the clear understanding, that we can safely ignore everything that pertains to Time, and imagine that we attain to the highest Truth when we live in the current frame without any consciousness of the temporal landscape of which the frame is an organic part?

[lorenzop]

Typically the 'goal' of multiple lives is getting off the wheel of rebirth (and suffering). The Upanishads are littered with otherwise great individuals who longed for more cattle and fair maidens in this life or the next.
I'm not saying you are encouraging the exploration of past lives in hopes of more maidens in this or a future life . . . however, what you are proposing sounds eerily like this type of pursuit, ie, 'I want more success in this and future mind\bodies'.
This is at the heart of the Central Topic . . . how to manipulate spiritual objects\knowledge for personal knowledge and power.
I suggest this because the Central Topic has nothing to do with freedom from the wheel of rebirth.

[AshvinP]

Typically the 'goal' of multiple lives is getting off the wheel of rebirth (and suffering). The Upanishads are littered with otherwise great individuals who longed for more cattle and fair maidens in this life or the next.
I'm not saying you are encouraging the exploration of past lives in hopes of more maidens in this or a future life . . . however, what you are proposing sounds eerily like this type of pursuit, ie, 'I want more success in this and future mind\bodies'.
This is at the heart of the Central Topic . . . how to manipulate spiritual objects\knowledge for personal knowledge and power.
I suggest this because the Central Topic has nothing to do with freedom from the wheel of rebirth.

Lorenzo,

We have offered our answers to your questions on this and many other threads. Wouldn't it be fair, even a bit sacrificial, if you answer Cleric's?

[lorenzop]

If you mean this question . . .

"In this sense, I can ask you the counter-question: what gives you the confidence that we can safely focus on our present state and see it as inconsequential for anything that happens in the world? I know that this is a highly convenient view to hold but what is it from our practical experience which suggests, which gives us the clear understanding, that we can safely ignore everything that pertains to Time, and imagine that we attain to the highest Truth when we live in the current frame without any consciousness of the temporal landscape of which the frame is an organic part?"

. . . it's pretty much goggeldygook. If the goal is freedom from suffering and wheel of life\death, then there is nothing lacking in any given present moment. If the goal is a winning lottery ticket, then ya, maybe mastering Time would be a good strategy.

[Federica]

If you mean this question . . .

"In this sense, I can ask you the counter-question: what gives you the confidence that we can safely focus on our present state and see it as inconsequential for anything that happens in the world? I know that this is a highly convenient view to hold but what is it from our practical experience which suggests, which gives us the clear understanding, that we can safely ignore everything that pertains to Time, and imagine that we attain to the highest Truth when we live in the current frame without any consciousness of the temporal landscape of which the frame is an organic part?"

. . . it's pretty much goggeldygook. If the goal is freedom from suffering and wheel of life\death, then there is nothing lacking in any given present moment. If the goal is a winning lottery ticket, then ya, maybe mastering Time would be a good strategy.

Lorenzo,

I have really applied myself to try to see what’s written here from the perspective of the one who has written your words (I cannot say ‘from your perspective’ because I have no idea if I nailed it or not, which will actually be my question in a minute). I am always amazed how, coming from different perspectives, the same reasoning, expressed in a series of sentences, can be made sense of in 1001 different ways. That's why I am curious to find out.


So you say ‘typically’. When you say typically, what are these typically occurring facts, what are these typical facts, what are these types you refer to? You are bringing some sort of variety of types in the reasoning, aren’t you? Do you mean typically, in the various sacred texts and traditions that tackle reincarnation? Or, typically, for the typical individual who goes through that cycle, or which other variety of types?
This ‘typically’ suggests me (but am I right?) that the implicit perspective you are standing in here, when you look at the process of reincarnation, and in this thread, is the perspective of this or that individual. Could be your own, or the perspective of one of the various characters in the Upanishads, etc. So my guess is, you are reading here from the eyes of one of them, either your own eyes, or the eyes of any other individualized being. Is this the case?


If it is, I would think, that’s why you feel that ‘what you are proposing sounds eerily like this type of pursuit, ie, 'I want more success in this and future mind\bodies'.


Also, you look interested in understanding why the proposition here ‘sounds’ like a pursuit of more cattle. When you say ‘sounds’ I understand that you acknowledge that the proposition might mean something else in good faith, however from your end, that’s how it ‘sounds’. You are signaling the sound of it at your receiver’s end, and at the same time you are signaling that you are aware that in the way the proposition was intended, it might very well contain something else. This something else might very well have a very different sound, even if that’s not how it makes its way to your ear for now. Is this correct? (sorry if this goes all too slowly, I am just more afraid to misrepresent you than to bore you)


In case the previous is correct, may I suggest a test. Tedious, but maybe interesting. I have just tried it myself, to be sure what I am recommending. Would you read again the whole post (Clerics), and this time, when making sense of every sentence, like literally every sentence, one by one, would you apply yourself to see if there’s another way to look at the intended meaning of the sentence, that doesn’t flow out from the perspective of the typical individual?


This is really tedious, I know, because it’s probably not going to flow as we usually want a reading to flow. It’s the same with the body. I teach strength classes in my spare time and maybe you know what I'm talking about. When we are used to performing a certain physical exercise in a certain form, mobilizing certain muscles in certain directions, and even if we are doing it wrong, the movement flows, somehow, especially if it's in music. But in order to get stronger safely we have to learn how to step out of the wrong mode. So we apply ourselves to go through the same exercise again, but from a different perspective, trying to slide our muscles in movement into a different functionality or logic, trying to get in touch with the new flow we're getting at through this other technique. So tedious, I can tell you. But also so worth it...


For instance, when reading here from that post: ‘It's about getting a feeling how the past grows into the present and how the present seeds the future.’, how does it feel, reading this sentence, to step in and out the perspective of the typical individual? Would you be willing to read this from that perspective, and then read it again, but from the impersonal perspective of the past itself, which grows into the future. How does it change your look at the described process? Has the past any profits to gain form the process? What would these be?
And when you do this same tedious test on the whole post, how is this going to change the comments that you will be interested in sharing?

.

[Cleric K]

. . . it's pretty much goggeldygook. If the goal is freedom from suffering and wheel of life\death, then there is nothing lacking in any given present moment. If the goal is a winning lottery ticket, then ya, maybe mastering Time would be a good strategy.

I'm no longer sure what you view is. You say "I neither believe in nor disbelieve in reincarnation, I don't have an interest in the subject. Why would someone pursue this?" Yet you seem to base your world conception around the wheel of life and death (which presupposes reincarnation) and the freedom from it. Is this right to say? Or you're equally open that after death all existence may cease or you may be awaited by 72 virgins, or the gates of Paradise, or the bowels of hell? Speaking of lottery, how do you choose where to place your bet? Or the trick is to simply not think about it?

[lorenzop]

I neither believe nor disbelieve in reincarnation, meaning I have no opinion re whether reincarnation happens or not. Put another way, I have no experiences or 'data points' where reincarnation is required or helpful in an explanation.
However, certain scriptural texts refer to reincarnation, texts like the Upanishads which I respect, so I don't dismiss reincarnation out of hand.
So,no, i don't base my world view on the cycle of birth and death, I simply concede it may be true.
I am not aware of any scripture that states having an understanding of our past lives, or describes any value in digging through past lives is helpful in culturing spiritual freedom or release from the cycle of birth and death.
If someone has an interest in past lives, or if someone has an experience where past lives may provide an explanation, etc. - - I am totally cool with that. I don't think its crazy to be interested in reincarnation. I would place this in the same category as someone wanting to learn how to play the cello, or go for a bike ride or find any pleasure to be found in the relative world.

[Federica]

...

Hi Cleric.
Here's the status update on my understanding of Feeling. Thanks to the various discussions, it's turned out thinner than the draft!

(...)

My point here is to guard against inserting abstract fillers between our gesticulating in meaning and the perceptions, in order to emphasize how unrelated the two sides are. While this is exaggerated in the case of thinking, it is much easier to be taken as a matter of course in feeling. The reason is that feelings are elusive for the average person of today. Most people can hardly, for example, summon (this is the inner gesture) the actual feeling of joy.

Reading this 10 days ago, I was stunned: ‘Able to summon joy?? To artificially engender a surrogate of joy by autosuggestion techniques? Supposing that I can - and I certainly cannot - why should I be interested in training this?’ That’s how it was going in my draft response.
Later, building on the recent discussions and on more reflection on the nature of feelings, my perspective has softened a lot. To begin with I can notice that for other feelings, for example gratitude, I do seem to have some summoning capacity. Another note is that only a tiny amount of carelessness and prodigality with negative thinking loops is enough to quickly give momentum to, or summon, all sorts of negative feelings, through thinking.


Even more substantially, I have realized that my resistance to the idea of summoning joy was resting on the underlying assumption that spontaneous and authentic feelings are not only to uplift ourselves, but are also sort of a relational glue: if I can give someone else joy, and if it’s precious and authentic to them (they can't summon it at will) the personal connection will be strengthened and that’s how a genuine sense of friendship, community, camaraderie, or whatever relation it might be, is nurtured. But there’s a trap in this idea. The risk is to constrict freedom and to actually promote a somewhat forcible vibe in the relation with others. Moreover, I know since a while ago that with love it certainly doesn’t work like that (love is about freely giving full stop, not about giving something authentic and unique enough that it will be received as precious enough, that it will reasonably call for something comparable in return, that will hopefully be decent enough).
So now I have extended to all feelings this ‘freedom’ where we can still share the feeling (although some do not require anyone else than ourselves) but by sacrificing the scarcity game, we grant everyone’s full integrity and sane autonomy, including our own. I feel a bit ashamed of not having seen this symmetry earlier, and also grateful that it has now happened…
Long story short (too late) I am not any longer shocked by the idea of training feeling gestures.

In theory it seems logical to be able to do so. If we can will the impression of the sound 'a' with our activity, why shouldn't it be possible to will something which reflects to us as the actual atmosphere of joy? Yet this doesn't seem to happen for the average person. They might be able to summon a vague degree of the feeling, through the inner gesture of trying to remember how joy feels like, but most people wouldn't be able to intensify this feeling to the degree that it fills the soul content. This is not limited only to feelings. If we close our eyes and try to remember how red looks like as vividly as possible, most people wound barely see anything.

Curiously enough, this I can do to some decent extent. By the way, when trying to pinpoint the nature of feelings, trying to pin down the quality which characterizes a feeling once isolated from the sensation and the related thought perception, the closest image coming to mind is as rarefied color, embedded in the background of existence, that can intensify or be summoned, when certain conditions co-arise.

Please note that even though we say "try to remember" the goal is actually to fill our soul with the quality of redness through and through. Remembering speaks only about the fact that we try to utilize an inner degree of freedom of our spirit. That's why I spoke about memories as creating new degrees of freedom. For example, if we want to remember how green feels like, we'll have to exercise a different degree of freedom. Somehow we know what 'button' to press with our spirit in order to summon the quality of redness or the quality of greenness. What about remembering that color which we have never seen in our life? We don't have the 'button' for that yet, we don't have the degree of freedom. If at some point we behold the quality of that exotic color, then we'll also attain to a new degree of freedom, new 'button', through which we'll know what to innerly do if we want to remember that color and once again fill our soul space with its quality (even if very dimly). If we have extraordinarily vivid imagination then we might be able to remember colors with such intensity that they feel no different that a color impressed through the senses or in a dream.

I understand.

The same holds true for feelings too. Through spiritual training we can increase the vividness of this 'remembering' tremendously.
Now everything we said about the plumbing and the perceived effects still holds. My goal here is only to protect from the trap to imagine that our inner activity is bound to remain completely dissimilar from the actual feeling.

I realize the trap. I was under the impression that my plumbing work was different from the specific action of summoning, after realizing the value of both. Plumbing was the preliminary, asynchronous work of thinking, introspecting, reflecting and understanding that seemed different from the feeling gesture that contextually evokes and revives the feeling.
I have softened this hard separation too… the abstract filler. I see now that working on plumbing eases the hindrances for the functional flow of feelings. It clears up the interferences within, so that the atmosphere of feeling can fill our soul, flow in and out, not only spatially among individuals and through the environment, but also temporally between the memory of the feeling and its reappearance in the now.

It's true that this holds true for feeling to a greater extent than in thoughts. If we want to think about a dog we simply think about a dog. It makes no sense to say "I want to think about a dog but I can't", because we already thought about it by saying this. With feelings we have one more level of indirection. When we first experienced joy in our life it was possible to condense the feeling into the concept of joy. Now the word 'joy' (or we could use a gesture, picture, color, etc.) symbolizes the feeling of joy. It is a holographic token. As we saw, it is easy to remember the token. We simply have to think about it. To remember also the feeling of which the token is conceptual condensation, we need much greater inner strength. If we have that strength innately or we gain it through training then we can not only remember the concept (the token) but also fill our soul space with the quality of joy.

Of course, in order to attain to that strength, we need a lot of plumbing, which, as you say, may have no immediate relation to joy. We may need to develop our ability to concentrate, to let go of some habits, recurring feelings and so on. All of these are hinderances for our ability to remember joy with great intensity. But when the path is cleared and we've gained the strength, it no longer makes sense to say for example "If I want to remember joy, I have to do some completely different plumbing, I have to remember, say, pain". No, if we want to remember and fill our soul with joy we need to focus directly on it, just like when we want to fill our soul with the sound 'a' we focus our thinking directly on it. I repeat that the distinction between the inner gesture of summoning the feeling of joy and the actual feeling of joy is still valid. It's not like we produce joy out of ourselves, just like we don't produce the wax of thought perceptions, yet we certainly have a role in bringing it forward. As you said previously, we can imagine that these feelings are embedded in the background of existence but most of the time our inner atmosphere interferes destructively with them and they seem non-existent. In this sense yes - summoning joy is really manipulating the interference pattern such that joy can come forward and fill the soul. The point, though, is that once we have advanced with the preparatory plumbing, which truly may seem unrelated to joy, then in the end our final summoning gesture can really be called 'filling our soul with joy'. In other words, once we have gained the inner strength, our final action should focus directly on joy in order to lift it from the infinite potential, and not in some other direction.

I realize that it should be possible to make the gesture more specific and precise, with intention and training.

Of course there are many things for one to object here. It can be said that joy, even if we can remember it with great intensity such that it practically happens to us at the moment, is not 'real' joy because we ourselves bring it forward. Real joy should come only externally, otherwise we're 'cheating'. Well, we can talk a lot about these things too but my example with joy is once again arbitrary. We can substitute it with any other feeling.

As a side note, we can say that when we speak of will we have even one more layer of indirection. If I want to move my arm, first I can most easily summon the concept of moving hand. This is only the token. Then, if I have the inner strength I can imagine/remember quite vividly how hand movement feels like. I can move my imaginary hand. But then I need even greater strength if this imagination has to intensify to the level of what we call the 'outer' world. So our inner world has few rings (they are not really rings, they all fill the entirety of inner space and are superimposed, but let's call them rings). The most pliable is the ring where thoughts are impressed in the sound, color, etc. 'substance'. Then we have the ring of more substantial feelings which require greater inner strength to move. And finally we have the ring of the sensory spectrum which requires third level of strength. All these rings together form the spectrum of inner world as it metamorphoses from 'frame to frame' and we can be active in this metamorphosis by working in the three rings.

Yes, it starts taking shape. I also benefit here from the Philosophy of Freedom, that I have begun to read.

As usual the post turned out quite long so I'll leave the second topic for a separate writing.

.

[AshvinP]

I neither believe nor disbelieve in reincarnation, meaning I have no opinion re whether reincarnation happens or not. Put another way, I have no experiences or 'data points' where reincarnation is required or helpful in an explanation.
However, certain scriptural texts refer to reincarnation, texts like the Upanishads which I respect, so I don't dismiss reincarnation out of hand.
So,no, i don't base my world view on the cycle of birth and death, I simply concede it may be true.
I am not aware of any scripture that states having an understanding of our past lives, or describes any value in digging through past lives is helpful in culturing spiritual freedom or release from the cycle of birth and death.
If someone has an interest in past lives, or if someone has an experience where past lives may provide an explanation, etc. - - I am totally cool with that. I don't think its crazy to be interested in reincarnation. I would place this in the same category as someone wanting to learn how to play the cello, or go for a bike ride or find any pleasure to be found in the relative world.

Lorenzo,

We don't need scriptures to tell us that continuity of memory helps us learn, adapt, and evolve into greater freedom. Do you think the person with a brain injury and no short term memory is less likely to repeat the same mistakes over and over again than the person with no such injury? Why should it be any different with long term memory or the collective memory of humanity? Not wanting to remain in state of severe brain trauma is not the same as wanting to learn the cello.

Federica pointed to the fact that these things are easily understood if we are simply open to our own deeper intuitions, open to looking at the world in new ways. The intellect works very hard to these days to close off channels of communication with that deeper part of us who has our best interests at heart. It's that core part of us who looks at the Cosmos with imaginative wonder and yearns in good will to unriddle its secrets. Could it be our failure to discern this in scripture is due to that same lack of wonder and yearning?

Neither of them is in knowledge—the one who thinks the soul can slay and the one who thinks the soul can be slain. For truly, the soul neither kills nor can it be killed.

The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
...
As a person sheds worn-out garments and wears new ones, likewise, at the time of death, the soul casts off its worn-out body and enters a new one.
...
Hitherto, I have explained to you Sānkhya Yog, or analytic knowledge regarding the nature of the soul. Now listen, O Parth, as I reveal Buddhi Yog, or the Yog of Intellect. When you work with such understanding, you will be freed from the bondage of karma.