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

[Cleric K]

I hardly understand anything in that post. I will try reading the thread from the beginning.

I don't think the whole thread will be of much help to understand that exact post. The things written in the post can be investigated quite independently. It would be better to go through it slowly together, but let's bookmark it for another time. I'm trying to respond to few other posts but in the weekend it's more difficult for me to find uninterrupted time for writing.

[Federica]

Hi Federica,

I would like to explore together with you two things.

The first is related to the fact that, as you say, we don't cook the feeling, we don't create the water. We can really see this more clearly in thinking and then move on to feeling.

If we're very precise in our inner observations it wouldn't be quite truthful to say that we create out of ourselves the perceptions of the thoughts. In certain sense they are something independent. As you say, we feel involved in the thought but then we see how its tail recedes away as a memory picture. If we're careful we can't say that we somehow produced the 'substance' of this memory picture ourselves. We would be much less pretentious if we simply say "Somehow my thinking gestures, my willful weaving in meaning, becomes impressed in the field of consciousness (the World Content), like a seal becomes impressed in wax. I don't perceive the seal because it is the invisible meaning that fills my being as pure intuition. I only perceive the effects of this weaving in meaning, which are reflected in the 'substance' of the World Content". Of course all this should be grasped as imaginative artform expressing first-person living experience, and not as some theoretical model of the mind. I believe that you have no problem with this kind of inner expressing, as you've already showed. The same can't be said about others who simply can't see words like this as living testimonies for inner realities. Instead they try to imagine some floating seal and some wax and say "Well, that's a nice theory but such a seal and wax are nowhere to be found in my experience."

So we've established that our inner experience justifies us to differentiate between what we do through our spiritual gesticulation in meaning, and the perceptual effects in the World Content. In a similar sense but about feeling, you say that what we invisibly do with our spiritual activity as plumbing is different from what we perceive as feeling atmosphere in the World Content. And that's quite correct in the exactly same sense as it is about thinking. But we should also be aware that there's a potential trap here. I tried to illustrate this in the Central Topic series with the hysteresis image, where the meaning that we think most of the time is about something which is not the thinking itself. We think about the weather, the dog, the table but the wax impressions of these thoughts do not directly reflect anything back about the fact that there's a thinking process which impresses them. That's why we say that thinking is in the blind spot almost all of the time. When we do something like the vowels exercise or we simply move a light dot in our imagination and try to feel as closely as possible how the thought-tails reflect our inner activity, then we become conscious of the fact that the wax impressions are not only about the vowels or the light dot but also about the living process that impresses them. This was metaphorically illustrated as the hysteresis process spiraling into unity - meaningful intent and reflection come together. Of course, this unity is not perfect. We can still clearly distinguish between the meaningful gesture and the impression. So we still have no right to say that we create the wax out of ourselves.

That's all good. But the abovementioned trap is that if we overemphasize this differentiation, we practically forcefully open the hysteresis again. We want to emphasize the distinction and say "These thought perceptions have nothing to do with the activity I'm performing, they are of completely different nature. What I innerly do doesn't look like the thought perceptions. What I do is the plumbing in meaning. This only creates the circumstances for the thought to be perceived." And as said, this is technically correct but let's ask ourselves for example: what do I do if I want to think the sound 'aaaaa'? Do we find ourselves doing some plumbing which has nothing to do with the sound 'a', yet we perceive precisely that sound? As an exaggerated example, do we try to weave in the meaning of, say, a circle in order to hear the sound 'a'? Or when we want to hear 'a' we simply think 'a'?

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

As usual the post turned out quite long so I'll leave the second topic for a separate writing. Please excuse any writing errors above because I'm already quite sleepy and don't have the energy to go through the text once more.

Here finally comes my long-due comment. As it turned out longer than expected, I have restricted it to thinking, only. I will have to postpone feeling and sense-perceiving to later.


I understand by now when you say that we cannot state that we, for all intents and purposes, generate our thoughts out of ourselves: ‘Somehow my thinking gestures, my willful weaving in meaning, become impressed in the field of consciousness (the World Content), like a seal becomes impressed in wax.’ Yes, I surely recognize the workings of an enigmatic process in the background, and that ‘..our inner experience justifies us to differentiate between what we do through our spiritual gesticulation in meaning, and the perceptual effect’. We don’t perceive the seal, the seal is invisible intuition that fills our being. What we see is the perceptual effect, the thought generated by that intuition, this abrupt surge in consciousness, a thought that we can report. Right. there’s just a slight tension between ‘we do the spiritual gesticulation’ and ‘it would be pretentious to say that we create the thought’. So we do it, yet don’t fully do it. But it’s fine, I guess it's just language.


Next, we notice that thinking quality varies through time. I have been thinking about your hysteresis graph that represents that, which is very helpful. However, if I had to draw the graph based on my experience, I would draw it slightly differently.
To me it seems like, across the spectrum of observed thought perceptions, there is a gradient in level of intentionality/metacognition/awareness of the seal. More than as in the hysteresis graph, represented on orthogonal axes, I would see it on a single axis, going from zero level of intentionality of the thought to full awareness of thinking itself. As I am sitting here and writing, for instance, I’d say my thought process is floating around the middle of my gradient, meaning I have a good level of intentionality. The wax gets impressed in the world content, then impressed again in the word processor in this case, so I perceive it, plus I have a sense of bringing about the seal also, to some extent.


If we now add the time dimension, the process would fluctuate along that axis, to represent various thinking turns with slightly variable levels of intention. The amplitude of that fluctuation would be the intensity of fucus. For example now I am having an average ability to focus, not really great, so my thought process through time is staying well centered around the middle of the dimension, but with some deviation around it (focus is not great).
This would be my representation of thoughts that I feel responsible for, that I feel I am somehow making, preparing, but without experiencing a fully transpersing view on what the quality of the ingredients is, and who did the groceries (less than full intentionality), plus with some effort to be put in recentering the focus on the object / reducing the deviation.
No specific axis to represent the engulfment in the object of the thought seems to be needed. The object of the thought is simply represented by the point where the thought process stands at any given moment. If the dot is stable in time, then the thought is fully focused, meaning fully engulfed by the object. And this can happen at any given level of intentionality / mastery of the thinking gesture.


If now I am at the middle of my gradient with average focus, at other times, thoughts just appear, seemingly without any preparatory activity or intention on my part. I am then near the non-intentional, passive edge of the gradient. That would be like a piece of impressed wax thrown into my world content from nowhere. In my experience, these meteorite-thoughts are of two types. One is naked intuition. Images or ideas that just appear. These are rather peaceful, static, and don't require much processing, although they sometimes invite that. The other type would be negative thoughts, often related to accumulation of unprocessed feelings, like the replay of an unpleasant conversation, for example. If untreated, thoughts of that sort can drag us into thinking loops that not only lack discipline, but also seriously compromise plumbing (feeling). Now if the thought is noticed (there is a minimal level of intentionality), the effort consists of willingly creating new thoughts, with as much intentionality and focus as possible, in order to overpower the passive thought. By doing so I move from one edge of the gradient to the other. I have applied discipline, but it’s a shaky process. Or the thought is completely unintentional / in the blind spot, then there is no metacognition whatsoever and I just get carried on indefinitely on a toll-free roller coaster of negative mental chatter with its train of emotional havoc.


Lastly there can be thoughts that arise close to the fully intentional edge of the gradient. Like for me, it would be simple thoughts, where it’s easier to direct the action, to create meaning, and to stay fully focused. The vowel exercise could fall (if I were good at it) in this category. But different people would have different gradients that reflect their different level of thinking fitness…


So in this view, the goal of training our thinking would be to shift average quality of thought towards the intentional edge of the gradient, so one can most of the time think from a place of intentional, willful weaving of meaning, and also to develop stronger focus and stabilize thinking, reducing the big deviations caused by the fights against the sneaky thoughts, or simply by weak thinking muscles. The fights are still much better than falling unconscious prey to negative thoughts that keep us stuck at the passive edge of the gradient. But even better would be to stay away from that edge altogether…


Not sure how this could fit into the ‘spiraling into unity’ goal, maybe it simply doesn't. But I put it this way because I see engulfment with object to be same as focus. So engulfment with object doesn't seem necessarily ‘bad’ to me, provided that the level of intentionality / willful meaning is high.
Really wondering at this point if this makes any sense to anyone or if it just sounds vague and convoluted…

[Cleric K]

...

Federica, it's a great joy for me to read your inner observations of thinking! Actually, besides Ashvin, I think you're the first person here to report in such details their inner findings (I think Martin did that to an extend when speaking of the inner funnel). I hope this will serve as indication for others, that these things are not some preconceived sectarian ideas that are to be blindly believed but are completely real observations that anyone can do, if they have the good will to do so.

In the other thread you ask:

I can see this working for concrete objects but do you mean it should be possible to express any meaning in pictorial forms? For example the meaning you are expessing here in language?

I think you're already in a position to answer this for yourself. What you did in the post above is precisely this imaginative activity. It's clear that there isn't any axis of intentionality that you behold visually in your consciousness and along which you see your thoughts. In a similar way, when we say "I'm cold" or "I'm hot", we don't see these sensations of warmth as placed along some graduated axis. Instead, you express in pictures (the axis with gradations is the picture) the invisible lawfulness you find in the different kinds of thinking. That's how all metaphors, analogies and imaginative descriptions of the spirit are born. Even though it is not a sensory perception itself, our gesticulation in meaning is something that we know of through direct intuition. It's clear that with this intuition you don't describe simply fantasies. Instead, most of what you wrote seeks to grasp how this intentional activity confronts fully real constraints - negative feelings, shaky thinking muscles, the grocery list - these are all pictures through which you describe, first to yourself, then to others, something which in itself is supersensible. 'Super' means 'above' (I mention this because supersensible for most is synonymous to 'nonsense'). What you describe in pictures in itself is neither color, nor sound, nor smell, yet you know you live in it and your flow of becoming is shaped by it.

When one gets a good feel for this image making activity, it is only a small step to conceive that if we enter even deeper into this process, we may gain panoramic intuition of the supersensible landscape within which our spiritual gestures exist and project them into pictures. That's how we can reach the point of speaking about etheric body, for example. It is not something that we perceive in a visionary state. It's the holistic supersensible landscape that is being projected into images, in the same way you project your supersensible weaving in thinking into images.

And that's also why you're perfectly correct to recognize this axis of intentionality. Nothing is really our absolutely original and intentional creation. There's always a mixture between intentionality and forces which constrain us or downright drag us on the rollercoaster. For example, even thought in the vowels exercise we experience maximum intentionality, we're still operating within certain constraints. What if we had a completely different physical structure? What if we could produce sound only with stridulation, like crickets. Would we then know what a vowel is? So even if we don't realize it, our intentionality always operates within certain channels. The important thing, though, is that we can become conscious of these channels and find new degrees of freedom to use them of even reshape them.

I don't have more time now, I still have replies to write to the other posts but I just wanted to say Thank you for your efforts and that what you did here is a true example of how to practically approach the phenomenology of thinking, which alone can lead us into the spiritual world within which we flow.

[Federica]

...

Federica, it's a great joy for me to read your inner observations of thinking! Actually, besides Ashvin, I think you're the first person here to report in such details their inner findings (I think Martin did that to an extend when speaking of the inner funnel). I hope this will serve as indication for others, that these things are not some preconceived sectarian ideas that are to be blindly believed but are completely real observations that anyone can do, if they have the good will to do so.

In the other thread you ask:

I can see this working for concrete objects but do you mean it should be possible to express any meaning in pictorial forms? For example the meaning you are expessing here in language?

I think you're already in a position to answer this for yourself. What you did in the post above is precisely this imaginative activity. It's clear that there isn't any axis of intentionality that you behold visually in your consciousness and along which you see your thoughts. In a similar way, when we say "I'm cold" or "I'm hot", we don't see these sensations of warmth as placed along some graduated axis. Instead, you express in pictures (the axis with gradations is the picture) the invisible lawfulness you find in the different kinds of thinking. That's how all metaphors, analogies and imaginative descriptions of the spirit are born. Even though it is not a sensory perception itself, our gesticulation in meaning is something that we know of through direct intuition. It's clear that with this intuition you don't describe simply fantasies. Instead, most of what you wrote seeks to grasp how this intentional activity confronts fully real constraints - negative feelings, shaky thinking muscles, the grocery list - these are all pictures through which you describe, first to yourself, then to others, something which in itself is supersensible. 'Super' means 'above' (I mention this because supersensible for most is synonymous to 'nonsense'). What you describe in pictures in itself is neither color, nor sound, nor smell, yet you know you live in it and your flow of becoming is shaped by it.

When one gets a good feel for this image making activity, it is only a small step to conceive that if we enter even deeper into this process, we may gain panoramic intuition of the supersensible landscape within which our spiritual gestures exist and project them into pictures. That's how we can reach the point of speaking about etheric body, for example. It is not something that we perceive in a visionary state. It's the holistic supersensible landscape that is being projected into images, in the same way you project your supersensible weaving in thinking into images.

And that's also why you're perfectly correct to recognize this axis of intentionality. Nothing is really our absolutely original and intentional creation. There's always a mixture between intentionality and forces which constrain us or downright drag us on the rollercoaster. For example, even thought in the vowels exercise we experience maximum intentionality, we're still operating within certain constraints. What if we had a completely different physical structure? What if we could produce sound only with stridulation, like crickets. Would we then know what a vowel is? So even if we don't realize it, our intentionality always operates within certain channels. The important thing, though, is that we can become conscious of these channels and find new degrees of freedom to use them of even reshape them.

I don't have more time now, I still have replies to write to the other posts but I just wanted to say Thank you for your efforts and that what you did here is a true example of how to practically approach the phenomenology of thinking, which alone can lead us into the spiritual world within which we flow.

Cleric, Ashvin,

That is not the feedback I was expecting... (again!) I am thankful for the balm to the heart in your words, and, I feel like it’s not deserved... I am not really sure. What I am assured of right now is that my task is to bring together and tie up all these different pieces of me, or maybe only some of them, as my imagination is getting ahead of itself, while other pieces could be loosening up, getting closer to fall off on the sides, as the way ahead becomes more impervious.


Ashvin, I’ve read the account of the ascent to Mont Ventoux mentioned in one of your quotes (I do like reading them). The author’s description of his feelings as he painfully proceeds along the rocky path is an exact depiction of how I’m feeling right now.


Now if others reading here recognize themselves in my struggles, then it’s a case of more struggles bringing more balm to the heart. Not referring to you, Soul_of_Shu, because you are rooolling! I am thinking of you Eugene, Martin, and whoever else I can’t name is following here.
Please, look in the eye the temptation of reading this as entertainment, sitting back, taking your time, and see if by any chance you have anything to say to this indulgence that seems to be lingering around. If you do, that's you invitation to weigh in. Please say it again here...


Cleric, my next thing is, I will try to bring the clarity from your last words, here and on the other thread, and Ashvin’s, to a reflection on feelings. But I’m having lots to do with my jobs at the same time… I wish I could find a Midsummer cave where I can lock myself in and reflect. Maybe I will. And maybe by the time I'm back someone else will have contributed their own inner observations, for everyone else to be delighted at.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, I’ve read the account of the ascent to Mont Ventoux mentioned in one of your quotes (I do like reading them). The author’s description of his feelings as he painfully proceeds along the rocky path is an exact depiction of how I’m feeling right now.

Federica,

Trust me when I say, I have been there and am still there. Despite my confidence in what I write here, most of this is still entirely unknown territory for me. Every day is like a new adventure (I like to imagine myself as a knight in a medieval quest ), and I only have vague feeling for what it may bring. What we write about here is only the most basic a, b, c of reorienting perspective and building some conceptual foundation, which is very important, but probably gives the impression to some that we think we know everything about the Cosmic secrets, but that's not the case at all. We are carefully navigating our way, day by day, like everyone who has treaded this path before.





Which brings me to this:

Now if others reading here recognize themselves in my struggles, then it’s a case of more struggles bringing more balm to the heart. Not referring to you, Soul_of_Shu, because you are rooolling! I am thinking of you Eugene, Martin, and whoever else I can’t name is following here.
Please, look in the eye the temptation of reading this as entertainment, sitting back, taking your time, and see if by any chance you have anything to say to this indulgence that seems to be lingering around. If you do, that's you invitation to weigh in. Please say it again here...

As Cleric mentioned briefly, we have spent hundreds of pages of comments over 2 years going back and forth with people here, 99% of which were only about getting people to grasp what you have already grasped in a few weeks, in terms of how to approach one's own inner spritual activity without prejudice. It sounds like maybe these same people are whispering in your ear to start thinking abstractly about "Consciousness" again, not in those words of course. Little do they know, once a person approaches the core of their own existence with good will, the world of empty abstraction reveals itself for what it is - the "limbo" from the movie Inception where we have forgotten we are several layers deep within a dream, yet one we can begin awakening from if we are simply willing to admit this to ourselves, take it seriously, and make the proper inner effort.

But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import—so conspicuous a fact in the history of language—is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope. ... Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence... And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies, but that they are constant, and pervade nature.

What is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories. This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; “Can these things be, And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, Without our special wonder?” for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.

[coexistence]

Hi Ashwin, Federica,Ckeric,

I understand time and memory as follows.
TIME is the always present.All elements impact and are impacted by each other in the present.
The human being receives information and emits his understandings to the others in a continuous basis.
That is his innate nature. He continues to evaluate an dlearn till he understand the complete existence of everything present .
He then interacts with those in relation to him to facilitate harmonious coexistence.
The present is the reality and he start living only in the present.

Memory:-
To complete his education he has the faculty of memory. The information that he takes in can be real or his deluded understanding
which is not real. That information is stored in the outer layers and is rejected by the inner sanctum that only can accept reality.
Information that aligns with reality gets understood and then that never changes. It is existential.

Reincarnation:-
That knowledge that was real gained in one birth gets transferred to the next birth and will add more if the environment is conducive to get more of real information.
I will take an example. If We learn that this soul is permanent and the body is temporary and understand and accept it.
it is stored. Now if in the next incarnation we have the same knowledge coming from the culture that gets easily accepted .
If the culture is more materialistic and consider body to the the real person and not believe the soul the outer layers will
believe that and the knowledge got in earlier birth will just be stored and be clouded.

If we get a conducive atmosphere and this fact of being a soul gets re emphasised then the additional knowledge of all of humanity being the same.
The interconnected between all humans.Equality of gender and so on.
and that will continue till the complete knowledge is gained.

[Federica]

...

Hey coexistence,

So glad you have joined in here, thank you for being open and sharing your observations! Maybe I should wait, but I am too curious to ask you:

1. At the time when the understanding you are describing was forming in you, how did it unfold in you - if you could go back to that period? For example, your understanding of the innate nature of the human being, how did it come about?

2. Regarding reincarnation, when you say ‘If we learn that this soul is permanent and the body is temporary and understand and accept it, it is stored. Now if in the next incarnation we have the same knowledge coming from the culture that gets easily accepted’ do you mean that you have the feeling of having easily accepted the idea of reincarnation in your current life because that knowledge was stored in your previous life? Do you experience the direct understanding of these stored ‘sanskars’ or, if not, how do you know they get stored?

3. Are there any aspects of this understanding that are not fully satisfactory, even are there any aspects that are source of doubts or struggles, or is your understanding a proven, stable construction that holds together quite consistently for you?

[Federica]

Encouraging but also chilling that you consider most of this path to be still entirely (!) unknown territory for you. But yes, every day is a new adventure is the overarching mood. Better not to tell how I imagine myself along the way, suffice to say I understand smiling resilience. It’s what I hear in the Led-Zeppelin song (thanks!) Will see if I have enough of the same to keep me on track on the spiritual side of the quest : )

[lorenzop]

. . . taking this thread a step back, unless one has experiences that appear to be best explained by past live(s), or some similar reason or need, why the interest in reincarnation? Why go looking for this knowledge?
Note: I neither believe in nor disbelieve in reincarnation, I don't have an interest in the subject. Why would someone pursue this?

[AshvinP]

. . . taking this thread a step back, unless one has experiences that appear to be best explained by past live(s), or some similar reason or need, why the interest in reincarnation? Why go looking for this knowledge?
Note: I neither believe in nor disbelieve in reincarnation, I don't have an interest in the subject. Why would someone pursue this?

You said it yourself, Lorenzo:

I would suggest that the second, increased\enhanced perception, world is enriched to maximum value, is a natural consequence of spiritual growth. We've all experienced at least a taste of this; when we love someone or something, our heart is full, and we appreciate this person fully.

It's true, an abstract theory of reincarnation isn't going to get us anywhere closer to understanding our past lives and how they weave into our current one. So the question is, do we assume only these theories are possible, or is 'enhanced perception' through spiritual growth also possible? People in ancient India did not form abstract theories about reincarnation - they sensed it as embedded experiences of their soul's journey. There was really no point questioning it any more than we would question whether our soul traveled through the age of 0-7 years in this lifetime. It was simply a given fact of existence and could be dimly remembered to some extent, like we may dimly remember experiences here and there from childhood.

We no longer have this sense of experience which reaches out beyond our current incarnation, like we no longer have any recollection of what we experienced during the earliest years of this life. But if someone told us we could strengthen our continuity of consciousness so we are more awake to what we experienced during childhood, would we blow them off and say, "no thank you, I'm not interested!" Maybe it depends on how much effort they told us it would require. But if they could awaken us fully with a snap of the finger, we wouldn't decline on the grounds that it has no bearing on what we experience today. Psychologists and cog scientists have told us for some time now that experiences of immense significance occur during our childhood, which weave much of our current identity.

It isn't any different for past lives, if they occur. And we have great reason to think they do. Apart from ancient Wisdom traditions across all cultures, it necessitated by any monist and idealist outlook and helps make great sense of what occurs in the average single life of an individual through ingrained traits, habits, etc. What's even more important to remember now, though, is the period between death and a new birth. This is like the involutionary descent of the Spirit-Soul into Matter in bygone ages, the period during daily sleep, or the intuitive, inspirative, and imaginative meaning which lives between two perceptual forms like our words and sentences (the 'liminal spaces' or 'holes'). It's the period when we are ideating meaning before incarnating it into an action or form on the physical plane. This is the period of experience completely written off by materialists and idealists and fundamentalists alike, which leads them to one-sided and inverted conclusions about human evolution, our current perspective on the world, and therefore our current understanding of who we are.

This period can certainly be known concretely by enhanced perception during our current incarnation. So the question here, as usual, is only whether we are limiting this possibility because we ourselves cannot yet imagine how it could be known. Because if we could imagine it, and we could know how to attain it, there would be no remaining questions as to whether it's of relevance to our daily lives. How much more noble would our Maya existence be if each individual knew, in a concrete and living way, that they had belonged to a different race and nationality in prior incarnations and will again in future ones, that they were once the very same materialists they are now bashing for being so 'stupid', that they were female in the previous incarnation before they were male in the current one? It would be a nobility which comes from reasoned acceptance that we are all, in fact, responsible for the 'sins of the world', and our redemption can never arrive in isolation, but only with the destiny of humanity as such.