Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#3959 - Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Memories are Made of This …
I recently received the following query, which I think we can all relate to, from a reader of Beyond the Separate Self :
http://nonduality.com/btss.htm
Hi Colin,
I have been reading Dialogue in Consciousness and I was
wondering if you could answer a question I have about
something I read. It said that memory is just a
concept. So does that mean that when teachers say nothing
exists that they literally mean nothing exists? What came
up for me when I read that memory is a concept was that literally
nothing existed before this moment - not even a minute ago - and
that there is no past. Does that mean that
there whatever is happening is happening freshly now and
that all my so-called memories don't exist at all? It
feels huge but my mind doesn't want to accept this at all - if in
fact this is what the writer meant about memories being
concepts. But what then comes up is well why
does it seem to have continuity? I go to work and I know
what to do, I recognise some people and others appear to be
total strangers. I can see pictures of myself as a
child. How is that all explained? All that
seems to come from memory. I remember how to do things, I
remember people - and everything always seems to be there the
next time. But sometimes I also wonder if people are
still there when I'm not there. I hope you don't mind me
asking you these questions. I just wanted to run it by
someone before my mind whitewashes over it.
Here is my reply:
To say that memory is just a concept means that
memories are just ephemeral thoughts (including all mental
images), they come and go. Recognition occurs by comparison of
these ‘images’, which have been stored by past
sense-impressions, with the present sense-perceptions. Whereas,
that which 'sees' these thoughts/images is the constant conscious
subjective presence of pure awareness. However this does not mean
that they are not useful, in fact as you have pointed out they
are vital for our survival and seem to provide a sense of
continuity of an apparent separate self. When examined
carefully this can be seen to be an illusion as all
thoughts/images (and therefore memories) come and go, whereas the
continuing presence is in fact awareness itself. The confusion
arises when we identify ourselves with the mind, i.e. with the
thought/recognition process, rather than seeing the mind as what
it is: a very powerful tool (our onboard computer) which allows
us to negotiate the physical world. This does not mean that the
mind is not a part of what we are, but that it only exists at a
peripheral level and is experienced as a flow of objects
(thoughts and mental images). At the deeper level we are the
experiencer, the constant conscious subject (pure awareness), and
identifying with this means that memories lose their power to
overwhelm us as we can see them for what they are, just a flow of
ephemeral objects. A very useful flow at times but not who (or
what) we 'are' at the deepest level.
As far as 'nothing existing' is concerned, at the
ultimate level all (every thing) is just the 'play of
consciousness'. All 'things' are manifestations of cosmic energy
(movements in consciousness, or consciousness in movement) and
arise in, and from, consciousness at rest ( pure awareness) which
is aware of the movements occurring within it. They exist in this
(and are 'seen' by this) and finally subside back into this. So
what is meant by the phrase 'nothing exists' means that no thing
is permanent, or has a primary individual irreducible essence.
I do hope that this answers your question(s), love,
Colin
To back up my assertion that
all things arise in, exist in, are seen by, and finally subside
back into pure awareness (consciousness at rest) this can be
shown to be the case at the purely experiential level:
1. Consider the following statement: ‘Life, for
each of us, is just a series of moment-to-moment experiences’.
These experiences start when we are born and continue until we
die, rushing headlong after each other, so that they seem to
merge into a whole that we call ‘my life’. However, if
we stop to look we can readily see that, for each of us, every
moment is just an experience.
2. Any moment of experience has only three elements:
thoughts (including all mental images), sensations (everything
sensed by the body and its sense organs) and awareness of these
thoughts and sensations. Emotions and feelings are a combination
of thought and sensation.
3. Thoughts and sensations are ephemeral, that is
they come and go, and are objects, i.e. ‘things’ that
are perceived.
4. Awareness is the constant subject, the ‘perceiver’
of thoughts and sensations and that which is always present. Even
during sleep there is awareness of dreams and of the quality of
that sleep; and there is also awareness of sensations; if a
sensation becomes strong enough, such as a sound or uncomfortable
sensation, one will wake up.
5. All thoughts and sensations appear in awareness,
exist in awareness, and subside back into awareness. Before
any particular thought or sensation there is effortless
awareness of ‘what is’: the sum of all thoughts and
sensations occurring at any given instant. During
the thought or sensation in question there is effortless
awareness of it within ‘what is’. Then when it has
gone there is still effortless awareness of ‘what is’.
6. So the body/mind is experienced as a flow of
ephemeral objects appearing in this awareness, the ever present
subject. For each of us any external object or thing is
experienced as a combination of thought and sensation, i.e. you
may see it, touch it, know what it is called, and so on. The
point is that for us to be aware of anything, real or imaginary,
requires thought about and/or sensation of that thing and it is
awareness of these thoughts and sensations that constitutes our
experience.
7. Therefore for each of us, at the experiential level, this awareness is the constant substratum in which all things arise, exist and subside.
These seven points are taken directly from chapter two of Beyond the Separate Self which may be sampled, and purchased, at http://nonduality.com/btss.htm