=1 "Three levels of memory"
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Three levels of memory
“Then why don't I remember that eternal life you speak about?”
You do remember. The very cells of your body remember. None of your cells was born out of nothing on a certain date like that which you call your memory. Each one of them is always half of a living cell which preceded it. Each one took over not simply half of the personality and half the memory of its predecessor, but all of it. It was divided exactly into two copies, each of which kept the entire memory, the entire personality. And that memory is a very precise, encyclopedic memory, not like the fuzzy images you cherish and call your memory.
The memory of your cells is a total remembrance of all life from the first cell division which took place on earth more than two billion years ago, to the most recent, perhaps a few minutes ago. This memory is carefully copied each time and built into a three-dimensional code called DNA. It is this memory which makes you you, not that rather stupid and sentimental little remembrance of your first day at school, or your first kiss – when the truth was that that first was already a million times.
You remember now?
Like a computer you have many memories, many ways of depositing information of your past, each with different levels of importance and different capacities of recall. They are not only in the cells of your physical body, but in different subtle bodies of your being and with different speeds of retrieval and faculties of access.
But you, unlike a computer, think that your cells are able to draw only on that surface store of rather trifling importance, your mental memory. The memory of past lives is stored here only in extremely rare cases, under rather queer and abnormal conditions. It happens sometimes in early childhood when a child swallows parts of the decomposing mental being of a deceased person. This is rather unfortunate and usually has very unhappy results. Many things are better forgotten, and generally that first-called-up memory, our mental memory, the one most readily available to our surface personality, undergoes a subtle change in the course of time. We have all noticed how our childhood memories are transformed by the passing years, not simply being screened but also subtly transfigured. Most of that which at one time might have seemed terrible to us may become amusing or even joyful. Most of our defeats become secret victories. And many things of which we were ashamed when they happened we may become proud of. These remembrances are taken over by a different, deeper memory.
“But isn't there something like a psychic memory, which you can take over into your future life?”
Yes, but how many psychic experiences have you had in your life? The Greeks had a beautiful word for psychic experience, psychic knowledge. They called it Alethia: the Truth which is not left behind when one crosses the river Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. And this memory is the most joyful and blessed of all memories. All that is really essential in your life, those great joys when you discovered a new beauty, a new truth, a new courage, a new deep inner experience of oneness and of bliss – these are the things which are unforgettable to that memory.
Sit down in some happy place, on the beach when the moon is full on the sea, or in a forest glade where a campfire is burning, and meditate, and you will see how the doors of remembrance can open and how these subtle memories can remind you of life
after life
after life.
See also