What is memory and how do my layers of memory shape and influence my consciousness, my sense of personal identity, as well as my expectations of the future?
There is a sonnet by Shakespeare that begins with the lines โWhat is your substance, whereof are you made, that millions of strange shadows on you tend?โ Are our memories akin to these โshadowsโ in the sonnet? Do they simultaneously feed upon our substance while obscuring and hiding it? Or, if they were not there, would there be anything to see?
How is my belief in the reality-status of events (that are recalled to memory) inseparable from my belief in the independent reality of time? Remembered events are remembered against โ or within โ a background of a more or less continuous โselfโ or identity. As constituent parts of the developing, regularly revised and transmuted story of this ego or personal identity, they are necessary ingredients of the person I believe myself to be. It is often the case that everyone in a family remembers a shared event in a distinctively different wayโnot so much the bare-boned facts, but the (personal) significance, tone, and value of the event. This shows that what we call particular memories are never entirely objective, unequivocal facts, but โ because they depend for their distinctive character and quality upon the individual subjects who form and recall them โ are always colored and structured in slightly or significantly different ways by each rememberer.
In what respects โ and to what extent โ does our memory bank (our stored record of our accumulated memories) function as a consciousness-organizing-and-directing program, running constantly and automatically in the background? If what we are normally able or predisposed to see before us in the present โ and what we expect to see in the future โ is always being invisibly but decisively orchestrated by what and how we have seen, interpreted, and remember things in the past, then should it come as any surprise that our experiences tend towards a more or less stable and undeviating pattern that repeats itself over and over again? And mightnโt this very redundancy and repetitiveness easily be mistaken for confirmation of the validity of our beliefs and (unexamined) assumptions? A famous Nazi said, โRepeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.โ
Viewed in this way, our governing, identity-forming, map-making, plot-charting memory bank might be likened to the riverbed that is formed by a flooding stream of water that erupts from under the earth. It follows a gradient. It circumvents obstacles. It slows down and flattens out when it comes to wide, level areas. It can stop altogether when it hits a dam. But the pattern this water forms is decided by the course it follows (or creates). Time and gravity assure a forward, downward movement of the water that springs up from its source. When we step outside of the river, we can see it flowing from the source to sea, where it merges with the vastness and disappears. The line becomes a kind of circle or sphere.
If, on the other hand, we meditate on the riverโs water itself โ from within, as it were โ and do an imaginative โabout-faceโ โ reversing our course so that we mentally track our way back to the source rather than be swept along by timeโs arrow โ what do we experience? The โwaterโ becomes clearer as we make our way back to that source. What had become dull, sluggish, and obscure now becomes clear, lively, sparkling, and luminous.
Along this โway of returnโ we come to see and understand how and where our โflowing essenceโ became diverted, impeded, contaminated, cramped, flattened, choked, and dammed up, eventually absorbed and dispersed.
After meditatively and imaginatively returning to the clear, pure source from which our river began, we come away with an understanding that inoculates us against many of the fears and anxieties that troubled our spirits before we made the return visit. We now understand the surrender to time and gravity as our little part of the grand sacrifice that is constantly underway โ the grand sacrifice that life fundamentally consists in and depends on.
Of course our treatment of this theme of memory would be grossly insufficient if we confined ourselves merely to personal-biographical memories. Even when such memory-imprints are โfoundationalโ to our present personal identity, they are relatively superficial when compared to โarchetypalโ or collective memory deposits. Thus, our digging is far from over when we hit the โpay dirtโ of personally formative memory material. We become mere apprentices in the excavatory enterprise that leads on to the archetypal depths.
Platoโs allegory of the cave can be seen as an early but profoundly influential depiction of this move beyond the merely personal or local level of consciousness-shaping by artificial constructs โ and into the deeper, natural-archetypal forms that comprise the generative elements of โworld-making.โ Nietzscheโs admirable if potentially reductive efforts in ๐โ๐ ๐บ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ฆ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ and Freudโs similarly โarchaeologicalโ digs into the human subconscious are more recent examples. Jungโs and Hillmanโs amplificatory work in this area expand the context beyond the merely biological-instinctual level to embrace the psyche as an autonomous, independent realm of its own.
My river analogy aimed, among other things, to show the value and importance of returning, imaginatively or meditatively, to an original condition of formlessness. Such a standpoint โ or axis โ of awareness is prior to history, temporality, or, if you like, birth (which entails individual differentiation). ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ is the great form-giver and is therefore, in a certain respect, the very foundation or matrix of mind, or consciousness. The colorless, constant light within all sentient beings is one โ and identical with this formless, unborn, undying potentiality.
It is probably these constructed or borrowed stories โ these artful fictions โ which we live by and live out that are primarily responsible for the sense of personal importance and individual value that we cling to so tenaciously as humans. It is so obvious, when we step back a sufficient distance, that even the most celebrated and accomplished among us are little more than fleeting cells in a living, impersonal organism. We are, from this โnon-fictionalโ remove, just ephemeral bits of nature. Perhaps we, as a species, have become dependent on the fiction of personhood in much the same way that we have become dependent on culture and the rudiments of civilization in order to thrive. Could โpersonhoodโ be an evolutionary adaptation?
If the felt experience or sense of personhood evolved as an indispensable trait for the survival or well-being of members of our peculiar species โ as our hunting instinct and our language use did โ what dangers or drawbacks stem from its wrong or excessive use? To what โhigherโ principle or aim should this โuseful fictionโ of personal identity and importance be subordinated? Are certain virulent (and highly infectious) strains of โindividualismโ a kind of pathological hypertrophy of the personhood trait?
Does the apparent fact that personhood is generally regarded as sacrosanct (and not at all as an โas ifโ or fictional quantity) an indication of the mass delusion that may very well lead to our extinction if it is not seen through and counteracted by impersonal wisdom? Will there come a time when our distant posterity will look back in astonishment at this chronic epidemic of the delusional self-importance of millions and millions of โselvesโ in an impersonal, natural organism?
