BEYOND-MEMORY: The Missing Part of Human Consciousness
Unraveling the Mystery of Human Consciousness by opening to the World Outside of Memory can be the most serious of subjects. We can spend years studying spirituality and philosophy, meditation, prayer, manifestation, mindfulness, presence and Be Here Now, trying to "find our human completeness.”
But some of us prefer just to have a little sit.
As a confirmed lazy mugg, I believe if we approach the deeper questions of life lightheartedly, they will welcome us back in that same spirit. So my love of just sitting has led me to a remarkable insight that has almost never been discussed, to my knowledge. Perhaps it's been mentioned by one or two luminaries such as Alan Watts and J. Krishnamurti. Studies like Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Neoplatonism, Sufis, Christian Mystics and Carl Jung point in this direction, but don’t quite get there.
It is a perfect "lazy-mugg" insight, because it doesn’t require much thinking, no strict disciplines, not even any beliefs outside of how we live our daily life.
And the insight is this:
That our true self can easily, reliably and enduringly be found in the World Outside of Memory. Not just outside of talking, but fully outside of memory.
So in characteristic lazy-mugg fashion, the express path to our true self is available to every one of us without exception, and available immediately without any effort once we grasp this new approach to human awareness.
And the new approach is simply this: That we should remain just as we are, and add one little (but profound) ingredient:
The understanding that there is more to life than memory.
“Finding Our True Self and Human Completeness, simply by understanding that there is a World Outside of Memory.”
What could be lazier than that !!!
BEYOND-MEMORY: The Missing Part of Human Consciousness
BEYOND-MEMORY: The Missing Part of Human Consciousness
"42 Minutes to Change the World"
BEYOND-MEMORY
The Missing Part of Human Consciousness
“Memory never captures the essence, the present intensity,
the concrete reality of an experience. It is, as it were, the
corpse of an experience, from which the life has vanished.”
-- Alan Watts
The Wisdom of Insecurity
“Memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function without it. But there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom.”
-- J. Krishnamurti
Freedom from the Known
TRANSCRIPT:
For over 2500 years, we have sought the part of the world that can't be talked about. The world “Outside of Talking.” On the assumption and the hope that this is the place where our human completeness resides.
From the Taoist Lao-Tzu to Plato and the Neoplatonists, from the Medieval Christian Mystics to the Islamic Sufi poets, on down to 20th century Western philosophy, “Be-Here-Now,” and Mindfulness.
But we still haven't found ourselves as humans. We haven’t yet found our completeness. The Wholeness of Our Human Consciousness.
So in the late 20th Century, we began a new quest to find ourself in the World Outside of Memory.
To find the part of ourself that can’t be remembered.
>>><<<
In 1980, Jiddu Krishnamurti said the following:
The whole of my existence, the whole content of me, is put together by Memory. I am a structure made by Memory. Do you know what this means? It means one has to reject psychologically everything that Memory has put together.
https://youtu.be/FWuD1Sh1GYY?si=1BmBn4LcIznQXy-C, around minute 3.
Mr. Krishnamurti considered this discussion “much too radical,” and refused to talk about it.
It’s now time to talk about it.
>>><<<
The Thumbnail drawing attached to this presentation tells the tale.
The drawing shows how Talking is a subset of Memory, and Memory is a subset of Human Consciousness.
It also illustrates a part of the world that is Outside of Talking, and how this part of the world is still within Memory.
But, perhaps surprisingly, it predicts that there is also a part of Human Consciousness that can’t be remembered. It can’t be remembered, because it is Outside of Memory.
It seems we have ignored this part of Human Experience since, well, forever.
All of these together create the wholeness of Human Consciousness,
if we will have it.
>>><<<
Memory seems to make up a massive portion of our human life. It makes so many things possible, that we can't even conceive how we would do without them. Things like talking to each other and thinking and writing and planning and agreeing on things and making rules and enforcing those rules, to name just a very few.
These are all things that are dependent on Memory. They are 100% “products of Memory,” and these are all things that make civilized human life possible.
In fact Memory is so broad and so pervasive in