On Memory And The Quality Life

by Douglas S Johnson

The first thing to realize is that the creation of perception and the act of remembering are not passive, but rather very active; and that is what makes these processes, which we often take for granted, such a vital part of our living.

Right this instant, go to the window and look out upon the day. You will see rain or sun or snow and the colors and various vigorous movements of life; open the window, and you may hear bird calls and voices; breathe deeply, and you might smell wood smoke or an approaching storm. These objects of perception seem to exist in and of themselves and just as they appear to you. The things you see, hear, smell, touch or taste are "reality," you say, solid, as it were; but in actuality, where all these things seem to be, there are but energy waves of higher or lower frequency, vibratory potentialities, radiating through space at you, to be arranged and interpreted by your sense organs and your living mind.

If you wish to visualize the whole of the "unperceived" cosmos, think of a metaphysical version of what you see when heat rises from asphalt during the brutality of deep summer. Your consciousness must seize hold of these waves of potential perception, organize them, and thus, to varying degrees, turn them into something useful and "real." In this way, the mind actually creates any given scene, taking those aforementioned waves of potentiality and making a sight, a scent, a sound, and having thus created what we call a "perception," retains it, just as a clay molder's fingers will continue to know and recognize any shape which they have figured.

This is how "physical-world memory" or "memory of externality" works; it is how you remember the color of your beloved's eyes, the taste of your favorite food, or the tune of your favorite song.

The process of "memory of externality" is very important to us, and we could not get through the day without it; however, creation and memory do not stop at this level. We would be little more than animals if they did. Rather, everything in our earthly lives is a representation for something deeper, just as Plato, Swedenborg, Emerson and others have told us, and the same is true, of course, for perception and memory.

Just like remembering and the creation of perception, being alive is active; in fact, a being is alive to the degree that it creates and remembers, and it creates and remembers to the degree that it is alive (and therefore conscious). We, as human beings, are greatly blessed, because we can choose to create, remember, and therefore live at lower or at higher levels. What we decide to seek out (and so create for ourselves) in the way of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching will go toward determining how alive we are and at what level we exist. Will we fill ourselves with ugliness, degradation and violent images, or with images of beauty, loveliness and peace?

Just as we take the nearly formless physical universe into our minds and make of it something "real" and meaningful to us, so do we take these created perceptions of the outlying world and organize them yet again into systems of thinking, that is to say, natural science, logic, mathematics, and so forth. Thus, we take something which we have already created and create something even more useful with it.

At this point, it is important to know that the greater or lesser part one takes in the creation of a perception or an apperception will affect the memory of it. To create vivid and lasting "memories of externality," one must be aware with one's whole body; to create and retain the more abstract "memories of mentality," one must be aware with one's whole intellect. Thus, the degree to which the mind takes part in the active creation of any concept will determine the ability to recall it.

We refer to one's taking part in this "active creation," in the common vernacular, as "paying attention." To the degree that one pays attention, one learns, absorbing and arranging the wave potential of important principles. Thus, as one "pays attention" to the deeper things of life, one is proportionately able to create and remember in the mental realm, and thus such a person is just that much more or less "alive" and able to get better at living. We call this more abstract kind of creation, memory retention and life-adaptation "intelligence."

All intelligence-learning is accomplished by way of recognition (the "seizing" of the preexistent potentiality), but also by way of creation (the processing of the potentiality in something "real"). Paradoxically, one can know nothing new under the sun, because every thought exists, and has always existed, in latency (and so someone else has no doubt already seized it before), and yet every time something is learned by any given individual, even the simplest of concepts, the neophyte must create the thought from scratch, from bare possibility.

It is in this way that unrealized intelligence can also be seen as wave potential, in the more theoretical sense. Instructive in regard to this principle is the story of the wise Rabbi who diligently studied a particular passage of the Torah for ten hours before coming to realize what its deep meaning was. Then, the next day, a student in his class, without aid of any kind, came to the same conclusion in ten minutes. The Rabbi's assistant said, "why did it take you ten hours to realize the deep meaning of the passage, and it took your student only ten minutes?" The Rabbi replied, "once the answer had been brought into the world, it was free for anyone who truly wished to have it. I brought the thought with me into the classroom, and the student simply grasped onto it."

Of course, it is a bit much on the Rabbi's part for him to believe that he "brought the thought into the world" for his student (though perhaps we can soak up some of each other's knowledge simply by being close and by being open-minded). The point of the story, however, is that the answer, and, for that matter, any answer, is "out there" (in potential) to be had by anyone who really desires it.

Just as with "memory of externality," "memory of intelligence" cannot be seen as an end, but rather as a means. This brand of memory can also be used for ugliness or beauty, degradation or loveliness, invention or destruction, violence or peace. It is up to the individual creator. Intelligence-creation and intelligence-remembering is, in fact, a pivotal process, in that it can take us back down to the level of carnality or raise us up to the next level.

Proper use of intellectual creation and memory can lead the aspirant to greater and greater understanding and therefore aid in the ascending of the ladder toward Heaven. As we come to a thorough intellectual understanding of beautiful and purposeful mental concepts, these beneficent ideals will lead us onward to higher ground, to philosophy and theology, and we can go on to create and remember spiritually.

At the spiritual level, we remember who we are; we connect, reconnect, with Ourselves, with the Source, with God --- and thus, with each other, since we are all born of the same Spirit. Really understanding this in our deepest parts and holding it with us at all times is being "aware in the spirit." This is the highest form of knowing and remembering, and it is the most difficult to do well.

There is creation from wave potentiality in this too. In fact, our own souls, and even God, exist merely in possibility until we actively create them. I once wrote a poem called "God To David," which shocked a few of my Christian friends because, in it, the great Israelite king took part in his own creation by first creating Divinity: "dreaming of a God who might have dreams of [him.]" Despite those who might see it as blasphemous, it must be said that we are as responsible for creating God as God is for creating us.

In John Wayne's last movie, the lady innkeeper asks the dying shootist, "what of your soul?" to which he replies, "my soul is what I've made of it, Mrs. Rogers." So it is with all of us. We might even further this thought by stating, "God is what we make of God." This is not a profanation. It may be a difficult thing to comprehend, but it is not a profanation---it is true. To have a soul, we must decide that we will have one, and so create it and remember that it is there; otherwise, we shall simply perish with the body. If there is to be a good and loving God, we must likewise decide that there is to be one, and so create God and remember that God is there; otherwise, there will be nothing Divine for us or in us. In every mold of clay, there is a wave potential for a dead lump and a wave potential for a beautiful vase. In all of us, there is a wave potential for a soul and a wave potential for nothingness.

When we get the hang of how all of this works and practice a bit at really paying attention on all levels, we should see all three different kinds of creation and memory coming together in our everyday lives:

I ran into a former student last week. We got to talking, and he asked me if I was able to remember any of what my students wrote for me in composition classes. After I was able to recite for him the theme and grade of all of the essays he had written for me some goodly time before, astounded, he asked how it was possible to keep all those hundreds of students and thousands of essays straight in my head. I inquired as to whether or not he remembered significant things friends told him. He responded in the affirmative. Then I asked if he might remember such things indefinitely, especially if the friends were very important to him and he felt a real connection to them. Again, he responded with a "yes." I told him that my memory of my students' works functioned on the same principle. I had created a context of caring, a backdrop of deep human [spiritual] connection, before which the physical and intellectual memories themselves danced and shone like the figures in a shadowbox.

Too many people go through life collecting remembrances willy-nilly and without selection or purpose. So it is that their final "creation" is no creation, like the product of a madman who slings paint against a white wall. What we create and what we remember is what we are. Memories constantly wheel and rotate through our consciousness like constellations. When we live and create wisely and pay careful attention, just as the stars informed the soothsayers, our memories will tell us everything that we need to know, when we need to know it, taking us ever higher into the celestial planes.

(C) 1998  by Douglas S. Johnson
All rights reserved.