MEMORY
Selection From a lecture of Swamiji (in the year 1994)


. . . We gather memories in our lives, bitter and sweet, good and bad. An ordinary person cannot avoid gathering memories. An intelligent person will try to avoid memory. He will try to experience and integrate that experience. He will not allow the experience to hang out like a meaningless root from his personality.

Most people are unintelligently lead by memories. The past bothers them. The more the past bothers you, the less efficient you become in the world. When the speaker explains, most of the time you don't listen.

Generally there are gaps in our attention. We are not able to give continous attention. Because memory comes in between.

The memories that you gather of likes and dislikes are the adventitious roots. They are meaningless and useless growth from you. They become a burden for you.

Memories--likes and dislikes-- cause further activities based upon the past experiences. If you are enemical to somebody, you keep that memory and you will react according to that memory for the rest of your life. Your life becomes a life of reaction and not action.

Our actions are always reactions. And we don't know why we behave like that. If it is a good experience you want to repeat. Thus you miss the joy of newness in life. That is the reason for boredom. Because we all the time act on the level of memories--likes and dislikes.

We gather memories and unconsciously they operate in us. If you refuse to accumulate this garbage, if you keep your consciousness clean, if you hold on to the centre of your being, then you can enjoy the newness of life. . .

Two kinds of memories are gathered in the business of living. One is the psychological memory and the other technological or factual memory. What ever you learn is the technological or factual memory. But in the process of learning you gather some psychological memory too.

Technological memory is very important to live in this civilisation which is man-created. It is the psychological memory that you gather along which becomes a drag on you. You must get rid of it as early as possible. Jealousy, agitation, envy, comparison, anger, insecurity--all these are born of psychological memory. You accumulate these in the process of living.

Mind is a combination of both technological and psychological memories. An intelligent person will gather technological memory and avoid psychological memory.

We need technological memory. Otherwise we will be a cipher. We need knowledge. But we dont need any disturbances at all. . .