Understanding and Memory

Remembering is trying to store in the mind what we have seen and heard, what we have read, what other people have told us, what has happened to us, etc. etc. etc.

Teachers want their pupils to store in their memory their words, their phrases, what is written in textbooks, entire chapters, overwhelming tasks, with all their full stops and commas, etc.

Passing exams means recalling what we have been told, what we have read mechanically, verbalising memory, repeating like parrots, everything we have stored in our memory.

It is necessary for the new generation to understand that repeating like a record player all the recordings made in the memory does not mean having fully understood. Remembering is not understanding, it is useless to remember without understanding, the memory belongs to the past, it is something dead, something that no longer has life.

It is indispensable, urgent and of pressing importance that all pupils in schools, colleges and universities truly understand the deep significance of profound understanding.

UNDERSTANDING is something immediate, direct, something that we experience intensely, something that we experience very deeply and that inevitably becomes the true intimate SPRING of conscious action.

Remembering, recalling is something dead, it belongs to the past and unfortunately becomes an ideal, a motto, an idea, an idealism that we want to imitate mechanically and follow unconsciously.

In TRUE UNDERSTANDING, in profound understanding, in the intimate understanding of the background there is only intimate pressure of consciousness, constant pressure born of the essence that we carry within and that is all.

Authentic understanding manifests itself as spontaneous, natural, simple action, free from the depressing process of choice; pure without indecision of any kind. UNDERSTANDING converted into the SECRET SPRING of action is formidable, wonderful, edifying and essentially dignifying.

Action based on the remembrance of what we have read, of the ideal to which we aspire, of the norm of conduct that we have been taught, of the experiences accumulated in the memory, etc., is calculating, depends on the depressing option, is dualistic, is based on conceptual choice and only inevitably leads to error and pain.

This business of adapting action to remembrance, this business of trying to modify action to coincide with the memories accumulated in the memory, is something artificial, absurd, without spontaneity and which inevitably can only lead us to error and pain.

This business of passing exams, this business of passing the year, is done by any fool who has a good dose of cunning and memory.

Understanding the subjects that have been studied and in which we are going to be examined is something very different, it has nothing to do with memory, it belongs to true intelligence which should not be confused with intellectualism.

Those people who want to base all the acts of their life on the ideals, theories and memories of all kinds accumulated in the cellars of memory, are always going from comparison to comparison and where there is comparison there is also envy. These people compare themselves, their families, their children with the children of the neighbour, with the neighbouring people. They compare their house, their furniture, their clothes, all their things, with the things of the neighbour or of the neighbours or of their fellow human beings. They compare their ideas, the intelligence of their children with the ideas of other people, with the intelligence of other people and envy comes which then becomes the secret spring of action.

To the misfortune of the world, the whole mechanism of society is based on envy and the acquisitive spirit. Everyone envies everyone. We envy the ideas, the things, the people and we want to acquire money and more money, new theories, new ideas that we accumulate in the memory, new things to dazzle our fellow human beings, etc.

In TRUE, legitimate, authentic UNDERSTANDING, there is true love and not mere verbalisation of memory.

The things that are remembered, that which is entrusted to memory, soon falls into oblivion because memory is unfaithful. Students deposit in the stores of memory, ideals, theories, complete texts that are useless in practical life because in the end they disappear from memory without leaving any trace.

People who only live reading and reading mechanically, people who enjoy storing theories among the cellars of memory destroy the mind, damage it miserably.

We do not pronounce ourselves against true deep and conscious study based on profound understanding. We only condemn the outdated methods of extemporaneous pedagogy. We condemn any mechanical system of study, any memorisation, etc. Remembrance is superfluous where true understanding exists.

We need to study, we need useful books, we need school teachers, colleges, universities. We need the GURU, the spiritual guides, mahatmas, etc. but it is necessary to understand in an integral way the teachings and not merely deposit them among the cellars of the unfaithful memory.

We can never be truly free while we have the bad taste of comparing ourselves with the memory accumulated in the memory, with the ideal, with what we aspire to be and are not, etc. etc.

When we truly understand the teachings received, we do not need to remember them in memory, nor convert them into ideals.

Where there is comparison of what we are here and now with what we want to become later, where there is comparison of our practical life with the ideal or model to which we want to adapt, there cannot be true love.

All comparison is abominable, all comparison brings fear, envy, pride, etc. Fear of not achieving what we want, envy for the progress of others, pride because we believe ourselves superior to others. The important thing in the practical life in which we live, whether we are ugly, envious, selfish, greedy, etc., is not to presume to be saints, to start from absolute zero, and to understand ourselves deeply, as we really are here and now and not as we want to become or as we presume to be.

It is impossible to dissolve the EGO, the MYSELF, if we do not learn to observe ourselves, to perceive in order to understand what we really are here and now in an effective and absolutely practical way.

If we really want to understand, we must listen to our teachers, gurus, priests, preceptors, spiritual guides, etc., etc.

The boys and girls of the new wave have lost the sense of respect, of veneration for our parents, teachers, spiritual guides, gurus, mahatmas, etc.

It is impossible to understand the teachings when we do not know how to venerate and respect our parents, teachers, preceptors or spiritual guides.

The simple mechanical remembrance of what we have learned only by memory without profound understanding, mutates the mind and the heart and engenders envy, fear, pride, etc.

When we truly know how to listen consciously and deeply, there arises within us a wonderful power, a formidable understanding, natural, simple, free from all mechanical process, free from all cerebration, free from all remembrance.

If the student’s brain is relieved of the enormous effort of memory that he must make, it will be entirely possible to teach the structure of the nucleus and the periodic table of the elements to secondary school pupils and to make a bachelor understand relativity and Quanta.

As we have discussed with some secondary school teachers, we understand that they are terrified with true fanaticism of the old, outdated and extemporaneous pedagogy. They want pupils to learn everything by heart even if they do not understand it.

Sometimes they accept that it is better to understand than to memorise, but then they insist that the formulas of physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc. must be recorded in the memory.

It is clear that this concept is false because when a formula of physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc, is properly understood not only at the intellectual level, but also at the other levels of the mind such as the unconscious, subconscious, infraconscious etc. etc. etc. It does not need to be recorded in the memory, it becomes part of our psyche and can manifest itself as immediate instinctive knowledge when circumstances of life require it.

This INTEGRAL knowledge comes to give us a form of OMNISCIENCE, a mode of objective conscious manifestation.

Profound understanding and at all levels of the mind is only possible through deep introspective meditation.