The Selective Nature of Memory and Its Impact on Psychic Memory

If we do a quick experiment, we will quickly understand the selective nature of memory, how we attend to certain highlights and simply disregard almost all the details of our lives. Think about what happened yesterday. What time did you awaken, what did you do and at what time do you do it, what clothes did you wear, what did you eat, who did you speak with and about what subjects and when during the day, did you go somewhere, what did you do and how did you get there, etc. etc. Virtually everyone confronted with these questions will find that a few highlights remain in memory, and there is a vague sense of what happened but most of the details have already escaped us. Now reflect back on what happened last week, or last year, or 10 years ago. The further back we go, the less the details appear fresh in our minds. If we go back to childhood, we find that there is little we remember in detail. We may remember certain events, awards, traumas, major embarrassments, major triumphs, and even for these things, we remember they happened and key circumstances surrounding them, but not all the minute details.

This is the nature of our mental memory. It provides us a key insight however to the psychic memory that transcends this particular lifetime. There is a reason that those who have looked deeply into these matters have determined there is a wiping out of active memory of the external life the soul may have experienced in past incarnations. If we cannot even remember the events of the current lifetime, why would we believe that we can remember the events of past lifetimes, different incarnations, different physical, vital and mental formations, different ego-personalities?

Add to this the factor of the type of memory the psychic being actually attends to. It is not concerned with any of the factors of the external being, but of those highlight events and circumstances directly affecting the soul’s growth and development through time.

The Mother notes: “Apart from the things that were in your immediate surroundings at that moment, apart from that moment of contact with your psychic being, nothing remains. Once the privileged moment passes, the psychic being plunges into an inner somnolence and the whole outer life melts into a grey monotony which does not leave any trace. Besides, it is almost the same phenomenon as what happens in the course of the life that you lead at present: apart from those exceptional moments when you are at the summit of your being, mental or vital or even physical, the rest of your life seems to melt into a kind of neutral colour which has no great interest, when it matters little whether you were at such a place instead of being at another, whether you did this thing or that. If you try to look at your life all at once, in order to gather, as it were, its essence, the twenty or thirty or forty years behind you, you will see rise up spontaneously two or three images which were the true moments of your life; the rest is effaced. A kind of spontaneous choice works in your consciousness and there is a tremendous elimination. This will give you a little idea of what happens in regard to past lives: the choice of a few select moments and an immense elimination.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 4 The Afterlife and Rebirth, pg. 155