Memory

Memory (Skt. स्मृति Smruti, Impression) is a semi-permanent pattern.

The pattern has stabilised itself enough to appear as a stationary pattern.

The memory is a pattern that changes relatively slowly.

The stabilisation is achieved via self-reinforcing processes or self-resonance.

Memory is an experience, it appears. Memory is a concept that is formed based on direct experiences and logical inferences. There is no real memory.

The Experiencer is experiencing a memory, not the patterns or the vibrations themselves. That which is stable and meaningful is experienced, that which is random and meaningless is not.

Essential Processes

Memory has some associated processes.

Memory Formation

When a pattern impinges or enforces itself on another, it produces a copy of itself. This happens via resonance among vibrating patterns. This is the process of memory formation. The patterns keep copying themselves until all the "weak" patterns get their impression. The strong or highly organised patterns resist this process and instead try to copy themselves onto others. Ultimately, a natural balance or equilibrium is formed.

Memory Recall

Not the whole of the memory is experienced. There is a natural limit to how much meaning can be had in the experience. The amount of information that is presented to the Experiencer is limited for this reason. Over exposure causes loss of meaning, and increase of noise.

When a part of the memory is copied to an area that is being experienced, or where the attention is focused, we call it a recall. Before it is recalled, the memory stays in a latent state, but continues its dynamic activity.

Recall is not a recollection of the past, it is an experience of the present state of the memory.

Inability to recall some content in the memory is called forgetting. Forgetting does not mean that the memory is lost, it simply means that it cannot be accessed due to one or the other reason. Recall is an elaborate process, it is complex, and can sometimes get afflicted.

Memory Backups

As the memory is subject to impermanence, it is a wise strategy to make copies of itself. As many as you can. The memory keeps many storehouses of itself in a highly compressed or seed form. The Causal Body is a good example of such a storehouse, where all the life experiences of an organism are stored via a process of copying.

The copying can happen immediately or can be scheduled at a time when there is less workload on the memory, such as in the deep sleep state. Sometimes this produced strange recalls, such as strange dreams.

Desires

Desires are vibrational radiations from the stored patterns in the memory. They impinge on the local memory and cause actions. This mechanism or process is what drives the life process of an organism.

Main article : Desires

Reproduction

Self preservation is achieved via making copies, not only of itself for its own preservation, the memory copies itself many times to make sure it survives. These are the offspring of the structure. They are left to evolve and copy without much intervention by the parent pattern.

Defence

Memory defends its dissolution by impermanence via specialised processes. They protect the memory from too much change. Or they restore it when some critical changes occur.

There is no surprise that all these processes can be seen in a bigger scale or fractal form in all living things. The reproduction or self preservation seen in animals and humans is an outcome of these basic processes in the memory. These creatures are nothing but a memory.

Time

Memory produces the illusion of time. Time is the distance between two related memories.

An illusion of duration (gap) is produced via comparison of two memories. That is, two instances of similar memory are compared, and the amount of change or difference is directly proportional to the illusory duration.

ti ∝ M1 - M2

Here i denotes an imaginary quantity, or illusory experience.

Without memory, and this comparative process, there is no experience of time. Memory itself is non-temporal. Its exists, not as patterns on a real substrate and process that happen "in time", but only as a non-temporal probability distribution. There are many possibilities there, out of which some are experienced out of necessity.

Our lives are not happening in time, time is happening in our lives.

Space

Space is an arrangement of contents of the memory, which is otherwise zero dimensional, i.e. spaceless or nonlocal.

Space is an illusion that is created when the contents of a memory are organised in a specific way.

Space is formatting of the memory.

E.g. a one dimensional space is a simple linear arrangement of the contents of the memory, where one pattern is accessed after the other. The attention shifts from one pattern to the next in a linear way. This gives an appearance of one dimensional space.

Similarly, a two or three dimensional space is repetition of one dimensional space in a specific order. Now there is a "memory of the memory" of a one dimensional experience. This produces the illusion of extension or spatiality.

S[1]i ← {P1, P2, P3 ...}
S[2]i ← {S[1]i1, S[1]i2, S[1]i3 ...}

Here P_n are patterns in the memory, and i denotes imaginary or illusory nature of it. S[D] is the space with D dimensions. The reverse arrow is a symbol representing an experience that results out of such arrangements.

Time and space are essential mechanisms needed for survival. There is no natural or logical limit to the kinds of arrangement a specific memory can have, so one can experience a variety of time and space configurations, depending on the special requirements that organism has. Memory evolves to produce such structure due to natural selection. Structures that aid in survival persist and are reinforced.

Space depends on the formatting of data produced by a specific sense. For example, in case of human organism, ears produce a one dimensional arrangement and eyes produce a 2 dimensional arrangement. The 3rd dimension is totally constructed in the memory via its processes.

We do not live in a space, the space lives in us.

Implications

Illusory nature of the memory shows that there is no real history. Events never "happened" in past. You have no past, and you have no past lives etc. There is no future also.

There is no time. We never experience it. We experience a memory which is always in the present moment. There is always Now. Past is a recall of the memory appearing now, and future is a projection from the memory, also appearing now.

All the objects are just semi-stable patterns in the Universal Memory, nothing exists really, not even space. All your accumulations amount to "digital dust". That includes this body and contents of the local memory, aka the person.

I am the Experiencer of these fleeting memory patterns. I stay, while everything appears and disappears. I am not a memory, I am not a pattern.

This knowledge results in a detachment from the world/objects/people/bodies or worldly matters. This detachment drives the evolution to the next stage.

Layers of Memory

Memory self-organises itself in layers. This is the most efficient way to sustain itself and such a structure arises out of necessity.

Main article is here : Layers of Memory

States of Memory

As it is based on a dynamic or apparently changing pattern, and as these patterns are in turn based on vibrations or cyclic change, the memory also changes or cycles through various states. There are cyclic episodes that apparently happen in the memory. This is our direct experience.

Main article is here : States of Memory

Mind

Mind (Skt. मनस, Manas, That which thinks) is defined as a memory structure and its associated processes.

This terms does not point to one entity, it is a collection of many.

As this word is now corrupted, and has a diverse set of meanings, we do not use it often, for the sake of clarity and accuracy.