Wise Words
Laws Of Memory : Part 15 : Law Of Impermanence
Tarun Pradhaan
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# Laws of Memory Part 15 Welcome to Pure Experiences, and this is a series on Laws of Memory. ## 12 - Law of Impermanence Today we are going to discuss a well-known law. It is the Law of Impermanence. It simply means everything changes, nothing is permanent. So we don't need any evidence for this. This law is self-evident, and nobody has found any exception. You can observe some things about impermanence. First thing is that that which appears is empty. It appears that something is changing, but actually there is nothing. We discussed the meaning of this in our episode on Law of Emptiness. So not only everything changes, goes away, it was already not there in reality. It is like a flowing dream. There is a very good formula to confirm that there is nothing right now. It says, if it was not before and it won't be in the future, that confirms that it is not now. That sounds tricky, but very straightforward, almost self-evident, logical. If something is not present in the past, and nothing can be said about future of it, then it is not right now also. So you can observe the events that happen. They always happen in present. It looks like that something happened yesterday because there is a memory of it, but the memory happens in present also. And obviously nothing happens in the future. The future is an imagination, extrapolation of the memory, or a prediction from the events in the memory. So past is actually not there. Future is not there. So there cannot be anything in the present. Still we see something. Something appears. It is conclusively proven that it is not there, still it appears, and that's why it is called an illusion. It is false. It is Maya. Some people can say, but present is there. There is present. And now there is some debate among philosophers: what is present? Is it a tiny duration of time? But then again, time means past and future, so you cannot call it time. And some will say it is eternity. That means that's all there is, no time, timeless. The present is timeless. It is more acceptable. It is more logical to say that present moment is the eternity. Eternity does not mean a long duration of time. Nobody has seen anything like that. Eternity means no time, timeless. This is our direct experience. There is only eternal presence, no time. That which is present is empty. It is as good as not present. Still there is presence. So it is somewhat beyond knowledge, beyond intellect. What is happening right now? Moreover, it is changing. That which was yesterday is not today. It will not be there tomorrow. So if you remove time, everything is already gone. Still more is coming, but whatever we thought is present, exists, is gone. Nothing actually happens. This is a deeper meaning of impermanence, that the existence is unknowable, because whatever we want to know, it is gone. Whatever we think is happening, it's actually not happening. So there is nothing to know here. Knowledge itself is an illusion produced by the mind, the memory. Knowledge itself is an event that is fleeting, appearing. So it is very obvious that everything is impermanent. But these deeper implications of impermanence are not so obvious and not so well-known. Even spiritual seekers, they don't know this. They do not contemplate on impermanence. It will reveal many secrets. I'm not saying it will give you some knowledge, it will take away your ignorance, destroy your ignorance. Contemplate on impermanence. ### Change So we said a lot about change, how it is produced by comparison of memory locations and all, so I'm not going to repeat that again. In summary, the vibrational model explains impermanence as changing vibrational patterns in memory. They are non-physical, non-mental, which implies there is actually nothing there, it is empty. There is no substance. Can we call it energy and all? These are useful metaphors, there is no real energy. So why does it change? There is no why, as change itself is some kind of illusion. You remove the memory, there is no change. Only the unknowable, eternal present remains. So memory gives some kind of illusion of change, and if the events impress on the memory, we get an illusion of past. Then we can predict something from this memory using intelligence or computation, and that gives us illusion of future, something happening, time flowing. It is all a play. There is nothing, non-happening. So no answer to why, because this why is demanding a reason. So that reason, if it is provided, will be something which is appearance, illusion, impermanent, false. So you will not get anything concrete, no reasons, no purpose, no meaning, because impermanence wipes out everything: purpose, meaning, telos, direction, goal, nothing. It's all impermanent, an illusion. Anyway, since it is our imagination, we have imagined the memory patterns, vibrational patterns, so you can imagine the mechanism of how everything is impermanent, and how it can be derived out of the model of memory and vibrations. So as we know, vibration is a two-state change. The change here has never happened. It is two states that are overlapping, superimposed. Very difficult to understand, but this is our hypothesis. It's not really true. So when one state appears in the emptiness, it is for a moment not empty, because it is not zero. There is something. So to restore the emptiness, the state flips back. And so any attempt to create a vibration leaves zero behind. The net result is empty, zero. And if it did not change, that will violate the Law of Emptiness. There will be something which stayed. So even though the vibration is virtual and superimposed states, then also it does not allow it to stay in one state. The emptiness forces it to reverse and cancel. And this virtual event is a event of change. We know that this has happened only when some comparison is done. Comparison is possible only when only when this oscillation is registered in the memory, otherwise knowledge is not possible. Without it registering in the memory, will not even know that state changed. So impermanence or change is a natural quality of the vibration. It is the nature of vibration to change. And if everything is made up of vibrating patterns, obviously, everything will change. ### Semi Stability Now, something interesting happens which makes this play, illusion, much more interesting rather than a fleeting dream which dissolves in split seconds, and that is called semi-stability. Since there are infinite possibilities, there is a possibility that the vibrating pattern will change and then will change back to its original. It is possible. And if it repeats the same thing, that can give us an illusion of stability. It is vibrating the same thing. It will look like that. A good example is a pendulum. It repeats the states, so it looks like that nothing is changing there. Or a rotating fan, a rotating top, it looks like that it is the same object, or a whirlpool. The second way to get semi-stability is to repeat in a cycle. It goes and comes back into its first pattern. So it looks like that the same thing is there, although it is always changing. Very good example is a tree that becomes dry in summer, then new leaves emerge out of tree in rainy season, then it becomes green in other seasons, and continues. So although the tree is changing, the leaves are not the same, they are not even in the same position, even the branches have changed, still we call it the same tree. It is the same tree. So what is happening is there are things that change very slowly because there are some stabilizing processes there, and they appear permanent. And there are events that are totally impermanent, they disappear even before the senses can detect what happened. They are as good as not present, non-existent. And there is everything in between, the full spectrum of events with different degrees of impermanence that provide more or less stable illusion. And there are events that are very fast, they change, but they are normalized by the mind. We say, yes, this happens. It's not a big problem. We have become habitual of thinking that it is true, this happens. Like a broken egg never changes back into a solid egg, but we accept that it is real. So something which changes slowly, something which changes in cycles, circular, and something which is useful for us, even though if it changes quickly, is branded truth. And this is called relative truth or transactional truth, not the absolute truth. The absolute truth will never change. So examples of very permanent, semi-permanent objects are minerals, rocks. They are crystals, essentially. Planets, stars. So crystals are fascinating because they are ordered patterns of vibration. They are also changing. The atoms and the particles in the crystals are changing very rapidly, but they change in a ordered way, they change very regularly, so that remains stable for a long time. But yes, they are also impermanent. And there are giant objects that are changing quickly, but they are so big that whatever changes happen, they appear negligible compared to the size of it. For example, Sun or ocean. They will disappear someday, but because of their size, it will take a very long time. So for us they are permanent, for human beings. So fortunately we are living in a memory area, a field, a layer of memory which is semi-stable. There are unstable events, but like I said, we became habitual of it, or they keep repeating in the same way sometimes, mostly in the same way, not exactly, essentially. So we have extracted some permanence out of it. Like I gave you the example of breaking an egg, there is another example of lightning strike. Although the lightning strike will not last more than one second, and every time it strikes it is something different, the shape is different, it is never the same lightning, still there are some qualities in lightening that can be abstracted into permanence. For example, there is this loud noise, thunder, there is this white spark, and there is damage, and so on, you see. It occurs when there are clouds and all. So this event is recognizable, although it is never the same. Still, some kind of qualities can be extracted and we make it as relative truth. Some events, they do not even happen in repeated way, we still normalize them. We say it is true. Like birth of a baby, that will never happen again. Same baby will not be born again, but many more babies, they're born, so yes, it's normal, we say. Humans have this amazing quality to treat something which is totally illusory, an appearance, an unusual, once-in-a-lifetime happening as truth. We call it true, because somehow it is useful for us. Somehow it ensures survival, or whatever is semi-stable we call it survival: bodies, and so on, minds. So a person is totally impermanent. We studied the person in an earlier episode. It is very unstable. Today something, tomorrow something else, after one year unrecognizable. However, we say that this is the same person. He changed, but same person. The person is abstracted out of a cloud of changing things. There is no real person there, and it is associated with this body-mind which changes relatively slowly. So we find something which connects the past to the present, and we call it stable even if it is not stable. The funny thing is some events, they take a specific amount of time to change. This is also a kind of semi-stability that it changes into something, but it takes a finite time, specific duration. For example, a tomato rots in ten days, or if it's too warm and humid, it will rot in five or six days. So even if it is completely gone, it has become dirt, and a part of air and water and soil, still we call it a true object. "It exists," we say, because it happens in a specific duration. We don't mind. We say, "Yes, the tomatoes disappear all the time. It's normal." But somehow if that specific duration changes, then the illusion that is hidden there becomes very obvious. If the same tomato now rots in one minute or one second and disappears in air, thin air, now it will be called magic. Although the same process has happened, no physical laws were broken, only the time duration changed. So now this will appear as complete illusion. Nobody will believe it. You must have seen those movies where they fast forward something, some event, time-lapse, like blooming of a flower. So the flower takes two or three days probably, one night sometimes. But if you capture the process, let's say every five minutes, and make it into a movie, it will look like that the flower is changing into fully bloomed flower in one minute. Now it appears magical, and it appears really beautiful, and the plant becomes a living, breathing organism. When we look at a plant, normally the plants look like almost dead. They do not move, nothing much changes, but we know that they are not dead because they change after some time, some days, some months. But here it becomes apparent that plant is a living thing because it changes so quickly, plus we cannot believe that this happened simply because the time duration changed. And the reverse is also true. If you see a tomato which is not rotting for one month or one year, you will suspect that this is a fake tomato, this is some wax sculpture or something. If a person stops moving for even five minutes, you will suspect that this is a mannequin, statue, or something because you've never seen a person completely stationary even when they are sleeping. They're breathing, they are twitching, they're moving all the time, specially animals. So a specific time duration of change provides the illusion of stability or normality, ordinariness, although it is just like magic. Sometimes events happen that break this illusion. And we can use our direct experience and a little bit of logic, like changing the time and so on, to confirm that impermanence is a law, and and whatever is changing is an illusion. The knowledge stored in the mind gives it an appearance of truth or gives it an appearance of something happening, some it says something exists. It does all kinds of tricks to create an illusion of stability. And fortunately this is this animal's life and discussions like this, philosophy. Remember, this is also impermanent. Whatever I'm saying is disappearing into clouds. It is totally useless and totally false, illusory activity of me talking and you listening, meaningless, purposeless, impermanent. ### Play That can only be called play because our concept of play comes very close to what we are looking at. And so we can say that the existence is pure entertainment. Nothing really happening, obviously, like a movie. It's all false. It's all illusion. Nothing stays. Anything can happen. It is purposeless, it is meaningless. Only the concept of play or entertainment, drama, comes close. Otherwise it is impossible for human beings to understand what is happening. The word "understand" itself is an illusion. There is nothing like understanding. You can silence your intellect by some kind of mumbo-jumbo logic, rationality, and so on, direct observation, scientific analysis. The intellect can be silenced. It can be fed all these things so that it keeps quiet, but that does not mean understanding. There is no understanding of anything. If you understand something, by chance, it will change, it will be converted to something else which is again beyond understanding. So impermanence makes everything beyond our knowledge. Same way, if you know something today, it will change tomorrow. And the knowledge that you thought is knowledge is no longer knowledge, it is ignorance now. This happens many times in our lives. "I thought this is like this and that, but I came to know it is not like that. It changed." So no matter how much you know in this illusion, since it is changing, impermanent appearance, nothing is really known. Whatever facts and data you collected will be gone, will change into something else. And if you are very convinced that, "No, this is what will happen, I know this, we have verified this," but since this is infinite possibility, infinite illusion, exactly opposite can happen. It's very funny. So ultimately the knowledge cancels out, plus one, minus one, zero. Ultimately there is no knowledge. Knowledge is a part of the play. Knowledge is a part of the dream. So what about the laws? Are they not true? And no, that's what we said in the beginning. If you have heard this series from the beginning, we started the series like this: that we are going to play, and we are going to imagine something about what is. We are still playing after so many episodes, but it has become so complicated and logical that it gives an illusion of truth. Your mind is convinced that this is knowledge, and this is higher knowledge, this is spiritual knowledge, this is occult knowledge. No, it is complete BS. Laws are similarities and minor stabilities, patterns that we humans have observed. You can call it transactional truth, not absolute truth. You will find some laws that are completely opposite of this law. So does that mean we'll find permanence somewhere in this memory structure? And the answer is yes and no. This is self-referring problem, so you cannot answer it actually. Impermanence says the laws are also impermanent. That means the Law of Impermanence is also false, it is impermanent. Something permanent will appear some somewhere, it has already appeared because there is no time. So it is referencing to itself, so it is going into infinite loop. So the answer is both yes and no, superposition of yes and no. Yes, in one of the fields, in some part of the memory, there will be produced an illusion of permanence where nothing will change for sufficiently long time, or it will change and repeat again so that it remains what it is. It is possible. But what does that mean? That impermanence is actually true? But now we cannot say anything about permanence or impermanence in that kind of condition, so the answer is yes and no both. And just like I said, if you think too much, you will get a headache. You should not think too much about the Maya, illusion. It is beyond understanding, as I said. So we approximate the illusion. We say, "Okay, I'm looking at this part of the illusion right now. It is somewhat within my understanding, somewhat, like .0001% of it. Yes, there is impermanence. Yes, I can see it. There is other law: law of relativity, law of interconnectedness, and all. We have abstracted out the regularities in our part of the illusion. It is not the whole illusion. You can be sure of it because the illusion is infinite. That which appears, what is, is infinite. So beyond understanding, actually. ### Rising Above Impermanence How can we rise above impermanence? How can we make everything permanent? Bad news again: you cannot. Don't even try. All we can do is accept that which is impermanent, including this body-mind, whatever you call human being. Even if you become a master, you are impermanent master. Even if you become a greatest tantrik, it is just a fleeting, rotting tomato. That's all it is. So accept this. This will bring some humility, humbleness, gratitude, so on. This will prevent megalomania, that "I am important somehow." No, nothing. Everything becomes dirt. Everything comes out of the dirt. It is just memory, changing memory. So we accept impermanence, and we try to utilize whatever is appearing right now. "What is the use of it?" many people will say. Totally subjective. It depends on your wish. What do you want? The play is set up that there is some repetition and semi-stability which is called our life. So we utilize this life, enjoy this life. Enjoy this drama that is happening for free. We did not do anything to get this thing, human life, human experience, you can say. Make it stable, make it unstable, whatever you want. So many people want a little bit of stability and a little bit of novelty, because complete stability means boring, nothing happens in the life. So we use impermanence to introduce some kind of novelty, something new in our lives. There can be many examples of it. Daily repetition of routines will give you a stable life, but it is very boring. So we introduce something in a controlled way, introduce a change, so that the drama becomes interesting. It is changing, but if you want to make it interesting, you need to change yourself. Yes, everything changes by changing yourself. The drama is automatic, it is scripted, so you can change your role if you want. Totally depends on the will of the seeker. Since everything is memory, and it will disappear, you can collect good memories. Events, they disappear quickly, but the memories remain for somewhat longer. They are also impermanent. So collect good memories, collect good experiences that will make the drama interesting. Those who have mastered the memory, they can make copies of the memory. This is an advanced topic. So even though the patterns in the memory are impermanent, they are fleeting, if you keep copying them, they will remain for a longer time. Self-copy is already happening through resonance, and that is what is happening in crystals and so on, and that is what is called reproduction. Right from plants and insects to human beings, everything makes a copy. So the same, similar patterns, they continue. So a master can do that. A master can make a copy. An ordinary person can make a copy of the memories in forms of books, and photos, and videos, but a master can make a virtual copy, non-physical copy of whatever has happened, whatever he wants to stay. If that is impressed with enough power and energy on the memory, it appears. It remains for a long time. So usually the masters, they make a copy of themselves. By themselves, it can mean anything, starting from the body, physical body. They can make a non-physical copy of this body, but mostly the masters are interested in their knowledge. Like I said, if you collect good experiences, knowledge is probably the best experience. Whatever you came to know, whatever you experienced is knowledge. And that is preserved in some hidden memory locations. When given enough energy, when they are excited, these patterns, they manifest again. They are latent patterns. And this process is already happening. It is called causal body. Whatever we experience as a creatureanimal, plants, human beings, more than human beings, para-humanstheir memories are their knowledge. Their experiences are stored in latent form, in a condensed form, encrypted form, or you can say zipped, compressed form, in a memory. That memory is called causal memory. It is called causal because it can cause a similar event, for example, rebirth. The same kind of person appears, not the same person, not the same body, the person with same qualities and characteristics. It is like drama is playing on the stage, and there is a character there: red clothes, a high hat, long beard, so on. There is a character. But he gets a phone call: "Your wife is sick. You need to go to hospital. Go and take care of your wife." So he leaves. But the drama must go on. Somebody else comes and takes on the costume, takes on the role, takes on the persona. Same red clothes, long beard, high hat, same walking and talking style, acting. And the audience never comes to know that something impermanent has happened, something has changed on the stage. So causal body takes on personas, personalities in various costumes. This is, in very short, a description of reincarnation. A master can make it as per their wish. They can reincarnate in any form. They can store anything they want in the causal body. They can manipulate it. They can remove things which are not needed now, so on. And as I said, this is very advanced, so I'm just giving you research material. Go and research. So how many copies can you make? Obviously infinite, but it will For a human being at leastprobably master is not human being, strictlybut for this kind of entity, limited entity, it will take a lot of energy to create infinite copies. It's not even possible. So the masters create sufficient copies. They know they are going to change. Ultimately they will be destroyed, so some process is set up so that copying does not stop. And the same thing can be done not only for the knowledge and personality and causal body, same thing is possible for the entire worlds, for the entire universes. Because a world is nothing, it is a memory location. They are patterns in the memory that are similar, that are bound by rules. For example, physical world. So it is possible to make copies of these worlds. And you can imagine that that master will be of very high kind, that will be almost like a God, or Goddess. So they start with small worlds, make copies, and they evolve. These worlds, they evolve on their own because impermanence, nothing stays. So they set up processes there which causes interesting drama. That's all we can say. You can suspect that our world is like this. You can find some copies of it which have evolved differently, and there will be infinite like this because this memory is infinite. And this natural copying of worlds is also happening, the seed worlds. They get scattered everywhere, and they evolve. Some become useful, some become semi-stable because of rules, physical rules or the memory-specific, area-specific rules. And interesting experiments happen. Experiment means they are interesting stages to experience a specific kind of drama. It all sounds like fiction, so yes, it is fiction. Nobody say says it is the truth, it is a possibility. But everybody needs to experience it to even know that there can be a possibility like this. Nobody will believe the words. These are just words, not the proof, and there is no evidence here. So for a seeker, especially on path of knowledge, we have a very good system of memories that is preserving knowledge, the essential knowledge, also called the spiritual knowledge. That is called the guru-field. It copies, it stores, it sets up processes, it creates worlds, and we don't even know what it does. I don't have the full list. And simply by telling you about these laws and memories and so on, I'm becoming a part of this guru-field. I'm producing a copy of some kind of knowledge, even if it is tiny-winy and insignificant, still something was done. So this entity which is talking has joined the guru-field simply by doing this. This event got registered somewhere, some memory. Yes, it is fun to preserve memories, experiences, make them less impermanent through magical powers and power of your intention. It is possible. But the highest drama is this: to preserve knowledge, to preserve, let us say, the techniques of copying the memories. "How can I make a copy of my body?" Many people will ask this question after this. Yes, guru-field. All you need to do is contact somebody who has done this. It will be difficult, but if you can and if you are able, if you have the qualities, worthiness, they will transfer the knowledge to you. They will copy the knowledge into your memory. This is some kind of very high kind of drama here. It is not purely entertainment. It is not purely exploration of some world somewhere and living a life of ups and downs, and adventure and boredom, like they show in movies, strange things. It is something more now. So guru-field is playing the highest kind of play that is possible. They are making the impermanent permanent. They are trying. So the strange thing is, rising above impermanence means using the processes that are impermanent and that are happening in the memory to create semi-stable or semi-permanent patterns of memories. That's all is possible. We use impermanence and the inherent laws to transfer things, to copy things, to preserve, disseminate, spread the seeds, let them evolve. Like this. We use impermanence, take advantage of it, and thanks to impermanence, nothing goes as per the plan, obviously, and that makes it very entertaining. If everything is predictable, it is not entertaining. So thanks to the law of probability, copies are not perfect. It always produces some change, some mutation, and things evolve. Since there are infinite possibilities, infinite copies will be produced, so we are not worried about that. Plus, we get infinite mutations, infinite variety already. So what else do we want? Nothing. It's whole and complete already. It is perfect. So do not fight impermanence. It is good. It makes this drama entertaining. Do not try to hold on to something. Do not cling to that which is impermanent. That thing will be destroyed, yes, and if you cling to it, if you stick to it, you will be destroyed. That is the tragedy of ignorant person. So change is the game, impermanence is the law. Change yourself with time, with situations. Change your lives. Change your causal body. Get more experience, get more knowledge. Evolve, progress. That is how we take advantage of impermanence. A static life is boring. Holding on to something which is rotting, which is going, is stupidity. It causes suffering. So we flow in this flow of impermanence, fully knowing that there is nothing which is permanent, fully knowing that it is a play. So we'll discuss other laws of memory. Thank you for listening to Pure Experiences. --- This article is a formatted transcript of a video in the series of videos on my YouTube channel **Pure Experiences**. Laws of Memory Video Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWKBCXU2oaNU