Course I - Teaching 10: Exercise of Memory

Memory is a vague or clear remembrance of past things; it is a mental fixation of present things, and an obvious imagination of the future.
These three times of memory become indispensable so that it may be properly named memory.
Generally men have a very poor concept of memory, because in their view memory is a mental power which makes them to remember the past, and nothing more. But a real possession of this virtue implies the dominion of the three times.
A human being believes he knows his past, but he does remember only vague shadows that grow weaker and weaker as years pass by and new events occur. If a man had a good memory, he would widen noticeably his area of possibilities.
From our childhood, when our human brain is already pervaded by cosmic energies taken from the beyond, our memory is good, fixes events with clarity, and clearly foresees what is convenient to life. In his middle age, a man has a weakened memory, and a premature old age increases the oblivion. This is why men do not possess memory.
For them, memory is a gratuitous gift of mind, while memory is only a field to exploit, which you lose when you do not till it.
Students of esotericism should have such a memory that may perfectly remember the past, maintaining ever present the highest events of their lives, and should have such a fixation of events of their lives and present works so that, by logic, they may manifest clearly the future.
First time: The past.
How should a student overcome the thick shadows and veils that hide the past? Just a day passed by and already we forgot events occurred on that period of time.
The point is that all events imprint themselves on the subconscious, and the Solar Centre exhumes them instead of being exhumed by the Visual Centre.
In short: man refuses to think; he lets his subaltern mind think for him. When a child observes and remembers, he is driven by such force –so called curiosity– that it implants all its energies in the Hypophyseal Centre.
Then, in short, lack of memory is due to lack of concern about life.
A being accepts to know and remember what is necessary and indispensable for his daily tasks and for his essential job, disregarding the rest. So the backward survey is vitally important because it re-arranges events occurred during the day, to charge them with due mental energy, indispensable to be clearly –not vaguely–fixed in the subconscious.
But to acquire a good memory, a backward survey is not enough. A good dealer does not conform to make a daily inventory of his entries and sales, but he needs to make a yearly, and even a six-monthly balance.
Ignatius of Loyola triumphed by the use of this method; and with his spiritual exercises save the Catholic Church from its collapse. Because, what spiritual exercises are but a pause in the course of a life to make an inventory of past deeds and in such a way the highest points so that are living centers of energies that will be a drive toward the future?
Ignatius of Loyola does not conform to the exercise of mental memory, but he wants past deeds to be written in detail on a paper for their better consideration.
This is one of the aims of spiritual exercises, so much advised by the Sacred Order of Knights of Fire. Every student should stay away, at least once a year, from the uproar of the world, far away from business, far away from relatives, far way from worries, to live some few days of complete spiritual absorption, in order to be able to make a backward survey of a whole year and to habituate memory to fix properly on outstanding events occurred during the year.
Or did not God say to the Psalmist?, “Come to the solitude, and I shall talk to you?”.
Spiritual development –that students wish too much– cannot be acquired without efforts.
Ramakrishna said to his external disciples, who lived in the world: “Some time leave your house and your works, and come with me to the solitude”.
Nature helps to awaken this power of memory, like with the rarefied air of the heights. This is why the ancient Knights constructed their castles more than one thousand meters above the sea level and Tibetan Lamas say that Himalayas’ air awakens memory.
So it is advisable to do these retirements, if possible, on high places.
It is so important to acquire past memories that sometimes it leads to discover a new mission, or to solve most difficult problems in no time at all.
By his study of psychoanalysis, Freud wanted to cure diseases by leading memory to seek in the subconscious their original causes.
Second Time: The Present.
Fixation of the idea to foster clarity of memory is achieved with the exercise of observation and attention.
Children should be taken always as an example; their insistence by asking everything and wanting to know everything sometimes delights and sometimes bothers. In a person who memorizes everything, the curiosity of a child becomes sharp observation.
You observe only those things that are interesting to you, discarding all the rest; but a true observer should have wide and accurate vision of what he sees.
Masters give certain exercises on purpose. They cause the student to pass running from one room to another, afterward to come back and to write on a paper what he saw. After the first inventory, you can observe that he forgot to write down one third of objects in the room.
This exercise should be repeated several times a day until, by a simple look, the student captures the whole panorama prefixed.
Also you can take an object, by observing it closely and then by taking notice of all its inherent qualities; in the beginning, very few qualities shall be attributed to it, but with the passage of days, surprisingly, many other qualities will continue being added.
These exercises of observation awaken attention in such a way that a student, without spending much time, acquires great knowledge and accurateness about things, and not spending much time, he sees that he is enriching this memorization store.
An Instructor of the Order ordered to an absent-minded student to remain standing before a white curtain, and said: “Look what is on the curtain, and then come and tell me about it”. The young man looked, not seeing anything except the white curtain, but after returning and saying to the Master he had not seen anything, the Master led him up to the curtain and indicated him how a moth had made holes in it, forming various drawings. “How did you discover it?” the student asked. “Simply by observing closely what I had before my eyes”, the Master replied.
Third Time: The Future.
This clear, steady and constructive memory obviously is mirror of the future. For a forgetful person, for a person who lives in a semi-dream of material life, it is very difficult to build his future when he has forgotten so easily his past, but a person that remembers, knows very well the result of the Work.
A Hindu king visited a solitary Yogi who stayed in the jungle with the only company of his gazelle; and before the king could speak, the Yogi said: “You come to tell me your people rebelled against you because for the last three years there is hunger and draught in your land”. “How do you know it?” the king asked. “I know”, the sage replied, “just by your sayings when you visited me three years ago; you had had three good years and you told me about giving great festivals and opening granaries for all the people; and in remembering this waste and in seeing successive waterless seasons which took place since then, I have deduced what has occurred recently.
Here it is very important to observe:
In Teachings always it is told past should be forgotten and deleted; but there is a subtle spiritual nuance in the fact of erasing the past on one hand and of remembering the past on the other hand, as this lesson says.
When the Teaching advises the past should be forgotten, it wants to express: a man has to untie his bonds, to forget his emotions, not to repeat them; he has to delete images not to live tied to them.
But when the Teaching says the past should be remembered, it means you should remember it as a thing that is not yours, that does not belong to you, something that is exclusive property of knowledge, and that is observed and known just to enjoy the fruit of knowing.
A man that remembers knows well. He learns easily what he does not know, and what he learns easily, he uses it for constructing the future.

Cafh Founder

Disciple, the Teachings –free, generous and magisterial– are at your disposal. It is up to you. Master Santiago came back!

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