21. Complete the Past, Know the Future🔗

The fifth modification of the mind is Memory. Memory is a very powerful thing! Memory means, the ideas, thoughts, imagination, visualization, which you have collected, and which are still alive inside your system.

Please understand: memory is what I call 'pain body'. Memory is more powerful than the other modifications. With right knowledge, your connection with it can create suffering or joy only with your action. Right knowledge can give you suffering or joy only if you act upon it. With wrong knowledge, only your response to it can create joy or pain. With imagination, only your supporting the imagination can create joy or pain. With sleep, only when you support sleep, only when you are a part of it, you will have joy or pain. But with memory, you don't need to do anything. Your memories are independent of you; they don't need your support or co-operation to put you into joy or anguish.

Memory is such a powerful thing; it can come up by itself and put you in joy or suffering, put you in anguish or peace, put you in bliss or suffering. It can lead you to anything on its own. By its own right, it doesn't need cooperation from your side. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination and sleep need co-operation from your body and mind. But memory can just erupt and you can't even question it, but you are in suffering or joy. Suddenly a memory comes up, occupies your whole inner space and puts you in suffering or joy for no reason. You can't say, 'Why did you come?' Memories are uninvited guests. Why that memory came so strongly, you can neither question nor understand. Sometimes, suddenly you know the memory of the Master is inside you, and for ten minutes, you are in ecstasy, you are in joy. Just soaked in his memory, being in his presence! You can't ask your mind, 'How did this memory come?' Same way, some memories which you don't want to cherish may arise, and your whole day is gone. Just one wrong memory awakening; your whole day will be in depression, in a low mood. That is the power of memory.

and connect only all the past incidents where you had suffering, and think that your whole past life was suffering. You create a 'pain shaft' and connect all your memories of suffering on that one shaft, like flowers strung on a garland. Just that idea is enough to feel, to think, to imagine, to visualize, that your whole life was suffering. This is not a right memory, it is a wrong memory.

Same way, if you think that your whole life is joy, again you will edit, cut, fix, paste and see your whole life as joy. You will connect only all the joyful incidents and memories, and start feeling that your whole past life was joy.

We never comprehend reality as it is, we don't have the complete memory in our control, we don't look at the past as it happened.

One important thing you need to understand about memory: if your memory is complete, it won't lead you to suffering, it will lead you only to joy. And, if your memory of your past is complete, you will have the knowledge of your future!

I am not giving you a false promise; I am stating the simple straight truth. If your memory of the past is clean and pure and complete, you will have a clear idea about your future, because your future is nothing but the reproduction of the past in a different dimension. Some of the quantities may be different, but the basic structure will be the reproduction of your past. You might have had one car in the past, you may have a few cars in the future, but the future is going to be the reproduction of the past.

If you have a simple, straight, clear idea about the past, you will have a simple, straight, clear idea about the future. Your miscomprehension, your wrong idea about the past, is responsible for the wrong idea about the future. If you think you are not able to plan your future, be very clear: you don't have a clear vision about the past. Any incident that happened in the past adds some juice to your being, some understanding to your being, some awareness to your being, some knowledge to your being, some experience to your being. So, if you are aware of all your memories, that knowledge, that essence, is added to your Being. It will continue to guide you in the future. But when you forget those incidents, when memory loss happens, when selective memory happens - which is happening in all of us - the juice of that experience, the knowledge born of that experience, will not express itself in the future.

But the big problem is that we don't even have the right idea about our past! We remember our past only after editing it!

If you think that your whole life is suffering, as we usually think, you edit

Look into your life and see how you have connected only the painful incidents and decided that life is suffering. Now, consciously let go of that incomplete perception.

Direct perception, inference and competent evidence constitute right knowledge.