56. Three Levels of Memory🔗

In Sanskrit we have a beautiful word, 'tirobhaava'. It means hiding, casting a veil, making you forget.

This is described as one of the actions of God. Making you forget is supposed to be one of the actions of God!

The Divine is responsible for five actions: creating, sustaining, destroying, making you forget and giving you enlightenment.

You may think, 'Why does God make me forget things? Why should he take away memory from me?'

Let me share an incident:

The other day a man came to me during the Kalpataru program and asked, 'Swamiji, please give me a technique to remember all my past lives!'

Kalpataru is a program where people ask for and receive whatever they desire to experience, but still I wanted to warn him!

I asked, 'Do you know the side-effects or after-effects of what you are asking?'

He said, 'Whatever it is, I want to know all about my past births Swamiji. I want to know who I was, where I was, what I was doing - everything.'

I asked him, 'Why did you come for this meditation program?'

He said, 'To find peace.'

I asked him, 'What is your age?'

He said, 'Forty-two, Swamiji.'

Then I told him, 'The memories of just these last forty-two years are not letting you remain in peace! You are not able to handle just forty-two years' memories! If the memories of all your past lives are suddenly awakened inside you, what do you think will happen! You will go mad!'

This is the reason we have an automatic mechanism inside for forgetting the past. After a limit, the memory automatically unclutches itself from you; it disconnects itself and goes and sits in your archives. It is not available to you directly.

You have three levels of memories, and each of your memories is stored at one of these three levels, depending on how often you use it. We can compare these memories to files that you use in your office. The first-level memories are like the files which you have right on your table, which you need to handle every day - the relationships which you maintain, the place where you live, the actions you repeat every day - these are files which are directly connected to your day-to-day routine. The second-level memories are like the files which are inside your cupboard in your office. You are not using them every day, but you can retrieve them whenever you want. The memories of you carry of people and happenings from a few years ago are in this category - like the friends with whom you spent your time ten years ago, or the vacation which you went on five years ago. These files may not be continuously available on your table, but you can bring them to the table if you want, because they are right there in your cupboard. The third-level memories are like files which are in the office archives or storage room, which you cannot access directly; it requires a special key which is not with you. Past-life memories are in this category. The special key to open the archives are the meditation techniques or initiation by an enlightened master.

Once the load becomes too much on the table, there is an automatic system to move the files to the cupboard. In the same way, once the load becomes too much in the cupboard, there is an automatic system to move the files to the archives. That is what we call tirobhaava - reducing the load on your consciousness.

Please understand, modern-day psychology and psychotherapy are too small in front of Patanjali's depth, clarity and vision. Thousands of years ago, he has penetrated the depths of the modern mind and given precise solutions for all our modern-day problems. That is why the techniques given by Patanjali are being used successfully even today to solve our day-to-day problems.

CONTEMPLATION

Forgetting is also an action of God, to reduce the load on my consciousness.