60. Why we forget🔗

All your diseases, all your disturbances, whatever you think of as problems in your life, have their source in memory. This includes your physical problems, because most of your physical disorders are from psychosomatic problems. Even these happen because you are unable to handle memory. Constantly, we are struggling with memory; we are suffering with memory. When it comes to the outer world, you need to know how to handle more and more memory. When it comes to the inner world, you need to know how to unclutch more and more from memory!

You need to understand the deeper truths of memory, because, being unable to handle memory not only creates problems in your young age, it creates very complicated problems in your old age! In your old age, you are filled with too many memories. That is why, whenever you sit with an elderly person, he starts, 'In 1962, when I was in the army...’! He can’t help it, because he is loaded with memories; his inner space is filled with them, and they is overflowing. What else he can do? Unfortunately, nobody is there to listen. Nobody is there to listen. You don’t know how to handle whatever is going on inside you; you don’t even know what is going on inside you!

Another important thing you need to understand: when certain memories come up, the hurt or the pain or the suffering is so much that you strongly subconsciously decide not to remember those incidents. When you subconsciously decide again and again to forget things, you land up with Alzheimer’s disease. Please understand, Alzheimer’s is very closely connected with your strong subconscious decision to forget things.

Memory is a very complicated phenomenon. That is why Patanjali goes on speaking about it in various sutras. Memory can be used either to liberate you from all suffering, or to put you into all kinds of difficulties! For example, if you were hurt in the past in a particular place by somebody wearing a black dress, you will remember the same pain whenever you cross that place, even though you know that person is not there. Or whenever you see a person in a black dress, you will have that same pain inside you, even though you know that it is not the same person. Many times, when you don't want to remember them, memories come up. Many times, when you want to remember them, memories do not come up. All of us are suffering with excess memory, but we always feel that we don't have enough memory to handle our life.

When you learn the technique of unclutching, the quantity of memory available to you, and the capacity to retrieve them - both just explode a few hundred times. If you understand this science, you will understand much deeply what I am trying to express.

What are the painful memories you have subconsciously decided to forget? Would you like to become aware of them now, and complete with the pain?