Understanding and Memory

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laidyTo remember is to try to store in the mind what other people have told us, what has happened to us, what we have heard, seen or read, etc.

Teachers want their students to store faithfully in their memory their words, their phrases, what is written in schoolbooks, entire chapters, heavy home-works with their dots and commas, etc.

To pass tests means to remember what we have been told and what we have mechanically read. It means to verbalize memory, to repeat everything that we have stored in our memory like parrots.

It is necessary that new generations understand that repeating everything in the memory like a record does not mean having understood anything in depth. To remember is not to understand. The memory belongs to the past; it is something dead that no longer has life.

It is imperative and of great contemporary importance that all students in education really understand the deep meaning of profound Understanding.

To Understand is something immediate, direct, something that we live intensely, something that we experience profoundly and which inevitably is transformed into intimate means of conscious action.

To remember or to recall is something dead, it belongs to the past and unfortunately it becomes an ideal, a motto, an idea, into idealism that we want to imitate mechanically and follow unconsciously.

In true Understanding, in profound Understanding, in intimate Understanding there is only the intimate pressure of the Conscience, constant pressure born from the essence that we carry within and that’s all.

Real Understanding manifests itself as spontaneous natural and simple action, free of the depressing process of choice, pure without indecisions of any type. Understanding transformed into secret means of action is splendid, wonderful, edifying and essentially dignifying.

Calculation is the action based on recalling what we have read, the ideal we aim at, the norm of behaviour that we have been taught, of the accumulated experiences in memory, etc. It depends on depressing option, it is dual, based on conceptual choice which only leads inevitably to error and pain.

To adapt action to remembrance, to try to modify action so that it coincides with memories accumulated in us, is something artificial, absurd, without spontaneity and can inevitably only lead to error and pain.
That of passing some exams can be accomplished by any fool who has a good dose of astuteness and memory.

To understand subjects that have been studied and which one is going to be examined on, is something very different from memorizing subjects, it belongs to true intelligence which should not be confused with intellectualism.

People who want to base all the actions of their life on ideals, theories and memory of all types accumulated in the warehouses of the mind, always go around comparing, and where comparison exists, envy also exists. People compare themselves, their children and relatives, with neighbors and neighbors’ children and relatives. They compare their house, furniture, clothes and all their material things with those of their neighbors and people in society. They compare their ideas, intelligence of their children, etc., with ideas and intelligence of other people, these results in envy which is transformed into the hidden cause of action.

Unfortunately for this world, the whole mechanism of society is based on envy and acquisition. The whole world envies the whole world. We envy ideas, things, people and we want to acquire more and more money, new theories, new ideas that we accumulate in our memory, new things so as to dazzle our neighbours, etc.

In real, true understanding, there exists true love and not mere verbalization of memory.

Things we remember, that which is confided to memory, soon is forgotten because memory is unfaithful. Students deposit in the warehouses of memory, ideals, theories and complete texts that are useless in practical life because in the end they disappear from memory without leaving a single trace.

People who only read mechanically and enjoy storing many theories in the storerooms of memory, destroy the mind, they damage it pathetically.

We do not pronounce ourselves against true, profound and conscious study based on in-depth comprehension. We only condemn antiquated methods of extemporaneous pedagogy. We condemn every mechanical system of studying, every memorization, etc.
Remembering is superfluous where there exists true understanding.

We need to study, we need useful books, teachers, spiritual guides, etc., but it is necessary to understand fully the teachings and not merely to store them in the storerooms of the unfaithful memory.

We cannot be truly free as long as we commit the mistake of comparing ourselves with the stored recollections and ideals in our memory, and with what we covet to be or not to be.

When we truly understand the teachings, we do not need to remember them nor convert them to an ideal.
For as long there is comparison of what we are here and now, with what we want to be later on; as long as there is comparison of our practical life with an ideal or model to which we want to adapt, there cannot exist true love.

All comparison is disgusting, brings fear, envy, pride; fear of not obtaining what we want, envy for other's progress, pride because we think ourselves superior to others.
The important thing in practical life, whether we are ugly, envious, selfish, covetous, etc., is not to boast of being saints, but to start from absolute zero, and understand ourselves profoundly, the way we are and not the way we want to become or the way we would like to be.

It is impossible to dissolve the Ego, the my-self, if we do not learn to observe ourselves, to perceive in order to understand what we really are here and now in an efficient and absolutely practical way.

If we really want to understand we would listen to our teachers, gurus, priests, tutors, spiritual guiders, etc. etc.

Young girls and boys of this generation have lost the sense of respect, of veneration towards their parents, teachers, spiritual guides, mahatmas, etc.

It is impossible to understand teachings when we do not know how to venerate and respect our parents, teachers, tutors or spiritual guides.

It is impossible to understand teachings when we do not know how to venerate and respect our parents, teachers, or spiritual guides.

The simple mechanical remembering of what we have learnt by heart without in-depth understanding mutilates the mind and heart, brings about envy, fear, pride, etc.

When we truly know how to listen in a profound and conscious way, within us emerges a wonderful power, an extraordinary, natural and simple understanding, free from all mechanical processes, all reasoning and remembrances.

If the brain of a student is relieved from the enormous effort of memory it has to exert, it would be totally possible to teach the structure of the nucleus and the periodic table of elements to secondary students and enable high school students to understand relativity and quantum physics.

As we have talked to some teachers of secondary schools, we understand that they stick with true fanaticism to the old, antiquated and extemporaneous pedagogy.

They want students to learn everything by heart even though they do not understand it.

Sometimes they accept that it is better to understand than to memorize but they insist the formulae in physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc., should be recorded in the memory.
It is clear such a concept is false because when a formula of physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc., is totally understood, not only at the intellectual level but also in other levels of the mind, unconscious, subconscious, infraconscious etc., it is not necessary to record it in the memory; as it forms part of our psyche and it can manifest itself as immediate instinctive knowledge when the circumstances of life demand it.

This integral knowledge comes to give us a type of omniscience, a way of conscious, objective manifestation.

In-depth understanding at all the levels of the mind is only possible through profound inner meditation.

Samael Aun Weor. Fundamental Education.