The Virtual World and the Two Forms of Memory

by Michael Mamas | Saturday, August 30, 2014 | Spirituality | 6 comments

As a result of the sum/total of all of your experiences in life, impressions are left upon the aspect of your awareness called ‘chittam’, the storehouse of impressions. These impressions are what memory is made of. Wipe the chittam clean, and there is no memory, at least not in the common sense of the word ‘memory’. Those impressions condition the mind… program the mind.  They are karmic in nature. They are a major aspect of your karma.  Many schools of spiritual growth and of education merely program your mind to function as they feel you should function. That sort of education is indoctrination. It is not True Education.

However, there is another form of memory.  Everything is contained in seed form within the Absolute… i.e. within the Transcendent.  That is what everything is in its essence. Therefore, anything can be found within the Absolute. When you are living in what I call a transgradiently integrated state, i.e. in enlightenment, then you are living in harmony with Mother Nature… living in harmony with your own true nature… living in harmony with God… living in harmony with your own Divinity… living in harmony with all that is. Then you live what is called your Divine Play, your Lila. In other words, you live your true nature. You ‘remember’ things by re-membering with those things within the Absolute. All knowledge of everything is within the Absolute, but in the state of Enlightenment you only access what is in harmony with the Cosmic Flow of your life.  You have no memory in the conventional sense of the word… i.e. no Chittam.  You are free. You are not enslaved by programming, conditioning, limitation, etc.  That is what is called ’emancipation’.  It is what the Soul longs for – True Liberation from the chains of programmed thoughts and emotions.

Now, there are some subtle points here that need to be understood:

Firstly, the pathways through which both kinds of memory emerge are the same, even though the source of those memories are very different. Since the pathways are the same, to the onlooker both types of memory appear to be the same. Both can forget things, both can know or not know things, both must go through the process of learning – for example, learning a foreign language, or how to play the piano, etc. However, in the first type of memory, it is about what is stored in the chittam.  In the second kind of memory, it is about what is in harmony with Natural Law.  Please understand that living in harmony with nature does not usually look like what many think it should look like. It is not like the Hollywood or Bollywood depictions of Jesus, Saints, and Sages. It is a very natural state that can look quite ordinary to the undiscerning observer. Though the Absolute is a field of all possibilities, it is not in harmony with nature to be a superman.  (Often, in this age of humanity, supernatural powers are the result of left handed tantra which is not in harmony with nature and creates a great deal of bad karma… but that is another subject. Generally speaking, the performance of showy miracles at this time is not in harmony with nature… not in harmony with the times.)

Secondly, you may think it is a contradiction that ‘things’ can be contained in the Absolute, which is a field of No-thing-ness, i.e. Pure Consciousness… before any ‘thing’ exists.  This is how that works:  Have you ever looked at the screen on the back of a camera?  The image of what is being photographed appears within the camera.  That is called a virtual image.  Say you are photographing a tree. The tree appears in the camera but really there is no tree in the camera. Like that, everything exists in the Absolute, but in a virtual sense. Now some would argue, “what is really virtual, the Absolute or the Relative?” I respond by saying that all you need to do is understand the mechanic, then you may feel free to assign the word ‘virtual’ to whichever you would like.

Along those lines, a dear student once said that they did not want to spend time meditating or living in the ashram at Mount Soma because they wanted to stay in the real world.  I, with loving humor, responded by saying, “Do you really consider that pinball machine you are living in to be the real world?” She looked back at me and smiled.  In that moment, at least for a moment, she had a deeper understanding of the word ‘maya’… illusion… virtual.

The Soul

by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, August 27, 2014 | Spirituality | 9 comments

Q:  Could you please discuss the relationship between the soul and consciousness?

A:  Pure Consciousness is the source of everything.  It is the Unified Field of modern physics.  The one thing out of which all things emerge and ARE in their essence.  It is transcendental… meaning it transcends relativity.  It is beyond relativity.  It cannot be touched, felt, seen, heard, etc.  It is like the Central Sun of all that is.

You do not touch the sun.  You experience the sun through the rays that emerge from it.  Similarly, you do not feel the Absolute Essence of your Being, i.e. the transcendent… pure consciousness.  However, you do feel that which radiates from it through all levels of your being.  Those rays you experience are the Soul.  You feel your essence through your Soul… the rays of your essence radiating through all levels of your being.