Out of interest, I decided to align my discussion of memory with the more ordinary psychological model of memory.

Attached are two images: The naive conception, which is OK as far as it foes, and then my own amended version which distinguishes between physical and metaphysical.

The naive scientific conception starts with the assumption that the material world absolutely and independently exists, regardless of consciousness. It therefore reckons memory is a purely physical phenomenon.

They take the sensual input at its word.

My one draws the proper distinction between consciousness (i.e. what we intimately know to be real), and disturbances to consciousness (i.e. detection of differentiation, i.e. the senses).

The material world depends on consciousness.

On the diagram, sensory information is the precise boundary between physics and metaphysics.

This is in fact the body. You are conscious of your body being disturbed and falling prey to entropy. Your senses are focused on what is immediately in contest with your bodily form.

Beyond that boundary, you lack knowledge. This is because you are clinging to your bodily form. The will-to-life is the refusal to accept too much differentiation away from that form.

Prior to that boundary is *the extent to which you have knowledge*.

It is only by virtue of transcending the infinitesimal present material arrangement that you understand what is happening, what will happening, what can happen, etc.

Everything that's happening in the present *persists* in memory, and coheres into a unity.

The body persisting through time is the phenomenal representation of this reluctance to give into entropy. This is a central Schopenhauerian claim.

I like how one NDE put it: "All material things are just props for our souls."

Memory thus begins from the moment our body detects a change. First of all, the sensory impression continues to have an effect on the body.

This is fairly easily noticed with vision. Light continues to have an effect, and can sometimes be difficult to ignore.

We ignore the old impression because the new sensory input is so much more relevant to the will-to-life.

A skilled meditator will be able to see older impressions, and he will need no convincing on this particular point.

(I don't want to belabour this point too much, because it's obvious to anyone who understands the human mind)

After the sensory impression has been received, it immediately afterwards forms part of an *episode* in your memory. In other words, it loses its infinitesimal character

But because you want to live, you do not let these impressions sweep past unfazed. Instead, you're seeing the world as in contest with your being, and so you're clinging to the world in discernment.

You are discerning your physical status in the world.

You have to *keep yourself in the world*. You have to cling to certain forms (not least your own bodily form), which is to say: you have to ensure that they do not fade away with entropy.

You can only cling to a form by having an aggregate idea of it in memory.

Also note that your sole input from the beginning is of those things which are in friction with your form, i.e. which impact your senses. Your entire life is a battle in this regard. You're only seeing what is in friction with you.

Short-term memory are things which have recently had an impact on you, and still stir the will to live. Because it's still relevant to you, the world is still being interpreted with respect to it.

If it turns out to be unimportant, it's unlikely you will access it again.

If it has an enduring effect, e.g. because you nearly died from it, or because it continues to be physically present in your life, then you form a more complete conception of it, and it becomes part of long-term memory.

Put otherwise: if something was fleeting and incapable of interpretation, then it is more characteristic of entropy. If it endured and was interpreted, then it's more metaphysical.

See again how this relates to the diagram.

What keeps these memories accessible is the body's *disposition* and circumstance.

The more frequently your body does something, the more it is inclined to do that thing. You'll better remember a certain word if your nervous system is inclined toward saying it due to repetition.

This gives occasion for the memory, like a lightning conductor. Sometimes, "it's on the tip of your tongue" but you can't quite make the connection. This results in a physically felt frustration. You want to *physically say it*. You move your mouth randomly in hope of its return.

Your brain doesn't store everything that's ever happened to you (This is palpably absurd, even from a naive perspective. Anyone with a hint of curiosity will never be satisfied with a purely physical explanation of memory).

Its role is something different.

Your body (more specifically in this example: your brain) is the phenomenal representation of the refusal to fade away.

When it's being disturbed, it gives occasion for memory (i.e. interpretation of entropy) to come to the aid.

When it's trying to make sense of sensory impressions (i.e. entropy of your form), it *recalls* what it could be.

This, by the way, helps to explain that mystery of why the hippocampus (so crucial to memory) is also important in "approach-avoidance conflict" processing.

This is also why people come up with historical analogies, film analogies, animal analogies when confronted with the present moment. It's all being interpreted in light of precedent.

(Analogies are metaphysical. Specific arrangements are physical/fleeting.)

If you cannot handle entropy, i.e. if you're scared of fading away, then you will be stuck in pre-conceived notions, and you won't be open to augmenting memory.

You will resort to the same, stale, specific, non-universal recollections which have worked in your interests.

If instead you let entropy run its course, and you didn't interpret it too quickly, then your memory will be updated with new possibilities and a broader conception of existence.

Too quick of an interpretation means you get stuck in repetition and blind movement.

The slowest, most all-encompassing interpretation is the one which accepts entropy entirely, and thereby gives up the will-to-life.

In doing so, it no longer has to interpret existence in terms of objectified forms in contest with its form.

It is no longer rushed into action with specific recollections for purposes of execution.

Its interpretation is not being sucked into a specific form, but now encompasses reality as a whole. It has a complete conception of existence, without regard to space or time.

It doesn't get sucked into entropy. Only the body succumbs in that direction. It snaps back in the other, more interpretive direction (as this is the nature of consciousness).

First of all, it sees its entire life in its universal significance.

(i.e. the Life Review)

If it can continue, it will be allowed to see an even more absolute, universal and timeless perspective. It will see not just the purview of its own life, but the absolute aggregate of everything. The full, untapped view of everything and everyone.

Ordinary knowledge is occasioned by uncertainty, and tries to fill the void in case it dies.

Complete knowledge is certain of its absolute being because it knows everything. Memory is a superfluous concept for it.

Memory is a human failing.

We laud it as remarkable and exceptional only because our senses detect differentiation and entropy, and so we assume that all of existence is fading into chaos. We necessarily see ourselves as the exception in this window of consciousness.

"Wow, the entropy having an effect on my body reveals that everything is taking an unthinking mechanical course, but here's me: a thinking and non-mechanical being! I alone am interpreting that everything is chaos. I am the exception in this universe of decay!"

People are so insufferable on account of this delusion. They think they are the ordered, reasonable ones in a world of stupidity and blind mechanical movement.

It's an a priori fact about physical senses that they will depict entropy. They are part of that system.

If they depicted order, they would have to transcend time, in which case they would no longer be physical senses, but an intellectual interpretation.

This interpretation can only exist by standing above time, i.e. above entropy.

The human brain is a kind of delaying mechanism which allows for an intellectual interpretation to become manifest in a physical world. It does not produce the memory, but gives specific occasion to it when the nervous system needs it.

Memory does not live in the brain.

For the thought to be sophisticated, the body cannot demand a quick and rushed interpretation which can become easily manifest in the physical world

And it requires a complicated brain, capable of being a delaying medium between present-moment physical supremacy and timelessness

If the body is rushed, and if the brain is simple, then the interpretation will be rushed, and present-moment physical supremacy will be pursued.

If the body is calm, and the brain is good, then it will recall: "This present-moment will pass, and you will be supreme."

It knows it will be judged favourably. It knows it has right on its side. It knows that all wrongly asserted victories lie on shaky foundations.

If it is especially enlightened, it will see the physical world as a whole as wrong on all counts.

It will ignore the senses completely. It will discover accordingly that existence cannot cease, and that this realisation is a perfect happiness.

From then on, it no longer takes the material world seriously. It sees matter not as a miracle, but as degenerate and ugly.

Memory is miraculous only if you regard matter as primary. If you regard consciousness and timelessness as primary, then memory will seem like a necessary aspect of existence.

Recollection as we know it is the re-interpretation of entropy.

It's imperfect and faded, because our real focus is on an uncertain future, not on what already exists.

What already exists is consciousness and memory, which is always the starting point. Existence as a whole is consciousness and understanding of what already *is*.

An uncertain future only exists for the fading being, and the unfolding of its life is really just the forgetting of what it is.

What's default and already existing is the understanding that death is inevitable and that chasing it away is doomed to failure.

What is memory ultimately? Is it a binary 0/1 unit? Is it stored in the matter itself? This is the same question as the hard problem of consciousness.

In both cases, matter does not produce it out of nothing. This makes no sense at all.

Memory (just like consciousness) is not stored or located in something; it is recalled into being from an original existence whose essence was awareness.

Memory, as I said earlier, is everything that has had an effect on you.

Memory, for it to be cohered into one single thing, must have an interrelationship between all parts. If it was completely atomised and specific events, then there would be nothing which unifies it.

The same is true of consciousness.

(Will continue this thread later.)