It could be all of these, compositely known as Memory. When we say, memory, we are often referring to the encephalic aspect of it. But it is a far broader term that stretches beyond the brain. To give a structure to this write-up, I'm classifying it into Cranial, Genetic and Consciousness.
1.) Cranial Memory - Every individual gathers information with their own sense organs. All these are stored in their individual cranium. Most of it, stay the same way on the surface and doesn't get pushed down into the genes or consciousness.
"Bad memory", "Doesn't remember things", "memory-loss" are some of the most common complains of parents and teachers. These statements are absolutely meaningless as every individual has exact same memory mechanism. To understand why it is exhibited differently, we need to dig into the verb-aspect of the memory phenomenon. It is the orchestration of three independent acts; Reception, Retention and Retrieval.
Think how an efficient goods storage works? Their receiving team receives the good, stored it in a specific room, rack and shelf by the storage team. There is a common ledger that is updated about the whereabouts. To the retrieval team, the ledger gives the exact directions to retrieve it. In a similar way, there are these three aspects involved in better memory management.
Reception - Our senses are awake and receiving information while we are awake and conscious, known as Jagrat in Sanskrit. In the current times, we spend more time in pleasing our mind mostly using ears, eyes takes the second spot, then the skin, then the tongue and finally the nose. While the intensity of the impact it creates is in exact opposite order. This order is not a coincidence but how the corresponding endocrine glands (chakras) are aligned in the body.
A specific smell can bubble up a whole container of memories in an instant than an interviewer questioning about that exact specific childhood moment. Sense of smell in so innate (muladhara) and hence it has deeper reach which qualifies it to be the best possible ledger (in database terms, an index), a metadata store for the actual information. Taste, touch, vision and hearing follow in the exact same order. Sharpening these senses, practicing each of them, one by one and compositely, all the 31 combinations is the key to drastically improve the ability to receive information.
It is the concise teaching of several wisemen who walked this earth; living in the present, being conscious of everything around, absolute alertness.
"Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life." - Buddha
Retention - A good retention capacity involves initial caching, periodic rumination, linking and reorganizing the received information.
One can easily count the number of stairs they took, the names they just heard and the streets they just passed. But all those live in cache, the most superficial aspect of the memory. The way to retain that is, extract the data to be retained, chew on it, link to already existing data, whenever possible. Create a discipline and make it a second nature to ruminate on the just received information every-time the level of reception reduces.
There is a simple exercise, where you can ask a group to say our 20 distinct words. Then you can repeat them in the same order, in the reverse or by index, i.e., like the 7th word is _____. Trick here is; Have a static list of 20 words, memorize them. When the group gives the new list of words, link them to your static list and store. Then the recall becomes a walk in the park.
Retrieval - There were several situations where we feel the answer is struck in the throat. This is one of the common symptom of impaired retrieval ability. And suddenly out of the blue, while walking the dog, the struck information spurts out. Which gives us an insight into what is behind a good retrieval mechanism. A relaxed state of mind. When the reception and retention aspects naturally diminish, mind relaxes and all the horsepower is available for efficient retrieval.
Relaxed mind is directly proportional to reduced blood stream to the brain. Physical workout or a big meal can put strain on the body and redirect the blood away from the brain. It is the basic way, but very limited as one cannot keep working out that long or eating all the time. Yoga and eventually meditation is a sustainable way to consciously reduce the blood traffic to the brain.
All these three aspects Reception, Retention and Retrieval are to be individually assessed and diagnosed before planting any suggestions in their mind, feeding any herbs or medicines to their body and pinning any tags like memory-loss, ADD, ADHD to their personality.
Emotions are the bridges to carry the cranial memories into deeper regions like genes and consciousness.
2.) Genetic memory - Body remembers way lot more that the brain can, mainly due to the enormous real-estate it has. From blood circulation, air recycling, temperature control, digestion, disposal to healing, the body is a self-sustaining phenom. It doesn't need the mind for its sustenance, but the mind needs body, even for its existence.
Knowledge catering to individual senses like language, comics, weaving, recipes and perfumes don't get into the genes. For a specific knowledge to enter the genetic pool, it needs to be connected to the whole species. Anything that helps the species survive and thrive qualifies to become a genetic memory.
The absolute base emotion linked to the survival; Fear has been the most reliable channel in carrying the cranial memory into genes.
3.) Memory of the consciousness (சித்தம்) - All the memory that we can successfully push into our consciousness is available to all other living beings to access. Hence, we have the innate ability to tap into the consciousness of any living being. Every new aspect of tennis that Roger Federer personally discovered and has pushed into his consciousness is available for everyone to access. The mechanism to do so is also in-built. All we have to do is to pull out the weeds, clear the hurdles and let it do its job.
All the mind-reading, hypnotism, prayers, wish fulfilling rocks and several other obscure things in the name of miracles, work on this principle. All the animate pulsating objects are linked by this layer of consciousness and communicate through the protocols of emotion.
Non-survival emotions like guilt, shame, pain, grief, joy, gratitude and love are well known carriers of cranial information to consciousness. The sheer purpose of the words, songs and chants are to simulate the necessary emotion. Hence the curses, blessings, wishes and prayers, not backed by the corresponding emotions, remain as empty words.
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