What is the Primary Function of Memory?

  

There was a discussion the other night about self remembering in which someone asked what it actually consists of.

It’s useful to think of my various minds as members, that is, “limbs” with which I both sense my world and move about in it. Arms and legs, if you will: tools through which consciousness extends its agency into contact with the world. 

In this way, the mind of feeling engages in emotional contact with the world; the mind of sensation engages with physical contact; and the mind of the intellect engages in organizational contact. These limbs have, like the myth of Osiris, been separated; the body of agency and consciousness has been cloven  asunder and the parts aren't available in any kind of unity. The “re – membering” of the self is a reassembly of the limbs, a reattachment to the body of consciousness and agency.

Consequent to this question of remembering was the question of what memory is. 

I raised the question of what the principal function of memory in this work (specifically, the “Gurdjieff” work, that is, the ancient work of The Reconstruction of the Soul) might be. 

Although I posed the question, no one answered it; and so it falls to me to give you the answer here.

The principal function of memory in the Gurdjieff work is to engender remorse of conscience.

Once this is said, it seems self evident; yet, I feel quite sure, you have not heard it put in these terms before; and this is probably because the thinking part of the ancient work has been in large part atrophied by modern living.

In order to explain this principle in greater detail, one needs to examine the nature of the question in a bit more precise terms.

Events give birth to three different types of memory:

Memory of feeling

Memory of "things" and their relationships

Memory of the body

Each of these types of memory has a unique and different characteristic from the others; and each one acts within the emotional, intellectual, or physical center according to the nature of its origin. Each of these types of memory, moreover, is a function of the impressions that created them, which “engrave” the molecular relationship of their nature into Being.

These three different kinds of memory combine together, if agency is active and the being is “re –membered”, into an active conscious condition that can engender remorse.

I say that this is the principal function of memory in the ancient work because, although memory has many other different and quite important functions — for example, my wife pointed out that memory supports me in knowing who I am — the most important thing that an organism can undertake is an objectively moral and ruthlessly intense examination of its own agency, action, and motives. All of this work, in modern terms, could be called an examination of the “ego;” yet what is at stake here is a more delicate matter, that is, the growth of the soul, which is an independent entity not ultimately subject to the authority of the ego. 

When we look at this function of memory, we begin to see that it is in fact a spiritual activity of great depth and meaning. Yet this is entirely ignored and actively misunderstood, because memory has become the victim of science and sentiment, removing it from the domain of the soul and placing it instead in a much more profane context. 

At its best, memory engenders the religious impulse in a human being, and it does so strictly based on the objective evaluation of one’s Being and one’s nothingness. Once the ego gets hold of it, however, it appropriates everything that memory can achieve and memory becomes a reflexive stimulus for desire rather than an entity for a sacred process.

May God bless your efforts at Being today. Be well.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.