How would you answer the question "who are you?" ? The average person will first of all give his name and surname, gender, age, profession, marital status - in a word, he will begin to list the signs that, as he believes, distinguish him from others.
As a rule, human memory does not penetrate beyond the current incarnation. Although, of course, there are different methods of expanding the range of memories, be it the method of holotropic breathing by S. Grof or the techniques of deep hypnosis by M. Newton, which allow you to pass the threshold of birth and remember something that precedes your current life. But even in this case, a person “remembers” all the same distinctive features, albeit from a previous incarnation: gender, nationality, profession …
So what happens? I am what I remember about myself. It is memories that are formed in response to the question "who am I?"
One might think that this is how we define the real purpose of human memory. That, they say, is why we need this memory - to know ourselves.
In the same way, the principle of awareness and the principle of memory are associated not only with individuals, but also with entire nations. One often hears that people who do not know their history do not have a historical perspective, that historical knowledge is the most important brick of national self-awareness, etc.
That is, the same idea is again affirmed: we are what we remember about ourselves.
Is this true? In a sense, yes. However, the thing is that this property of memory is being mercilessly exploited, turning into a powerful weapon of manipulation. To go far for examples: just think how many times in your memory, dear reader, the history of Russia has been rewritten! And if you look through the history textbooks of the former Soviet republics?.. School textbooks and "scientific" works are redrawn to please the wishes of the next political elite. It's funny (and sad) that people involved in this kind of manipulation of popular memory hardly wonder what it might eventually lead to.
For example, what is the result of an attempt to put on a pedestal a historical event, which no one has previously recalled due to its insignificance?
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It's clear that everyone wants to have great memories. But in essence, such manipulation means a mental disorder at the level of the entire ethnic group. How will we react to a person who will remember what did not happen to him?.. Why does the people, who suddenly “remembered” that they won a war in which they practically did not participate, do not seem to us insane?..
FALSE MEMORY
There is such a phenomenon - a false memory, when people remember something that has never happened to them. Is the person suffering from this property adequate? Of course not, and the term refers to the field of psychiatry. For example, a person is sure that he is a surgeon. Tells believable stories about the operations he carried out, sprinkles with special words … If you know for sure that he is actually a tram driver, will you lie under the knife with him? The answer is clear. Our rational consciousness does not admit the possibility that false memory is capable of endowing a person with any real skills. The attitude towards states rewriting their history is formed in a similar way: false memory, fictitious memories have no chance of re-creating a personality, collective or people, endowing them with new wonderful properties.
So - but not so! In fact, everything is much more complicated. Let us recall at least the battles around the Norman theory of the emergence of statehood in Russia.
It would seem: how can fiction be stronger than reality? Maybe - and Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov understood this perfectly when he fought so fiercely against the official approval of the so-called Norman theory of the formation of the Russian state. According to this version, the state as such did not exist in Russia - until the Varangian princes were invited to govern the country. The version is controversial, if not to say - ordered, and Lomonosov categorically disagreed with it.
But the great scientist worried not so much about "pure science", historical truth, but about the prospects of Russia, believing that a distorted history will change the future of the country, will predetermine the mentality of the nation, the character of each individual. And he turned out to be right: more than one century has passed, and the Russian people still live by faith in the kind overseas tsar.
It turns out that sometimes false memory turns out to be a much more effective tool than the real factology of the past. It doesn't matter how it really was, say the supporters of this approach: as we write, so it will be. Another half step, and we come to the conclusion that no real story exists at all. After all, it turns out that the past is constantly changing - depending on what is remembered about it. Do you think this is absurd? Do not rush to conclusions, let's think a little on this topic.
Those who did not understand the past, Those who did not understand the past of humanity in general, Those who did not understand their past in particular, Those will be condemned to reproduce it.
Bernard Weber
REMEMBER ALL
There are many examples when invented, in fact, false memories endowed a person with real abilities.
An excellent example is the history of filming one of the episodes of the cult film "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" Namely - a fragment where Zheglov comes to the billiard club and, as it were, between times, in the process of a conversation, famously beats the inveterate billiard player Smoked. Many probably remember how Vladimir Vysotsky demonstrates his brilliant cue skills.
However, when, after filming, the actor was asked about where he learned to play billiards, he replied that he was holding a cue for the first time in his life. Vysotsky was not a billiard player, but, having entered the character, he mastered all the necessary skills.
Miracle? Almost … Acting talent, the ability to organically get used to the role worked the same way as false memories. There was a real transfer of qualities, abilities, experience from the invented character to a real person.
Of course, the minimum stage of training was: the actor was shown how to hold a cue, how to whiten a finger. But, you must admit, to transform into an experienced player, this is not enough. It was only thanks to false memory that an image with the necessary qualities appeared in the actor.
“He has never been in the mountains,” the film director Govorukhin recalled about Vysotsky. - But I wrote a wonderful song about climbers. He has never played billiards, but he was brilliantly able to convince the audience that he is an excellent player. Shooting in the billiard room lasted two days, and they can be called one of the most enjoyable moments in the work. It was easy to work with Vysotsky. He played excellently: the blow was staged smartly, not fake, but real gambling excitement! In these scenes, he did not need any special consultants or director's tips."
So what happens: there is no direct connection between memory and real events of the past? Can fictional experiences change reality?
And in this case, can the memory of non-existent events create some semblance of a fact - a fact that other people will remember as well?
This is how it usually happens. After the release of the film, stories began to appear on the screens about how someone played billiards with Vysotsky. It came to a billiard tournament named after Vladimir Vysotsky. The false memory changed reality. So, is the very definition “false” applicable to such a phenomenon?
Let's not rush to answer, but again return to the question "who am I?"
I REMEMBER THERE IS THERE?
Suppose someone replied, "I am a math teacher." That is, the person singled out qualities, remembered the events that, in his opinion, characterize him most fully. But would he stop being himself if he changed his profession? Hardly … And wasn't he himself before he learned to be a teacher, when he did not go to school yet, did not even know the multiplication table? There is something deeper in a person, isn't there? Agree, we cannot answer the question “who am I?”, Even if we supplement the description with a listing of other qualities, skills or social roles.
We cannot say: “I am a dad,” “I am a wife,” or “I am a director” - whatever properties we name, it will be a memory of only some of our role or part of life experience. Somewhat flawed, truncated knowledge about myself.
So we come to the main thing: what do you need to remember in order to understand who you are? So that all the fragments of the mosaic are formed into a coherent picture - into a portrait of our "I"?
All world religions, like many religious and philosophical teachings, agree that the main thing in a person is the soul, and it is immortal. In this case, it is not important for us whether we are talking about an eternally existing soul that comes to earth in order to live a human life, get some experience and reunite with the Creator, or about many successive incarnations. Essentially different: it is the soul that is completely identical to our “I”, having neither gender, nor earthly age, nor profession. So, in this case, memory is powerless to help a person realize himself? Of course not. Everything is stored in its depths - the infinite space, and the presence of the Most High, and former lives, and ancient archetypes - the embodiment of the ancestral memory of humanity itself.
We have already said that special psychotechnics have been developed that allow you to dive into these pools, but hardly everyone needs to go through this experience.
It is enough for the majority to realize, to believe, to feel themselves in Eternity in one way or another.
Until this knowledge has become our only reality, memory turns out to be a global trap of consciousness, from which it is extremely difficult to get out.
For a person who is confident that personality is exhausted by a number of functions, and existence is the fulfillment of everyday and office tasks, life turns out to be equal to those facts that memory for some reason retained. Why is it dangerous? It’s easy to understand: imagine that your childhood memory keeps the memory of how your mother unjustly or too harshly punished you. It was terribly painful and upsetting - and this memory for decades spoils not only your relationship with your mother, but also makes you suspect a potential offender in everyone you meet. It would be nice to forget the bad episode - but it does not work. And here a tremendous helplessness of consciousness is revealed: most people are not able to control their memories. A person understands that the reason for his resentment is worthless,but nevertheless, day after day, he remembers and recalls this "traumatic circumstance."
The quotation marks are put here precisely because in fact it is not the fact itself that is traumatizing, but the memory, which, by the way, is imperceptibly transformed in the imagination: the past begins to acquire more and more heartbreaking details. Result: the picture of the past changes - depending on how we remember it.
LITTLE TRICKS
Since we are already talking about traumatic memories, I must say that too difficult sometimes seem to disappear from memory. Of course, no one actually erases them with an eraser. Our consciousness and subconsciousness are arranged so cunningly that they are able to remove, hide unpleasant episodes of the past deeply, deeply. In a sense, this greatly facilitates life: a person gets the opportunity not to get hung up on some fears, to move forward. However, sooner or later the moment will come when a certain unsolvable problem will arise - an unsolvable one precisely because the key to it is in those very hunted memories.
You can go to the best psychologist and spend hours looking for the answer to the problem with him, you can pray days and nights - all to no avail, while the “forgotten memories” remain in your cherished closet.
You have to decide on hard work: disturb the ghosts of the past, enter into battle with them and try to win. By the way, it is on this that one of the most paradoxical and effective methods of modern psychology is built: a person is forced to relive the most difficult hours of his life - and then “replay” them according to a different scenario. So, to form a different, happy memory. You already understand how it works: if a person sincerely believes in the reality of a new scenario of his past, a fundamentally different future will begin to emerge from this past.
ANCIENT GOD
From an astrological point of view, memory is ruled by Saturn. Let's remember that one of the names of this god is Chronos: time. Let us recall the ancient myth of Saturn devouring his children - this is the embodiment of the idea of ruthless time, that sooner or later it will swallow everyone.
“Law” is a favorite word from the Saturnian old lexicon. Chronos does not yet know Love - that's why he eats his children. He is not ruthless: Saturn reigned in the world long before the appearance of the concepts of good and evil, and therefore he … is simply just. Cold karma of retribution, necessary for our passions by the soul.
We begin to feel the influence of Saturn from childhood: the demands to obey the regime, laws, rules - all this is his diocese. The child, of course, resists external pressure. An adult also resists - until he realizes that all these restrictions will disappear as soon as a firm inner discipline arises in the person himself, as soon as he subordinates his life to his own rigid system of values, as soon as an immutable moral law begins to operate in him. These are the true lessons of Saturn …
The more discipline we have, inner rigor, the ability to follow obligations, the more we succeed, the more saturated our being becomes. And the less random are our memories. Memory ceases to be a black box, a dusty chest of drawers, in which barely visible things are scattered. And most importantly, a person ceases to hide from himself, ceases to be afraid to know himself.
FAREWELL WITH FORGIVENESS
Most often, the merciful memory tries to hide from us the memories of the grievances suffered. A close, dear person for us treated unfairly, underestimated, or even betrayed. To think about it is only to poison ourselves, and we diligently forget these stories. Not that we declare it non-existent, but we suppress it as an irritating factor.
However, resentment - it is resentment. Feeling negative, destructive. Sits in a corner of the subconscious and gradually undermines the psyche, surreptitiously coloring the world in dull, gray tones, instilling distrust of people, distrust of fate itself.
Do you want to turn your own memory into a negative repository? In that case, let's learn to truly forget.
The first method is the simplest, but very effective. Pick a few people that you resent the most. Do not feel sorry for yourself - remember in detail the traumatic situations associated with them. Analyze each, trying to understand why fate sent you this test. After all, this is indeed a test, a kind of life lesson! Maybe you were taught to be more tolerant? Maybe they indicated excessive sensitivity? Or that you are not ready to accept the fact that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and their own mistakes? There are a lot of options, try to find your own. Once you understand what that story should have taught you, mentally thank the offender for the lesson - and let him go.
It is possible that you will not be able to figure out what the lesson was about right away. Well, it happens: perhaps the time has not come yet and you will understand it later. The main thing is to internally agree that the offense inflicted on you is not a cruel joke of fate, but an attempt by the Higher Forces (or your subconsciousness) to point out to you some shortcomings, to give you a hint in which direction to move, what internal attitudes to change. Do you agree?
Fine! Say thank you for the lesson - and let the offender go: the offense will go out by itself.
If you are ready for more serious work, take a few sheets of paper and a pen: we will write letters.
Again, remember the brightest traumatic situations. Sit down and write a letter in which you make claims to yourself for allowing yourself to be treated this way. For allowing someone to neglect your interests, for giving someone the right to humiliate you.
List everything that comes to mind when trying to write in the stream of consciousness genre - that is, regardless of style and punctuation spelling. You are not composing a novel - you are pouring the boiling water onto the paper, freeing the subconscious, the memory from old sores. When the stream of memories dries up, write that you forgive yourself - you forgive in all the situations described and in each separately. Thank the Lord or Higher powers for the lesson - and burn the letter. Without rereading! By the way, keep in mind: you can write only by hand, the computer is not our assistant here.
Now write a second letter, in which you need to express complaints against each offender. Do not be shy in expressions, directly and frankly say what you think about his (her) behavior and motives. This letter should also be burned.
Well, if after some time new grievances emerge in your memory, sit down for letters again.