Memory

The content of the mind is information. Information can be about real knowledge. But it is not the knowledge yet. Information is infinite; it contains memories, theories, descriptions, images. But the real knowledge is the taste. You have the taste, and so you know. If you do not have that taste, you do not know. But that does not mean that if you tasted it before, you know it now. But if you could remember that you knew, and remember what it is exactly that you knew, if you could remember it totally, the Essence would be there. So memory can help to get back to the real knowledge. Memory can reach toward it, and come very close. Then there must be a leap, and the essential knowledge will be there. (Diamond Heart Book 1, pg 69)

Personality and memory

The personality, as we have seen consistently, contains the memory of all that was lost. To ask it to let go means, according to the unconscious, letting go of its attempt to regain all that was lost. Unconsciously, it knows what has to be there, and it is not going to clear the space completely before it is sure that everything is there. On the surface, it appears that personality wants to displace Essence. This is partially true, but on the deeper levels, it was formed and developed ultimately for the protection and the survival of the organism and hence for the protection and the survival of the whole essential process. And it performs this function faithfully, even though rigidly. (Essence, pg 176)

The soul possesses memory which makes it possible for her to retain impressions of basic knowledge. The first memories are bound to be elements of pure basic knowledge, direct and simple experiences and perceptions. However, she cannot retain the fullness of the impression, but most importantly, she cannot retain the knowingness of being. Pure basic knowledge is both protoconcept and sense of presence, but memory cannot retain the sense of presence… so it retains only the concept, the defining outlines of the element of knowledge in question -- the shape, color, texture, affect, and cognitive garb. Basic knowledge further manifests in the soul the capacity to label such concepts. The label is usually a word, which is another form of basic knowledge that refers to the remembered one. Memories and labeling become the initial steps in the process of representation. Conceptualizing develops into full-blown formal concepts that refer to categories and categories of categories. Memory can then connect one concept to another, remembering relationships and correspondences, beginning the process of thinking. (Inner Journey Home, p 317)

The representations which constitute the structure of the identity of the normal self are impressions integrated from the past, which by their very nature are unable to contain essential presence, and thus, alienate the self from its essential core. Essential presence cannot be captured in any kind of memory. Awareness of oneself as presence is the immediate experience of beingness, while retained impressions are many steps removed from this immediacy. Therefore, to recognize ourselves with and through this memory, or any impression from past experience, is bound to exclude essential presence from our sense of self. Hence the nature of essential presence and the epistemological stance involved in identification with psychic structures combine to make that developed self -- a psychic structure -- fundamentally narcissistic. This development creates epistemological barriers to self-realization by rendering the content of experience opaque: the self cannot see through or beyond its concepts of itself or the world. (The Point of Existence, p 176)

Experience and memory

The way the body is has a lot to do with what happened to you in the past—the same with your mind, your personality, your emotions, your actions, and so on. They are so much determined by the past that after a while there is no presence, there is only memory instead. The more you act and experience according to memory, the more your experience lacks presence. After a while, your experience is mostly a set of reactions based on what happened in the past. And the more it becomes reactivity from the past, the more you forget presence. After a while, you don't even know what presence is. It then becomes very difficult to disengage from the past because it not only determines how you feel, it determines what you think, your sense of who you are, your very sense of existence. The understanding of presence makes clear the great gulf that exists between the experience of Essence and the experience of the ego. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 57)