Crisis in Consciousness Chapter Fourteen

Memory Without a Cause

The conclusion arrived at on p. * that memory images come forward on their own account when challenged may seem a little strange at first sight.  We are so accustomed to thinking in terms of cause and effect that we feel lost when we see something happen without apparent cause.  But it must be realized that, coming right down to fundamental level, something like this may be expected to occur: the appearance of an effect which is its own cause (cf. the postulate of a “space-time barrier” in “Zen and Reality”).  And does not the search for an underlying cause imply that the event was not fundamental?  If a cause is found then obviously the event was an effect and could therefore not have been fundamental.

This confusion in our minds has arisen partly because, brought up in the Christian tradition, we tend to look for a First Cause, a Prime Mover, without ever asking whether such an animal can or does really exist.  Another factor is that the mind cannot see events otherwise than as bound by time, i.e., in a cause-and-effect framework, for the mind itself is the product time (being the bundle of memories) and it can therefore never grasp the timeless, the unconditioned.  A similar problem in classical philosophy is that of the body-mind relationship.  For many hundreds of years philosophers have searched for a causal relationship–either body shaping mind, or mind shaping body–and have found none.  At last they have come to console themselves with the postulate of “psycho-physical parallelism” (whatever that may mean).  All these difficulties crop up so long as we cannot see through the illusion of duality; and this illusion is imposed on us by the limitations of the mind, the very tool that is used in the endeavor to find a solution to the problems. 

But perhaps it may be possible to see directly–without intellectualizing–that the notion of causality viewed from outside time, is simply reduced to one of “association”, for it is the discriminating mind which cuts up that which flows eternally, into the static units of “cause” and “effect”.  For without the mind that abstracts, classifies and pigeon-holes, where does cause end and effect begin?  Then, ultimately, we may see that even the notions of “association” and “flow” are reduced to simple “being” in the timeless state, the fundamental level of reality.

However, of far greater significance than the above considerations, which although interesting in themselves are only of academic import, is the tactical recognition that individual consciousness has a built-in self-cleansing mechanism, which is capable of automatically digesting psychological memories, so that at no time a harmful residue is left.  This becomes operative in a spontaneous process of meditation when there is full attention to what one has “on one’s mind”.  This verbal expression in itself is telling, because it implies that there is a certain psychological tension which has to work itself off.  Unfortunately we live such hurried lives nowadays, and we are all the time trying to “concentrate”, planning and calculating our future actions, that we have destroyed this innate capacity of mind.  

Thus the torturing thoughts, constituting the turmoil in the mind, fulfill a definite purpose.  They arise so that we should accord them full attention, and not opt out by repressing them or trying to become oblivious of them.  In this way only is catharsis to take place.  People who think that the spiritual person is one who is always serene, never disturbed, or who have made that state their ultimate goal, will not be able to understand this, for they have made the search for serenity another escape.  The truly spiritual person, on the contrary, is continually being disturbed; every moment is a new crisis.  

What does all this add up to in practical, everyday life?  It means, does it not, that I don’t have to do a thing, as long as I am integrally aware of outward impressions and my reactions towards them.  It also means, when I have a problem that recurs again and again, that I look at the problem–not in the narrow sense, as when trying to solve a mathematical problem which only requires a certain answer–but in the fullest sense, which comprises inquiring into the relationship between the problem and the problem-maker.  The latter is the conditioned entity whose undigested past is always giving rise to further thought–thought which is ever driving, compelling, stirring, preventing the state of serenity in which there is not a single problem.  Then going deeper still, there is the realization that in actual fact there is not even a relationship between “me” and the problem, for I am the problem. Thus there is no longer any need to do anything about it: in fact, the trying to find a solution to the problem is the avoidance of the problem (and because, more subtly, the very seeking is the problem). The seeing of the “I” as the collective reaction of past memories, creating complications in the now, reduces all problems to the one, and at the same time it reduces this one to Nothingness.