NOTHING that takes place, no manifestation
however rapid or weak, can ever be lost from the Skandhic
record of a man's life. Not the smallest sensation,
the most trifling action, impulse, thought,
impression, or deed, can fade or go out from,
or in the Universe. We may think it unregistered by our
memory, unperceived by our consciousness, yet it
will still be recorded on the tablets of the astral light.
Personal memory is a fiction of the physiologist. There
are cells in our brain that receive and convey sensations and
impressions, but this once done, their mission is
accomplished. These cells of the supposed "organ of
memory" are the receivers and conveyors of
all the pictures and impressions of the past, not their
retainers. Under various conditions and stimuli,
they can receive instantaneously the reflection of these astral
images back again, and this is called memory,
recollection, remembrance; but they do not preserve
them. When it is said that one has lost his memory,
or that it is weakened, it is only a facon de parler;
it is our memory-cells alone that are enfeebled or destroyed.
The window glass allows us to see the sun, moon,
stars, and all the objects outside clearly; crack
the pane and all these outside images will be seen in a distorted
way; break the windowpane altogether and replace it with
a board, or draw the blind down, and the images
will be shut out altogether from your sight. But can you
say because of this, that all these images-sun,
moon, and stars-have disappeared, or that by repairing
the window with a new pane, the same will not be reflected
again into your room? There are cases on record of long months
and years of insanity, of long days of fever when almost
everything done or said, was done and said unconsciously.
Yet when the patients recovered they remembered occasionally their
words and deeds and very fully. Unconscious cerebration
is a phenomenon on this plane and may hold good so far as the
personal mind is concerned. But the Universal Memory preserves
every motion, the slightest wave and feeling that ripples
the waves of differentiated nature, of man or of the Universe.
Lucifer, October, 1891