renots
10-27-2000, 09:23 PM
by Manly P. Hall
It is always rather impressive, when we enter into a field of specialized thinking, to realize how little is gnown. Even though we have advanced our sciences tremendously in the last 50 years, there are many areas where almost no penetration has actually been attained. This lack of penetration has generally accompanied lack of interest. With very strong attitudes, prejudices, and monopolistic thinking, it is quite obvious that fields can be neglected simply through narrow-mindedness - the unwillingness to consider that worthwhile investigation is possible within a certain area of research.
Fifty years ago, it was held by a small group that psychometry could have a scientific foundation. At that time , this small group was ridiculed or ignored. Today we are slowly moving in the direction of justifying this early concept. The reason, perhaps, why we do not move more rapidly, is that long prejudice has created a situation in which advancement in this direction must be acompanied by an admission of previous error. The individual must admit that she was wrong in hur earlier refusal to examine the available facts.
In the last twenty or thirty years, the extrasensory range of man has come into considerable focus in our thinking, and the advancements in science are now bringing us close to the exploration of a 4th or even 5th dimensional time factor - one which we did not even realize to exist at the turn of the present century. The time factor, if it can be further explored, may prove to be the solution to a great many mysteries, but in order for it to be explored, man must gradually convince himself of the validity of things unseen and facts which lie beyond the range of his sensory perceptions. He must also recognize that the only solution to these mysteries lies in the development of his own faculties, and that he cannot do this by mere production of machines.
The development of faculties suitable for exploration of these more abstract levels of consciousness. also presumes certain changes in the ethical, moral, and cultural life of man. A person cannot improve their faculties systematically without improving one's character. One cannot know more until one becomes more, and the challenge of becoming is the one thing we have diligently resisted since the beginning of history. This challenge implies self-control, self-discipline, and the acceptance of personal responsibilities for thought, emotion, and conduct. Advancement along such lines is regarded as a penalty interfering with our inalienable right to live as badly as we please. To meet the challenge, therefore, of the development of additional faculty-dimension, we must turn to certain moral, philosophical, spiritual, and ethical codes which we have always admired generally, but have not applied particularily, especiallt to ourselves.
It is probable that the general lack of orientation in the exploration of intagibles arises from this one problem: namely, that we have to grow in order to have the faculties to make these explorations. We have resolved that we would do this with machines, with formulas, contrivances; we would solve these problemsas we have solved atomic fission -- very largely on paper by theory. But can you solve many any way you wish on paper, yet unless the human being in some way changes or improves hur own own personal way of life, she cannot escape from the narrow boundaries of hur present situation.
We are further stimulated in our reflection by the obviously rising crisis in ethics, in which, today as never before, our present incentives are proven inadequate; our present attitudes towards life little better than barbaric; and our entire personal security threatened by our lack of idealism, understanding, and spirit of mutual cooperation. The few individuals who atempt to preserve values are heavily penalized, but those who do not preserve values are contributing to the general collapse of human civilization. Thus we must finally come to some important conclusions.
Psychometry is one these mysteries which we have hesitated to approach, for the reason that if we were able to prove it, to dmonstrate it scientifically, it would bring with it certain moral and ethical implications which we are loath to accept; we do not wish to discover them to be factual. While we admit general ignorance, we may live as we please, and we do not feel that other persons have any right to condemn us. But if we make discoveries whereby certainties are established, we may reasonably be expected to live according to these certainties, and this in itself would require a marked change in our general attitude.
Within the last 5 years, the attention of the scientific mind has been turned, to a degree, to the possibility of breaking through the time barrier and achieiving a state of almost universal immediacy. We are seriously wondering what the interval really is that divides man from the period of the rise of christianity in the 1st century. We no longer feel that it is completely impossible that we could restore the entire living picture of incidents and circumstances that occurred long ago. We are comforted in this, particularly by an investigation of ourselves. We are no longer thinking in terms of mystical speculation, but in more definite terms of factual experience.
In humans, for example, what is memory? Here we do not have any really adequate scientific opinion. Memory is a certain retentiveness, we are told; it is the power, or capacity, of certain brain areas to store the record of events. These retentive areas may either keep the events available to us, so that by conscious focus of attention, we can revitalize a past incident, or this retentiveness may drop into the subconscious and there remain available, but unknown, for a considerable period of time. This availability is demonstrated every day by what is called association mechanisms. The individual experiences something in hur immediate life that reminds hur of some past occurence, and this association opens up the old memory again, brings it to the surface, and makes it available for consideration.
Now, retentiveness is preserved, seemingly, within cell life, or within a very delicate psycho-neural complex, tissue, or substance capable of this power. Yet it is also obvious that in this cell structure, a memory is not a picture; it cannot be an entire area as in life. Memory is not the filing away of photographs. Furthermore, this memory-pattern, when restored, is not in the form of a picture, but in the form of events, themselves moving even while remembered. Still more important, these memory-patterns cn and do excite mental and emotional reflexes. They can cause the individual to re-experience an event or circumstance.
The explanation can only be that memory patterns are held in the form of energy -- some type of vibratory force. They then become available through an interpretive instrument. In the same way, a television broadcast does not pass a picture through the air, but passes certain vibrations. These, when they reach a proper receiving set, are brought together again , to reform not only a picture, but also it's sound pattern. Consequently, we do not need to say that history is recorded in the form of pictures, but we can say that there is nothing to disprove that all events are held in some kind of electro-vibratory patterns -- rates of vibration -- and that these can, and probably do, endure.
The human memory, like rates of vibration, is stratified. There are things that we remember from last weel; other things, from last year; and still others, from 20 years ago. It is therefore evident that memory is not a witch's cauldron into which things once poured are stirred into a hodge-podge. Memory is able to restore itself, usually by association, upon levels; and in terms of association, memory will release, at any given time, that which is stimulated by the association mechanism. Thus, within the power of memory, there is a faculty by which an individual falling down stairs now, suddenly remembers[re-member=put the pieces back together] having fallen down stairs 10 years ago. She remembers the details of this incident, at least temporarily, and then they fade away again; but when she falls and remembers this previous fall, she does not necessarily remember every fall, only the fall like the one just experienced.
This means there is an editorial process going on within the individual, by which hur memory is available only in areas of demand. No matter how many memories go back into the subconscious, they never mingle or fuss or lose their identities, and although the events may have occured very close together, the memories of them do not coalesce; nor, if they are of similar content, are they greatly seperated, although the events may have occured many years apart.
Nature has provided the means fo this procedure in humans, for it has created within all of us the power of retentiveness. It has given us memory as a means of advancing our spiritual, intellectual, moral, and physical life, Memory is useful, but when misused, it can be a source of constant pain and sorrow. It is often hard to hear because, being burdened with evidence of previous errors, it is continuously accusing us of not having corrected old faults.
Now, if this retentiveness is possible and purposeful to man as an individual -- and there is every evidence that it is purposeful -- then it is reasonable to suppose that this memory faculty also exists psychologically on a collective level, in what is called folk memory -- the mysterious power of culture groups that arise out of the cultural heritage behind various races, such as the Teutons, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Cherokee. Each of these groups has a folk awareness by which it is bound to its own culture and tradition, and this folk awareness is undoubtedly asociated with instinctive emotional and mental patterns. For as we well gnow from association, various races have different temperaments, and these certainly affect the unlocking of the subconscious memory content. The individual with certain emotional and mental attitudes experiences certain events in a particular way, and older association mechanisms are in turn reawakened. This gradually results in the rise of a particular culture psychology.
Thus humans are able to do the thing which science would regard as impossible if applied to anything but humans. I remember an engineer who was working with me at the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, and he said: "You gnow, this causes me to have a peculiar reaction. If this thing weren't standing here now, there would be no way of convincing anyone that it ever existed. If it weren't here, the learned of 50 generations would explain how it could could never be built. But being here, it is an embarassment." It is the same with this memory problem. We have it, but we have not explained it adequately. If we did not demonstrate it every day, it would be universally denied.
We also realize, more and more, the peculiar relationships between man and nature. Not very long ago, we held humans to be an exception to all nature. We assumed hur to be a particular and peculiar type of life, created differently from all other creations, and intended for a different destiny than other destinies. This answered a great many questions, after a fashion. Actually, however, it simply permitted us to evade the demand for answers. We did not have to explain ourselves, for we were a divine creation, and our explanation rested in the will of GoD; and GoD does not explain. It is the human who forever attempt to explain both GoD and hurself. But when it becomes increasingly obvious that the human was, at least physically and psychologically and intellectually, a part of nature, then hur outward body and hur functions were under the same laws that govern all other creatures. When the processes within hur could no longer be regarded as dissimilar to the processes around hur, it became necessary to use the inevitable pattern of analogy to realize that any faculty that exists in a human, must have an existance other than human. That she may specialize a power, is obvious; but that he may have powers which are totally absent in other parts of nature, is no longer tenable as a belief.
Human must depend upon universal creation for hur existance and hur continuance, and every power and faculty which she possesses must be nourished by an energy appropriate to itself. Nature cannot sustain in a human what nature itself does not possess. It cannot perfect in hur patterns which have not already been established archetypally, in some way or form, within its own structure. Thus the fact that the human has faculties or powers is definite proof that the energies and archetypes of these powers must exist in nature or in space. And were we to search for the root of memory in ourselves, we would find a mystery apparently as empty as the space around us. All of our important attributes seem to arise from the absence of themselves -- from a mystery or darkness, from an inscrutable source; yet we must assume that this source contains within itself everything that can come from it. Consequently, this space-equation is probably the very foundation, source, and essence of everything that comes forth out of space or is sustain in space.
In the Human, therefore, we recognize a power by which, from certain records imperishably placed within hur own psychic structure, she can restore memory. Years ago, mystics talked of what they called the memory of nature, and in eastern philosophy, there are references to the Akashic records, or the records of the past[and of the future] of the world, of nature, and of the total pattern of which we are a part. These records are somewhat analogous to those found in the strata of rocks. When we dig out the prehistoric remains of animals or primative human types, we are able, through the study of rock structure and stratification, and other related phenomena, to come to a reasonable knowledge of the approximate date when these creatures or beings lived. We also find that we can restore from tree rings a very adequate report on the maxims and minima of sun spot cycles 4 or 5,000 years ago. In the great sequoias and other trees that have had a vast existence, this record unfolds almost like a book. Therefore, here are simple records, which again we would deny, were they not available to us. We have been aware of tree ring since carpentry began, but only within the last 50 years have these rings revealed their important contributions to the science of history.
Thus we are constantly in the presence of various kinds of records, and to assume that the small pattern of our physical achievements exhausts this record-keeping device, would be too ridiculous to contemplate. But this subject has retired into the realm of unexplored fields -- not unexplorable, but simply neglected fields -- because we have been afraid of what we would discover.
In the presence of this challenge, we have a right to go a little further. Psychometry is based upon one of two factors, or perhaps both of these factors operating together. The first of these is the photographic nature of atmosphere or energy itself. The second is that energy has within it a retentive power, and any impression made upon energy, remains locked within it subject to be drawn forth by association, exactly as in the case of the human nature.
The problem of what kind of energy may sustain such records brings us again to one of the greatest queestions that we have; namely, is the universe dominated by a conscious intelligence? Is the intelligence that governs the universe conscious, in the sense of a being or even of a person, or is universal intelligence operating in a way we would call subconscious? In other words, is it moving from within outward, through its creation, so that it actually seems to be a subconscious pressure moving continuously from sources of energ in the cosmos? If we wish to assume that it is a subconscious pressure, then we must probably also assume that this pressure results from a preceding state of conscious, because the Human, in order to build up a conditioned subconscious, must have conscious experience.
In order to solve this, we must go back into mysteries that become too abstract to be essentially valuable to us. We go into a sphere of contemplative speculation. One point, however, seems to have relevance; namely, that if the universe is dominated by a conscious intelligence, then the universe must contain all the essentials of a universal memory. We have no reason to doubt that its essential retentive function is not similiar to that of the human mind. It may be grander and more inclusive, but it must be essentially of the same principle, inasmuch as the human's function bears witness also to this principle. Th Human did not create the pattern of hur own retentive memory; she merely specialized it according to hur needs. But the pattern itself, as an availability of specialization, has to exist in space, or humans could not have gained access to it or enregized it.
A universal memory is essential if we assume evolution to be true, because evolution depends for its productivity upon certain perspectives. The evolutionary processes lose most their meaning and their most active principle if there is no record of the intellectual and moral relationship between levels of action. If the individual cannot learn from yesterday, so that she will be better today, one of the most important prodding agencies of evolution is lost.
Nature, in the same way, if it is going anywhere,is moving from its yesterdays, through its todays, into its tomorrows. These motions become significant morally, in terms of the cultivation of values and growth, through the recognition of experience and the correction of previous error. Thus, the moral universe demands memory or retentiveness in order that mistakes can be remembered and corrected, and instructions can be learned and applied.
We therefore have two possible theories which will be considered by scientific thinking as time goes on. One is that universal memory does exist, and that it is supported by every cell, atom, electron, and ion; and that every unit of force-matter contains a retentive potential. On the lower levels, this retentive potential may be regarded as a photographic record, while on higher levels, it can be regarded as a moral or psychological record -- a record of qualitative memory, rather than merely pictorial memory.
The second possibility is that the universe, complete and ensouled as one being, possesses one stupendous memory, and that this memory is available through its creatures, along with every other faculty which they may possess. If the human thinks because the mind of GoD is in hur; if she has emotion because the love of GoD is in hur; if she has physical action because the motive power of GoD is within; then she possesses hur own limited memory because the memory potential of the Deity is in hur.
Just as all of the human's other attributes derived from the Deity are subject to infinite extension towards greater usefulness, power, and clarity, so it may well be that memory, as we use it today, is bound also to a higher dimension of memory potential. Therefore, just as by the mystical experience the human may transcend, mentally or emotionally, hur own personal thought and feeling, and attain union with the consciousness of Deity, so it is conceivable that in memory experience, the human can outgrow the limitation of hur own human memory and be united with the eternal memory of Deity.
By such an experience, the individual would suddenly find the infinite potential of the record of all things available to hur, in the same conditioned way hur own memory is available to hur. That part of the universal memory would be opened which would, by association, supply or supplement some need of the human's memory. It is not likely, however, that the human would move out into a universal memory in which all things appeared kaleidoscopically; she would move out into the gradual needs of an enlarging memory factor in hur own life, and she would probably crawl along through various levels of transcendent memory, First, she would proceed along the lowest and most restricted level, and finally, as hur own needs and evolution required, this memory would open up to hur.
It is reasonable to assume that the end of all gnowledge, in terms of history and time, will be in this restoration of world memory. It is only, for instance, by such restoration that it will ever be possible to establish the ethical content in history. By means of the reexperiencing or revitalizing of the historical record, the truth may come to be gnown. History, at the present time, is in lamentable condition. In the first place, out of the human's historical record of hur struggle and growth, less than 5,000 years is available at all. And when we realize that man has been here probably neared a 100 million years, it is evident that most of this living occured at a time when no record was available. Nature, however, is profoundly economical with the magnificence of universal procedure, as we constantly observe it, and it is impossible to assume that all of the so-called prehistory period leading to the comparatively shallow area of historical report, is lost. We can assume, therefore, that this history is perpetuated within the nature of human, so that she is not only a record of hur own history, but also of hur own prehistory.
This brings us to the next interesting speculation; namely, that this world memory, or universal memory, is not dependent upon the individual's tuning in to a universal situation around hur, inasmuch as the entire memory, certainly as far as it relates to Humans, is locked within hurself. Physically, she is the total of hur entire evolutionary process; mentally and emotionally, she is the the sum of the parts of hurself and hur kind. Consequently, if we wish to regard this merely as a physical development of evolution, then the human must contain in the the physical equivalent of hur memory nature, the record of the entire history of organized matter as it has been used in the creation of hur body. If we wish to assume the doctrine of rebirth, then the psychic being contains a record of hur own living through innumerable ages of descent. If she can revitalize hur present life in various times, she can, by the same means, revitalize more ancient times, making them available again as immediate experience.
It is always rather impressive, when we enter into a field of specialized thinking, to realize how little is gnown. Even though we have advanced our sciences tremendously in the last 50 years, there are many areas where almost no penetration has actually been attained. This lack of penetration has generally accompanied lack of interest. With very strong attitudes, prejudices, and monopolistic thinking, it is quite obvious that fields can be neglected simply through narrow-mindedness - the unwillingness to consider that worthwhile investigation is possible within a certain area of research.
Fifty years ago, it was held by a small group that psychometry could have a scientific foundation. At that time , this small group was ridiculed or ignored. Today we are slowly moving in the direction of justifying this early concept. The reason, perhaps, why we do not move more rapidly, is that long prejudice has created a situation in which advancement in this direction must be acompanied by an admission of previous error. The individual must admit that she was wrong in hur earlier refusal to examine the available facts.
In the last twenty or thirty years, the extrasensory range of man has come into considerable focus in our thinking, and the advancements in science are now bringing us close to the exploration of a 4th or even 5th dimensional time factor - one which we did not even realize to exist at the turn of the present century. The time factor, if it can be further explored, may prove to be the solution to a great many mysteries, but in order for it to be explored, man must gradually convince himself of the validity of things unseen and facts which lie beyond the range of his sensory perceptions. He must also recognize that the only solution to these mysteries lies in the development of his own faculties, and that he cannot do this by mere production of machines.
The development of faculties suitable for exploration of these more abstract levels of consciousness. also presumes certain changes in the ethical, moral, and cultural life of man. A person cannot improve their faculties systematically without improving one's character. One cannot know more until one becomes more, and the challenge of becoming is the one thing we have diligently resisted since the beginning of history. This challenge implies self-control, self-discipline, and the acceptance of personal responsibilities for thought, emotion, and conduct. Advancement along such lines is regarded as a penalty interfering with our inalienable right to live as badly as we please. To meet the challenge, therefore, of the development of additional faculty-dimension, we must turn to certain moral, philosophical, spiritual, and ethical codes which we have always admired generally, but have not applied particularily, especiallt to ourselves.
It is probable that the general lack of orientation in the exploration of intagibles arises from this one problem: namely, that we have to grow in order to have the faculties to make these explorations. We have resolved that we would do this with machines, with formulas, contrivances; we would solve these problemsas we have solved atomic fission -- very largely on paper by theory. But can you solve many any way you wish on paper, yet unless the human being in some way changes or improves hur own own personal way of life, she cannot escape from the narrow boundaries of hur present situation.
We are further stimulated in our reflection by the obviously rising crisis in ethics, in which, today as never before, our present incentives are proven inadequate; our present attitudes towards life little better than barbaric; and our entire personal security threatened by our lack of idealism, understanding, and spirit of mutual cooperation. The few individuals who atempt to preserve values are heavily penalized, but those who do not preserve values are contributing to the general collapse of human civilization. Thus we must finally come to some important conclusions.
Psychometry is one these mysteries which we have hesitated to approach, for the reason that if we were able to prove it, to dmonstrate it scientifically, it would bring with it certain moral and ethical implications which we are loath to accept; we do not wish to discover them to be factual. While we admit general ignorance, we may live as we please, and we do not feel that other persons have any right to condemn us. But if we make discoveries whereby certainties are established, we may reasonably be expected to live according to these certainties, and this in itself would require a marked change in our general attitude.
Within the last 5 years, the attention of the scientific mind has been turned, to a degree, to the possibility of breaking through the time barrier and achieiving a state of almost universal immediacy. We are seriously wondering what the interval really is that divides man from the period of the rise of christianity in the 1st century. We no longer feel that it is completely impossible that we could restore the entire living picture of incidents and circumstances that occurred long ago. We are comforted in this, particularly by an investigation of ourselves. We are no longer thinking in terms of mystical speculation, but in more definite terms of factual experience.
In humans, for example, what is memory? Here we do not have any really adequate scientific opinion. Memory is a certain retentiveness, we are told; it is the power, or capacity, of certain brain areas to store the record of events. These retentive areas may either keep the events available to us, so that by conscious focus of attention, we can revitalize a past incident, or this retentiveness may drop into the subconscious and there remain available, but unknown, for a considerable period of time. This availability is demonstrated every day by what is called association mechanisms. The individual experiences something in hur immediate life that reminds hur of some past occurence, and this association opens up the old memory again, brings it to the surface, and makes it available for consideration.
Now, retentiveness is preserved, seemingly, within cell life, or within a very delicate psycho-neural complex, tissue, or substance capable of this power. Yet it is also obvious that in this cell structure, a memory is not a picture; it cannot be an entire area as in life. Memory is not the filing away of photographs. Furthermore, this memory-pattern, when restored, is not in the form of a picture, but in the form of events, themselves moving even while remembered. Still more important, these memory-patterns cn and do excite mental and emotional reflexes. They can cause the individual to re-experience an event or circumstance.
The explanation can only be that memory patterns are held in the form of energy -- some type of vibratory force. They then become available through an interpretive instrument. In the same way, a television broadcast does not pass a picture through the air, but passes certain vibrations. These, when they reach a proper receiving set, are brought together again , to reform not only a picture, but also it's sound pattern. Consequently, we do not need to say that history is recorded in the form of pictures, but we can say that there is nothing to disprove that all events are held in some kind of electro-vibratory patterns -- rates of vibration -- and that these can, and probably do, endure.
The human memory, like rates of vibration, is stratified. There are things that we remember from last weel; other things, from last year; and still others, from 20 years ago. It is therefore evident that memory is not a witch's cauldron into which things once poured are stirred into a hodge-podge. Memory is able to restore itself, usually by association, upon levels; and in terms of association, memory will release, at any given time, that which is stimulated by the association mechanism. Thus, within the power of memory, there is a faculty by which an individual falling down stairs now, suddenly remembers[re-member=put the pieces back together] having fallen down stairs 10 years ago. She remembers the details of this incident, at least temporarily, and then they fade away again; but when she falls and remembers this previous fall, she does not necessarily remember every fall, only the fall like the one just experienced.
This means there is an editorial process going on within the individual, by which hur memory is available only in areas of demand. No matter how many memories go back into the subconscious, they never mingle or fuss or lose their identities, and although the events may have occured very close together, the memories of them do not coalesce; nor, if they are of similar content, are they greatly seperated, although the events may have occured many years apart.
Nature has provided the means fo this procedure in humans, for it has created within all of us the power of retentiveness. It has given us memory as a means of advancing our spiritual, intellectual, moral, and physical life, Memory is useful, but when misused, it can be a source of constant pain and sorrow. It is often hard to hear because, being burdened with evidence of previous errors, it is continuously accusing us of not having corrected old faults.
Now, if this retentiveness is possible and purposeful to man as an individual -- and there is every evidence that it is purposeful -- then it is reasonable to suppose that this memory faculty also exists psychologically on a collective level, in what is called folk memory -- the mysterious power of culture groups that arise out of the cultural heritage behind various races, such as the Teutons, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Cherokee. Each of these groups has a folk awareness by which it is bound to its own culture and tradition, and this folk awareness is undoubtedly asociated with instinctive emotional and mental patterns. For as we well gnow from association, various races have different temperaments, and these certainly affect the unlocking of the subconscious memory content. The individual with certain emotional and mental attitudes experiences certain events in a particular way, and older association mechanisms are in turn reawakened. This gradually results in the rise of a particular culture psychology.
Thus humans are able to do the thing which science would regard as impossible if applied to anything but humans. I remember an engineer who was working with me at the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, and he said: "You gnow, this causes me to have a peculiar reaction. If this thing weren't standing here now, there would be no way of convincing anyone that it ever existed. If it weren't here, the learned of 50 generations would explain how it could could never be built. But being here, it is an embarassment." It is the same with this memory problem. We have it, but we have not explained it adequately. If we did not demonstrate it every day, it would be universally denied.
We also realize, more and more, the peculiar relationships between man and nature. Not very long ago, we held humans to be an exception to all nature. We assumed hur to be a particular and peculiar type of life, created differently from all other creations, and intended for a different destiny than other destinies. This answered a great many questions, after a fashion. Actually, however, it simply permitted us to evade the demand for answers. We did not have to explain ourselves, for we were a divine creation, and our explanation rested in the will of GoD; and GoD does not explain. It is the human who forever attempt to explain both GoD and hurself. But when it becomes increasingly obvious that the human was, at least physically and psychologically and intellectually, a part of nature, then hur outward body and hur functions were under the same laws that govern all other creatures. When the processes within hur could no longer be regarded as dissimilar to the processes around hur, it became necessary to use the inevitable pattern of analogy to realize that any faculty that exists in a human, must have an existance other than human. That she may specialize a power, is obvious; but that he may have powers which are totally absent in other parts of nature, is no longer tenable as a belief.
Human must depend upon universal creation for hur existance and hur continuance, and every power and faculty which she possesses must be nourished by an energy appropriate to itself. Nature cannot sustain in a human what nature itself does not possess. It cannot perfect in hur patterns which have not already been established archetypally, in some way or form, within its own structure. Thus the fact that the human has faculties or powers is definite proof that the energies and archetypes of these powers must exist in nature or in space. And were we to search for the root of memory in ourselves, we would find a mystery apparently as empty as the space around us. All of our important attributes seem to arise from the absence of themselves -- from a mystery or darkness, from an inscrutable source; yet we must assume that this source contains within itself everything that can come from it. Consequently, this space-equation is probably the very foundation, source, and essence of everything that comes forth out of space or is sustain in space.
In the Human, therefore, we recognize a power by which, from certain records imperishably placed within hur own psychic structure, she can restore memory. Years ago, mystics talked of what they called the memory of nature, and in eastern philosophy, there are references to the Akashic records, or the records of the past[and of the future] of the world, of nature, and of the total pattern of which we are a part. These records are somewhat analogous to those found in the strata of rocks. When we dig out the prehistoric remains of animals or primative human types, we are able, through the study of rock structure and stratification, and other related phenomena, to come to a reasonable knowledge of the approximate date when these creatures or beings lived. We also find that we can restore from tree rings a very adequate report on the maxims and minima of sun spot cycles 4 or 5,000 years ago. In the great sequoias and other trees that have had a vast existence, this record unfolds almost like a book. Therefore, here are simple records, which again we would deny, were they not available to us. We have been aware of tree ring since carpentry began, but only within the last 50 years have these rings revealed their important contributions to the science of history.
Thus we are constantly in the presence of various kinds of records, and to assume that the small pattern of our physical achievements exhausts this record-keeping device, would be too ridiculous to contemplate. But this subject has retired into the realm of unexplored fields -- not unexplorable, but simply neglected fields -- because we have been afraid of what we would discover.
In the presence of this challenge, we have a right to go a little further. Psychometry is based upon one of two factors, or perhaps both of these factors operating together. The first of these is the photographic nature of atmosphere or energy itself. The second is that energy has within it a retentive power, and any impression made upon energy, remains locked within it subject to be drawn forth by association, exactly as in the case of the human nature.
The problem of what kind of energy may sustain such records brings us again to one of the greatest queestions that we have; namely, is the universe dominated by a conscious intelligence? Is the intelligence that governs the universe conscious, in the sense of a being or even of a person, or is universal intelligence operating in a way we would call subconscious? In other words, is it moving from within outward, through its creation, so that it actually seems to be a subconscious pressure moving continuously from sources of energ in the cosmos? If we wish to assume that it is a subconscious pressure, then we must probably also assume that this pressure results from a preceding state of conscious, because the Human, in order to build up a conditioned subconscious, must have conscious experience.
In order to solve this, we must go back into mysteries that become too abstract to be essentially valuable to us. We go into a sphere of contemplative speculation. One point, however, seems to have relevance; namely, that if the universe is dominated by a conscious intelligence, then the universe must contain all the essentials of a universal memory. We have no reason to doubt that its essential retentive function is not similiar to that of the human mind. It may be grander and more inclusive, but it must be essentially of the same principle, inasmuch as the human's function bears witness also to this principle. Th Human did not create the pattern of hur own retentive memory; she merely specialized it according to hur needs. But the pattern itself, as an availability of specialization, has to exist in space, or humans could not have gained access to it or enregized it.
A universal memory is essential if we assume evolution to be true, because evolution depends for its productivity upon certain perspectives. The evolutionary processes lose most their meaning and their most active principle if there is no record of the intellectual and moral relationship between levels of action. If the individual cannot learn from yesterday, so that she will be better today, one of the most important prodding agencies of evolution is lost.
Nature, in the same way, if it is going anywhere,is moving from its yesterdays, through its todays, into its tomorrows. These motions become significant morally, in terms of the cultivation of values and growth, through the recognition of experience and the correction of previous error. Thus, the moral universe demands memory or retentiveness in order that mistakes can be remembered and corrected, and instructions can be learned and applied.
We therefore have two possible theories which will be considered by scientific thinking as time goes on. One is that universal memory does exist, and that it is supported by every cell, atom, electron, and ion; and that every unit of force-matter contains a retentive potential. On the lower levels, this retentive potential may be regarded as a photographic record, while on higher levels, it can be regarded as a moral or psychological record -- a record of qualitative memory, rather than merely pictorial memory.
The second possibility is that the universe, complete and ensouled as one being, possesses one stupendous memory, and that this memory is available through its creatures, along with every other faculty which they may possess. If the human thinks because the mind of GoD is in hur; if she has emotion because the love of GoD is in hur; if she has physical action because the motive power of GoD is within; then she possesses hur own limited memory because the memory potential of the Deity is in hur.
Just as all of the human's other attributes derived from the Deity are subject to infinite extension towards greater usefulness, power, and clarity, so it may well be that memory, as we use it today, is bound also to a higher dimension of memory potential. Therefore, just as by the mystical experience the human may transcend, mentally or emotionally, hur own personal thought and feeling, and attain union with the consciousness of Deity, so it is conceivable that in memory experience, the human can outgrow the limitation of hur own human memory and be united with the eternal memory of Deity.
By such an experience, the individual would suddenly find the infinite potential of the record of all things available to hur, in the same conditioned way hur own memory is available to hur. That part of the universal memory would be opened which would, by association, supply or supplement some need of the human's memory. It is not likely, however, that the human would move out into a universal memory in which all things appeared kaleidoscopically; she would move out into the gradual needs of an enlarging memory factor in hur own life, and she would probably crawl along through various levels of transcendent memory, First, she would proceed along the lowest and most restricted level, and finally, as hur own needs and evolution required, this memory would open up to hur.
It is reasonable to assume that the end of all gnowledge, in terms of history and time, will be in this restoration of world memory. It is only, for instance, by such restoration that it will ever be possible to establish the ethical content in history. By means of the reexperiencing or revitalizing of the historical record, the truth may come to be gnown. History, at the present time, is in lamentable condition. In the first place, out of the human's historical record of hur struggle and growth, less than 5,000 years is available at all. And when we realize that man has been here probably neared a 100 million years, it is evident that most of this living occured at a time when no record was available. Nature, however, is profoundly economical with the magnificence of universal procedure, as we constantly observe it, and it is impossible to assume that all of the so-called prehistory period leading to the comparatively shallow area of historical report, is lost. We can assume, therefore, that this history is perpetuated within the nature of human, so that she is not only a record of hur own history, but also of hur own prehistory.
This brings us to the next interesting speculation; namely, that this world memory, or universal memory, is not dependent upon the individual's tuning in to a universal situation around hur, inasmuch as the entire memory, certainly as far as it relates to Humans, is locked within hurself. Physically, she is the total of hur entire evolutionary process; mentally and emotionally, she is the the sum of the parts of hurself and hur kind. Consequently, if we wish to regard this merely as a physical development of evolution, then the human must contain in the the physical equivalent of hur memory nature, the record of the entire history of organized matter as it has been used in the creation of hur body. If we wish to assume the doctrine of rebirth, then the psychic being contains a record of hur own living through innumerable ages of descent. If she can revitalize hur present life in various times, she can, by the same means, revitalize more ancient times, making them available again as immediate experience.