Spiritual Amnesia

March 27, 2019 1 By Lance Kelly

Self-knowledge is unknowable to the mind because it can only be invoked in the present as a direct communication from the inner being. The immediacy of such timeless knowledge leaves no trace in the memory, which is why the truth cannot be remembered – and why any acquired learning of the past must eventually be forgotten. Of course, the memory has an important worldly function to remember, for example, to pick up the children from school or to keep an appointment. But these practical necessities of daily life are not the problem. The main impediment to freedom in living the spiritual life is in knowing something which becomes an attitude of belief and a blockage in the psyche.

To the person, spiritual amnesia seems not only unworkable but a preposterous suggestion. This is because to truly live in the moment is an impersonal state of being without any intermediary observer to interpret the living life. And yet to exist in a physical body is to be subject to the laws governing all things in the objective world. To ignore, for instance, the demonstrable fact that human beings are animals which bleed, and are as vulnerable as any other species, is to live in ignorance of the totality of life’s magnificence on earth.

But as much as we exist as physical creatures, we are also imbued with the cosmic element of higher mind. This connects each of us to the paradigm of eternity as individual consciousness. The implication of this is astonishing, for it’s possible while alive to have access to the highest truths and mysteries that have ever been realised by the great masters and seers who have walked the earth. The unifying knowledge which characterises such profound beings is that the highest truth is nothing. Spiritual amnesia is the way in which everything can be known by knowing nothing – and then nothing needs to be remembered as any reference to the past.

Who will dare to cross the threshold of time into the timeless place of the absence of experience? But it’s alright, because our real home is behind the appearance in form of all that is loved in existence. We enter this place each night in sleep and are never more content. Whatever can be remembered will eventually turn to pain and restlessness for more experience in the sensual world. It’s to enjoy life while alive – and then to joyously surrender, when the time comes, into the loving embrace of death with nothing to remember.