XIII
COMPREHENSION AND MEMORY
To remember is to try to take out of storage in the Mind what we have seen and heard, what we have read, what other people have told us, what has happened to us, etc. etc. etc.
Teachers want their students to store in their memory their words, their sentences, what is written in school texts, whole chapters, overwhelming tasks, with all their points and commas, etc.
Passing exams means remembering what we have been told, what we have read mechanically, verbalizing memory, repeating like parrots, everything we have stored in our memory.
It is necessary for the new generation to understand that repeating all the recordings made in the memory as a radio-console disc does not mean having fully understood. To remember is not to understand, it is useless to remember without understanding, the memory belongs to the past it is something dead, something that no longer has life.
It is essential, it is urgent and of palpitating actuality that all students of schools, colleges and universities really understand the deep meaning of deep understanding.
UNDERSTANDING is something immediate, direct, something that we experience intensely something that we experience very deeply and that inevitably comes to become the true intimate RESORT of conscious action.
Remembering, is something dead, belongs to the past and unfortunately becomes ideal, in motto, in idea, in idealism that we want to imitate mechanically and follow unconsciously.
In the TRUE UNDERSTANDING, in the deep understanding, in the intimate deep understanding there is only intimate pressure of the conscience, constant pressure born of the essence that we carry inside and that is all.
Authentic COMPREHENSION manifests itself as spontaneous, natural, simple action, free from the depressing process of choice; pure, without indecision of any kind. The comprehension transformed into a SECRET RESORT of the action is formidable, wonderful, uplifting and essentially dignifying.
The action based on the remembrance of what we have read, of the ideal to which we aspire, of the norm, of the behavior that we have been taught, of the accumulated experiences in memory, etc., is calculating, depends on the depressing option, is dualistic, it is based on conceptual choice and only inevitably leads to error and pain.
That of accommodating the action to the remembrance, that of trying to modify the action so that it coincides with the memories accumulated in the memory, is something artificial, absurd without spontaneity and that inevitably can only lead us to error and pain.
That of passing exams that of spending a year, is done by any fool who has a good dose of cunning and memory.
Understanding the subjects that have been studied and in which we are going to examine ourselves, is something very different, it has nothing to do with memory, it belongs to the true intelligence that should not be confused with intellectualism.
Those people who want to base all the acts of their lives on the ideals, theories and memories of all kinds accumulated in the cellars of memory, always go for comparison in comparison and where there is comparison there is also envy. These people compare their persons, their relatives, their children with the neighbor's children, with the neighboring people. They compare their house, their furniture, their clothes, all their things, with the neighbor's or neighbor's things. They compare their ideas, the intelligence of their children with the ideas of other people, with the intelligence of other people and comes the envy that then becomes the secret spring of the action.
Mostly the whole mechanism of society is based on envy and the acquisitive spirit. Everyone envies the whole world. There are envy of ideas, things, people and we want to acquire, new theories, new ideas that we accumulate in memory, new things to dazzle our fellow men, etc.
In TRUE COMPREHENSION, legitimate, authentic, there is true love and not mere verbalization of memory.
Things that are remembered, that which is entrusted to memory, soon fall into oblivion because memory is unfaithful. Students deposit in the stores of memory, ideals, theories, complete texts that are useless in practical life because at last they disappear from memory without leaving any trace.
The people who only live reading and reading mechanically, the people who enjoy storing theories among the cellars of memory destroy the mind, damage it miserably.
We do not speak out against true deep and conscious study based on the background understanding. We only condemn the antiquated methods of extemporaneous pedagogy. We condemn all mechanical system of study, all memorization, etc. Remembrance is left over where there is true comprehension.
We need to study, we need useful books, we need teachers from schools, colleges, universities. GURU, spiritual guides, mahatmas, etc. are needed but it is necessary to fully understand the teachings and not merely deposit them among the cellars of the infidel memory.
We can never be truly free while we have the bad taste to be comparing ourselves with the remembrance accumulated in the memory, with the ideal, with what we aspire to become and we are not, etc. etc.
When we truly understand the received teachings, we do not need to remember them in memory, nor make them ideal.
Where there is comparison of what we are here and now with what we want to become later, where there is a comparison of our practical life with the ideal or model to which we want to accommodate ourselves, true love cannot exist.
All comparison is abominable, every comparison brings fear, envy, pride, etc. Fear of not achieving what we want, envy for the progress of others, pride because we believe ourselves superior to others. The important thing in the practical life in which we live, whether we are ugly, envious, selfish, greedy, etc., is not to boast of saints, to start from absolute zero, and to understand ourselves deeply, just as we are and not as we want to reach be or as we presume to be.
It is impossible to dissolve the ego, if we do not learn to observe, to perceive to understand what we really are here and now in an effective and absolutely practical way.
If we really want to understand we must listen to our teachers, gurus, priests, preceptors, spiritual guides, etc., etc.
The boys and girls of the new wave have lost the sense of respect, of the veneration of our parents, teachers, spiritual guides, gurus, mahatmas, etc.
It is impossible to understand the teachings when we do not know how to love and respect our parents, teachers, preceptors or spiritual guides.
The simple mechanical remembrance of what we have learned only from memory without understanding of the background, mutilates the mind and heart and engenders envy, fear, pride, etc.
When we truly know how to listen in a conscious and profound way, a wonderful power arises within us, a formidable, natural, simple understanding, free of all mechanical processes, free of all cerebration, free of all remembrance.
If the student's brain is discharged from the enormous memory effort that he must do, it will be entirely possible to teach the structure of the nucleus and the periodic table of the elements to the students of secondary education and to make understand the relativity and Quantum to a bachelor.
As we have talked with some professors of secondary schools we understand that they cling with true fanaticism to the old outdated and extemporaneous pedagogy. They want the students to learn everything by memorizing even if they do not understand it.
Sometimes they accept that it is better to understand than to memorize but then they insist that the formulas of physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc. they should be recorded in memory.
It is clear that this concept is false, because when a formula of physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc., is properly understood not only at the intellectual level, but also at other levels of the mind such as the unconscious, subconscious, infra-conscious, etc.. etc. etc. There is no need to record in memory, it becomes part of our psyche and can manifest itself as immediate instinctive knowledge when circumstances of life demand it.
This INTIMATE knowledge comes to give us a form of OMNISCIENCE, a mode of objective conscious manifestation.
Understanding in depth and in all levels of the mind is only possible through deep introspective meditation.
XIV
INTEGRATION
One of the greatest longings of Psychology is to reach TOTAL INTEGRATION.
If the ego were INDIVIDUAL, the problem of PSYCHOLOGICAL INTEGRATION would be solved with great ease, but the ego exists within each person in a PLURALIZED form.
The PLURALIZED I is the fundamental cause of all our intimate contradictions.
If we could see ourselves in a full-length mirror as we are PSYCHOLOGICALLY with all our intimate contradictions, we would arrive at the painful conclusion that we do not yet have true individuality.
The human organism is a wonderful machine controlled by the PLURALIZED ego that is studied in depth by the REVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY.
I'm going to read the newspaper says INTELLECTUAL I; I want to attend the party exclaims the EMOTIONAL I; to DEVIL with the party grunts the I of movement, I better go for a walk, I do not want to walk screams the ego of the instinct of conservation, I am hungry and I am going to eat, etc.
Each one of the small ones that constitute the EGO, wants to command, to be the master, the lord.
In the light of revolutionary psychology we can understand that the "I" is legion and that the Organism is a machine.
The little egos squabble among them, they fight for supremacy each one wants to be the boss, the master, the lord.
This explains the lamentable state of psychological disintegration in which the poor intellectual animal, mistakenly called MAN, lives.
It is necessary to understand what the word DISINTEGRATION means in PSYCHOLOGY. To disintegrate is to break up, to disperse, to tear oneself apart, to contradict oneself, etc.
The main cause of PSYCHOLOGICAL DISINTEGRATION is the envy that often manifests itself in exquisitely subtle and delicious ways.
Envy is multifaceted and there are thousands of reasons to justify it. Envy is the secret spring of the whole social machinery. Morons love to justify envy.
The rich envies the rich and wants to be richer. The poor envy the rich and want to be rich too. The writer envies the writer and wants to write better. The one who has a lot of experience envies the one who has more experience and wants to have more than that.
People are not content with bread, coat and shelter. The secret spring of envy for the neighbor car, for the house of others, for the neighbor's suit, for the money of the friend or the enemy, etc. produces desires to improve, acquire things and more things, dresses, costumes, virtues, not to be less than others etc. etc.,etc.
The most tragic of all this is that the cumulative process of experiences, virtues, things, money, etc. strengthens the PLURALIZED EGO intensifying within ourselves the intimate contradictions, the terrible tear up, the cruel battles of our internal forum, etc. etc. etc.
All that is pain. None of that can bring true contentment to the afflicted heart. All this produces an increase of cruelty in our psyche, multiplication of pain, discontent every time and deeper.
PLURALIZED EGO always finds justification for even the worst crimes and that process of envy, acquire, accumulate, get, even when it is at the expense of the work of others, is called evolution, progress, advance, etc.
People have a conscience asleep and do not realize that they are envious, cruel, greedy, jealous, and when for some reason they come to realize all this, then they justify, condemn, seek evasive, but do not comprehend.
Envy is difficult to discover due to the concrete fact that the human mind is envious. The structure of the mind is based on envy and acquisition.
Envy begins from the school benches. We envy the best intelligence of our classmates, the best grades, the best costumes, the best dresses, the best shoes, the best bicycle, the beautiful skates, the beautiful ball, etc. etc.
The teachers called to form the personality of the students must understand what the infinite processes of envy are and establish within the PSYCHIS of their students the adequate foundation for understanding.
The mind, envious by nature, only thinks in terms of the MORE: "I can explain better", "I have more knowledge", "I am more intelligent", "I have more virtues", more sanctifications, more perfections, more evolution, etc.
All the functionalism of the mind is based on the MORE. THE MORE is the intimate secret spring of envy.
THE MORE is the comparative process of the mind. All comparative processes are ABOMINABLE. Example: I am more intelligent than you. So-and-so is more virtuous than you. So-and-so is better than you, wiser, kinder, prettier, etc. etc.
MORE creates time. THE PLURALIZED EGO needs time to be better than the neighbor, to show the family that it is very cool and that it can, to become someone in life, to show its enemies, or those to whom it envies, that it is more intelligent, more powerful, stronger, etc.
Comparative thinking is based on envy and produces what is called discontent, restlessness, bitterness.
Unfortunately people go from one opposite to the other, from one end to the other, they do not know how to walk through the center. Many struggle against discontent, envy, greed, jealousy, but the fight against discontent never brings the true contentment of the heart.
It is urgent to understand that the true contentment of the tranquil heart is not bought or sold and only born in us with complete naturalness and spontaneously when we have thoroughly understood the very causes of discontent; jealousy, envy, greed, etc. etc.
Those who want to get more money, magnificent social position, virtues, satisfactions of all kinds, etc. In order to achieve true contentment, they are totally wrong because all this is based on envy and the path of envy can never lead us to the harbor of the calm and happy heart.
The mind bottled up in the PLURALIZED EGO makes envy a virtue and even gives itself the luxury of giving it delicious names. Progress, spiritual evolution, longing for improvement, struggle for dignity, etc. etc. etc.
All this produces disintegration, intimate contradictions, secret struggles, problems of difficult solution, etc.
It is difficult to find someone in life who is truly Integral in the fullest sense of the word.
It is totally impossible to achieve TOTAL INTEGRATION as long as the PLURALIZED EGO exists within ourselves.
It is urgent to understand that within each person there are three basic factors, First: Personality. Second: EGO PLURALIZED. Third: The psychic material, that is, THE ESSENCE OF THE PERSON.
The PLURALIZED I awkwardly misuses the psychological material in atomic explosions of envy, jealousy, greed, etc. etc. It is necessary to dissolve the pluralized "I", with the purpose of accumulating inside, the psychic material to establish in our interior A PERMANENT CENTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
Those who do not have a permanent center of consciousness cannot be integral.
Only the permanent center of consciousness gives us true individuality.
Only the permanent center of consciousness makes us whole.
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