I don't know why, but I was down memory lane today. While looking at the horoscopes, I tried to figure out why past memories feel so strong. In our daily lives, we operate on two different levels. First, we experience whatever happens in the present moment. We eat food and enjoy the taste through the taste buds. We wear clothes and enjoy the comfort through our skin. We use some perfume and enjoy the fragrance through the nose. We get burned and feel the burning sensation on our skin. We get a cut and feel the pain. Similarly, we have different psychological feelings. For example, we feel the comfort of being home. We feel safe in the presence of somebody while jittery in the presence of another person. All these experiences take place in real time.
Second, we keep thinking about the past and the future. A student sees the DM of the city, how people fear him, how toll-tax people roll out a red carpet for the DM's vehicle, and how people envy his status. He creates a story about the IAS. A critical issue is that, while forming this story, the student lacks complete information about the IAS's role and responsibilities, yet he presumes many things. He imagines certain things about the IAS. He tries to gather information from newspapers and seniors and somehow creates a mental image of half-cooked information about the IAS, mental projections, imagination, propaganda, society's biases, parents' dreams, and the desire to be different from the rest. This mental image about the IAS brings him to Mukherjee Nagar, Rajendra Nagar, and Jia Sarai. He spends several years there. Some fail to clear the examination; others carry the pain of shattered dreams throughout their lives, while others adjust to the new reality. Some clear the examination and soon realise that reality is quite different from their mental story; again, some accept the new reality and move on, while others keep cooking up new mental stories to conform to their original mental story.
This happens to all of us. Whenever we think of the past and the future, basically, we think of one or more such stories. The story we created when we used to roam around in college with a friend. We had big dreams about our future. The mental story that a CEO job in an MNC makes you feel out of this world. The mental story that a big apartment in a prominent colony feels like heaven. The mental story that when society appreciates us, it feels wonderful. The mental story that when we win arguments and people regard us as "extraordinarily intelligent", that makes you feel on cloud nine. The mental story that some spiritual experience makes us special and we stand out from the rest of the crowd. The mental story that people get better treatment in heaven. The mental story that "Hum and Humare Do" will live together always happily. Our brain is constantly cooking all these stories. The problem is that once it cooks up such a story, we hardly have time to examine the truth behind it. We keep adding more and more chapters to the story with each passing day. Even if someone tries to show us the gaps in the story, we reject them, believing they are not well-wishers or are jealous.
Whenever our mind takes us down memory lane, it recalls all these mental stories. Even when we think of the future, the mind very subtly enjoys the projected future where we imagine some of these stories coming true. Sometimes, we feel anxious when we have apprehension that some of these stories may not come true. Some of these stories we carry consciously, while others travel deeper into the unconscious mind. Some of these stories are so common in society and repeated so often that they feel almost real. If the initial experiences also conform to the story, then it becomes almost impossible for the human brain to recognise its true nature. Somebody is fed by their family since childhood that the purpose of life is to live happily in a family with a spouse and kids. He believes in that story, and by chance he gets a loving wife and children. Now it's a deadly mix. A mental story that has been confirmed by everybody around him; his own mind has also repeated it millions of times, and that's why it has travelled to the depths of the unconscious mind, and the circumstances also supported the same. Now he experiences a tragedy, and his wife dies. How will he accept this? A dream based on the mental story of a "happy family" which he holds so dear has shattered. How can he bear the pain? He will even be frightened in his dreams.
Can we be a little real? Can we observe reality while our mind starts the process of creating these mental stories? Yes, of course we can. The more real we are while creating images of people, relationships, things, experiences, and so on, the less likely we are to be shocked later. Stories are stories, but what about the experience we have in real time, like the taste, pain, comfort, and anxiety? Are they too real? If so, why do different people experience it differently? Why does one person like chocolate so much while for another it feels tasteless? Why do people have different reactions to different fragrances? Why do people have different reactions to crises in relationships? It is because we have different wiring.
That means the first category of experience, too, leaving aside the second, is subjective. Can we then experience reality? Yes, but only when we realise, not at the level of thoughts, but at the level of experience, the relativity of the first and the second category of experiences. That's not easy because society constantly feeds us the second category of experiences, and our brain happily consumes the feed, while the brain and body constantly make us realise the first category of experiences. Who will defy the brain and the body? Has that "I" realised that it is free from the body and the mind? How will a person realise, while living on the Earth, that it can walk in no-gravity space? Maybe at the level of thought, but the cunning brain will just keep this "knowledge" at the level of just an "idea" or "utopia". The mind is like "Betal" on Vikram's back, which keeps frightening him until he learns to walk in no-gravity space.
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