I spent some time away from this conversation so I could better dwell on it,
@Blue_Drake. I have certainly answered it before and while my conclusions have not changed, the articulation is what I need and needed to consider. Some of this will be, once more, parts psychology and other parts theosophy. None of these I can say are absolute, just that there are certain consistent rules which we can define based on what is, indeed, objectively true of the reality in which we all at least exist in this moment; what can be said to be true for here. A memory is a very specific thing and we should be careful to not dare confuse it or tangle it up in anything else - doing so is only going to make any sort of questioning and reflection more difficult.
I will set out by denoting that memories are, at least psychologically speaking, encoded patterns of thinking based upon reactions to certain stimuli. This is extremely broad and it becomes much more specific than that very quickly but I will lay out what I can in this presentation. These stimuli are reactions to sensations in one's environment and are involuntary and potentially even utterly unconscious, if not generally subconscious, awareness of certain factors which pertain to the senses. This varies from the very obvious which quickly conveys itself to the conscious mind, say visual, to extremely subtle but substantial evidence that humans can perceive electromagnetic fields unconsciously, as we know other organisms to do so effortlessly, and change the very way the brain is processing formation or to better say it, become "aware" of it, even if not imminently aware to it. The next is perception, in that the mind interprets sensory information and sees it through its particular train of thought and mind. Barring physical limits, such as disabilities or variances as small as the genetic or even down to hypotheticals about just quantum improbabilities shaping slight changes in things, the body one has will like most humans, orient to these things in a specific and predictable pattern. This is what makes this scientific in that it is replicable and repeatable, it is not subjective, however, the perception by the individual of that can be wildly different; sounds sound different to different people, colors are different colors to different people even if the shame shade. The variance can be minor to major but that is beside the point.
Now that we have covered this, it is the case that when one activates various forms of recall, or the retrieval of encoded information, it is the case that certain arrangements and clusters will be stimulated to transmit information and send it elsewhere. These, generally, are all the same but can be shaped over time - refined, altered, expanded or contracted in their network, or even go into disuse by lack of use. I hope one sees where this is going but patently speaking here, at least as psychobiology goes, memories should behave roughly the same. When one "feels" the mind working to retrieve information it has, it should generally "feel" the same biologically in doing so. This is, in effect, a telltale sign of a
memory versus a
fantasy.
A memory is no different in experience or recall or expression than any other deeply encoded memory and this validity is, of course, where we get into subjectivity but we could actually test this were there interest in it; we should be able to correlate specific memory centers of the brain and see what neurons fire and what path they distribute in various forms of related memory processing. Either way, the point is in the case of "memories of the other", the experience should be absolutely no different from any other memory one has had.
Yet there is one issue here, in that not everyone in the community experiences this or can differentiate it - usually by lack of experience or lack of time committed to differentiating and comparing memories to experiences. However, there is nothing to indicate within this that one's memory is, first, infallible, or their perception of it the same too - recall perception is the interpretation and that as noted before, interpretation can and does shift with time, nothing is ever truly remembered the same way twice - and second as well as more importantly, required. There is no fundamental requirement in the "other" world here and abroad, as small as that is in scope, for it to be because it is based fundamentally upon experiential knowledge. This automatically renders it, generally speaking unless one goes to some more fringe applications of science as it is, invalid because it really is not factually, thus objectively, based. The most one can do is hunt for and compare against contradictions to obvious reality; recall this is done that one may also differentiate between a delusional person, or an individual who even when confronted with truth objective to their experiential relay deny it and convey alternative sincerely, and what is the real.
The following matter is, one does not need a connection to anything past, nor present, nor future, nor quantum, nor astral, nor, on and on it goes. One does not inherently require those things, for the least of reasons being that the objective world around us will persist with or without that awareness, for better or worse, but more importantly because it is not a requirement either. One does not need
any of these things to function in this life and it goes without saying that animals do this very well. The lack of this awareness - to call it "biological programming" as if living things are just complex computers is cringe-inducing for myself in the circle of life science but here for the sake of comparison only I will use it, because brains do not in fact operate scarcely like any computer regularly understood by anyone - and instead follow their "biological programming" is quite successful. No one questions if conifers and similar needle-natured trees are successful, they outlasted the dinosaurs, and several mass extinction events, so obviously it goes very well to simply orient to stimuli in the environment and respond to it, but that is an extremely low bar to set.
I will state that generally speaking, in itself, however, having a consciousness is not inherently the same as having a soul; most if not all interpretations of religious and or spiritual nature propose one needs to have some sort of animating factor. For Christianity and to some extent Judaism by proxy, which most are familiar to, the
pneuma, the
psyche, and the body comes into factor here, although in contrast dualism - the mind and body or mind and spirit split is - is much more "recent" but historically this was more rare and all three were treated highly interrelated. One could not have one without another, not really at least. Likewise, being without the "mind" or the "spirit" made oneself more or less empty barring the most vulgar, read too as carnal or earthly, nature.
Is that relevant? I cannot claim to know, for me it has relevance and for many beliefs, traditional and those not, it is highly relevant.
Yet what is relevant is that one has to find being "fine" with being alive. Fine is acceptable, because to think life is happiness is to fool ourselves; no one can be happy all the time, not truly. To be sad at the same time can be said in inverse. A famous remark might well be that nihilists, true nihilists at least, believe that nothing matters and that nothing actually exists, but it is the case that if one asks them "Does pain still exist?" one completely tears down their philosophy in one stroke. But the real point here is, is simply going with what it is. A great number speak about simply being in the "now" and this is part of that. If one simply wishes to be and claims to be, and nothing more and nothing less than that, then simply
be. One does not really need to feel or care one way or another about being in a "meaty shell" or having no memories. None of that particularly even matters and so much is insubstantial, so long as one can simply
be. The only way to do that is to find a balance, a wholeness in it.
If one goes around worrying about having memories or not because others do, is that really a significant change of meaning when one says there is even a lack of sense of self in being? How can one be so much as "broken" when one cannot define, exactly, what one
actually is because one cannot remember? Do not toil over trivial little games as that, those are not things worth beating oneself up over. Much better time would be spent, is spent at that, on trying to establish how and why one comes to these things and differentiating between the real and the imagined and sorting that out.
Id est, more time spent on wondering about the nature of what one does or does not remember, and less time deciding if it really matters or not.
