But whether this is done by images or not, who can readily say? Thus, I name the sun, and the things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images are present to my memory. I name a bodily pain, yet it is not present with me when nothing aches. Yet, unless its image was present in my memory, I would not know what to say of it, nor how to tell pain from pleasures. I name bodily health. When I am sound in body, the thing itself is present with me; yet unless its image were also present in my memory, I could not recall what the sound of this name signified.

Nor would the sick, when health was named, recognize what was being spoken of, unless the same image were retained by the power of memory, although the thing itself was absent from the body. I name numbers by which we count; and it is not their image but the numbers themselves that are present in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and that image is present in my memory. For I do not recall the image of its image, but the image itself is present to me when I call it to mind. I name memory and I recognize what I name. But where do I recognize it but in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?

When I name forgetfulness and recognize what I name, how could I recognize it if I did not remember? I do not speak of the sound of the name, but the thing which it signifies. If I had forgotten, I could not recognize what that sound meant. When I remember memory, memory itself is, by means of itself, present with itself; but when I remember forgetfulness, there are present both memory and forgetfulness: memory by which I remember, and forgetfulness which I remember.

But what is forgetfulness, but the absence of memory? How then can that be present, so that I remember it, which, when it is present keeps me from remembering? But if we hold in memory what we remember, we could never recognize forgetfulness when we hear it named unless we remembered it. So then, forgetfulness is retained by memory. It is present then, so that we do not forget it. This being the case, are we to suppose that forgetfulness, when we remember it, is present to the memory only through its image rather than by itself? Because if it were present by itself, it would not cause us to remember, but to forget. Who can search this out? Who shall understand how it is?

Lord, I truly toil in this; yes, and in myself. I have become a difficult soil, requiring too much sweat of the brow. For i am not now searching out the regions of the heavens, or measuring the distances of the stars, or inquiring about the weight of the earth. It is I myself who remember, I, the mind. It is not so strange if what I am not should be far from me. But what is nearer to me than myself? And lo, I do not understand the power of my own memory, though I cannot even name myself without it. For what shall i say, when it is clear to me that I remember forgetfulness? Shall I say that I remember is not in my memory? Or shall I say that forgetfulness is in my memory so that I will not forget? Both of these are most absurd. But what third view is there? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained in my memory, not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it?

How could I say this either, seeing that when the image of anything itself is imprinted on the memory, the thing itself must first be present from which the image may be imprinted? For this is the way I remember Carthage, and in this way I remember all the places I have been; this is the way it is with men faces whom I have seen, and things reported by the other senses. Thus it is with health or sickness of the body. For when these things were present, my memory received images from them, which remain present with me, so that I can look on them and bring them back to mind when I remembered them in their absence. If then this forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its image, not through itself, then, plainly it was once present itself, so that its image might be taken. But when it was present, how did it write its image in my memory, since forgetfulness by its presence erases even what it finds already recorded? And yet, in whatever way, although it is past conceiving or explaining, I am certain that I remember forgetfulness itself, too, by which is blotted out what we remember.

Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, O my God, a deep and boundless multiplicity; and this is the mind and this I am myself. What am I then, O my God? What nature am I? A life various and manifold, exceedingly immense. Behold the innumerable plains and caves and caverns of my memory are innumerably full of unnumbered kinds of things - either through images, as in all physical bodies, or by actual presence, as the arts, or by certain notions or impressions, like the emotions of the mind which are retained by the memory even when we no longer feel them, because whatever is in the memory is in the mind. I run over all these, I fly, I dive on this side and on that, as far as I can, and there is no end. The power of memory is as great as the power of life in this mortal life of man.

What shall I do then, O my God, my true life? I will go even beyond this power of mine which is called memory. Yes, I will go beyond it, so that I may approach you, O lovely Light. What do you say to me? See, I am mounting up through my mind toward you who dwell above me. Yes, I now will pass beyond this power of mine which is called memory, desiring to reach you where you may be reached, and to cleave to you where that is possible. For even beasts and birds have memory, otherwise they could not return to their dens and nests, nor do the many other things they do. Nor indeed could they be used in any way except through their memory. I will pass then beyond memory, too, that I may reach him who has separated me from the four-footed beasts and made me wiser than the fowls of the air. So, I will go on beyond memory, but where shall I find you, O truly Good and certain Sweetness? If I find you without my memory, then I cannot retain you in my memory. And how shall I find you, if I do not remember you?

The woman who lost her drachma and searched for it with a light could never found it unless she had remembered it. And when it was found, how would she know it was the same coin if she did not remember it? I remember having looked for and finding many things, and this I know by it, that when I was searching for any of them, and was asked, "Is this is?" "Is that it?" I said, "No," until the thing I was looking for was offered to me, I could not have found it because I failed to recognize it. And so it always is when we look for and find any lost thing. Nevertheless, when anything is lost from sight by chance (not from the memory, as any visible body might be) still its image is retained within us, and we look for it until it is restored to sight; and when it is found, we recognize it by its image within. We do not say that we have found what was lost unless we recognize it, and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it. It was lost to the eye, but it was retained in the memory.

When the memory itself loses anything, as happens when we forget something and try to recall it, where do we look for it, but in the memory itself? And there, if one thing happens to be offered instead of another, we reject it until we find what we are looking for. And when we find it, we say, "This is it!" We could not say that unless we recognized it, nor recognize it unless we remembered it. Certainly then we had forgotten it. Or, had all of it not been forgotten, and did we look for the part that was missing by the part which we still remembered, as if the memory felt that it could not carry on properly until the missing part was restored to it?

For instance, if we see or think of someone known to us, and having forgotten his name, try to recall it, whatever else occurs does not connect itself with his name, because we are not accustomed to think of that in connection with him. So we go on rejecting these things until something presents itself on which the knowledge we seek rests. And from where does that come, but out of the memory itself? For even when we recognize it as it is brought to mind by someone else, it still comes from memory. For we do not believe it as something new, but upon recollection, agree that what was said was right. But if it had been utterly blotted out of the mind, we would not remember it even when reminded of it. For we have not as yet utterly forgotten what we remember as having forgotten. What we have lost and utterly forgotten, we cannot even search for.

How do I seek you, then, O Lord? For when I seek you, my God, I seek a happy life. I will seek you that my soul may live. For my body lives by my soul, and my soul lives by you. How then do I seek a happy life, seeing that I do not have it until I can rightly say, "It is enough!" How do I seek it? By remembering, as though I had forgotten it, remembering that I had forgotten it? Or by desiring to learn it as something unknown, either never having known, or having so forgotten as not even to remember that it had been forgotten? Is not a happy life what all seek, and is there anyone who does not desire it? Where have they known it, so that they desire it? Where have they seen it, that they love it so much? Somehow we have it, but how I do not know.

There is indeed a way in which one has it and then is happy, and there are some who are happy in the hope of having it. These have it in lesser way than those who have it in very fact; yet they are better off than those who are neither happy in fact nor in hope. Yet even these, if they did not have it in some way, would not so greatly desire to be happy - and that they do desire it is most certain. How they have known it then, I do not know. By what sort of knowledge they have it, I do not know, and I am perplexed whether it is in the memory - for in that case, we would have been happy once.

I do not now inquire as to whether everyone was happy separately, or happy in that man who first sinned, in whom also we all died, and from whom we are all born with misery. I only ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For we could not love it if we did not know it. We hear the name, and we all confess that we desire the thing, for we are not delighted with the mere sound. When a Greek hears it in Latin, he is not delighted, not knowing what is being spoken. But we Latins are delighted, as he would be too, if he heard it in Greek; because the things itself which Greeks and Latins and men of all other tongues long for so earnestly is neither Greek nor Latin. It is therefore known to all, for could they with one voice be asked, "Do you want to be happy?" they would answer, without doubt, "We do." And this could not be unless happiness itself, signified by the name, were retained in their memory.

But is it the same as when one who has seen Carthage remembers it? No. For a happy life is not seen with the eye, because it is not a body. Is it the same as when we remember numbers? No. For the one who has these in his knowledge does not have to look further to reach them. But a happy life we have in our knowledge and therefore love it, and yet we still desire to attain it, so that we may be happy. Is it the same as when we remember eloquence, then? No. For upon hearing this name, some who are not yet eloquent and desire to be so, call it to mind. Through their bodily senses they have observed others to be eloquent, and were delighted by it and wanted to be like them, though actually they would not have been delighted without some inward knowledge of eloquence, nor want to be like them unless they were delighted by it. But in the case of the happy life, we do not experience it in others through any bodily sense.

Do we remember happiness then in the same way we remember joy? Possibly. For I remember my joy even when I am sad, as I remember a happy life even when I am unhappy. Nor did I ever see, hear, smell, taste, or touch my joy with my bodily senses, but I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced, and the knowledge of it stuck in my memory, so that I can recall it - at times with disgust, at other times with longing, according to the nature of the things which I remember having enjoyed. For I have been immersed in a sort of joy even from foul things which I now abhor and utterly detest when I recall them. At other times I rejoiced in good and honest things which I recall with longing. although they may no longer be present. In that case I recall former joy with sorrow.

Were then, and when, did I experience my happy life that I should remember and love and long for it? Mine is not an isolated case, nor is it that of some few besides me, but all of us desire to be happy. Unless by some certain knowledge we knew what a happy life is, we could not desire it with such certainty. But how is this, that if two men are asked whether they would go to the wars, one might answer that he would and the other that he would not? But if they were asked whether they wanted to be happy, they would instantly, without any hesitation, say they would; and for no other reason would the one choose to go to the wars and the other not, but to be happy. Is it possible that as one looks for his joy in one thing, another in another, all agree in their desire to be happy?

In the same way, if they were asked, they would agree that they wished to have joy, and would they call this joy a happy life? Then although one obtains joy by one means, another by another, both have the same goal they try to reach - joy. Since joy is a thing which all must say they have experienced, it is therefore found in the memory and recognized whenever the name of a happy life is mentioned.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -