Under the Influence: How Memory and Imagination Can Deceive Consciousness

By Harry Krueger

Contributing writer for Wake Up World

What we perceive as our daily relationship experiences (for the most part) are not compatible with natural law. Our pre-conceptions are born out of the illustrations of a faulty imagination.

Because neither memory, senses nor consciousness can generate its own thoughts, then how did it come about that consciousness came to believe that it can?

The living organism is designed to function as a harmonious whole. The principle function of memory is to record and store what the consciousness experiences. When the consciousness makes a request for any part of the stored knowledge, the memory-senses (mind) passes onto consciousness the registered information where it is then objectively discerned and responded to as a completed challenge. Without the complex memory instrument and the ability of discernment, we would perform as all other species who depend solely on (interaction with) the environment for their growth and survival.

Intelligence is the mysterious harmonious expression of all that exists.  When mind injects itself between intelligence and consciousness, it acts as a spoiler. We are consciousness. All consciousness is exactly the same. The is no ‘my consciousness’ as being different from another. What seems to separate us is memory’s content of stored knowledge. Depending on one’s personal environment (where we are raised) we will reflect that culture.

For the most part, consciousness has always been identified through its content. We have (for millennia) come to believe that the content of consciousness is consciousness. The original nature of consciousness is content-less.

Besides the power of discernment, consciousness has the ability to name things. Mind plays an indispensable role in that function. Consciousness (in co-ordination with the mind) is responsible for our necessary language system. For both, practical daily and relationship challenges (and the ability to express both) language plays an important role.

Sometime after the arrival of human beings, it became expeditious to give names to our experiences. Each member of the family was given a first name. Names were given to all living species, to all fruits and vegetables, herbs, grains, seeds, nuts, oceans, rivers, lakes, the solar system and everything else.

As the memory process progressed, mind gave birth to a new phenomenon called imagination.  It was at this time that consciousness took a misleading turn and since has not been able to get on track again (except for a very few).

Consciousness is self-less.  Except for factual assumptions and conclusions of the mind, a self with an imagination does not exist.  A pre-ordained mission to fulfill itself by making efforts to pre-determine its own  destiny does not exist. Prior to the progression of imagination, the innocence of consciousness had no reason to doubt what passed through it. This innocence created the opportunistic scenario where the consciousness could be deceived  into believing that its thoughts and feelings are self-generated.

A false persona born of words became the beginning seed in the dis-functioning of consciousness. Mind sincerely believed its new logic, but because it had no conscious-energy to fulfil its imaginary desires, the deception of consciousness became the primary goal. The chaos, confusion, stress and anxiety that we experience is because we are functioning out of order.

The difficulty in reversing this false process is because consciousness does not see that it is being duped by the mind. All answers to resolve our dilemma are being provided by the same source that is responsible for it. Whether those answers are being provided by our mind, or someone else who claims to be an authority, the source remains the same. Mind (like any form) cannot provide solutions because a like thing cannot see a like thing. What we are receiving from ourselves and others is answers given from previous questions. Whatever beliefs and practices we participate in to free ourselves from this conundrum will only further exacerbate the dilemma. All efforts by the consciousness to free itself must always bring false hopes, because those efforts are from the mind and so, from the start, are doomed to fail.

A species whose thoughts are not self-generated cannot make claim to the distinction of having freedom of choice.

It is through the effortless seeing of consciousness (how mind is acting as a mediary between intelligence and consciousness) that insight, acting as a catalyst, instantaneously frees itself from its falsely induced bondage.

That seeing is my wish for you.

Previous article by Harry:

• Living the Attentive Life: an Exploration of Consciousness, Mind, Memory and Senses

About the author:

California-based Harry Krueger has spent the past 40 years working to awaken humanity to concepts of peace freedom and consciousness.  When he was 35 years old, he discovered a book by Sri Krishnamurti (which he read 7 times in a row) and it changed his outlook and consciousness forever. Harry is now 85, and has never looked back.

Through his writing, Harry reveals the glorious reality of who we human Beings truly are, and offers insights to help us to break through the false identification of who we are not.

“Life is real (and only then) when living the attentive life”