My father has been looking over my shoulder again! I’m playing games on the computer. I can hear him saying, “Your ‘frittering’ away time”, “Time is too valuable to be wasted”, or “Idle brains are the devil’s workshop”. I don’t stop playing. My dad’s has been dead now over 35 years but his admonitions stay with me. They still come into my head like they were coming out of his mouth! Time just doesn’t heal all memories. In some cases that’s great but we certainly would like to decide which we want to keep and those we want to lose. But memory doesn’t seem to be that controllable or maybe I should just say ‘my’ memory. I can’t really testify as to anyone else’s.
We all have memories of parents, teachers, or friends who over the years have suggested we use our time wisely. On my father’s last day with us I drove him from church to home. I was in running clothes. He asked me about them and I acknowledge I had been running and was planning to run a marathon on Saturday in New York. He didn’t verbally admonition me at that point but his past attitude regarding such was apparent. He had by previous comments indicated his thought, that ‘exercise was great, marathons a waste of time’. There is no question he made me conscious of the need to conserve time and for most part I’ve tried to follow.
It’s been said, “memory plays tricks”. It brings back to view sometimes the strangest things – like my father’s admonitions yet sometimes I can’t recall what I had for breakfast or the author of a book I read just last week. But I can recall the words to a song I sang some 30 years ago. It also reminds me occasionally of things I regret having done. It doesn’t keep them buried, as you would like. I can recall things that happened at my running events. I will never forget an incident in Sea Isle City run, now at least 30 years ago when my buddy Bill King managed to finish in the money due to the fellow ahead of him being attacked by some ‘druggies’ driving by in a car. I of course I never let him forget it. My usual comment is, “What some guys won’t do to finish in the money!” Another running memory was my surprise to hear my brother Father Pat comment how much he enjoyed watching the marathon in New York. Then I learned why. My start and finished of that marathon was at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. I passed the tavern at the end of each lap. Each lap lasted an hour. They, Pat and Father Jim, would be out there to cheer me on. Of course they spent the time in between in the Tavern, so now I understood why Pat thought watching a marathon was so much fun!
While writing and thinking about memory by mere coincidence I happen to read a meditation on a verse from Hebrews. It read, “For I…will remember their sins no more” The commentary to it was, “I find encouragement knowing that even Jesus is said to have ‘a poor memory’ when it come to recalling our sins. So I want to be like Jesus in this regard. I hope always to remember the blessings I have received and the good things in life. These are pleasant memories that bring peace”
Memory has been a subject of study for years. It was in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. In 400 AD the philosopher Augustine wrote a chapter in his book “The Confessions” on memory. It was entitled “A Philosophy of Memory” One of his descriptions sums up how we might see memory working. “When I am in that realm (memory), I ask that whatsoever I want be brought forth. Certain things come forth immediately. Certain other things are looked for longer, and are rooted out as it were from some deeper receptacles. Certain others rush forth in mobs, and while some different thing is asked and searched for, they jump in between, as if to say, ‘Aren’t we perhaps the ones?’ By my heart’s hand I brush them away from the face of my remembrance until what I want is unveiled and comes into sight from out of its hiding place. Others come out readily and in unbroken order, just as they are called for; those coming first give way to those that follow. On yielding they are buried way again, to come forth when I want them. All this takes place when I recount anything by memory” I can’t think of reading anywhere such an apt description of how our memory seems to work. I say ‘seems’ because that is the way it looks to me. Still 1600 years later there is still the “Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication and Explanation”, which is also the title to a book by John Horgan. He is a writer specializing in Science with a best seller in the early 90’s,“The End of Science”. Horgan in this later book has seven chapters devoted each to a theory hoping to explain consciousness. He refers to the ‘explanatory gap”, i.e., the inability of physiological theories to account for psychological phenomenon such as perception, memory, reasoning, and emotion much less consciousness. Consciousness is subject of the ‘eighth’ chapter and is referred to as a ‘conundrum’. In that chapters he reports of attending a conference at the University of Arizona in 1994 billed as ‘an interdisciplinary scientific conference on consciousness’. He opens the chapter with quotes from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, all alluding to the conundrum of consciousness. The twentieth century quote is from Gunther Stent. ”Searching for molecular explanations of consciousness is a waste of time, since the physiological process responsible for this wholly private experience will be seen to degenerate into seemingly quite ordinary, workaday reactions, no more no less fascinating that those that occur in, say, the liver.”
Horgan writes on the conference saying, “their presentations (all the different mind sciences) had all the trappings of serious scientific discourse: technical term, references to experimental data, equations. But they still seemed a little …off” There was one suggested explanation that is from a deeper source than science. It was by Danah Zohar who has degrees in physics from MIT and philosophy and religion under psychoanalyst Erik Erikson of Harvard. She wrote in her book Quantum Self: “It was time to move beyond dualism, and accept that both matter and mind stem from a deeper source, ’the quantum’. Human thoughts, she assured us, are quantum fluctuations of the vacuum energy of the universe, which is really God” Horgan ignores this suggested solution. He is in atheist. But I have read how he was and is seeking answers in Buddhism, psychedelic drugs, and going to the East to visit mystics.
In 2002 he wrote an essay for the New York Times entitled, “More Than Good Intentions Holding Fast to Faith in Free Will”. In it he writes, “Dr. Blackmore reasoning strikes me as less spiritual than Orwellian”. Dr. Blackmore contends that ‘free will’ is just a feeling and that we really don’t control the action. Horgan can’t accept that premise. He believes in ’free will’ because it ‘has social values” It forces us to take responsibility for ourselves. Belief in God has social value too but he doesn’t apply that reasoning to that belief. How he can accept ‘free will’ without scientific proof and still not believe in God is a ‘conundrum’
This looking at the failure of science to explain ‘my consciousness’ has strengthened my belief that part of me—call it consciousness or whatever – is not composed of matter. There is within me a spirit that is not controlled by bouncing neurons. It is a spirit put there by the creator of man to remind him that life is just a journey with a purpose. This purpose is to direct that spirit back to its creator, so when all that is ‘me’ that is matter, melts away my ‘spirit’ will move back to its creator.
Speaking of the body, I am happy to say that mine is recovering very well from the siege of pneumonia. I will have a sleep study to see if I can rid myself of the oxygen tubes when I sleep. But I feel like my old self and have graduated from my Physical Therapist treatment. I am even planning on returning to the gym for exercise three times a week. I am grateful that the Lord has given me another chance at living. I am grateful to June, all my family and friends whose cards, thoughts, and prayers helped me reach that goal. Until next time, Pax Tecum!