The Forgetting

The Forgetting

We must know how memory and information are [formed] with a human in order to know what results from them, which is forgetting or omission of what is in this memory and information or some of what is in them.

Some of the information of a human comes from this physical world through sight and hearing for example. And some comes from the Upper Kingdom of Heaven, and the example of what comes from above is the inspiration to the prophets pbut and the true visions.

And this information is imprinted in the page of a human, or you can call it the place of memory or information, and it is in the humane soul (the spirit) and not in the body as many people imagine that it is in the brain. Rather the brain is exactly like a fax machine or a telephone as it is not the place for permanent saving of information, but rather it is a device that transfers information from and to the existence of the human in this physical world.

And this information, as long as the person is in this world, is continuously increasing. For example, what you see with your eyes and realize, what you hear with your ears, and what you read are accumulated information in the human soul, and remembering is extracting this information and presenting it to the human in this world whenever he wants that.

As for what affects this remembering or collecting an information and extracting it from the memory, they are many things, some of them are:

First, The quantity of information. And the effect of the quantity of information on remembering is clear from the reality in which we live. For example, the child’s ability to memorize is far greater than the ability of the adults. And memorizing is nothing but remembering the information. And the reason that the child’s ability to remember is superior is because his memory is almost free of information when he first starts remembering. Therefore, his quantity of information which is accumulated over time is under control in the beginning so it would be easy to sort it and reach the information, unlike the adult who has a massive quantity of information accumulated that is hard to control. And to demonstrate the quantity issue more, I say, if you have something you are searching for, it would be easier to find it if you were searching between ten things rather than searching between a hundred.

Second, the quality or type of information, as the simple information is not like the compound and complex information, as the latter may be placed in the memory in an unorganized and random manner as a result of the incomplete comprehension of it. Therefore it will be hard to remember it or extract it in a correct form or with all its components and requirements. Rather even with perceiving it and placing it in an organized and accurate manner, remembering it is still more difficult than with simple information. This is because remembering it requires remembering all its components.

Third, the body. And it is a veil which affects the ability of a person to remember and it is like a cover over the information. And this cover becomes thicker the greater the occupation with it [the body] in order to provide it with desires and to push away that which it does not desire. And it lightens as a cover over the information whenever it [the body] is neglected to calculate the concentration on the information, but no matter how neglected it is it remains a cover with an effect, as some things are a necessity such as eating for strength.

Fourth, the light and darkness in the soul of a human, as the more the light increases, the more the ability to remember increases, and the more the light decreases and the darkness increases, the more the ability to remember decreases. For that, Joshua the pure prophet pbuh, what do we expect from him other than to accuse himself of negligence and inadvertence,

﴾He [his lad] said, “Did you see when we took shelter at the rock? I forgot the fish, and none but Satan made me forget to remember it.﴿,

which means the darkness.

Fifth, the brain, considering that it is a device of transmission to and from this world; therefore it affects the matter of remembering greatly. For example, both the correct blood flow within it and the suitable reaching of nutrients to it make it more efficient. The occurrence of a disorder or an illness in it may lead to the loss of the ability to remember fully or partially, temporarily or permanently.

And there is also a matter which must be noted, which is that the information should be truly acquired. This means that the human intended to acquire it, and not that it just passed his hearing without him listening to it, rather he heard it without paying attention to it. This is as if he had passed a place and saw it but did not care to perceive the details of what he had seen. This does not fall within the matter of remembering because to begin with, it is not acquired information in order to be remembered, and whoever omits it is not to be described as have forgotten it.

These matters which I have mentioned have a direct relationship to remembering, negatively or positively. But usually, with a particular human, not all of these matters have an effect in the same amount or direction.

For example, the preoccupation with the body, which negatively affects the human ability to recall the information from the Kingdom of Heavens as well as to remember it later on, could gather in one person along with the increase of light in the page of the human’s existence, which positively affects the human’s ability to recall the information as well as to remember it. Also the amount of this preoccupation, and the amount of this light, are both in the equation of remembering.^[1]

Thus, the matter of remembering is an equation which has a number of variables which include the five mentioned above. And it is very difficult, rather usually impossible, to know the result of this equation through knowing the real or approximate value, to know one or two of these variables. Rather the value of each variable in this equation must be known in order to sum up the final result. This means that we cannot judge a virtuous believer as having a high degree of remembrance solely because of our knowledge that he is a virtuous believer, or that we judge a corrupt disbeliever as having a low degree of remembrance solely because he is a corrupt disbeliever. So it is possible that a human is a disbeliever, and the value of his variable of light is five percent for instance, but his other variables have a high value in favor of remembrance. Therefore, a disbelieving human has achieved a high value in the equation of remembering, and is therefore a man with a superior ability to remember despite the fact that he is a disbeliever.

And the important matter that we must notice and perceive accurately is that no creation can achieve and acquire a full and complete value from this equation such that his degree of remembering would be described as one hundred percent. The reason is that the creation cannot achieve one hundred percent value in all variables. Take the light variable for example; if it is assumed that a creation achieved one hundred percent in it, this would mean that this creation is light without darkness within and this is impossible because the light without darkness within is Allah swt.^[2]

By this it is shown and made clear that there is no creation who achieves one hundred percent in the equation of remembering, such that his remembering is described to be full and complete, and therefore his omission and forgetting would be equivalent to zero, meaning he does not forget or omit. And Allah swt cannot create a creation whose remembering is one hundred percent and whose omission and forgetting is zero. This is not because Allah swt is incapable of doing so, and this is not a matter of ability, but rather because it is impossible and it would mean that the Ultimate Divinity is numerous, while Allah is greatly above that.

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