Why Memory Is the Root of Wisdom

In 76 years, I have learned many lessons on this journey to living well. But I keep forgetting them. Ah, remembering! How lost we are before remembering to remember on this journey! Forgetting causes most of my insanity and disasters. It also causes, our planetary guides tell us, most of our suffering. The act of forgetting we are one with God, one with each other, one consciousness manifesting as different entities and bodies, is called maya in Indian mythology and philosophy. Our quest is to tear away the veil of this illusion and see that we are gods only dreaming that we are beggars.

One of my favorite stories from Norse mythology is about Mimir, the Remembrancer. Mimir was a giant who guarded and drank daily from the Well of the Waters of Memory and Wisdom, which sprang from an underground spring at the roots of the world ash tree, Yggdrasil, the center of the cosmos. Odin, the god of magic, poetry, and death, asked Mimir for a drink from it. Mimir named his price: one eye for one draft of water from the Well of Wisdom. Odin thought the sacrifice well worth the reward. He paid the price and became the one-eyed god of wisdom.

Somewhere along the myth, Mimir was decapitated in a war. When Odin saw his head, he picked it up from the battlefield and cradled it in his arms with love and worship. He chanted prayers and sang songs while embalming it with precious herbs. He wanted to preserve it; to treasure it above all gold. Mimir’s head was the voice that counseled him throughout his days. The one-eyed Odin is a god because he sees the value in things with his unified vision, especially the value of memory, which is the tap root of wisdom and far more important than sight. If Odin had been a Buddhist, he would have drunk out of Mimir’s skull. Buddhists and Hindu Tantra practitioners drink out of beautifully carved, gem-encrusted human skull cups to remind themselves of the most important thing we need to remember on this adventure: death.

Memory is pivotal in all cultures and mythologies. Mimir’s name comes from the Indo-European root (s)mer, “to think, recall, reflect, remember.” It is connected to the Sanskrit smarati and smarana and to the Sikh concept of simran, to remember God by the repetition of his/her name. In ancient Hindu texts, Smarna is an epithet for the God of Love. When the gopis, the cowherdesses who love Krishna, accuse him of cruelty for deserting them, Krishna replies: “It is not from cruelty that I cast a veil over myself. It is so you can remember and yearn for me during separation. As a poor man always recalls and yearns for the wealth he has found and lost, I want my lovers to remember me always.” The path of memory, called smarna marg, is an important part of spirituality in the Indian system. By remembering, God is known. Memory bridges separation and union.

Memory (called Mnemosyne) is a powerful goddess in Greek Mythology. She is the daughter of Heaven and Earth, consort to Zeus, inventor of language and words, and Mother of the Muses. In Greek mythology, people who forget are reborn to learn the lesson of remembering; those who remember are sent to the Elysian fields to live in uninterrupted peace and bliss. The word mnemonic, related to techniques of remembering, comes from Mnemosyne. In Plato’s Theory of Recollection, all wisdom is remembrance of things we have forgotten. In Hindu mythology, even gods forget their divinity in their enmeshment with life. Vishnu becomes a boar and lives the life of a pig. When he is immune to Shiva’s reminders of his true nature, Shiva lets fly his trident and kills him. When the dying Vishnu despairs that this is the end, Shiva says to him, “Remember who you are! Remember you are spirit, Vishnu, the undying energy of the universe. You are formless light; the eternal, undying flame.”

The striving to remember in the morass of forgetting who we are must be relentless, ongoing.

Adapted and excerpted with permission from the publisher, from the new book, The Privilege of Aging: Savoring the Fullness of Life (July 2024, Park Street Press) by Kamla K. Kapur.