16 Mar Somebody had said something to you ten years before and you are still carrying it. (OSHO)
I have not been telling you to drop your factual memory. That will be stupid! Your factual memory is a must. You must know your name, who your father is and who your mother is and who your wife is and who your child is and your address; you will have to go back to the hotel, you will have to find your room again. Factual memory is not meant – psychological memory is meant. Factual memory is not a problem, it is pure remembrance. When you become psychologically affected by it, then the problem arises. Try to understand the difference.
Yesterday somebody insulted you. Again he comes across you today. The factual memory is that “this man insulted me yesterday.” The psychological memory is that seeing that man you become angry; seeing that man, you start boiling up. And the man may be coming just to ask for your apology; the man may be coming to be excused, to be forgiven. He may have realized his mistake; he may have realized his unconscious behaviour. He may be coming to befriend you again, but you become boiled up. You are angry, you start shouting.
You don’t see his face herenow; you go on being affected by the face which was yesterday. But yesterday is yesterday! How much water has flowed down the Ganges? This man is not the same man. Twenty-four hours have brought many changes. And you are not the same man either.
The factual memory says, “This man insulted me yesterday,” but that ‘me’ has changed. This man has changed. So it is as if that incident had happened between two persons with whom you have nothing to do any more – then you are psychologically free. You don’t say, “I still feel angry.” There is no lingering anger. memory is there, but there is no psychological affectation. You meet the man again as he is now, and you meet him as you are now.
Consciousness is a continuous river.
When I say drop your memory, I mean psychological memory; I don’t mean factual memory. That chapter is closed; it is not worth carrying it your whole life. But you go on carrying. Somebody had said something to you ten years before and you are still carrying it. Your mother was angry when you were a child and you are still carrying it. Your father had slapped you when you were just small and you are still carrying it, and you may be seventy years old.
These psychological memories go on burdening you. They destroy your freedom, they destroy your aliveness, they encage you. Factual memory is perfectly okay.
And one thing more to be understood: when there is no psychological memory, the factual memory is very accurate – because the psychological memory is a disturbance.
When you are very much psychologically disturbed, how can you remember accurately? It is impossible! You are trembling, you are shaking, you are in a kind of earthquake – how can you remember exactly? You will exaggerate; you will add something, you will delete something, you will make something new out of it. You cannot be relied upon.
A man who has no psychological memory can be relied upon. That’s why computers are more reliable than men, because they have no psychological memory. Just the facts – bare facts, naked facts.
When you talk about a fact, then too it is not fact: much fiction has entered into it. You have moulded it, you have changed it, you have painted it, you have given it colours of your own it is no more a fact!
Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within
Osho
