The Delusion of Memory 

10:59 Yes Brad, i feel that all the time! I maintain a kind of a daily journal where i write down any philosophical revelations that my mind makes up. Once in a while i peak behind to the pages of the past and i am amazed how insightful i was! There were many times when i felt to have actually degenerated spiritually compared to how i was in the past. This makes me think that there is no such thing as a linear "spiritual progress" i think all we do is go in circles getting conditioned and re conditioned. Would like your thoughts on this idea on a video if you think its worth to ponder upon.

Wait, i don't remember this video coming out 2 weeks ago!!!! The song is really good in this one.

Great video Brad! I actually had an almost identical experience to yours about a month ago. I got my old camcorder running and digitized a bunch of videos from when I was in high school and college - 20+ years ago. The amount of things that I had no recollection of, or that were completely different than my memory was mind-blowing. It was like I was watching some strange avatar of my past self doing a bunch of things, but I felt almost no direct connection to that person or those events anymore. Maybe the past really is just an illusion? In any case, keep up the good work, I always love your videos!

I'm loving how easy it is to get a hold of Dementia 13 albums. They are all really surprisingly good.

Oooh, this is one of the trippiest things I've ever seen.

Sometimes i will get these strange thoughts in meditation and as one does, you cant supress it nor is it your intention to provoke them, it just so happens to present itself before it dissolves into nothingness again. So anyways the idea/thought/sensation was precisely about this. How all islands of memory, all my "past selfs" are just snapshots of what would seem very different people. It felt as if even if i know that person was myself, the vefy different flavors and sensations that corresponds to very specific points in time makes the actual "present" self infinitely distant to each and all of them no matter how little or long ago that was. Even if subtle, i think this change of perception allows you to not cling as much as i used to do whenever i get the obligatory trip down memory lane from time to time. Persistence is really an illusion

Thanks for bringing this up!

The illusion-trap catches a lot of tigres. Ole master Buddha, what did You do?

Great Track

Its great to learn youve remembered things totally wrong...

Thank you for these videos. I have some thoughts about a couple of things mentioned in here related to time. First, according to quantum science, the present does influence the past - at least at the quantum level. Secondly, looking at time travel from a Buddhist cosmological perspective, such a movement seems unlikely. As reality (space/time/matter/consciousness) is a unity, the ability to pick someone up, pull them from one moment, and move them to another point in time would require all of space/time/matter/consciousness to move. All things are co-dependent. At least, I cannot see a way around that, for even from a Newtonian view, moving someone would add/subtract energy from a moment. Or not! Again, thank you for your wonderful practice dana.

Once it happened that I met a girl that recognized and talked to me as if we were friends. Supposedly we met at a party, but I had absolutely no idea about her, and I thought (I don't know if this was true anymore) I didn't have any drugs or a lot of alcohol during that party. What a weird world

Good video

13:09 better not lend money to this guy, he's dangerous!

lovely music...sounds like Moby Grape...

'If you can remember the 60s you werent there' i used to feel i belonged more to that era culturally, but wasnt even born yet. Keep reminding myself the '60s' phenomenon was also very geographically specific.

This is a bit difficult to word properly but I had a dream the other night wherein I saw a person who I felt I had to talk to after some sort of argument that happened a few days ago (in the dream) when I woke up I thought that was odd that I “remembered” a past interaction with this person. I’ve had “memories” in dreams before but I’ve always assumed they were from another dream. But I know for certain the aforementioned “dream memory” had never taken place in any other dream I’ve ever had. So these past couple days I’ve been racking my brain with the possibility that not only are my “dream memories” made up, but potentially my waking memories too. So weird that you would make this video now ahaa thanks brad 👊

A few days ago, I visited my elderly mom and she talked about having a cat when I was very young. My response was that I don't remember and this was the first I heard this story. Maybe she is recalling a memory incorrectly as she had a cat when she was in elementary school or maybe I just don't or was too young to remember and there are no pics or they were lost. The part about recovered memories reminded me of such stories during the "satanic panic" where some people claimed to have memories under hypnosis or during therapy of being abused during Satanic rituals but such claims didn't hold up under investigation or the person admitted they just made it up

I "believe in" the feeling tones of the past, but not the narratives? Some of my childhood was "marked" by traumatic experiences. I can't remember how I got the bruise (the story is vague), but the tenderness, or hurt, remains at some level. The story is not important. I think this holds for positive experience too - but they don't cut as deep.

Hi - very interested by your comment about the past not being really there. I'm way out of my depth with this stuff, but is it not true that according to the laws of physics, if we were able to look at the earth from light years away, we would be looking at the past (just like the light that reaches us from distant stars is 'past light')? So, if you could get far enough away with a strong enough telescope, you would effectively be able to see the past. That being the case (if it were...), how could it not be there? That would seem to chime with your teacher's comment about action being 'carved into the universe'. Anyway, I am finding your books, blogs and videos very helpful. So thank you.

As a big fan of Jung, I find the Betty and Barney Hill and the larger abductee phenomena fascinating. Though I am skeptical that they are reporting something objective that occurred I also believe that they experienced these things subjectively and it left a huge impression. What do you think it is? Some kind of makyo-like fugue state, maybe anesthesia miscalculations that cause people to form distressing memories of bright lights and obscured faces performing procedures on them while they are helpless?

Any thoughts on alternate realities?

*lol* I spent this video mistaking/confusing Steve Hagen Zen Guy for/with Steven Hager High Times Editor and JFK Conspiracyhead. ;}P>

This topic kind of reminds me of Last Thursdayism in Christian debates. When creationists are challenged with all the scientific evidence of the age of the earth, one common response is that God created the Earth with the appearance of age. Similar to how a toy train set artist makes a train set look like a real world place with history and age. The response to this assertion is that "well, then how do you know the Earth wasn't created last Thursday? Maybe your memories are just a trick by God to give it all the appearance of age." Anyway, the point is that memory and the past really are an odd topic and you can really go down a rabbit hole on this subject.

This is why the Mandela effect was never very convincing to me.

Whoah. You vanished at the end.

Time travel is absolutely possible.... to the future, anyway, thanks to time dilation due to relativity.

Did you mean delusion; typo in the title possibly

Compare Hagen's "Plain and Simple" to Rahula's "What the Buddha Taught". Hagen practically "paraphrases" the whole thing, beat for beat. It's embarrassing.