The Art of Remembering - On Writing, Forgetting, and the Drift of the Mind

There are moments when truth is clear — so clear it feels impossible to ever lose again. In those moments, the mind is still, the world makes sense, and the ache for meaning disappears. But then, as quietly as it came, the clarity fades. The current of ordinary thought returns, sweeping us back into the noise of desire, worry, and becoming. What was seen as eternal becomes a memory, and even that memory begins to blur.

This is why the sages wrote — not to record discovery, but to preserve remembrance. The Upanishads were never meant as arguments, but as anchors: words tied to truth, left on the riverbank for the times when we forget who we are. Writing, at its deepest, is not self-expression but self-preservation — a way to hold steady in the current of maya, to mark the still point before the waters of the mind rise again.

To write, then, is not to speak — it is to remember.

The Current

The mind does not rest; it moves. It circles around thoughts, identities, desires — building and dismantling itself each moment. Even the most beautiful insight lasts only as long as attention does. Then the current takes it, as it takes everything.

Maya is not some external illusion imposed upon us; it is the movement of forgetting itself — the ceaseless tendency of awareness to identify with what it sees. The world, the body, the thought, the cause: each becomes another form of “I.” In that identification, we begin to drift. The current carries us toward noise, toward becoming, toward endless reaction.

To live without remembrance is to be carried wherever the current pleases. You might rise for a time, thinking yourself triumphant — but the river bends, the whirlpool returns, and you are once again at the mercy of your own mind. Every scroll, every argument, every plan is part of the same motion: the search for ground within a moving stream.

To remember, even for an instant, that you are not what moves — that is awakening. Yet the moment passes, and the drift resumes. And so, the need arises for something that endures when memory fails.

The Anchor

Writing is one way the soul resists the drift. The hand moves, but the act itself is stillness — a pause in the current where truth can gather form. Each word becomes a small tether, a remembrance cast into the flow: I have seen something real, and I do not wish to forget.

The sages understood this instinct long before ink touched paper. They repeated, recited, and remembered, not to convince others, but to convince the mind itself — to keep it turned toward what does not change. What we now call scripture was once an act of survival, a lifeline against the flood of forgetting.

Every sentence written from clarity is an anchor dropped into the sea of maya. It cannot stop the waters, but it can hold a point of awareness steady. To return to such words — whether your own or another’s — is to return to yourself. The words do not save; they remind.

The world rushes to express, but the seeker writes to remember. One adds to the noise; the other traces silence.

The Return

In time, even the anchors sink beneath the surface. The words fade, the ink dries, and what was once alive on the page becomes another form — another ripple in the stream. But if they were written in truth, something remains: not the letter, but the remembrance that gave rise to it.

To remember long enough is to see that there is nothing to remember. What we call “truth” was never lost — only veiled by the motion of thought. Writing, like all spiritual practice, points us toward the place where no reminder is needed. When the current stills, even the act of anchoring falls away.

The sages left words not so we would worship them, but so we would someday outgrow them. The purpose of remembrance is not to build a monument, but to find the silence it serves.

And in that silence, writing ends — and knowing begins.

Yet even this knowing does not stay. The tide returns, the mind begins again, and the current of maya resumes its pull. Insight flickers, then dissolves, and the world reasserts itself in color and sound. But something remains — not the thought, not the words, but a faint trace of recognition, like the scent of rain after it has passed. That is enough. To remember, forget, and remember again is the rhythm of awakening.