Have we humans got any internal markers of the life we live?
FR KM GEORGE
At middle school what the science teacher told us about the annual growth rings formed inside the trees still rings in my ears. Showing us a picture of the cross section of a big tree she told us that one could determine the age of trees by counting the concentric circles on it. She advised us to visit a timber mill and count for ourselves the rings and the age of trees when they sawed them down. While the class listened to her with rapt attention one boy suddenly asked: ‘Can we see our growth rings if we cut open a human body?’ The teacher was aghast. ‘No, no, no you cannot do that...’, she said with obvious fear on her face. Unanswered the question still rings. Have we humans got any internal markers of the life we live?
Scientists tell us that tree rings reveal a complex body of information about past climatic conditions -temperature, drought, rainfall, diseases, forest fires, flood, sunlight, and pollution. Disciplines like Dendrochronology (from Greek Dendron=tree; chronos=time)and Dendroclimatology claim to be able to study environmental changes occurring even thousands of years ago by examining intact tree fossils. Trees are thus keepers of a great memory.
We humans have many more modes of memory. Associated with our brain cells or neuronal network we have a neuro-psychological memory that is subjective, personal, patchy, vulnerable and subject to forgetfulness. We may not be able to compare our subjective memory with the comprehensive memory of trees objectively registered in the growth rings. We remember in our conscious mind. But our conscious mind seems to be a screen that hides rather than reveals, something like a television or computer screen that reveals images, but hides the complex technical processes spanning huge spaces and time behind the screen. The conscious mind constantly sweeps away its experiences to the subconscious zone and finally to the hard disk of the unconscious. We try to retain collective memories of our race in mythology, music, dance, storytelling, folk arts, rites and rituals, language and literature.
We have a social and historical memory. Dig up historical memory by means of archaeology and various paleo-sciences. We write volumes of history and erect monuments.
We have a genetic memory of the human race that we now begin to understand scientifically. According to researchers our diverse environmental experiences can make an impact on human sperm and ovum and it can eventually be transmitted to our DNA and our behavioral patterns. So they talk about a “trans-generational epigenetic inheritance” that can be transmitted to successive generations.
We can talk about several other domains of memory. For example, what we may call the Eco-cosmic memory or the memory of our rootedness in planet earth, the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy and so on. We have a psycho-spiritual memory arising from our ability for transcendence and abstraction beyond physical material categories.
Through these multiple forms of memory like neuro-psychological, socio-historical, phylo-genetic, eco-cosmic, psycho-spiritual, we try to generate meaning by weaving the connecting threads of our life and its past environment. However, we seem to lack the sensitivity of trees to register the environment in its totality.
We human beings, however, have a qualitatively different concept of memory because we have the unique gifts of self-awareness and capacity for self-transcendence, freedom and creativity, power of speech and intellect, imagination and insight. So the innocent question of the impulsive little boy returns: Can we see human growth rings if we cut open the body?
No amount of the analytical dissecting of our psyche, no interpretive intervention into our social history, no sequencing of our human genome will exhaust the mystery of human consciousness and memory. We can make useful inroads into it, but never grasp the whole in our present condition.
That is perhaps why great teachers of our human race always pointed to the necessary mutation of our self-seeking awareness itself into enlightened self-awareness. We then become leading lights to the world for healing and wholeness, for love, joy and peace.
The growth rings of memory are hidden deep within us. The little boy’s quest was in the right direction.
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