TickTockMan.

Actually I have had the experience of the total loss of memory, but, it was for a relatively short time, the experience was repeated over time however. As far as your above question goes, you would know that you have lost your memory, but, the last part of the question does not really surface, you are at this point, free of all baggage, no beliefs about yourself one way or another, your alive and experiencing, and it feels bloody good. So, the essence of what you are in fact, cannot be the knowledge of your experiences, but the fact that you are the experiencer, the consciousness of the community of the body, the vehicle of your genes--or should I say their functionary.

This is extremely interesting to me. I especially like your comments about being "alive and experiencing." Did you feel like it would be possible to maintain this state of mind indefinitely and still function effectively in what we call "consensual reality?" Perhaps you still are . . . I have no way of knowing without asking you.

I've also experienced temporary total memory loss a time or two as well, but mine also involved the shifting of my consciousness into another life form that at the time, seemed absolutely real from the standpoint of all my senses including touch and smell . . . or, as you say, an "experiencer."

Now, granted, this occurred while using some disturbingly powerful entheogens. However, the experiences were so real, that now, even many years later, it is difficult to write them off as mere hallucinations and integrate them into "real life." To this day I almost have to look at it as if I went somewhere else for awhile and lived as something else for a time, then came back once again to consensual reality. Which, for the record, I have no problems in doing, despite my experiences in "Non-Ordinary Reality," as Castenada called it.

I may be shooting off in a different direction at this point, but I think this is still relevant to the idea of Conscious Thought.

Regards,
Tock

TickTockMan,

That sounds like an incrediable experience, some sort of transference to the bodily form of another creature, actually I have done that, but only as a thought experiment. My experiences of memory loss, each time I came back, it was a bit of a downer, for with no memory of my life to that point, I was free of all negative beliefs and feeling about myself. These things come flooding back with the return of ones lost identity. I was still in my teens at this time, and it really made me ponder the nature of memory, the nature of identity. The duration of this state was often so short term that I did not even have time to get to upset over my lack of orientation in the world. Your miss spent youth, was perhaps not so miss spent, anything that opens the door to wonder, is a spiritual experience.

Our mind is in constantly changing, with neurons dying all the time for example, but yet we do not lose consciousness because of those little changes, what means that consciousness is something higher, something independent from memory. Kind of: If I lose all my memory, I will not be the same person, but I will be the same being.

Also I have a fairly bad memory, and I do not fell im being more or less myself then I forget things... but at the same time, I have a very good long-term memory, then I, for example, play a game again after a long time and as I play I realize I already know those places, I fell like I am recovering parts of myself that were lost.