How Does Consciousness Recall Past Events?

Sometimes when you wake up briefly in the morning, you do not yet know where you are sleeping; even after a minute or two you still do not know you are in your own home—this is the mind consciousness having a lapse. A major lapse of the mind consciousness occurs when the new five aggregates (pañca-skandha) are born: one is dazed and ignorant, having forgotten everything from past lives; without supernormal powers, one forgets for an entire lifetime. A minor lapse occurs after waking from unconsciousness, after sobering up from drunkenness, after waking from sleep, and at the moment the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava) arises after death—whenever the mind consciousness does not arise continuously, a lapse will occur.

Upon what does the mind consciousness rely to connect with the past? It relies on its co-existent support (sahabhū-āśraya), the manas, and of course there is also the eighth consciousness, but let us not discuss that for now. When the mind consciousness first appears, it strives to recall the past; all thoughts are given to it by the manas. In a dazed, half-awake state, it can only discern the immediate sense objects and does not know anything from before it became awake. The manas prompts the mind consciousness to think and to remember, and the mind consciousness then recollects; the content of that recollection is also the dharmas that the manas has taken as object, and the mind consciousness continuously discerns and judges them, and then the memories come forth. In fact, all those dharmas that the mind consciousness recollects are presented by the tathāgatagarbha.