The Depth of Memory Is Determined by Manas

Question: Why does a person with Alzheimer's disease fail to remember their closest acquaintances?

Answer: Familiar people are not necessarily the ones they are most interested in or find most important. Therefore, individuals with Alzheimer's disease cannot recall or remember them.

After the subtle faculty of the brain malfunctions, elderly people often retain clear memories of distant past events and frequently reminisce about people and matters from their childhood or early years. However, they have little impression of recent people and events from the past few years. They remember and are interested in those they care about most or like best, while others leave no impression. As age advances, the subtle faculty of the brain progressively deteriorates, leading to increasingly impaired memory function, causing many people and events to be forgotten. Events from youth and childhood, having been stored in the tathāgatagarbha, can be recalled as long as the sixth and seventh consciousnesses are free from disease. However, memories from later years are poor and thus cannot be recollected.

Some deeply etched memories become increasingly vivid in old age, impossible to forget no matter how hard one tries. The depth of memory is entirely determined by the seventh consciousness (manas). What the manas finds uninteresting, the sixth consciousness (mano-vijñāna) cannot retain even if it tries. If a person with Alzheimer's does not recognize you or remember you, it indicates you are not important to them. The person constantly on their lips and mind is the one most important to them, the one they are most interested in. Additionally, individuals with Alzheimer's exhibit selective memory and amnesia, which relates to karmic connections and the state of the brain at the time. By now, having studied this, it should not be difficult for us to discern whether a person merely mentions you with their conscious mind or holds you in genuine presence within their manas.