Page 1

To Remember God

In book 10 of Augustine’s Confessions, the self-reflective author turns inward to abstractly probe the deepest reaches of the self. After nine books of reflecting upon the memories of his own life, Augustine now consciously examines memory itself. Ultimately, through reflection upon his life and now his consciousness and memory, Augustine endeavors to understand the precise relation of God to the self. Where is God in relation to a man? How does one come to know Him? Though God is also testified to by creation and the external world, Augustine understands that the conscious human self cannot meet with God in the external realm. Though tastes, images, intimations and whispers of God touch the self through experience, the essential connection of being cannot be made from without. Thus Augustine turns inward to examine the internal world of the self, and there in discover where one may truly enter into the presence and abode of God. Ultimately for Augustine, personal knowledge of both the self and of God occurs within the memory, while the essential relation of personal to divine being occurs in a realm inaccessible to the mind. How does one find God? He is not found by us any where, but we are found by and in Him.

Augustine understands the memory as the locus of all knowledge and reflection, the cavern through which the immediate consciousness moves and contemplates. Only through recollection can the mind actually think; “by thinking we, as it were, gather together ideas which the memory contains in a dispersed and disordered way.” (189) It appears as though our immediate experience, the material of the ever present yet instantly fleeting ‘now’, enters into the storehouse of the memory, where the reflective mind then essentially examines and orders the contents randomly collected. The reflective mind cannot think about that which it does not remember. Our understanding always trails the moment, unable to ponder anything until it has already passed through the ephemeral screen of the invisible present. Even our self-knowledge comes not directly but only within the fields of memory. In memory, “I meet myself and recall what I am, what I have done, and when and where and how I was affected when I did it.” (187-6) All our knowledge proves confined to this vast realm of the memory.

Memory possesses all that the mind can access, both in content and form: sensory experiences, previous thoughts and emotions, as well as the functions and tools of the both the mind and body itself. The memory stores the ‘know how’ of riding a bicycle, of typing, or mathematical concepts and the structure of logical connections. All that the mind may directly examine, even the patterns through which the mind actually thinks, derive from the storehouses of memory. Memory provides the intellectual space for the conscious intellect to live and move. All self-awareness and all knowledge proceed from the power of recollection; Not only does all knowledge derive from memory, but the actual mind itself, the intellectual self, only dwells within the memory. Within the ungraspable ever-present moment, the mind is pressed up against a glass window, as it were, always pressing towards the future. So tightly does the present press against the invisible barrier of the future, that not a hairs breadth of space remains for a thought to escape. The fleeting presence of ‘now’ consists of an idealized point in time, without any extension. The mind cannot make a movement within a point that has no space. Without the open space of memory, consciousness becomes pure dumbstruck awareness, completely devoid of intellectual thought; for what is a thought if not a reflection upon something recalled? Although the act of thinking proves immediately present, our thought of thought, or intellectualized awareness of thought always follows through the medium of remembrance.

With this realization Augustine confesses, “The power of the memory is great, very great, my God. It is a vast and infinite profundity. Who has plumbed its bottom? This power is that of my mind and is a natural endowment, but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am.” (178) Since conscious thought, our intellectual comprehension, arises by the gathering, ordering activity of the mind from the material of the memory, an inescapable limitation arises. Truly, conscious thought seems as a particular point within the expanse of memory. It may collect and pile contents together, create towers here or a construct there, yet the moment it turns to pick up another thought, the construct exits the ‘mind’s eye’. Never may all the contents be collected into a final, comprehensible whole. Further, the collection of some blocks out the view of other thoughts. As contemplate the nature of memory, many aspects of myself and my life fade from view. The conscious mind can organize and order the view of memory in many ways, but only one view at a time may be seen. “I run through all these things, I fly here and there, and penetrate their working as far as I can. But I never reach the end.” (194) A vast, unfathomable infinity forever remains outside our comprehension.

Page 2

Though memory proves the locus of any and all conscious knowledge, yet such knowledge remains incomplete, always fathoms behind the fullness of being. After a deep searching of memory Augustine returns to wonder, “Great is the power of memory, an awe-inspiring mystery, my God, a power of profound and infinite multiplicity. And this is mind, this is myself. What then am I, my God? What is my nature? It is characterized by diversity, by life of many forms, utterly immeasurable.” (194) In light of this impossible difficulty in comprehension, knowledge both of the self and of God becomes equally difficult. A relation to our own self, to our essential being, proves as unfathomable as our relation to God! Thus, either the self becomes a ridiculous idea, or we begin to realize that to know ourselves is to know our relation to God. 

Clearly, all knowledge of the self arises from memory, for what do I know of myself except what I recall from memories of my life and my thoughts, of experiences and desires? I have knowledge of myself through recollection of experiencing life with myself. And where else but in memory may one seek knowledge of God? I have knowledge of God through recollection of experiencing life with Him. Augustine confesses, “If I find you outside my memory, I am not mindful of you. And how shall I find you if I am not mindful of you?” (195) Nothing can be grasped by the mind, save that mindfully remembered. Thus, all we know of God derives from our meditative contemplation of His revelation throughout the tale of our lives. In this the primary purpose of Augustine’s Confessions unfolds. Augustine opens Book 10 imploring, “May I know you, who know me.” (179) He reflectively writes of his life to better remember and therefore better know God.

Augustine asks “But when I love you, what do I love?” for love desires full, conscious fellowship with the beloved. Contained in every moment of this rich storehouse of memory is the presence of God, always in and through and with all things. I know myself as that presence which experiences and receives every moment, and I know God as that presence which gives and ordains every moment. “There is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God – a light, voice, odour, food, embrace of my inner man, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses . . . and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God.” (183)

Although our knowledge of God, the finding of Him with the instrument of the intellect, remains within the reflective domain of memory, still Augustine senses the incompleteness of this relation. Through conscious intellectual knowledge, God is only known abstractly as that which unites, transcends and necessarily lies behind, through and in all things and events. But a greater problem arises, how do I come into a knowledge of God? Immediate reflection seems aware of the self; there seems no moment of estrangement from a basic, self-consciousness. Yet how and at what point do I come into knowledge of God? When do I enter into His presence and fellowship? Our lives seem so devoid of this abiding comfort and surety. Even for those who have known it, quickly and for long periods again estrange themselves from it, and only with difficulty return to His presence again. How are those who have never consciously known its fullness to discover it? How can we know that which memory does not record entrance of? How is a new relation to God begun, for surely we know that it has been absent. God is most often lost from us, not found. 

Augustine frames this problem in the language of Plato’s Meno; “Then how did these matters enter my memory? I do not know how. For when I learnt them, I did not believe what someone else was telling me, but within myself I recognized them and assented to their truth. . . . So they were there even before I had learnt them, but were not in my memory.” (189) Not only the presence of God, but such idealities as numbers and abstract concepts or forms, must already be present within the memory in order to be recognized as such. I must already posses an idea of four in order to sensorily experience anything in groupings of four. Similarly, I must already posses an idea and knowledge of God in order to recognize and discover Him anywhere. Knowledge exists only within memory, yet how can such idealities, and God Himself, already be present in memory, accessible to the conscious for reflection, before it is even first learned or recollected? Precisely, what is this ache and estrangement from God, if He already exists within my memory to be reflected upon? Thus Augustine ponders, “is it by remembering, as if I had forgotten it and still recall that I had forgotten? Or is it through an urge to learn something quite new?”

Page 3

Is it not the happy life that which all all desire, which indeed no one fails to desire? But how have they known about it so as to want it? Where did they see it to love it? . . . Even they would not wish to be happy unless they had some idea of happiness. . . . My question is whether the happy life is in the memory. For we would not love it if we did not know what it is. We have heard the term and all of us acknowledge that we are looking for a thing. . . . Therefore it is known to everyone. If they could be asked it they want to be happy, without hesitation they would answer with one voice that they so wish. (196-7)

Thus, Augustine reasons that through seeking joy, the soul seeks that which brings the highest happiness, ultimately it seeks God and then will find Him who is everywhere present for the one who has eyes to see.

Unfortunately, Augustine’s explanation leaves the ultimate question yet unexplained. How do I search for that which I have, and how do I know to seek that which I have not known? Be it an absent happiness longed for, or consciously the presence of God Himself, our epistemological relation to these things remains enigmatic. Augustine’s simplification from seeking to know God from seeking happiness may disclose the key to understanding the problem of the Meno and human existential knowledge. Augustine accepts the premise that all humans seek happiness, yet he makes a logical mistake at this point as revealed by his psychological analysis of the human heart. Even after stating the ‘certain’ desire of all people for true joy, Augustine writes, For there are those deplorable blind spots where the capacity that lies in me is concealed from me.” (207) Why does Augustine say that he is certain all people posses a real idea and desire for happiness? Because “if they could be asked if they want to be happy, without hesitation they would answer with one voice that they so wish.” Here Augustine commits the fallacy of popular opinion. Basic logic courses first teach that something is not at all necessarily true just because the majority says that it is, for even the simpleton knows that people possess false ideas and are easily deceived. In book III, Augustine writes, “The blindness of humanity is so great that people are actually proud of their blindness.” (38) Just because we think that we understand happiness and think that we desire it does not really mean that we have an accurate idea of happiness or that it is the truth of our desire. Further, as Augustine states “All these ideas I hold in my memory, and the way I hold them in the memory is the way that I learn them.” (190) If I experience a pleasure of power, and some one labels it for me as joy, henceforth I am deceived and bring others into my deception that the pleasure of power is what people speak of as joy. Yet in truth, the satisfaction of power and true eternal joy prove light years apart.

Who remembers a moment of true, pure joy. Was it not so indescribably new and breathtaking that the soul gasped, “Surely, I did not before know that such a joy as this was actually possible! I had not yet fathomed!” The joy experienced was not the thing known and desired, for it was altogether new and inspiring when actually encountered. The reception of happiness is not an “oh yes, I remember that I love this. Oh yes, this is it,” but the “Oh my God!” of an utter astonishment that brings the soul to its knees as if the birth of a star had burst open in the center of our heart. Joy by its very nature of exhilarating newness cannot be remembered. CS Lewis explained further in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, that the very desire for joy itself destroys and prevents joy from being found. The second of movement from the reception of joy to the return to desiring and seeking something obliterates joy in an instant. The two energies of joy and desire are as immiscible as oil and water, as far as the east is from the west. Joy overflows with abundance while desire craves from emptiness. Will the vacuum ever spring forth with unending substance? With the substrate of want can contentment be constructed?

What then is remembered when we desire, and say that we desire joy? For what does the soul desperately seek? Another difficulty in Augustine’s thought lies in his careless employment of the word ‘love’. Given the selfish, deceptive heart of man can Augustine actually say that the unrepentant soul, turned from God actually loves anything? On page 151 he refers to the desires of an unrepentant heart as ‘loves,’ yet after his conversion he calls them “biting cares” (155). Rather perhaps, Augustine might have gained more clarity into how one may seek God had he more precisely differentiated between love and lust. Love gives and adores and is selfless, without care of possession, even the possession of intellectualization. Truly, intellectual knowledge is a type of possession where the contents of the memory are gathered, sorted and ordered into a construct of my mental self! Lust, however, seeks and wants and grasps, desperately reaching for possession and control.

Page 4

What then is remembered when we desire, and say that we desire joy? For what does the soul desperatlely seek. In its own self-deception and lust, the soul seeks control, that rush of power felt when we reach out and successfully take something for ourselves, whether a sweet bit of food, or a mental idea, or the obedience and praise of others, anything under the sun. The desire for happiness proves a lust for control. The very fact that this desire ‘is found in everybody’ derives from the fact that it the self’s craving to glorify the self. (198) Every self will logically possess it, and in order to fulfill it’s craving for glory, will deceptively disguise such a desire as a pure and good longing for joy! “They love truth for the light it sheds, but hate it when it shows them up as being wrong,” for the truth of their desire is for truth and joy to be their own, for the greatest things to be within their control for the honor and praise of themselves (199). This was the essence of sin revealed by Augustine’s reflection over his stealing of pears. He didn’t desire the pears themselves, but his control and power in the situation. The self will seek glory in whatever circumstances and means available, even if but by taking that thing which itself it does not want. “ I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself.” (29) And what is wickedness except to take for the self the honor and worship and glory due God who is the only One worthy? “What does ambition seek but honor and glory? Yet you alone are worthy of honour and are glorious for eternity. The cruelty of powerful people aims to arouse fear. Who is to be feared but God alone?” (31)

It cannot truly be happiness that all people seek, for Augustine’s own conversion taught him that the entrance into the fellowship and presence of God, “the one necessary condition, which meant not only going but at once arriving there, was to have the will to go.” (147) If people in truth completely desired God, they would instantly find Him, as well as an abundance of joy. “Whereas, if I wish to become God’s friend, in an instant I may become that now.” (143) In answer to the problem of knowledge, to the ancient question of the Meno lies in the realization that the heart does not seek what it does not know. The self deceives itself and others in order to gain control wherever it may. It proclaims “peace!”, “goodness!”, “joy!”, “knowledge!” when in truth it has no experience or understand of what these truly things are. The dying, transient self, ever pressed against the confining wall of the fleeting present moment, craves the stability of eternal presence and being, yet does not receive it from God. The self wants not the being given by God, but its own eternal being, wrested away from connection to and dependence on another. “They wish to be the light not in the Lord but in themselves.” (148)

And now is not the problem greater! We know nothing that is outside of our memory, yet are without a true memory of God or even real joy. Further, our hearts in their corruption do not even actually seek God or their own eternal joy in Him, but seek the pleasure of glory and power, sheer wickedness before the greatness of God. How then is God ever to be found!? How are we ever to come to know Him with our conscious self? Where does our being come from, except that it is given? And further, where does our knowledge come from, whether of God, ourselves, or of mathematical concepts? Augustine answers, “So they  were there even before I had learnt them, but were not in my memory. Accordingly, when they were formulated, how and why did I recognize themand say, ‘Yes, that is true’? The answer must be that they were already in the memory, but so remote and pushed into the background…” (189) However,  though stored in the memory, this recognition is also, as our very being, given by God alone. Truths cannot be wrested and discovered for ourselves, created by our desire for them any more than one might make money grow on trees. Our recognition of truth, as our very sustenance of consciousness, proves but a miracle, a gracious gift from God. Ultimately, Augustine himself presents the answer. He only degenerates into confusions and contradictions when he tries to break this existential truth into digestible parts for intellectual comprehension. Elsewhere he writes, “For what I know of myself I know because you grant me light, and what I do not know of myself, I do not know until such time as my darkness becomes ‘like noonday’ before your face.” (182-3) The knowledge of God comes by revelation; He illuminates the understanding of those who would seek Him. “Where then did I find you to be able to learn of you? You were not already in my memory before I learnt of you. Where then did I find you so that I could learn of you if not in the fact that you transcend me? There is no place, where we go backwards or forwards; there can be no question of place. O truth, everywhere you preside over all who ask counsel of you.” (201) It is not that we know, but that we are known.

How then do we seek Him, how do we enter into this His knowledge of us, and thereby know both ourselves and our God? By the receiving of His revelation through faith that acknowledges to Whom all truth and wisdom belongs. We cannot wait for impossible intellectual comprehension of the presence of God. Only by faith can we access the knowledge of God that abides in the ephemeral present, the place unseen by the mind and accessible only by the pure willing in the immediate moment. Augustine confesses, “I will pass beyond even that power of mind which is called memory, desiring to reach you by the way through which you can be reached, and to be bonded to you by the way in which it is possible to be bonded.” (194) The presence of God, the entrance into fellowship with Him will abide in the pre-intellectualized present moment of ‘now’. Ultimately, true knowledge of God proves not an intellectual cognition or mental comprehension, but an existential knowledge, a personal relation: the connection of being that abides as an miraculous sustained presence, as incomprehensible as the fleeting present moment, yet as sure and sweet as a lover’s touch. Whole, joyous, steadfast knowledge of God emerges through the personal knowledge of love that believes all things and gives all things to the Beloved. “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you.  . . . You were with me, and I was not with you.” (201)