The Deep Floors

The iron in your blood was made inside a star. That star burned for billions of years, then fell in on itself and blew apart, and scattered its iron through space long before there was any earth. The water in your body has been rain and river and ocean many times over. You are very old. You are older than anything you remember.

The yogis of India teach that memory in a human being lies in eight layers. It helps to picture a building of eight floors, the lowest set deep in the ground. The first four floors we share with all people, and in some measure with all that lives. We did not choose them. Our will had no part in them. So they are not our fault, and they are not our achievement. We were born with them as we were born with hands.

Each of the four answers a different question.

The first is the memory of the elements. It answers the question: what kind of stuff am I made of? The old teachers counted five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. These are not five chemicals. They are five ways that matter behaves. Earth is what is solid and holds its shape, like bone. Water is what flows and binds, like blood. Fire is what burns and turns one thing into another, like digestion. Air is what moves, like breath. Space is the room in which the rest can happen. Each keeps its own habits inside us. The water in us still wants to flow. The heat in us still wants to rise. This memory is not the record of any event. It is the nature of the material.

The second is the memory of the atoms. It answers another question: how old is the stuff I am made of, and where has it been? The elements tell what kind of matter we are. The atoms tell the history of that matter. The atoms in your body are billions of years old. They have passed through stars and stones and seas and trees before they passed through you, and they will pass on after. Elemental memory is about nature. Atomic memory is about history.

The third is the memory of the creatures who came before. It answers the question: why do I have a human body, shaped the way it is? This memory belongs to the whole human race, and much of it to all animals. When you are cold or frightened the skin rises in goosebumps. That is the body trying to lift a coat of fur it no longer has. A walker leaps back from a curved stick on the path before the mind has named it. Something older than the mind has seen a snake. Every person carries this memory, whatever family they come from.

The fourth is the memory of the family line. It answers the narrowest question of the four: why this particular body? Why your grandfather's laugh, your mother's long fingers, your uncle's bad knees? Evolutionary memory makes you a human being. Genetic memory makes you a member of your own family. The genes are a letter handed down from parent to child. Scientists are now learning that some of what a grandparent lived through, a long famine for instance, may leave marks on the children who come after. That work is young, and they are still finding out how far it goes.

Side by side, the four floors narrow as they rise:

• Elemental memory: the nature of the matter you are made of. Shared with everything.
• Atomic memory: the long history of that matter. Shared with everything.
• Evolutionary memory: the shape of a human body. Shared with all people, and in part with all animals.
• Genetic memory: the features of your own family. Shared with your kin.

None of the four was chosen by anyone. That is why they are called collective karma.

The Gurus knew that we are made of the world. At the close of Japji Sahib, Guru Nanak calls the elements our family.

Japji Sahib, closing salok

Bhagat Pipa said the same thing from the other side.

Bhagat Pipa, Raag Dhanasari, Ang 695

And Guru Arjan wrote to the soul about the long line of creatures it has been.

Guru Arjan, Raag Gauri, Ang 176

The last line is the one to keep. After a very long time, this body was put together. The elements, the atoms, the long procession of animals, the family line: all of it came together to make one human body. And the Guru says it was made for a single purpose. This is the time to meet.

There is one caution. The fourth memory gives us our faces. It does not give us our worth. The Gurus would not let any person be ranked by the family or the caste into which they were born. Guru Nanak wrote:

Guru Nanak, Asa Patti, Ang 432

The same stars. The same water. The same One in every living thing. That is what the deep floors teach.