A metaphysical description of memory
plus insights into death and the phenomenon known as the 'life review'
We are our memory. This is perhaps the simplest and most all-encompassing description of what we really are. If we boil down the problem to its essence, we'll struggle to find a better answer than this.
Some might prefer to say we are consciousness rather than memory, but this draws an unnecessary distinction between memory and consciousness. Memory is consciousness over time—and not as some incidental attribute, but because it cannot be any other way. Consciousness is not a series of infinitesimal slices of time, but has a continuous and uninterrupted span—and it is this intrinsic span over time, this continued possession of oneself, which is what memory is.
Perhaps a helpful analogy here is vision. Vision is not just one focal point (this would be an inscrutable one-dimensional point without extension); rather, it has continuous spatial span—namely peripheral vision. Peripheral vision has the same relation to the visual focal point as memory has to present-moment consciousness. It is this vague, subconscious contextual awareness which makes the overall situation intelligible. It imbues existence with a sense of span—spatial (as peripheral vision) and temporal (as memory).
Just as there is no sharp line of division between the area of focus and your peripheral vision, so too is there no sharp line of distinction between the present moment and what came before. Consciousness cannot be just a singular, infinitesimal point. There has to be background, depth and duration, otherwise consciousness doesn’t truly occupy existence, just as an infinitesimal slice does not occupy a space. Memory is the overall mental presence which really anchors us in a sense of reality.
Music is intelligible because we do not hear the present note in isolation, but rather our mind has retained the previous notes, and it thus presents a contrast with the current note. The music is intelligible in view of its continuity with the previous notes. In a sense (I don’t want this to be taken too literally), you could call the present moment the most the most up-to-date memory. It is the vanguard, the not-yet-faded memory, the original impression. The present moment is the most original and unfaded.
The materialist’s plain additive view of memory—i.e. that memory is added—doesn’t make sense. Memory is something that is already known, not something which is added after it has already been experienced. Returning to the music analogy: the passing musical note isn’t added to memory; it remains continuous into the present, it still lingers as the very basis of a continuous experience.
Memory is not some additional faculty on top of consciousness. It is not something you make use of from time to time. It is always with you, imbuing your experience, whether you like it or not. If it were otherwise, you would not recognise things with such immediate and automatic effect. You would instead be naive to everything, and nothing would ever appear strange or unseemly, as this capacity requires being anchored in the precedent of memory at all times which gives contrast and comparison to everything in the present.
Our continued participation in the world, our pushing forth into the next present moment, is the continuous extension of our memory. Present moment consciousness is kind of exerted anticipation. It is the bringing forward of our memory. It is actively trying to recognise, repeat and maintain the world we know. Our consciousness is an engine of expectation, always trying to conform the world to our expected model.
As we grow old, this strain becomes untenable. Our minds become numb from repetition, they stop expecting novelty, and they lose their preoccupation with specificity and details, and we are thus drained of that surplus mental energy which is required for strained discernment. In the end, this characterises the experience of death, whereby we lose the will to extend any further into the next present moment. (A depressed person knows what it means for the next present moment to be a burdensome extension of the mind.)
Eventually, we cannot keep up the charade anymore. It is an unsustainable effort. The mental effort required to keep up with life is unduly forced, even when it comes to recognising people's faces and basic social propriety. In the end, we feel the need to let go—to flow with the natural course of things, to stop resisting this more effortless flow of existence. No longer willing to extend to the next present moment, the lust for life is finally abandoned.
As for what happens after death, let us recall again: you are not merely the present moment. Your existence was not confined to this infinitesimally-thin slice called the present moment. You were the entirety of your consciousness, past and present, all along, an uninterrupted chain of existence. On dying, instead of being the forward-pushing anticipation, you are resigned and fall back into an overall and indifferent impression. A completely resigned and detached image of your life and its unnecessary exertions. This goes some way in characterising the Life Review phenomenon.
The tangled, burdensome-to-recall, overly-specific mental constructions die, because this is not with the flow of reality. The names, the particular details, the specific laws, the redundant mental constructions, even these very words—all of these are regarded as a superfluous strain, something that requires active maintenance and clinging, not fit for eternity. In fact, they make you cringe in retrospect, like remembering the unsustainable try-hard appearances of your youth. (Moral errors in general also fall into this category of burdened experience because all suffering is a strained and inwardly-squeezed consciousness)
In the Life Review (and in life more generally), what is easy to behold is the genuine understanding of the world without need of nouns, symbols, rules, objectified placeholders and other objectified abstractions—in other words, that manner of understanding which wasn’t a burden to recall, but was effortlessly (and thus truly) beheld. It is this which is fit for eternity, like a daydream without interruption.
This overall impression is taken in all at once, a plurality subsisting under one consciousness, in a way that shouldn’t be any more mysterious than being able to see more than just a single point in your vision. Consciousness isn't just one object at a time. It's an entire impression. To really highlight this analogy, one could also argue that each individual photoreceptor in your retina is its own eye, and the entirety of your vision is the unified and combined image of all these miniature eyes (photoreceptors). In any case, our two actual eyes combine in this way.
The review happens from a detached perspective because the scope of consciousness is no longer from the perspective of your body, because this first-person perspective was synonymous with self-preoccupation and striving to continue the erroneous perspective. There are even moments within our lifetime when we can see our life-history in something like a third-person perspective. For example, when we have stopped identifying as some former aspect of ourselves, e.g. our youthful personality, there is a limited sense in which we look at ourselves in third-person.
What most people regard as a loss of memory is physiological exhaustion/incapacity, such that you cannot find the wherewithal to respond, react, move your eyes, navigate, et cetera. This can be seen clearly in old age and people with dementia. ‘Terminal lucidity’ is when, for whatever reason, you are suddenly reengaged with the world, resume specific discernment, and are thus able to bring yourself forward to the present moment again. This phenomenon demonstrates that a physical “loss of memory” can also be understood as just the inability to recall, recollect, and give physical expression or find physical outlet for your memory. It is the physical disinclination or incapacity to bring it forth.
Memory itself, the background of consciousness, isn’t located in a specific material correlate, just as consciousness as a whole isn’t “located” anywhere. You cannot point at someone's consciousness or memory. Consciousness exists in an ontological background which completely and utterly transcends anything which can be pointed at or reduced to in the material world. Consciousness is always the absolute, all-consuming and largest background. Everything about your existence is your own consciousness. That is all you know. Even when pointing at an object, you are pointing out some feature of your consciousness. The memory/consciousness within which you featured is world-transcendent.