Human Brain- II, Pujya Gurudev

Human Brain: A Marvellously Rich Storehouse of Memory-II

= Pt. ShriRam Sharma

It was before the French Revolution that an innocent person was proved as guilty in a court. Renowned attorney Louis Bernard came forward to defend his case as per the request of some well-wishers. Although the court had ordered death sentence to the accused, Bernard appealed for a stay of five days on the grounds that the King, the ultimate appellate authority was out of town. However the court showed inability in staying the hearing any more. Then Bernard continued his defensive arguments for 5 days and 5 nights marshaling and citing his stupendous knowledge of law and justice across the world. 

His rigorous defense would have continued even longer, had the King not arrived by then! The latter too heard the case and granted mercy to Bernard's client on the basis of his Bernard's excellent defense. Lord Macaulay had an exceptionally sharp memory. This erudite scholar of the 19th century had written the history of Britain in eighty volumes without opening any reference book for this purpose. 

He used to remember all the references, dates and venues of the events and the names of the people associated with those events since the day he met them or heard or read about them. Map of any place ever visited by him, names and addresses of the people whom he had interacted with at least once, information or knowledge of any kind ever required by him, were so easily recalled by him as if he had crammed them by heart a short while ago. People used to call him a 'moving library'. Richard Porson was a nineteenth century classical scholar of Greek. He knew by heart all the books written in this language till his times and all the plays of Shakespeare. Mr. Richard Garnet, a one time assistant superintendent of the British museum had become the chairman of the publication section of another museum for about twelve years. 

The catalogue and locations of the books were so perfectly stored in his memory that without lifting himself up from the chair, he used to tell the exact location of the book asked for from the library's stock. Moreover, he was even able to give an oral report on the contents of the text inside the books. The "Guinness Book of World Record -1981" had published the records of exceptional memory in arithmetic. 

The record of recalling a number of 28013 digits in 9 hours 14 minutes was broken that year by Mahadevan, a Banglore based student, who could recall and write the numbers up to 31811 digits in 3 hours and 40 minutes only. Shankuntala Devi of South India had also gained global recognition in the 1970s and early 80s for her amazing ease with arithmetic operations that could beat even the fastest computers of that time. Alaibda Baghdad was a great writer. Despite losing his eyesight, he had completed the thirt-two volumes of his treatise on Arabic just with the help of his exceptional memory. Renowned French philosopher August Comte (1790-1857) used to thoroughly assimilate his thoughts in his memory before expressing them orally or in writing. So marvellous was his memory that he did not have to refer to any books, notes or other sources, in order to complete his 6 volumes (running into 4,712 pages) of "Positive Philosophy" during 1830 to 1842. So fluent was his writing as though a pre-recorded cassette was fixed in his brain.
Distinguished psychologist Prof. Bartlett suggests that deep interest in the subject matter of importance, its thorough study and pondering over the benefits of retaining it in the memory help its vivid storage in the long-term memory. 

The above examples seem to affirm such possibilities. Savants like Galesburg find oral or written repetition also as a supportive tool in this regard. They consider the ancient system of cramming by heart as quite efficient. Prof. Eveguards adds that it will be easier and faster to memorize and recall something if its key points are also attempted to be visualized or imagined and its meaning or implications are also considered while reading, listening or studying it. Some people seem to have naturally built-in mechanism of such optimal links to memory. A courtier named "Shrutidhar" of King Bhoj of Medieval India had made place in history because he was able to recall and reproduce, without any error, any subject matter or verbal discussion in any language heard by him for 24 minutes or lesser duration at a single stretch of time. Swami Ramtirath was revered for his exceptional mathematical skills and memory. In one peculiar incident, when he was going to America, two British men travelling in the same ship fought with each other one day. Swamiji was also siting nearby. The dispute led to a court case where Swamiji was also asked to despose as an eyewitness. He said - "I do not know who is guilty but I can narrate the entire discussion exchange of words between the two fellows". 

He indeed did that in the same language in which the duo had quarreled and thus helped in arriving at a fair judgment. General Stumptas, former Field Marshal of South Africa had also developed extraordinarily sharp memory. He used to remember the location of every book kept in his town library. Contents page by page, word by word of each of the books ever read by him were known to him by heart. ( Countinue)

Thanks GOD, Thanks Sadguru,

Shiv Sharma