I like to listen to music while I work. Classical music. Instrumental, as the human voice distracts me. Mozart and Beethoven and Schuman and Bach. Never in any particular order, so that I never know what I’m going to choose, and it is always a pleasure to recover a masterpiece forgotten for years. It was years actually since I had last listened to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D. I remember having heard Jehudi Menuhin play it in the Madrid Royal Theatre in one of those performances one never forgets. Menuhin said on that occasion that, although the concerto is not difficult for the violinist, he waited long in his professional life to approach it, as it requires great artistic maturity. I have it now by me in Arthur Grumiaux’s version conducted by Colin Davis. It was so long since I had listened to it that I had forgotten how it began. I did remember the last movement with what has been called “one of the most joyful themes of all times”, but however much I tried I could not recall the opening bars of the concerto. It just escaped my memory.

Then a strange thing happened. I took the cover, took out the CD, was going to insert it in the player, and before I could slide it inside, before closing the lid and pressing the button and hearing a single note, while the record was still in my hands and I was reading the printed information on it… I suddenly heard in my mind’s ear its opening bars strong and clear. The four strokes of the kettledrum with which the score opens. And from there on to the whole melody in all its arresting beauty. What had happened?

Something quite simple had happened. Memory is not only a matter of the ear. It is not only intellectual memory, mental memory. There is such a thing as a sense memory too. Eyes and hands and skin and body. Bodily memory. My hands were touching the record, my eyes were scanning it, my body was sensing it, and the first notes of the forgotten concerto sounded at once within my mind. There was no need to hear a note or to read a score, no need to wait for the record to be inserted, to spin, to sound, no need for the orchestra to play and the violin to follow. The CD was silent, waiting in my hands, and yet the melody was already in the air and the performance had begun.

This is important. Memory is not a purely mental activity, but also a bodily one. Every remembrance is inscribed in our body. To be watched if it is harmful, and to be cherished if it is helpful. As the violin concerto. Let it come into my body again. F-G-A-B-C-DDD-A…

As though this were not enough, here comes another recent experience. I’ve just been to Malaga, in the south of Spain, and visited the Banús Harbour which I had known about forty years ago when it was only a small fishermen’s harbour, while now it is a very large concern full of the most modern ships and buildings. In the old days we had taken a beer in a small café whose name I now wanted to remember as we approached the place, but it didn’t come to mind. When we reached the place, the café was not there any more, neither was its name anywhere, but then it suddenly sprang to my memory. El Chiringuito de El Beni”. That was it. My feet did remember it. Uncanny.
Funnier still. I went to a German school as a child but left it when I was ten years old and never practiced the language again. In spring we used to sing a song to the month of May… which I had not sung again since those days at school. And that is now more than seventy years ago. Well then, the other day, May the  1st, I went for my morning constitutional, I greeted the beautiful spring day that was expecting me outdoors, I saw trees in full flower all around me…, and suddenly, without any thought or intention, I found I was quietly singing to myself the German spring song of my tender days:

Der Mai ist gekommen,
Die Bäume shlagen aus.

“May has arrived! All trees are in bloom!” And so on verse by verse as though I had learned them yesterday. My memory was keeping them safe. And it brought them out when it wanted. Everything waits in our subconscious. Just as well the flowers of the month of May are also there.

Swami Ramdas was one of the best known and loved Hindu saints in the last century, who roamed India from South to North singing the name of God and cheering people up with his smile, his teachings, his constant recitation of the name of God. Here are a couple of his experiences. He always spoke of himself in the third person, as St Ignatius did in his diary, so that when he says “Ramdas said…” he  means “I said”.

“Ramdas had been several days in the temple preaching and distributing to children the food and sweets people brought to him when two Muslim policemen appeared in the temple, pushed the crowd aside and face Ramdas and his companion. One of them took out pencil and paper and asked in a hostile tone:
- Are you the sadhus? Give me your address. We are in a hurry.
- Ramdas’s address is this temple where we are now.
- Place of birth?
- The universe.
- Don’t come to me with nonsense or you’ll end up in jail. Occupation?
- Praising God.
- What is that?
- Oh God, how wonderful are your ways! Sometimes you appear to us with a smile and sometimes with a stern face, but you are the same. The mother sometimes kisses and sometimes scolds her child, but she is always the same. Today you have sent to us someone to threaten us, but that is your same self as when you appear in those who come to listen to us. You are the devotee who comes with their offerings, and you are the policeman who comes with their threats. How wise you are in disguising yourself in such different ways! And what about jail? The only thing that matters for Ramdas is the repetition of God’s name, Rama, Rama, Rama, and that can be done in jail just as well as in the temple. Come, take us wherever you want.

The policeman listened patiently. Ramdas was as peaceful and cheerful as ever. Suddenly the policeman’s face changed. He became pale and lowered his eyes. Then he joined his hands before his breast, which he had not done before in greeting, and said:

- Sorry, sir, and I apologise for my language. I had come with orders to take you to jail, but I’m old at this job and I can see that you have nothing to do with jail. Your very face is saying you are a man of God. Your smile is disarming. I have behaved in a rude way before you and I ask forgiveness.

He put paper and pencil back in his pocket and turned to leave with his companion. Before they left Ramdas gave then sweets from the prasad he was distributing. Ramdas later came to know that first two Hindu policemen had been sent to arrest him but the pious crowd had convinced them to let him alone, and subsequently two Muslim policemen were sent to do the job, but they equally left Ramdas in peace.

- - -

One morning Ramdas found Durgadas and Gopalrao sitting under the shade of a tree in the garden, examining some precious stones Gopalrao had bought. He had in his hands a big transparent opal and was quoting its value. He showed it to Ramdas and said: “See what a beautiful stone. I’ve paid a big sum for it but it is worth it, isn’t it?”

Ramdas bent, took an ordinary stone from the ground, and told them: “Do you see this stone? Is it not a wonderful, surprising, exceptional work of art? The whole power of creation, the whole beauty of the arts, the whole majesty of the mountain is in it. Keep this also in your collection.” And he handed Gopalrao the stone.