"The brain goes on recording everything. The brain is the physical part. It will go on recording, and your memories cannot be destroyed unless the brain is destroyed. But that is not the problem. The problem is that your consciousness is filled with memories. Your consciousness goes on identifying itself with the brain and the brain is always stirred by your consciousness – and memories go on flooding you.

"When it is said, 'Die to the past,' it means do not be identified with the brain. You can use the brain; then it is just an instrument. When you will need it you will use it. And you will need it. You will have to go back home; you will have to remember where you live – where your house is, what your name is. You can use these memories, but use them, do not be used by them. That is the problem.

"While you are here you need not think about the house where you live in your town, but you go on thinking about it. You need not remember your wife while you are here, but you go on talking with her and she is not here. When you go back home you must recognize that she is your wife, but there is no need to be bothered with her now. She must not come in the mind; the mind must not go on functioning unnecessarily. It must not bring in the past; it must not flood the present with the past.

"The memory remains. It is not being destroyed. Through meditation the mind is not destroyed. You simply start transcending it. It remains a storehouse; you need not live in it. If you live in it then you are mad. You need not live in a storehouse. When you need something, you go into the storehouse, bring that something out and use it. But a storehouse is not a living-room. But you have made it one. Your storehouse of memory has become your living room; you live there. Do not live there, that is the whole meaning. Be in the present and whenever the past is needed use it. But do not allow it to go on continuously overflooding you."