Pelman Day FIVE: Memory and Mental Efficiency

Impression, Retention, Recollection

There are three stages to memory— impression, retention and recollection, and if any one of these three factors is impaired, the memory is in a corresponding degree defective. We’ve been talking a lot about memory but since it forms a groundwork upon which much of your future success will be built, we have to really grasp how important it is. So let’s look at the three components:

• Impressions are of two kinds; those coming to the mind from outside; and those arising within the mind itself, such as thought and of imagination. The more you consider an idea that originates in your mind, it is good exercise to trace the train of thought that led up to it. Ask yourself: “Why did that idea occur to me? How did it come?”
• Retention is physiological, and beyond your control. Whenr a vivid impression is made, permanent retention is practically assured. Of course, if no impression has been made upon the brain, no impression can be retained. When people say they have “forgotten,” they frequently suppose that their retentive power has broken down. The failure, however, is not in the retentive power, but in the third stage, which is the power of recollection.
• Recollection is the name given to the revival of an impression made upon the brain and retained by it. Frequently recollection is spoken of as if it were synonymous with “memory,”   but in reality recollection is only the third and final stage of the complete process. Facility in recollection depends primarily upon the intensity of the first impression. Secondly, it depends upon certain principles of association which will be explained in a later lesson.

So far we’ve been dealing with what is essentially a map of the whole course.  These sections are just building blocks. Only by a realization of yourself can you attain success.

Remember

1. Don’t admit you are too old. Mental age is a matter of training.

2. Don’t expect to become mentally efficient by means of one lesson. There is some work ahead of you.

3. Don’t skip sections.

4. You may not see immediately how each lesson can be psycho-synthetic, but you will realize it later. Go through the sections so far, for instance, and try to discover any mental power that has been neglected by you.

5. Emphasize the personal element. Tell yourself that the Pelman system has a message for you; also a discipline, an illumination, and a deliverance from error.

6. “I have a future with promise in it.” Turn that phrase over in your mind. It is true enough, for most people at any rate, but we want you to feel it.