How Does Consciousness Recall Past Events?

Sometimes when you wake up briefly in the morning, you don't yet know where you fell asleep; even after a minute or two you still don't know you are in your own home — this is the mind consciousness having a lapse. A major lapse of the mind consciousness occurs after the new five aggregates (pañca-skandha) are born: one is in a state of bewilderment and ignorance, having forgotten everything from past lives; without supernormal powers, one forgets for an entire lifetime. A minor lapse occurs after waking from unconsciousness, after sobering up from drunkenness, after waking from sleep, and at the moment the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava) arises after death — whenever the mind consciousness does not arise continuously, a lapse will occur.

Upon what does the mind consciousness rely to connect with the past? It relies on its coexistent basis, the manas, and of course also on the eighth consciousness, but let us not speak of that for now. When the mind consciousness first appears, it strives to recall the past; all thoughts are given to it by the manas. In that dazed, half-awake state, it can only discern the immediate sense objects and does not know anything from before it woke up. The manas prompts the mind consciousness to think and to remember, and the mind consciousness then recollects; the content of that recollection is also dharma brought into contact by the manas. The mind consciousness continuously discerns and judges it, and then the memories come forth. In fact, all those dharmas that the mind consciousness recollects are presented by the tathāgatagarbha.