How Does the Mind Consciousness Recall Past Events?

Sometimes when you wake up in the morning and have been awake for a little while, you still do not know where you fell asleep; even after a minute or two you still do not know you are in your own home—this is the mind consciousness blacking out. A major blackout of the mind consciousness occurs after the new five aggregates (pañcaskandha) are born: one is in a daze, knowing nothing, having forgotten everything from past lives; without supernormal powers, one forgets for an entire lifetime. A minor blackout occurs after waking from a coma, 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, the blackout phenomenon appears.

Upon what does the mind consciousness rely to connect with the past? It relies on the manas, its dominant condition (adhipati-pratyaya)—and of course there is also the eighth consciousness, but let us not discuss 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 a state of grogginess, 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 recall, and the mind consciousness then recollects; the content of the recollection is also dharma that the manas has taken as object. The mind consciousness continuously discerns and judges it, and then the memories come forth. In fact, all those dharmas that the mind consciousness recalls are presented by the tathāgatagarbha.