Anamnesis

ANAMNESIS is the opposite of AMNESIA. In other words, the recovery of the forgotten.

Anagrammatically, ANAMNESIS = AS ENMAN IS

As to its Neoplatonic background, WIKIPEDIA says:

The idea of psychic memory was used by Neoplatonists to demonstrate the celestial and immaterial origins of the soul, and to explain how memories of the world-soul could be recalled by everyday human beings. As such, psychic recollection was intrinsically connected to the Platonic conception of the soul itself. Since the contents of individual "material" or physical memories were trivial, only the universal recollection of Forms, or divine objects, drew one closer to the immortal source of being.

Anamnesis is the closest that human minds can come to experiencing the freedom of the soul prior to its being encumbered by matter. The process of incarnation is described in Neoplatonism as a shock that causes the soul to forget its experiences (and often its divine origins as well).

At the time of my discovery that anamnesis is "as I am," I plugged the search terms COSMO STONE ANAMNESIS into Google, and right on top got a reprint of  a 1978 essay by Philip K. Dick called "Cosmogony and Cosmology." Appropriately enough, this is an essay I have at home and had read a few years ago but forgotten about. Here Dick is discussing Renaissance memory magus Giordano Bruno, who called himself "an awakener of sleeping souls." He begins by quoting from the Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

ART OF MEMORY. The side of Bruno's work which he regarded as the most important was the intensive training of the imagination in his occult arts of memory. In this he was continuing a Renaissance tradition which also had its roots in the Hermetic revival, for the religious experience of the Hermetic gnostic consisted in reflecting the universe within his own mind or memory. The Hermeticist believed himself capable of this achievement because he believed that man's [mind] is in itself divine and therefore able to reflect the divine mind behind the universe. In Bruno, the cultivation of world-reflecting magic memory becomes the technique for achieving the personality of a magus, and of one who believes himself to be the leader of a religious movement [p. 407].

Dick then adds his own, less Neoplatonic, more science-fictioney take on this:

The kind of memory that Bruno was cultivating – and teaching techniques by which to restore this memory – is the long-term DNA gene pool memory that spans many lifetimes. The retrieval of this long-term memory is called anamnesis, which literally means the loss of forgetfulness. It is only by means of anamnesis, then, that memory truly capable of "reflecting the divine mind behind the universe" is brought into being. Therefore, if the human being is to fulfill his task...he must experience anamnesis.

Anamnesis is achieved when certain inhibited neural circuits in the human brain are disinhibited. The individual cannot achieve this himself; the disinhibiting stimulus is external to him and must be presented to him, whereupon a process in his brain is set into motion by which he eventually will be capable of fulfilling his task.

Just for the record, I much prefer Bruno's methods, and even, if you will, his madness. His methods, in fact, turn out to be much like mine. Remembrance of Things Past, indeed.

And it makes me wonder: When I was introduced to Stanza and Cosmo, was I really meeting them for the first time?

Only Bruno knows for sure....