[vinceguidry]

I have a lot of meditation experience, and deep trance states are also extremely hard to hold on to. Meditating on the phenomena has revealed that it's a combination of unfamiliarity with the subject matter along with the sheer complexity of the experience that leads to inability to remember all the details.

People also tend to forget that ordinary life is crazy complicated in its own right. We don't have trouble remembering it because our brains have tuned itself to compress and operate on those kinds of experiences symbolically.

But since we don't have appropriate symbolic representation for 'deep experience' it gets shoved out of mind before we can form memories.

[mistermann]

> But since we don't have appropriate symbolic representation, our (or, most people's at least) mind is literally unable to store the experience.

This is my armchair theory on it. I imagine someone smarter than I has speculated on it, but I've yet to encounter anything on the subject.

I'd also like to read anything on comparisons of the two from people who are experienced in both, although I suspect interactions between the two may skew things a bit.