Rupert Sheldrake observes in criticizing the widely accepted but unproven hypothesis there are memory traces in the brain aiding memory retrieval, that the memory trace must have a memory itself to know what to look for. How does consciousness know where to look, to retrieve relevant memories?

This is indeed exhibition of a kind of resonance, that the intention to find something or connect to something that would be useful in the moment, as one is thinking about a situation or issue, that intention will be taken up by nonlocal consciousness with the power to locate, much like a kind of resonance, that which has a similar vibration making it relevant because there is some kind of connection to an issue at hand. So memories of prior events as well as future occurrences that have a relevant connection to a thought in the moment can be tapped, and potentially retrieved, at least by the deep subconscious mind if not reaching the conscious level for reflection. In the hierarchy of things, the intention within conscious awareness, to summon useful information about an issue, will first go to local repositories connected to the individual and its stored memories, and then to a wider arena like the collective unconscious and a survey of the akashic records. So to what extent the search is carried out, and to what extent it can be perceived at all by the conscious level of the mind, will depend on many variables and the complexities of the levels of the mind as we have discussed previously.