The Blavatsky Blogger

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Taking Theosophical ideas

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If We Have Lived Before

Why Can’t We Remember it?

Posted 17/2/07

I have often been asked why we are generally unable to remember past lives and have come up with several pointers on the subject.

As far as memory is concerned, a new life gives us a clean slate and an opportunity to learn whatever we have to learn in that life. Memory of a past life would mean bringing a big chunk of the previous personality and learning. A clean slate means that advantages/disadvantages such as wealth, education and rank may be changed and baggage such as family feuds, debt and national identities are left behind.

Memory in terms of recall is actually derived from the mortal part of man i.e. the Lower Manas or Lower Mind principle which is discarded by the reincarnating Ego on physical death. There is therefore strictly speaking nothing to remember with.

In “Why Our Past Lives are Forgotten” Annie Besant says this;

“Our present body and brain have had no share in those far-off happenings; how should memory assert itself through them? Our permanent body, which remains with us throughout the cycle of reincarnation, is the spiritual body; the lower garments fall away and return to their elements ere we can become reincarnated.”

Annie Besant also points out that many events in our current life are forgotten.

“Many people cannot remember learning to read; yet the fact that they can read proves the learning. Incidents of childhood and youth have faded from our memory, yet they have left traces on our character.”

Anmie Besant introduces the concept of events which although lost from active memory leave an imprint on the emotions. She develops this idea in relation to experiences carried forward in subtle form to future lives.

“When a philosophy or a science is quickly grasped and applied, when an art is mastered without study, memory is there in power, though past facts of learning are forgotten; as Plato said, it is reminiscence. When we feel intimate with a stranger on first meeting, memory is there, the spirit's recognition of a friend of ages past; when we shrink back with strong repulsion from another stranger, memory is there, the spirit's recognition of an ancient foe.”

In relation to this please see;

Can you call up learning from a past life?

You probably know more than you think you do

Posted 3/12/06

Suppose being reborn was like waking up the next day with the previous life easily remembered. If you had led a successful life last time, you could use your experience to pick up on it again and repeat the life. Putting large sums of money into a Swiss bank account and remembering the number into the next incarnation would be quite useful.

I believe that some people have been able to replicate the success of a previous life but are not consciously aware that they are doing it.

Why Our Past Lives are Forgotten

By Annie Besant

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The Blavatsky Blogger

Taking Theosophical ideas

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