Theos-Talk Archives (November 2005 Message tt00155)

[ http://www.AnandGholap.net - Online Books on Theosophy ]

“ No question is more often heard when reincarnation is spoken of than: 'If I were here before, why do I not remember it?' A little consideration offacts will answer the question.

First of all, let us note the fact that we forget more of our present livesthan we remember. Many people cannot remember learning to read; yet the fact that they can read proves the learning. Incidents of childhood and youthhave faded from our memory, yet they have left traces on our character. A fall in babyhood is forgotten, yet the victim is none the less a cripple. And this, although we are using the same body in which the forgotten events were experienced.

These events, however, are not wholly lost by us; if a person be thrown into a mesmeric trance, they may be drawn from the depths of memory; they are submerged, not destroyed. Fever patients have been known to use in deliriuma language known in childhood and forgotten in

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maturity. Much of our subconsciousness consists of these submerged experiences, memories thrown into the background but recoverable.

If this be true of experiences encountered in the present body, how much more must it be true of experiences encountered in former bodies, which died and decayed many centuries ago. 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.

The new mental, astral and physical matter in which we are reclothed for a new life on earth receives from the spiritual intelligence, garbed only in the spiritual body, not the experiences of the past, but the qualities, tendencies and capacities which have bee"n made out of those experiences. Our conscience, our instinctive response to emotional and intellectual appeals,our recognition of the force of a logical argument, our assent to fundamental principles of right and wrong, these are the traces of past experience."

Complete book can be read at
http://AnandGholap.net/Riddle_Of_Life-AB.htm