Can children be trained to remember their past lives?
Thank you. Hare Krishna. So, can children be trained to remember their past lives? Actually, for us, remembering past lives, some children remembering past lives seems like an intriguing story.
But for those who go through it, it is not usually a very pleasant thing. Because it's quite traumatic. It's disorienting for the parents.
And especially the parents don't believe in reincarnation. It can be quite challenging for their current beliefs. And in India, there is also the notion that if a child is remembering the past life, then that means that the child is not integrated into this body.
They accept reincarnation and they know that we all have been in somebody in the past. But if the child is remembering the past life, that means the child is not integrated into this body. And that indicates, this is the belief in India that, especially in rural India, that this child will not live for long.
Because the child is not integrated into the body. And that's why the parents approve, even believers, those who believe in reincarnation, those parents, they strongly discourage the child from remembering the past lives. So, in general, it's not a very pleasant thing.
Although for us, it might seem very fascinating. And, see, a new life for a soul is an opportunity to begin a new chapter in its spiritual evolution. And to the extent the soul begins with as less baggage from its previous life, the soul can move forward more expeditiously.
And that's one reason why most people don't remember their past lives. Because for the purpose of spiritual evolution, for beginning a new chapter in our life, we need to integrate reasonably well with the identity that we have right now. So that we can function in this life.
That's why certainly there's potential for research based on whatever memories are available. But when it comes to training people, training children to remember their past lives, it becomes a very, very unreliable field. Because once you start out, there is a whole field of hypnotic regression.
So, hypnosis means basically the hypnotizer gains control over the hypnotized person's mind. And it's a skill. Anybody can learn that skill.
If they're adept enough, they can actually control another person's mind. But the idea in hypnotic regression is you tell the person who's hypnotized, remember when you're 10 years old, remember when you're 5 years old, remember what you're doing when you're 1 year old, remember what you're doing when you're 6 months old, remember what you're doing when you're in your mother's womb, remember what you're doing before that. And like that you take the person back, back, back.
And still the people often give quite vivid accounts, gripping accounts of what happened to them in the previous life. The problem with the hypnotic regression is it's very difficult to discern between what is a genuine recollection and what is a plaintive suggestion. So, the hypnotic regressor may say, okay, so this person has hydrophobia.
Do you remember having an accident in which you fell in water? Now, this could be a prompt for a recollection, or this could also act as a suggestion for imagination. So, how do you separate that? That's why whenever we talk about triggered memories, not spontaneous memories, but memories that are triggered through hypnotic regression, their authenticity is questionable. There are researchers like Brian Weiss, who's done a lot of research in past life memories, and he has actually cured a lot of people also of issues.
People who have hydrophobia, people who have different kinds of phobias, by taking them to hypnotic regression in previous lives, he has cured many people. But the cure still does not prove the reality of the previous life memories. It could just be simply things happening at the level of the mind and the body.
There may be nothing at the level of the soul. So, rather than trying to train children to remember the past lives, because training, as I said, would lead to the accusation, the charge that these are plaintive suggestions, not genuine recollections, it's better to be more vigilant and try to document spontaneous past life memories more accurately, more promptly. The challenge in past life research is that, for documentation is that, the parents, when they describe a case also, the case becomes well known, especially the child makes accurate recognitions.
And those accurate recognitions happen when this life family and the previous life family meet together. But if the meeting has already happened, then the whole thing can be subjected to the charge of exaggeration, because these families colluded together. So, it's like a catch-22 situation.
If the case is not well known enough, then the past life researchers don't come to know about the case. And the case becomes well known only after the two families have met. And then by that time, it's too late for the researchers to make a foolproof case.
It's a little difficult. But still there are researchers who have been prompt enough and have been there in the case before the meeting occurred. So, I'd say that documenting the evidence better, prompter for spontaneous past life memories, is the way to go forward for providing more empirical evidence for the reality of reincarnation.
Thank you. Shall we stop here? So, thank you very much for your thoughtful questions.