Why don’t people remember past lives in other species?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. So why don’t people remember their past lives from previous bodies? First of all we can look at the question why don’t they remember why don’t most of us remember our past lives also? See basically each lifetime is an opportunity for the soul to make a new beginning and for that purpose the soul is given the memories, the recollections that are necessary for living in this world. Every action if we start doing you know, if say I am talking with you and while talking with you I ask you to remember Mayavad is someone whose face is reflected.
My eyes get distracted. Now if I had met someone like you and if we have all gone through say hundreds of lifetimes and all those memories start coming to us at all moments we just go crazy. We are cognitive overload for our brains.
So basically from a practical functioning perspective we are given the memories that are necessary for us to function in this life. Also death and even birth they are not very pleasant experiences. They are traumatic and it is a psychological defense mechanism that over a period of time we forget painful memories.
Initially those painful memories stay very they haunt us a lot but over a period of time we just need to push them aside and so nature helps us in pushing aside the past life memories and more importantly our memories are also largely triggered by circumstances. That means if you had lived in a childhood in a particular place now how much will you remember about that place? Maybe a few things. But if you go back to that place then you will remember a lot.
But usually when we are reborn we are reborn in a different body and a different place. So because our circumstances are different because of that most of our thoughts and emotions are associated with the present circumstances and that’s why the recollection of the previous life is very less. So usually the children who remember their past life have something else going on also.
They have some birth marks they have some odd behaviors and while these particular children remember their past lives it is just some peculiar combination of karma. Now it’s just like in this life we all have different memory capacities. Some people have outstanding memories.
They meet one person out of 10 years also they remember they didn’t identify the person and some people have outstandingly poor memories. They meet a person and talk with him for 2 minutes and at the start they hear the name of the person after 2 minutes what’s the name of this person? So what happens is we all have different memory capacities and why is that? It’s karma. Just as some of us have very good looks some of us not so good looks that’s because of past karma.
Our memory capacity is also because of past karma. Now similarly by some peculiar karma some souls may remember their past lives. Now I use the word peculiar karma because it’s not always pleasant.
We may think it’s sensational. If I could remember my past life it would be so exciting. I’d go and meet those people and talk with them but actually for the children who go through it they often have an identity crisis.
Who am I? Whose child am I? What am I actually? So for this purpose it’s important that in general we understand the rationale for forgetting. In exceptions there may be remembrance but although the soul can go from one body to another body one species to another species also but the transition the transition in consciousness is enormous and that transition requires a wipe out of the memories. Say for example the soul was in a hog’s body and from there say the soul has come to human body.
Now the hog finds human excreta irresistible. It rushes toward it. Humans find that same object intolerable.
Now it’s complete not just difference it’s opposite perception. So for such radically opposite perceptions to happen there has to be almost thorough memory blackout. So that’s why in general the soul goes from one species to another species there is so much difference in consciousness that a memory blackout is required.
That’s why the soul won’t remember lives in previous life when they were in different species.