Many times, people ask: why is it that we don’t remember our previous lives? When we say that we have a spirit and have taken many births, we could have been something in a previous birth, and in the future, we will take birth and be something else. Quite often, the question that comes up is: why don’t we remember the previous birth?
Srila Prabhupada used to answer these kind of questionsvery nicely. He would ask, “What did you have for breakfast one week ago?” It’s hard to remember such details from just one week ago—where was I, what did I eat? Our memory fails, so we cannot remember.
That is how this body, the mind and the intelligence system are designed. We can have memory to some extent, but by and large, we dispense with things, take them out of our memory and forget them.That is because this body has a certain purpose. The body that we have, the life we are going through and the world that we are in—all of this has a certain significance. And it is designed so that we forget these things. Actually, when people ask, “Why don’t I remember my previous life?” they are not really understanding the significance and the gravity of that question.
I remember—I think I have shared this story before. Sometime in the 1980s, it appeared in the newspaper, and I used to have the cutting. Perhaps I still have it—a newspaper clipping of an article about a woman from somewhere in Maharashtra. She was a middle-class, middle-aged woman, working as a lawyer, with children, a husband and so on. Suddenly, at some point in her life, she started speaking incoherently—some gibberish—and then she would speak normally again. Gradually, they realised that she was speaking a language she had never learned in this life. She sometimes couldn’t perform normal tasks. She couldn’t cook at home, take care of the family or do her job. She was taken to a doctor and started receiving treatment. At some point, she underwent hypnotic and psychiatric therapy.
Then she started revealing things that appeared to be from a previous life. After that, they tried to cure her, but in her daily life—once every few days, a few times a week, or sometimes even a few times a day—there would be periods when she would switch off from this life and switch on to her previous life, acting like a previous-life personality. Her family members were left wondering what was happening. She spoke another language, identifying with something else. Sometimes, she would return to her normal self. Eventually, she was unable to continue her profession or lead a normal life. She was always under treatment and so on.
You see, when we ask, “Why don’t I remember my previous life?” We often think it is simply a matter of memory recollection. But it is much more than that. It is the recollection of a previous personality, a previous set of circumstances. It is not just recollection; it is an attempt to live the previous life. That life was a complete personality, with its own situations, realities, relationships and circumstances. Bringing all of that into this life creates a clash.
Just remembering one life is difficult—imagine we have had thousands and thousands of lives. If we were to recall all those lives, it would simply be an information overload on this system and we would go crazy. So the Lord mercifully switches off all those memories, keeps the essential things and ensures that if we have any deep desires, Krishna (God) will remind us at the right time. He gives us a new body and tells us to start afresh.