THE RED INDIANS There is a widespread belief in reincarnation among the native American tribes. The Dakota tribe taught that man reincarnates and in between those lives, he lives with the gods and receives instruction in magic and healing. Many of the Indian medicine men claimed to remember past lives.
Bg 15.8 - The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas. Thus he takes one kind of body and again quits it to take another. Bg 15.9 - The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, eye, tongue, nose and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects. The Vedic text ÇrémadBhägavatam traces the reincarnation case of King Bharat in three lives—as a king, deer, and again a human. (Canto 5, Ch. 8)
WHY DON’T WE REMEMBER PAST LIVES? Life is tough enough dealing with hurt incurred this time around. Remembering all the trauma and grievances associated with past lives—and deaths—would paralyze us with fear and phobias. Nor would we establish relationships with those with whom we have karmic issues and lessons. Without contributing to enhance the quality of our present life, the haunting past will only complicate our every day choices, actions and create volatile opinions. Mercifully, God spares us the pain.
HINDUISM Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism—all accept reincarnation. Reincarnation is also there in Pharoaonic Egypt, polytheistic Greece, Rome as well as in Taoism and Zorastrianism. The main scripture of Hindus, the Bhagavad-gétä discusses reincarnation in great detail (2.13-30). It USE OF BELIEF IN proposes that the basis of consciousREINCARNATION AND leading a life based on it offers perness is not the brain or some other KARMA sonal growth and solution to maorgan in the body, but a spiritual A belief in reincarnation and jor sociolo-political problems of the spark called the soul. The world. soul does not die when the Reincarnation means body dies, but moves into that we can change species, another body, human, race, religion, gender, and plant, or animal or one of religious affiliation from the 84, 00,000 species of lifetime to lifetime. Once life. The soul moves into people realize that religious, the next body along with ethnic, and national affiliathe mind. The mind carries tion constitutes a temporary the impressions from previbelief system, that one can ous bodies and acts as a tembe a Hindu in one lifetime plate around which our and a Muslim or Pakistani in bones and tissues and the another, then conflicts new physical body develbased on these affiliations ops. When the impressions will be seen as self-defeatfrom the past life are very ing. There would be less instrong on the mind, it incentive to fight. If Germans fluences the new physical knew that a person could be body to grow with characborn Jew in one lifetime and teristic facial features, birth Christian in another, then marks or defects as in the the Holocaust causing murcase of Lilliput, mentioned der of six million Jews could at the beginning of the arnever have happened. ticle. When we know that reIn Chapter 15 of incarnation and karma are Bhagavad-gétä, this is de- Three lives of King Bharat as mentioned in Çrémad- real, then we will accept reBhägavatam: as a king, deer, and again a human. scribed as follows: sponsibility for our actions,
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