We should continue seeing a baby in a new body as a continuation of who they were in the immediate past life, if that baby begins the new life acting in a way which shows that its behavior in the new life is a continuation of that immediate past life. The most common actions usually are for newborn children to continue from the immediately past life but this is not always so because nature may cause shifts whereby a person takes a new body and acts as the continuation of some other previous life of the same person or even act in a way which was none of the past lives of that person, and acts under totally new influences.

Energies are for the most part, consistent from one body to the next, but sometimes during a lifespan a person suddenly changes away from what they were doing, from their behaviors which we term as normal. For instance with the recent spate of killings all over the US by gunmen at schools, and elsewhere, some of the alleged killers, did not exhibit these behaviors to the people who knew them intimately. Some influence expressed itself in the lives of those people and caused the change causing some other memory or instinct, to suddenly burst out of the subconscious into his conscious mind and begin operating the body to the contrary of what was normal for the said people.

A similar thing may happen to a yogi, where he (or she) may take birth without access to his memory of yoga practice before. He will then in the beginning of the life act as the agreeable child of the new parents. But then some years down the road, that same agreeable child might become disagreeable, and may resist the said parents when the memory package from the past life arises in the mind and this child becomes disinclined from materialistic ambitions. We can just imagine how shocking and upsetting this would be to the parents involved. People will; then say, He changed, maybe he is on drugs, maybe he is in a gang, maybe he should be exorcized or deprogrammed.

There is a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which supports this kind of sudden change in the new life of a person who was a yogi in the past life but who in the beginning of the current life did not interest in yoga, and who suddenly becomes motivated for it with no rhyme or reason as the cause of the interest.

pūrvābhyāsena = pūrva — previous + abhyāsena — by practice; tenaiva = tena — by it + eva — indeed; hriyate — he is motivated; hy (hi) — indeed; avaśo = avaśaḥ — without conscious desire; 'pi = api — even; saḥ — he; jijñāsuḥ — persistently inquiring; api — even; yogasya — of yoga; śabdabrahmātivartate = śabda – spoken description + brahma — spiritual reality + ativartate — instinctively sees beyond (śabdabrahma – Vedas)

Indeed, by previous practice, he is motivated, even without conscious desire. He who persistently inquires of yoga, instinctively sees beyond the Veda, the spoken description of the spiritual reality. (Bhagavad Gita 6.44)

Another thing which may happen is that as yogi might suddenly meet someone whose presence in his or her life could cause drastic changes for the better or worse. That is like when a planet was peacefully orbiting around a sun for millions of years and then sudden a comet appears out of nowhere and smashes into it.

Where did it come from?

Who caused it to be there?

These things are inconceivable in a way.

I know in my life there were times when I met someone somewhere whom I had relationship with in some way or the other in a past life, and then I could or could not avoid the energy-influence from that encounter. There might be abrupt influences coming into a person’s life which either ruins it or causes more good luck as the case may be.

The person in question, Winehouse, did continue from the immediate past life when she was in the upper class in the UK and got recognition and admiration from people but when she took the new body from non-upper class parents, she was deprived of that recognition and went overboard because of not being able to get it except by musical performances which led to her development of suicidal habits. In this way we can see an example of how a good life in one lifetime, could become our undoing in the next life time if we are not afforded such a good life again, and how people would not recognize our higher social status from the past life because its format was no longer supported by fate.