Falling back in yoga proficiency in a new life
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 5 years before Dec 14, 2017
MiBeloved 5 years ago
Inquiry:
Is it correct to assume that if a person had a yogic background in previous life, and reached an advanced stage of the practice then, it stands to reason that this person should not have a psychiatric disorder in the new life, since the yoga process should be transposed into the new life?
MiBeloved's Response:
This argument does not hold up because death of a physical body, and the interim condition in the hereafter, as well as the trauma of taking a new body will usually wipe out any recall the person has of the former practice.
We experience that in old age many persons are separated from their skills and memory when they are diagnosed with dementia. This is direct evidence of the onset of nature’s removal of the person’s most recent history.
For sure some remnant impressions of the practice will be carried over into the new life as instincts but as far as the objective observing self is concerned, that will not recall the past life practice because it will be separated from the subconscious memory of the same.
In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna explained that there was a difference between himself and the limited entities, the jivatmas, where he said that he remembered the past as it was but that the jivatmas do not have the power of such recall. The Supreme Being, Krishna in this case, carries over his sensibilities intact from one circumstance to the next but a limited entity has to perform special austerities to do that even partially.
You can make a simple test to see if you carry over your good sense into other existential situations by just testing yourself in dreams to see if your activities there are always in full conformity with your disciplines on the physical side. Usually we do things in dreams which we would never do on the physical side. We do things in dreams which we would not allow ourselves to commit on the physical side.
This means then that our abilities are reliant on memory access, which is something we do not have full control of. It is the same reason why even if I was master of English or any other language in a former life, I must still attend school all over again in a new life to again learn the said language. I may have a disposition or instinct for the language but still I will have to relearn its syntax.
If one did yoga to an advanced stage, it is likely that one will carry over the instinct for the practice and also the stability of the practice into a new life but that is also depended on certain social and psychological supports.
If I take birth in an environment which is hostile to yoga, or one in which yoga as a practice is unknown, then I will not have any opportunity to practice it. Instead my parents and teachers will guide me as an infant to other systems and that will, to a degree, nullify my yoga instincts.
Apart from this my subconscious memory of my former practice might not be within the reach of my conscious mind anyway. And it is not that I have command of my mind the way the Supreme Being Krishna does. I do not have that.
Alfredo 5 years ago
Thus Jose Perez from Cuba does not return as Piyusha Ghose from Bengal.
Thus every time there is a new birth, the essential being, the Psychic Being, appropriates from the physical, the vital, the mental. Verily almost a new being, for the language that Psychic Being uses in its interaction with Karma is like the zeros and ones the hard drive of the computer has, because the computer to function needs to manifest that as Windows, Word, Excel, to make it intelligible (mental), as well as the hardware (physical), and electricity (vital or prana).
