One Lifetime Only
The convention is that we consider everything in terms of this one lifetime. Like in Christianity where it is given unto human beings to live once and then die:
“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27)
What a statement!
Poor dude ~ a one-time chance to get it right or he (she) is finished.
This one lifetime philosophy is perhaps the most native sentiment any creature would have, once it exited its mother’s uterus. If we could miraculously get a fawn to speak, it would explain that it just arrived here and will live until something terrible happens, like being attacked by that fox who killed and ate another of its kind.
It is a given in nature, that once a creature is born, it is its material body and nothing else. When we read books like Bhagavad Gita, we get the idea that maybe, just maybe, there were other lifetimes, this being only one in many. There is this idea that one will persist as a person into the future in numerous other bodies. This challenges the Christian view that one will only live for this lifetime after which there will be hell to pay if one did not accept Jesus Christ.
The truth is however that the Christian idea is the convention of most human beings in terms of what they remember as themselves. Very few human beings will say that they have coherent memory of any past life. Some who use psycho-active herbs or chemical, claim to experience past lives when they were under the influence. Some who enter trance states make similar claims. Some who were in accidents and had a concussion also make similar claims. But hardly a man or woman can honest say that there is coherent memory of any lifetime except this one. Hence the Christian proposal is not farfetched. It is based on the memory reach of the human mind.
But if the Bhagavad Gita is true, and if then there are many lives, the convention is terribly flawed. From birth we were endowed with a lack of insight.
This is perplexing!
Nearly every one of our calculations in social dealings is based on this Christian idea which is so nature because of our one-life memory reach. Thus if indeed the Bhagavad Gita is correct, then these calculations are terribly flawed.
What about that infant whom we regard as the innocent toddler? Who was he in the past life? Was he a good or bad guy? Was he greedy or satisfied?
What about that man, the woman married? How was he related to her in a past life?
What about that politician who won the last election? Was he Julius Caesar or some other autocratic ruler in a past life?
Does it matter?
What is best, to only consider the one life or to reach for the insight about other histories?
Would you raise your children differently if you knew, say about four, of their immediately past lives?
If you son was Adolph Hitler in the past life, and you knew for sure that this was the case, how much enjoyment would you extract in association with him during the infant years?
