Memories of Past Lives? – Dialectic Two-Step
Where are the memories of past lives stored between death and rebirth?
Response:
I’ll start with an easier question. Where are memories stored in this life? The best answer humans have now is the brain. This belief is backed up by well documented, peer reviewed, and reproducible experiments.
Where are they stored after death? I don’t know, and I don’t think the question is a productive one.
I venture to say that no one has conducted well documented, peer reviewed, and reproducible experiments that would indicate that:
Memories are transferred out of the brain to some other receptacle between death and birth.
Memories are received, stored, and available for recall without external stimuli in another brain in the future.
Past Lives – A Thing of the Past
The concept evoked by your question shares a common theme with the afterlife, the resurrection, and astral projection. They are beliefs that cannot be verified.
From a Buddhist perspective, I would encourage you to abandon questions like these. They are a goose chase that will contribute nothing to your liberation.
Further they fail the triple seal test for authenticity which asks whether the concept speaks to impermanence, not-self, and nirvana.
Ask Yourself Three Questions
Belief in the transfer of memories from one brain to another seems to contradict the teaching of impermanence and not-self. My experience tells me that I carry no memories from a past life. The personal memories of my dead love ones are gone with them. This is consistent with impermanence.
The idea of the persistence of personal memories also contradicts anatman or not-self. To paraphrase the Buddha – It’s not about you.
Why Suffer?
Simple thought experiments also invoke an absurdity to the idea. Here are a few.
If memories are passed from one generation to the next, what happens when there are fewer numbers in the next generation? Are memories lost? What happens if there are larger numbers in the next generation? Are some people born without memories?
If memories are passed from one generation to the next, presumably I would be born with the collective memories of hundreds of thousands of my karmic ancestors. I don’t remember any of it. If this were true, how is it we construct so many false narratives of the past?
This question is a trap, it’s a hydra that only leads to more pointless questions. In other words, it is a source of suffering. I suggest you free yourself from it.
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Dialectic Two-Step is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio
Dialectic Two Step, Modern Koans, Verse Us, Say What?, and Minute Meditations all copyright Andrew Furst
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