Past Lives

In order to make real spiritual progress in your life, you need to understand that past lives exist. Many people scoff at this idea, due to their own ignorance and laziness to discover the truth for themselves. Personally, I have always believed in past lives, it is just part of who I am. I suppose that comes from imprinting. I don't recall anyone teaching me about past lives as I was growing up. I researched this topic when I was a teenager and young adult. When I discovered Buddhism, past lives were part of the teachings, so I knew I was on the right path.

The idea that you did not exist and were nothing, then you were born and developed consciousness and then you die and go back to nothing seems ludicrous to me. That would be impossible. You cannot get something from nothing. You cannot have not existed, suddenly exist and then go back to not existing anymore. That is impossible. If you have nothing, nothing at all, you cannot make anything from it. You need to have something to make something from it. If you hold up your hand and look at your empty palm, what can you make from what you have in your hand? You have nothing in your empty hand, so how could you possibly make something? You need to have something in your hand to be able to create anything. If you had a piece of paper you could make a paper airplane or something at least, but you have to have something first in order to make something else. If you never existed before how could you possible exist now? That doesn't make any sense.

You had to exist already in order to exist now. You have always existed and will always exist. Many people will argue that they don't remember their past lives, so that proves past lives do not exist. What a load of crap. You cannot remember every single moment of the life you are living right now, so does that mean it never happened? If you cannot remember every single moment of your entire life, does that mean you don't exist? Of course not, so that is an invalid argument.

With imprinting we can see this with child prodigies and even in your own life. Imprinting is knowledge or abilities we carry with us from previous lives. Mozart is an example of this and there are many others. How could a child who has not developed into an adult have such abilities? It isn't random chance, they brought this with them into this life from their experience in a past life or past lives even. The more we do an activity, the more familiar we are with it, so if someone spent an entire life or lifetimes doing one activity, it is no wonder they would bring this imprinting on their mind with them into this life. For your own life, perhaps you have talents that come naturally to you. Maybe you are the only one in your entire family that is an artist? It is likely that you have imprinting from a past life that is influencing your ability in this one. You can apply this to many things in life, like the propensity to be a good person or a bad one.

This can be explained if we look at our mind. I did not say the brain, that is something different. I am talking about your mind. You may want to call it your spirit perhaps. Your mind is divided into three parts. The first part is your gross mind. This mind was created during your conception and will dissolve upon your death. The second part is your subtle mind and it too, was created when you were conceived and will dissolve upon your death. The third part is your very subtle mind or mental continuum. This mind was always existed and always will exist. I'll break this down further.

Let's start with the gross mind. Upon your conception in this life, your gross mind along with your body began to develop. Your gross mind is your waking mind, the one you are using now. Your gross mind is part of your very subtle mind, which is responsible for the creation of your gross mind. Since this gross mind only exists during this lifetime, it is no wonder you cannot remember your past lives. You need to access your very subtle mind in order to gain that knowledge. When you die, your gross mind will dissolve into your very subtle mind.

Now, your subtle mind goes through the same process as the gross mind. It too is created at your conception and will dissolve into the very subtle mind upon your inevitable death. Your subtle mind is your sleeping/dreaming mind. This is why some people cannot remember their dreams. They have not developed their abilities past their gross mind manifestation and so are not able to access their subtle minds. If they could develop this ability they could even take it to the level of having lucid dreams. A lucid dream is when you are consciously aware that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. You are awake in your dream and can control what you do in the dream. When you have a lucid dream you are accessing your subtle mind and taking control of it. This is a very important development to achieve for your spiritual progress and can help you to further develop on your spiritual path, if used correctly.

Then there is the very subtle mind, or what is also called our mental continuum. As I have described already, the gross mind and subtle mind of this life will dissolve back into the very subtle mind when we die. It won't be lost. It won't disappear and become nothing. Every moment of this life will be kept on record. When we make spiritual progress, when we engage in meditation and other spiritual practises it is all done in the hopes that one day we will access our very subtle mind. Our very subtle mind holds all our knowledge of the past, present and future. We need to have full access to this part of our mind to become our true self. Everyone will accomplish this eventually. Some of us will need to live many more lives before we are able to, though.

So, if your gross and subtle minds were created for this life and go back to the very subtle mind when you die, then it was the same for every life you have ever had. In all of your past lives, you were given a new gross and subtle mind and they all dissolved back into the very subtle mind when you died. When you are able to access your very subtle mind you will remember your past lives. You will be able to see the big picture, beyond the small, brief life you are now living. You will understand how you are wasting your time on insignificant things during this life. We all need to work towards gaining access to our very subtle minds. That is why you have this life as a human now. You have the ability to do this in this very lifetime if you choose to. We all do. We just need to decide this is what is important in life and strive to work towards attaining this.

We have had countless past lives, since we have always existed. If we limit ourselves to only what we encounter in this one life with our current gross mind, we are short changing ourselves. We are preventing ourselves from gaining ultimate freedom. We are binding ourselves in a prison of our own making. Realizing past lives exist frees us from the fear of death. We will continue to live. We will live once again, in a new life with new gross and subtle minds. If we had past lives and our very subtle mind has always and will always exist, then we can conclude we will live future lives. We will have countless future lives. If we have had countless past lives and will have countless future lives, then this one life is rather insignificant in comparison.

It is important to realize that although we have had past lives and therefore will have future lives, this is a cycle of uncontrolled rebirth. Until we have full conscious access to our very subtle mind, we will bounce around from life to life outside of our control. You see, every action you have ever taken in this life is kept record of. If you have been listening to my podcasts, you will be familiar with me talking about your karma storage locker. This is it. Your very subtle mind stores all your karma and with the right circumstances that karma will happen to you in your life and you will have no control over it. Although, after you die, you will be reborn again, you have no idea what circumstances will arise and so have no idea what your future life will be. You do not get to choose which life you get. You do not get to choose how much suffering you will have to go through in that life. Until you gain full access to your mental continuum you will have no control over what happens to you.

This is why it is so important to do good and be a good person in this life right now and from now on, because that will help to limit how much suffering you will go through in the future. If you are a negative person harming others without a care for anyone but yourself, then that is the negative karma you are creating for yourself in the future that you will have to suffer through. Are you suffering in this life? Then you did negative things in your past lives and the circumstances have occurred for these negative things to cause you suffering now. Don't want to suffer in a future life? Then refrain from engaging in negative actions in this one to help minimize the damage you will do to yourself. Every negative and positive thing you have ever done is kept in your very subtle mind, your karma storage locker waiting to be used on you in the future.

The thing I fear is the negative karma I have stored from my past lives. I haven't been a complete perfect angel in this life, so that is bad enough, but I have no idea what I have done in my past lives and that is a scary thought. I now strive to the best of my imperfect ability to do good and be good, to not add to the giant pile of negative karma I already have. I know I have a giant pile because of all the suffering I have gone through and continue to go through in this very life. I hope that by trying to be a good person in this life I minimize the suffering I will have to go through in my future lives. This is why it is so important to know of the existence of past lives, so we can stop making mistakes in this life.

You can listen to the full podcast at this link here: https://youtu.be/EpAu8Oxy2wE