The fear of reincarnation

Bernardo Tahan Gómez

The first impression after reading the title, is that I am going to comment on the fear of our past lives, because of the suffering we have endured or suffered as weak and helpless victims. We believe that we are afraid because we have suffered passively, and this is true in part, but it is not the whole story. This represents a part of the fear of remembering our past lives. This fear is often linked to anger, because we were victims of other unsympathetic people, and we feel that those people did not receive adequate punishment, or went unpunished. We then feel a mixture of fear and anger, in the face of injustice. This fear with anger can be linked to a third element, which is disillusionment with human beings, because we tend to generalize and say that human beings can cause harm, in a merciless and irresponsible way. So, we have this first type of fear, to remember past lives where we have been victims of abuse, injury or even homicide, mixed with a dose of anger and disillusionment of the human race, and the lack of justice in the face of certain crimes. All this is one type of fear. 

But the second type of fear, hidden, deep in our soul, is that of remembering our past lives where we have caused harm or pain to other helpless people. Yes, we have caused unjustified pain to other people who did not deserve it, and this generates fear to remember it. It provokes fear, because surely in this life we are better people, more compassionate, and facing a conduct carried out in the past, totally rejected by our current values, represents a refusal to accept that we have been able to cause so much damage in an unjustified, senseless, unscrupulous way, unfaithful to the most elementary moral or spiritual principles. For example, if in this life you are a person who cares for the weakest, it will be very difficult for you to accept that in a previous life you caused harm in an unjustified way to other innocent people. You would be very afraid to remember this type of past life. Then, we have this second type of fear, which is linked to other sensations such as the shame of our behavior, totally different from the one adopted in this life. In addition to shame, we may feel disbelief or difficulty in believing that we have been able to commit such atrocities against weak or innocent beings. I even believe that this second type of fear, which we can call shameful fear, is stronger than the first, because it clashes with all our present principles, after the normal evolution of the soul.

In spite of the fear, all these memories are there. They do not go away. They are deeply hidden, but they generate consequences in our daily feeling. In those lives where we have been victims, they provoke a feeling of distrust towards other human beings, pessimism towards life, exaggerated anger in front of any fault or mistake of another person in front of us. Egoism, where we do not want to be anyone's victim, nor sacrifice ourselves for anyone.

In the second case, where we have caused harm to other people, we have difficulty to forgive ourselves, to aspire to a better life, we feel burdened with a deep weight or guilt for the mistakes of previous lives. We have a low concept of ourselves, and we do not know where it comes from.

With the different people I have talked to, the biggest barrier I hear on the subject is "...I would like to know what past lives I have had, but I am afraid..." . You are not the only one. BT.