Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 63

58
T. G. Kalghat gi
the identity
of
of immortality where there is no memory to maintain self."26
But memory is useful in preserving our experiences and wisdom. It is also useful for promoting virtue and strengthening the love of the present on the basis of the past. However, the past could help the present in these aspects without the aid of memory and the absence of memory need not destroy the chance of improvement spreading over many lives, 27
(i) Loss of memory is a blessing in disguise. It would have been a painful tragedy to have carried the burdea of past lives and their memories, depressing and pleasant. In that case life would have been a burden. Very often to forget is a boon, perhaps it is in our nature that for smooth working of life and for the preservation and promotion of values of life it is necessary that we forget a large portion of our own experiences even in the present life. Freud, in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, has discussed the various motivations of forgetting. Forgetting is a defence mechanism in some cases. Unpleasant experiences are forgotten or else they would be an unbearable burden on the mind and would distort the personality traits. He gives copious instances of bow in everyday life people forget unpleasant experiences. Therfore if forgetting is useful in everyday life, it is much more useful in the case of transition from one life to the other. As Radhakrishnan puts it “If we did not lose memory it might turn out a positive puisance. Our relations with our fellowmen are sufficiently complex without adding to them reminiscences of past lives."
(ii) If the theory of rebith is wellgrounded otherwise, the question of lapse of memory does not touch it. Memory may be necessary for a retributive theory of the universe, but not for moral continuity. Death may destroy memory of our deeds but not their effects on us, Loss of memory does not obliterate everything. Every experience leaves behind some traces which become the foundation of personality development. Such dispositions and memory traces become the spring-board for the development of personality. What we are today is largely due to the dispositions and traces that we have acquired. The nature of each individual is moulded by the experiences of the past. Every state is conditioned by the prior and leads on to another,
(iil) Moreover the purpose of memory is to enable us to be wiser by experience, and virtuous by effort. The facts we learn may be forgotten but the cultivated mind will remain. All our experiences consolidate themselves in forming our personality and that is what is important. Therefore
26. Pringle-Pattison : The Idea of Immortality, p. 126, 27. McTaggart : Some Dogmas of Religion, p. 132.