Book Title: Law of Karma
Author(s): Nirmala Jha
Publisher: Capital Pubishing House Delhi

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Page 38
________________ 28 Law of Karma tary present without a past or a future. The life of the indivi. dual must have the same rule. The arguments usually adduced by supporters and opponents, are often insufficient. One argument, for instance, is that we have no memory of our past lives and therefore, there were no past lives. But this argument is psychological. Besides, it ignores the very nature of our memory, which normal man can apply. We do not even remember much of our present. Our memory is good for what is near, it becomes faint as its objects recede into the distance. "Do we remember even the mere fact, the simple state of being an infant on the mother's breast? And yet the state of infancy was, on any but a Buddhist theory, part of the same life and belonged to the same individual,the very one who cannot remember it just as he cannot remember his past life. Yet we demand that this physical memory, this memory of the brute brain of man which cannot remember our infancy and has lost so much of our later years, shall yet recall that which was before infancy, before birth, before itself was formed. And if it cannot, we are to cry, Disproved your reincarnation theory'.”50 Thus, we see that the theory of rebirth and memory are closely related. It is not necessary to rememeber everything of our past lives. The old idea of rebirth always stresses on its partial side. It has been kept aloof from the Law of Karma which results in individualism. It seems that rebirth and Karma are one's own single affair which is not the case. It refers to a universal relation with the whole, which is misleading. It is true that while we are here, our rebirth or Karma runs on its own individual line. But, at the same time, it is similarly true that our self finding does not abolish our oneness with another life. This individualism is the part of the glory of spiritual perfection. “This idea of universality of oneness not only with God, or the eternal Self in me, but with all humanity and other beings, is growing to be the most prominent strain in our minds and it has to be taken more largely into account in any future idea or computation of the significance of rebirth and karma."'51 * Thus we conclude that human birth is achieved in long succession of rebirth. It has passed through forms, i.c., from

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