At times people may express a desire to recall past lives either out of curiosity or to prove the concept of reincarnation. And some of you, after reading about reincarnation in this book, may want to experience your past lives. Before you do, there are things you should know about past lives. They are not all rosy.

As you know, most people do not have vivid recall of their past lives. In fact, the concept of reincarnation is foreign and unimaginable to many. But we do reincarnate, not once but many times, and it is for our own good that we don't always have vivid memories of our past lives.

In addition, many of our present experiences are directly related to our past experiences, and it is much safer for us not to remember them. For example, imagine how difficult it would be for a physically disabled child to recall that her mother, who was her sister in her previous life, pushed her over a cliff and killed her out of jealousy. Imagine the fear this recall would instill in the child and how difficult it would be for her to trust her mother not to cause her any harm in this life. Imagine the blame and guilt the mother and daughter would have to deal with, whether or not that past experience had a direct bearing on their current life.

As a consequence of that past action of one sister against the other, they are related this time as mother and child, so that the one who committed this act against her sister now cares for her as her child. And the child recalls that she had abused and taken advantage of a crippled person in a previous life and now has to experience how it feels to be severely crippled.