Westerners sometimes have trouble accepting the notion of reincarnation because it is largely foreign to our tradition. The question that we sometimes ask is, “How can I have been reincarnated from a...

Westerners sometimes have trouble accepting the notion of reincarnation because it is largely foreign to our tradition. The question that we sometimes ask is, “How can I have been reincarnated from a previous life if I have no memory of my former mode of existence?” One answer that Hindu thinkers give is to point to your belief that you are continuous with and the same person as the little baby you once were even though you have no memories of that former state of your existence. Hence, we can accept continuity of the self even without conscious connection in our memories between our current experiences and the experiences of the baby. “As the embodied soul continuously passes, in his body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.”⁶¹

• How would you reply to this argument?

• Is the analogy between the successive phases of your present life and the doctrine of reincarnation a good one?