11 Mar 2021
[An online spiritual discussion was conducted on February 14, 2021, in which several devotees participated. Some of the questions of devotees answered by Swāmi are given below.]
[Śrī Bharat asked: I wanted to ask the same question asked by Ms. Thrylokya. I want to add a little to the same question. There are few kids who show excellent skills even at a very young age of say 5 years. I too would have developed so many skills during my past lives. Why do not get those skills in this birth of mine? I feel that if had retained some of the skills from my past lives, like those blessed children, I would not have had to struggle so much for earning money in this birth. Even the Gopikās were sages in their past life. They were super intellectuals. But in their next birth, they did not retain any of their intellectual skills. Does God take away my skills when I die? I am definitely asking this question out of ignorance. Kindly answer my question. Pādapraṇāms Swamiji.]
Swami replied: As I have already pointed out in answering the other question, the memories of the previous birth are completely erased to give a fresh mind to the soul before starting every new birth. The omnipotent God has the power to let a certain soul retain some skills of its previous birth or to remove all previous skills. Such decisions are made by God for the sake of special purposes, which help the soul as well as the world. By giving new births to the learned sages as the ignorant Gopikās, God removed their ego of knowledge (jñānāhaṅkāra). God also removed two other forms of ego of the sages. Their ego of their high caste was removed when God gave them birth in the low caste of cowherds. He removed their ego of gender, by giving birth to them as females. God thus helped them in these three ways and that help from God allowed them to succeed in their spiritual efforts.
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