I began reminiscing recently in my posts, with a specific purpose. I wanted to set down my thoughts about the suffering of innocent children. Why do so many of them have to experience the pain of: a life in which there is so little nourishment, and which does not offer any kind of a viable future; or a life of physical disabilities so severe that their life expectancy would indubitably be limited.
Strangely, all my life I have been concerned with this matter. Why, I have wondered. Had I perhaps experienced painful childhoods in previous lives? As a Hindu in this life, I am permitted to ask this question. What is surprising is that a clairvoyant I had visited, purely to satisfy my curiosity, told me that (according to her mentor in the spirit world, a ‘healer’) I had suffered most severely as a very young child in one of my past lives.
However, I recall rejecting her vision at that time, arguing that my past lives would surely not be accessible to her. To be honest, her vision was too painful to carry around with me. The implications of the cause of my suffering in that life were horrendous.
Recently, reviewing my normal sceptical approach to almost everything, I now accept that my unusual sensitivity to the suffering of little children everywhere may have arisen in part from a soul-memory. I thereby also accept the probability of the existence of soul-memories. This is mainly because of a driving instinctive urge which I have always had to achieve justice (or some betterment) for the communities in which I have lived.
Indeed, most consciously, I have had to cremate (mentally) in my memory-bank an insistent wish to wield a scimitar (that curved-edge sword favoured by the Turkic peoples) against certain individuals who made my life hell near the end of my career. Yes, yet another clairvoyant (who occasionally pops into my life in a casual manner) told me recently that she could see me as a mounted white-garbed warrior, with a scimitar in hand. Well!
But, I do need to move on. Vengeance is not appropriate. Some memories surely have to go, while others remain to remind me that we are all souls experiencing Earthly lives.
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 