Accepting the reality that each of us has a layer of identities, how would these identities have been formed? The layer would surely commence with a core identity. Surface identities would then cover that core. Would any of us dare to dig beneath our surface identities to perceive our innate self?
The surface or public identities are fairly obvious: gender, relationship within the nuclear family; if relevant, one’s position within the extended family; linkage by blood (kinship); the cultural surrounds of one’s tribal connections; occupation; and (possibly) one’s position in civil society (community organisations), and in society in general, in terms of one’s influence. Unusual circumstances can also delineate certain evolved identities.
As for the more personal components of one’s identity, one could quite readily identify one’s temperament (reaction potential); and whether one is able to perceive and understand correctly the happenings or events encountered; and whether one is capable of applying a logical process to deal with a myriad of situations, including coping with hardship, injustice, and the like.
Below these layers of multiple identities, is there not a deeper, core layer reflecting the passage of one’s soul through time and space? To state the assumptions upholding this question: Assume that each human being has a soul. Re-stating that: Assume that a soul-entity is encased within a human body while on Earth. Assume too (necessarily) that a soul-entity’s time spent on Earth is NOT a one-shot affair. If it were a single isolated event, would that not equate the life of a human to the life of an insect?
If this were so, we could dispense with the super-structure of religion, ethics, and related considerations. We live, we then die – with no meaning in existence!
Contrarily accepting that human life represents a cycle of rebirths (and there is no way of disproving this belief), then there is a strong probability of each soul recording some memory of previous lives. Could not such memories impinge, influence, or infiltrate a core identity in each Earthly life? Could we not be affected by this insidious impact through life, but necessarily without any awareness of that?
That some children are invariably non-competitive, or tend to anger or unhappiness, or are recalcitrant repeatedly, may be explicable by the proposition above. Better still, I happen to know a few children and adults who have displayed these behaviours without any visible trigger.
Add to that situation those who have intimations intuitively about a significant past life or two, or who have been told by reliable clairvoyants about certain past lives impinging relevantly upon current experiences. Of course, the real-life experiences of a few cannot be denied by a majority through only disbelief or, worse still, by allegedly infallible professional sceptics. The Cosmos does seem to offer inter-connecting ephemeral pathways to understanding the ineffable.
In my view, there is a great plausibility about significant past-life memories impinging in some way upon current life motivations, actions, and responses. As one’s soul transits time and space, it can surely resonate in appropriate circumstances.
This is to postulate that, within each of us, as human beings, each representing a finite soul-entity, there is a vibrational potential reflecting significant experiences in past lives; and that this shapes our core personalities. Insidiously, intangibly, we are also what we have been; our extended past exists within us, shaping us.
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 