Question: Is it possible for the individual to remember the details of past incarnations?

Sri Chinmoy: The soul can easily remember its past incarnations, but it does not want to do so. It is like this: let us say that in a past incarnation you were living in Connecticut and now you are living in Puerto Rico. Why should you care to remember every day what your home in Connecticut was like or how many rooms you had there? Your business now is to stay in Puerto Rico in your present house. If anyone asks you where you live, you will say, “I live in Puerto Rico.” And if anyone asks you how many rooms you have in your house, you will immediately think of this house and not your previous house. Please do not pay any attention to the past. Right now you have to do your own work. You have to manifest the qualities that God has given you. You have to do everything here and now. The soul does not care much for the body in which it lived during a previous incarnation. You may feel that your house in Connecticut was much better than this house. Sometimes a kind of nostalgic feeling comes to your mind and you say, “I had a better house in Connecticut. Here I am staying in an inferior house.” The soul can remember that in a previous incarnation it had better circumstances, surroundings and opportunities. But actually the soul will not care. It just wants to fulfil God in His own way.

You have accepted your fate. You are going to work and study here in Puerto Rico. The soul also feels this way. It says “Now I am in this body. Let me go on manifesting as much as I can. To think about what I could have done in the past will not solve my problems. Only what I am going to do right now can solve all my problems.”

If you go backward it is a waste of time. Our Goal is in front of us, not behind us. The soul does not care at all for the past. It only wants to reach the Goal. God-realisation lies ahead of us, not in our past. If we go backwards, we will be wasting our time.