History of the Vehicle leading to the origins

The importance of knowing previous lives took precedence about 2500 years ago when the historical Buddha, after reliving his previous lives, reached Gautama Sidharta and attained the final Enlightenment.  In the canonical texts this experience confesses us as follows:

           “In this deep state of mind, purified, pure, emptied of all thought, with a gentle soul, full of compassion, stable, calm, I turned my thoughts to the ability to remember previous existences.  I remembered many previous lives, different lives, as follows … ”

Because Buddha gave great importance to the knowledge of past lives, it goes without saying that the monks who were part of the order founded by Him, also endeavored to remember past lives.  The efforts the monks made in liberation from suffering were supported by his own experiences, which serve as the basis of methods he developed.

To understand the special significance of the series of reincarnations, we must acknowledge the important moments in the Enlightenment process of the one who was declared the founder of a religion, but he, more than likely, was far from considering himself so.

After – the historical Buddha, prince Sakya, named Gautama Sidharta – faced human suffering, he decided to leave the royal palace, where he was born.  To achieve liberation from suffering, for seven years, guided by the teachings received until then, he leads a life of austerity taken to the extreme, however, he does not find his inner peace. At some point, completely weakened, he realizes that if he continues to fast, he will die without reaching the ultimate goal, the state of a buddha.  Then, says the legend, he overhears the advice of a musician given to his student: “if you stretch the string too much it breaks, if you don’t stretch it enough it doesn’t sound right.”. After clarifying the confusions from the teachings he received from his first mentors about the yoga system, he inserts them into his insights and…

Buddhist tradition says that on a full moon night, at the age of 35, sitting under the Bodhi tree, Gautama Siddharta begins to experience the process of final enlightenment.  But when the first results appear, Mara, the demon queen – who is neither more nor less than the creator of the human Ego – sends her three daughters: passion, bodily pleasures, and aversion to seduce the Buddha, to prevent him to achieve its goal. But he manages to keep his mind perfectly focused and with that, temptations of any kind cease.  After this, the series of his innumerable lives and all the intermediate forms of existence unfold before him.

Later, he confesses the experience of enlightenment to his closest disciples in the following way:

“This knowledge was first revealed to me in the middle of the night.  In this deep mental state, purified, clean, emptied of any thought, with a gentle soul, full of compassion, stable, calm, I directed my thoughts to the ability to remember previous existences… I remembered many previous, different lives, … I was in that place, … that was my name, … I was born into this family, … into this caste, … that it was my occupation, … these were my joys and sorrows, … so my life ended, … leaving there, I was born elsewhere.

this is the way I remembered my innumerable existences, their kind and character … As a result of the tireless endeavor, ignorance dissipated, knowledge appeared, the darkness disappeared, a light appeared.  And the feeling of joy, thus born, did not imprison my thinking … In this mental state, purified, clean, void of any thought, with a gentle soul, full of compassion, stable, calm, I directed my thoughts towards the perception of departure and  the rebirth of all beings … “

What is very important in the history of knowledge of previous lives is that the experience lived during enlightenment had such a strong impact on him that in his lectures the Buddha did not miss any opportunity to remember it, proof that he regarded this ability to remember his previous lives as an important aid in the steps taken on the Path of Enlightenment.

As I mentioned before, because the Buddha attached special importance to the knowledge of previous lives, it goes without saying that the monks who were part of the order founded by him also strove to remember previous lives.  The monks’ efforts were supported by the many methods he developed, which, based on his own experiences, laid the foundations of practical methods to help them achieve their ultimate goal.

The following fragment is part of the public teachings of that period:

“Let the monk direct his focused, purified spirit,
enlightened, to remember the places where a
lived in previous lives. To remember the places
from one previous life, from two, three, four, five,
one hundred, one thousand, one hundred thousand lives […]
from different eras of the created and the uncreated ”.
(Prajna-paramita-sastra)

For the reasons mentioned above, in the practices of early Buddhism, special importance was given to the technique of regression in time, being kept in great secrecy especially to rival groups.  This explains the fact that those who managed to see their previous lives were treated with great respect.  The ancient writings concretely do not reveal anything of the teaching with which it is possible to access previous lives, only mentioning in passing that it is a “superhuman” knowledge called “Pratiloma”.

Contemporary Western Buddhists know too little about the practices of accessing past lives.  This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that in the life of the Buddha, teachings on Pratiloma were transmitted only orally, the monks not being allowed to write anything.  The canonical texts of those times give only vague indications that, in the first stage, the practitioner had to realize the memory of the moment of birth, respectively, the intrauterine state.  Those who were able to correctly put into practice the teaching of regression over time were called jattsari, “those who remember birth.”

Due to this fact, in traditional Buddhist medicine, they had very detailed knowledge about the intrauterine condition and diseases that can affect the human being at this stage of development.

In those days, Buddhist monks believed that with the help of Pratiloma methods, traveling in the opposite direction, the flow of Samsara’s whirlwind, jattisari could penetrate even deeper into the mysteries of existence.  They could access the state of “time without time.”  The sacred writings suggest that Pratiloma-Yana’s “Path to Origins” allowed them to mentally reverse the direct order of the elements that make up the causal chain and gradually move away from the present moment, looking in the direction of the beginnings.

The term “pratiloma” as the ability to evoke the past, can be interpreted in a much broader sense, for example, it has as a correspondent in Islamic Sufi teaching, the word “dhikr”, meaning “true memory”.

As I have shown, in the early Buddhist teachings, the capacity for remembrance plays an extremely important role.  Buddhist philosophy defines the act of falling as an act of forgetting, claiming that the gods also lose their existence as gods and decay when their memories are disturbed!  For this reason, Orthodox Buddhism considers the diffuse state> forgetfulness> ignorance> and the fall into the Samsaric vortex, which follow one another, as successively degraded states of existence.

But let’s go back to ancient India and early Buddhism.

It is known that in the six High Sciences (Sanskrit-abbijna) of India, the ability to remember past lives is mentioned.  In the classification of other yogic systems, this result obtained by the yogi is the first of the Three Knowledge (Sanskrit vidya) or the eighth paranormal ability among the “powers of wisdom” (Sanskrit, siddhi).

And Patanjali, the creator of the Ashtanga Yoga system, lists the ability to access past lives among the “necessary perfections.”

The regression in time, the science of remembering previous existences – as an enlightenment technique – was held in high esteem and secrecy by early Buddhism.  Those who managed to achieve “Awakening Backward” gained great respect and admiration among the monks.  At the same time, we must remember that in the communities where the spiritual traditions were kept, the birth was given a wider meaning, the coming on the terrestrial plane being considered identical with the moment of the beginnings of human existence.

In conclusion, we can say that in Pratiloma Yana – which has its roots in archaic Buddhism – we can find those teachings through which, with a focused mind, the practitioner progressively goes back in time, relives his previous incarnations, and finally can reach “the first moment of opposites ”, and whoever manages to pass this moment as well, steps into the Eternal Present.