Many seekers come to spiritual teachers to ask about their past lives. Charlatans are only too happy to oblige the demands of the market-place with fantastic tales of Egyptian and Atlantean incarnations, but truly realized masters stay mum on the subject. There is a good reason why God has not given to ordinary human beings the memory of their previous lives. For one, we would grow alternatively proud and depressed at the remembrance of our great and not-so-great deeds performed through countless incarnations. But more importantly, our already fragmented attention would be further scattered in the pursuit of old irrelevant dreams, instead of abiding in the Eternal Reality. As the great South Indian sage Ramana Maharshi explained, "Memory is a faculty of the mind and is part of the illusion. Why do you want to remember other lives which are also illusions? If you abide as the Self, there is no past or future and not even the present, since the Self is timeless."

Baba was asked this type of question on numerous occasions, and he had an inimitable way to gently, or sometimes forcibly, redirect the mind of the questioner towards the real issue-who are you really?

One day a woman came to see Baba in Vienna. She had been a student of his for many years, and had come to unburden herself of a long litany of health problems at the feet of her master-anemia, allergies, fatigue, constipation, depression, etc. She was convinced that if she was suffering so much in this incarnation despite trying to lead a pure and spiritual life, it was because she had been a very bad person in a previous life. Wanting the master's confirmation of her spiritual self-diagnosis, she had come determined to find out the truth about her selves, however unpalatable it might be.

Baba listened to her tale of woe, and tenderly declared, "Mother, it is gas."

"Gas?"

Reaching under his bed, Baba brought out a bottle of antacid and gave it to her. "Yes mother. Just gas."

The woman took the bottle with an embarrassed smile. "Baba, it is possible that some of my symptoms are due to gas, but surely not all of them. There must be some psychosomatic mechanism, so if you could tell me."

Baba gently interrupted, "Mother, I am telling, it is gas."

The woman took it in stride, and was silent for a few seconds. A new angle of attack soon emerged in her mind, and she ventured: "Alright, let us say it is all due to gas in this incarnation. But the root is surely from my previous life, in which I certainly did many wrong things. So if you could give me just a hint of what my previous life was like, I could then heal this condition at the soul level and."

The same inescapable verdict fell from Baba's lips: "Mother, it is gas."

Discouraged, but not vanquished, the student took a deep breath, and summoned all her courage to make a last go at it: "But Baba, what about my past life? I know you are a realized master, so surely you can see my past lives?"

With a disarmingly sweet smile and a glitter of mischief in his eyes, the master responded calmly, "Yes, Mother, I can see everything. And I am telling you, it is gas. Take the medicine I gave you and go meditate. You are not you, you are the Real You. Meditate and realize It. God bless you."

The student gently surrendered into the master's loving gaze, bowed in all humility, and quietly left the room. She had received her answer, but at a level far deeper than she had previously imagined or even comprehended yet.

She had finally gained peace and self-acceptance.