MRIDULA'S REVELATIONS OF HER LAST BIRTH

MRIDULA'S REVELATIONS OF HER LAST BIRTH

“Mummy! Mummy!”, exclaimed a child of two years and three months, and jumped out of her mother’s lap and ran towards the object of her attraction. That very moment an elderly lady was getting out of a car on the road in front of Mridula’s house. The child ran towards the car and exclaimed incoherently, “Ah, that car is mine, and she is my mummy.” The elderly lady, however, ignored the child and walked past her. Mridula’s mother rushed out, fearing that her child might be lost on the road.

But Mridula would not move from near the car, as she was looking hither and thither, as if in search of someone; her face flushed with excitement and joy. Her mother, however, would share none of that, and as she felt embarrassed, she took away the child forcibly back into her house. That night Mridula was not her own self. She went on speaking all sorts of things to her mother, like an adult recollecting the bygone days.

Mridula would say: “I have another home, mummy! We have six elephants and a car too, and there are my younger sister and daddy and so many friends. Will you take me to my old mummy, please? I promised her to come. Oh, now I want to go home!” And she would keep gushing with a babble of such irrelevancies, i.e., as others would think of them, but not the child. Her mother was thoroughly baffled and wondered if the child was mentally all right.

Days and weeks and months rolled past. It was now more than six months, but Mridula would keep on harping on her old theme, her big house and car and friends. The poor mother, with all her efforts, was unable to pacify the child. But the merciful Lord came to their help thus:

A Yajna (ritualistic rite according to Hindu tradition, when sacrificial oblations of clarified butter, etc., are poured into fire with the chanting of sacred syllables) was being performed on a large scale, in which many members of the community participated. Mridula’s mother, too, had gone there, taking the child with her. As the ceremony came to a close, Mridula, who had been watching, ran towards two small children, of her age, who were sitting at a distance. She took off the garlands she had been wearing and put them around the necks of those children.

The mother of the children, who stood nearby, was surprised, but appreciated this gesture of Mridula and said: “You seem to be a very sweet child. Do you know them?” Mridula at once replied: “Oh, I know you very well, though not these children,” and then with bubbling emotion she asked: “Don’t you recognise me? I am Munnu, your elder sister. Where are our daddy and mummy? How are our elephants?” And Mridula kept speaking excitedly, in this manner, many things which only an intimate member of the same family could have known.

The mother of those two children was wonder-struck, and she clasped Mridula to her bosom, and asked her many questions connected with the family. She took Mridula to her mother, and told her all that had happened and asked her permission if she would allow Mridula to visit her home. The mother agreed and they all drove to the young lady’s house in her car.

Back to the Old House

The car stopped in front of a house, and Mridula rushed out, shouting: “Oh, this is my house! Oh, here is my daddy! Here is my daddy!”, as she saw an elderly gentleman standing at that gate. They were all baffled to see her rushing inside, and going from room to room, and telling who were in each of them some years ago. And then she found her room and said that here she lived, and located some books and said that these were the books which she had read for her M.A. course. She sought out her almirah and said that there used to be her clothes, and also the cot where she fell ill and lamented that she could not appear for her M.A. examination.

Mridula asked the elderly lady of the house, with childish eagerness: “Do you know, mummy, how I felt at the time I left my body?” She pointed to her hands and feet and said: “All the nerves were taut and I felt terrible pain, and then I flew up, knowing not where, just like a bird. Then I wandered here and there, and saw many luminous and joyful things. Everyone was happy there. Then I remembered you and I felt very sorry, for I was not with you, and then I did not remember anything.” The elderly couple, who were deeply attached to their first daughter and had lost her six or seven years back, could say nothing, and as the old memories came back to them, they burst into tears.

Mridula’s words penetrated deep into their hearts, and they felt that the whole thing was like a dream, difficult to grasp, and yet very true, rather a revelation of profound truth, which this little unknown child unveiled before them. And Mridula would not stop and insisted: “I am the same Medha, whom you gave the pet name ‘Munnu’. How are my friends? How is Shuklaji of D.A.V. College? Everything here in this house is more or less the same as I had left. But why have you made changes in my room? This fan does not belong here; it was in the drawing room. Please speak to me, mummy? You made me promise, when I was leaving, that I would come back, and here I am!” The poor lady could no longer restrain herself, and she clasped the child to her heart as tears were streaming down her cheeks.

Renewal Of Past Ties

Medha, who had died of tongue cancer at Dehra Dun, in her early twenties, in 1945, was doing her M.A. course, but could not appear for the final examination. Her deep attachment to her family had most unusually left a residue of her past memory when she was born again, to work out her Karma. She had belonged to a wealthy Vaisya (commercial) family of Dehra Dun, and she took birth in a Brahmin family (priestly caste—though nowadays few follow one’s avocation according to one’s own caste), in Nasik, nearly a thousand miles south, on July 31, 1949. But her Brahmin father died soon after her birth, and the mother shifted to Dehra Dun and took up a teaching career. The child found the memory of her past birth in a flash, when she was two years and three months old, as stated before.

Since Mridula had lived for more than twenty years in the previous birth, her attachment to her former family was naturally more deep-rooted than to her present mother, and therefore, she was more eager to stay with the former family than in her own house. One can imagine the feelings of this poor lady, who had nursed her child with so much care and who loved her as her own self, having lost her husband, though Mridula’s former parents being glad to have her with them, gave her all the care she needed.

The Gita says (in the second chapter, verse 22): “Just as a man casts off worn out clothes and puts on new ones so also the embodied soul casts off worn out bodies and enters new ones”. This was actually proved in the case of Mridula, who was one of the very rare exceptions to have retained the memory of her past birth. Perhaps it is fortunate of man in not remembering the memories of past lives, since it spares him a good deal of suffering, caused by attachment to the moorings that could hardly be regained, without discomfiture.

Immortality Of The Soul

[Mridula had been to the Ashram of Sri Swami Sivanandaji at Rishikesh quite a few times. When she had come there soon after the flash-back of her past memory, with her present mother, she was about five years old, and had a vivid recollection of her past life. She had been to Swamiji’s Ashram with her both mothers, subsequently. As she became young her old memories faded out a good deal, being smothered by the impressions of her childhood. She was an intelligent, healthy and perfectly normal child.

[Swamiji, who had listened to the child’s experiences, told us that there was nothing new about them. There had been similar instances in the past, but very rare and far between, as for example, the case of Shanti Devi, who as a small child, found her former relations, more than twenty years ago. These prove the immortality of the soul, which is individualised in different forms through different Samskaras or the sum total of impressions caused through actions, good or bad, mental or physical. Swamiji pointed out the need of freeing ourselves from the bond of Karma and to return to our original, divine source. He shows us the way, by following which we can attain Godhead. He asks us to perform good actions in a spirit of detachment and dedication, and enquire, “Who am I” Swamiji’s cryptic injunctions are: “Be good, do good”, “detach and attach” (detach the mind from the worldly objects and attach it to the Lord). Let us all humbly pray to him to bestow upon us his grace and give us the strength to march forward and Godward. —Ed.]