If you believe in reincarnation, do you think you will know that you’ve been here before?

Aw hellz, Sweetie, I don’t learn from the mistakes I make in this life, I doubt I would do better in multiple lives.

Those are two different questions.

1) If you are reincarnated, I do not believe that you would retain memories or knowledge. You would come back as a new entity, but not with the wisdom of the past. (Although – books and movies tend to show the opposite – that you do come back with your previous knowledge – but I think those are plot devices and not based on fact.

But since reincarnation, ahem, doesn’t exist, there is no way to know for sure.

2) But for the purposes of this question – if it did exist, the question of “learning from your mistakes” is tangential. It’s more a matter of will than it is based on reincarnation.

Let me ask this: if there were a really bad Mafia killer – a truly bad guy who then died and was reincarnated. Would you expect him to repudiate his past life and be an upstanding citizen, or would he choose to do what he knows best, which is being a killer?

MY money is that he would go to what he knows best.

If a soul does not learn in a lifetime then they are destined to to repeat it until they do but in different capacities as stated in case number 2 above.

In that particular case scenario the killer might just possibly be the victim of another killer in order to see and more importantly “feel” the injustice of his actions in his past life.

Once this soul learns it then goes on to another lesson to learn etc

As explained in lots of books that I had read in the past on this subject.

And belief in reincarnation is not necessary as when on passes it is only THEN that the truths of life existence and death will be revealed.

(I do not believe in reincarnation but allow me to answer anyway.)

If we were conscious of past lives and able to learn from our mistakes, our life and the lives of everyone else would be optimized already. Think of the Bill Murray character, Phil, in Groundhog Day. Once he knew he was destined to repeat the same day he began making changes: avoid stepping in the puddle, not saying something stupid to the woman, catching that child falling out of the tree. etc. He could only make those changes because he remembered the past.
If we knew the past we’d all be able to change our outcome for the better.
For sure I’d invest differently. I’d be sitting on a pile of Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft stock right now.
Sicne there is so much strife, poverty, drug addiction, etc., in the world it is clear people did not learn from the past. That implies there is either no past life or, if there is one, people have no recgnition of it.

Consider this life precious and live it like it’s the only one you’ve got.

@LuckyGuy one thing I would add. Bill Murray made a choice at the end of the movie to be a good person. But all during the movie, he made lots of bad choices before he ended up making a good one.

Which goes back to what I wrote – the reincarnee is going to do what he/she knows best, and maybe only change later,

Nope, I think and hope I got the message I don’t need more return trips. How can I get this across to the ones in charge. I don’t want to come back!!!!

The problem with reincarnation is that there is absolutely no one around to tell you what you did wrong. You are just pushed back into life and supposed to figure the lesson out yourself. And really, some people need to hear their lesson out loud to get it.

It will soon become a school with a really bad student being held back in the same class again and again because they don’t get enough passing grade. It would be a waste for both the school and the student.

Reincarnation is a wonderful way for the universe to work out its desire to experience all possible incarnations and simultaneously to perfect itself by striving back toward Source. Source does not put the same good/bad binary on experience that we do because we want to avoid pain and increase pleasure. Source simply wants experience. We’re in the middle of it and can’t view it that way. Understandably.

There is an incredibly tiny fraction of people who can remember past lives and can work to better themselves in this life. That fraction is so small it’s statistically zero. The rest of us just do the best we can. Some of us are doing better than others.

On any given day, I’m doing the best I can. When I learn better, I do better.

Because the vast majority are not born with prior memories, I don’t think you consciously learn, subconsciously, perhaps. This would be an interesting question to ask those few who are born with knowledge of a prior life.