Will I keep my memories and experience with each passing incarnation?

Question

I am curious because I have seen documentaries, videos, posts and all kinds of books and literature saying some people are born with knowledge from a past life, I believe I might be such a person as even from a young age I was very knowledgeable about things I've never been exposed to.

So you see I'm just wondering if this is possible and how would it work? because the laws of Physics state no information is ever lost it just keeps on changing form (entropy) just as Buddhists believe You will keep incarnating infinitely until you learn your lesson and reach that higher state of being. So does this mean that in some fundamental way we get to keep what we have experienced and learned over lifetimes?

I ask this question also out of fear for the thought of being in an infinite void when the brain and mind dies and loses its content. Because to have lived a good life just to have your system wiped would be a big anti-climax.

Answer 1

Very doubtful but not impossible.

Insight into past lives is known in a few Buddhist traditions including Mahayana Buddhism. It is not a common practice in Therevada tradition, but certainly not unheard of.

I once heard of this monk, practicing a teaching in which he tried to see into his past lives by recollecting his memories backwards. From his current age until it's childhood to it was a baby - and so forth while he was in a deep meditative state.

I ask this question also out of fear for the thought of being in an infinite void when the brain and mind dies and loses its content. Because to have lived a good life just to have your System wiped would be a big anti-climax

Your brain will lose it's content but you will not experience an infinite void as you state because reality is ultimately created by the mind and that is gone.

Answer 2

We do not even keep our memories from moment to moment and day to day. Memories are relative. They have no intrinsic self and are impermanent. Certain memories change over time, or are covered with a lens of delusion. Other memories are completely fictional.