Wilber on past lives

Here is an excerpt from DEATH, REBIRTH AND MEDITATION.

"Of course, the fact that many people believe something does not make it true. And it is very difficult to support the idea of reincarnation by appealing to "evidence" in the form of alleged past-life memories, cause in most cases these can be shown to be only a revival of subconscious memory trace from this life.

Yet this problem is not as serious as it might at first appear, because the doctrine of reincarnation, as used by the great mystical traditions, is a very specific notion: It does not mean that the mind travels through successive lives and therefore that under special conditions -- for example, hypnosis -- the mind can recall all of its past lives. On the contrary, it is the soul, not the mind, that transmigrates. Hence, the fact that reincarnation cannot be proven by appeal to memories of past lives is exactly what we should expect: Specific memories, ideas, knowledge, and so on, belong to the mind and do not generally transmigrate. All of that is usually left behind, with the body, at death. (Perhaps a few specific memories can sneak through every now and then, as the cases recorded by Professor Ian Stevenson and others suggest, but these would be the exception rather than the rule.) What transmigrates is the soul, and the soul is not a set of memories or ideas or beliefs.

Rather, according to most branches of the perennial philosophy, the soul has two basic defining characteristics: First, it is the repository of it's "virtue" (or lack thereof) -- that is, of one's karma, both good and bad; second, it is one's "strength" of awareness, or one's capacity to "witness" the phenomenal world without attachment or aversion. This second capacity is also known as "wisdom." The accumulation of these two -- virtue and wisdom -- constitutes the soul, which is the only thing that transmigrates. So, when people claim to be "remembering" a past life -- where they lived, what they did for a living, and so on -- they are probably not, according to any major religion or branch of the perennial philosophy, remembering any actual past lives. Only Buddhas (or tulkus), it is said, can usually remember past lives -- the major exception to the rule. Even the Dalai Lama has said he cannot remember his past lives, which should perhaps serve as a reminder to those who think they can."

WILBER, Ken (1990) "Death, Rebirth and Meditation". In: The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Vol 4.