In an infinite world there are infinite opportunities. "The Universe...exists for the sake of the soul's experience and emancipation," teaches Patanjali (Book II, Aphorism 18). Light on the Path suggests: "And before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike," i.e., both good and bad experiences. In a given life, if we are in a male body then we are precluded from experiencing motherhood. The soul needs to pass through certain basic experiences like poverty, etc., to acquire fortitude and sympathy. Mr. Judge writes:

Viewing life and its probable object, with all the varied experience possible for man, one must be forced to the conclusion that a single life is not enough for carrying out all that is intended by Nature to say nothing of what man himself desires to do. The scale of variety in experience is enormous. There is a vast range of powers latent in man which we see may be developed if opportunity be given. Knowledge infinite in scope and diversity lies before us....We perceive that we have high aspirations with no time to reach up to their measure...To say that we have but one life here with such possibilities put before us and impossible of development is to make the universe and life a huge and cruel joke perpetrated by a powerful God. (The Ocean of Theosophy, pp. 87-88)

Each life is an opportunity to learn and experience. In a given life we are not able to act out all our thoughts, feelings and aspirations. There is a limitation imposed by brain capacity, bodily handicaps, etc. Sometimes our efforts and achievements are only halfway through when we die. Many have felt dejected at the thought that with death, all their aspirations and achievements would vanish like a torch dipped into water. As Edmund Wilson expresses it:

The knowledge that death is not so far away, that my mind and emotions and vitality will soon disappear like a puff of smoke, has the effect of making earthly affairs seem unimportant and human beings more and more ignoble. It is harder to take human life seriously, including one's own efforts and achievements.

But death does not mean an end. What happens if we are in the middle of learning the piano and we die? In the next life we pick up the thread from where we had left off in the previous life. In fact, in Devachan [swarga] there is an assimilation and expansion of all the nobler qualities—sympathy, love for beauty, art, and the abstract things of life—so that the soul comes back enriched.

It is quite possible that a person pursues only one field, one subject or develops only one particular faculty. If, say, the pursuit of music, literature, or computer science is kept up for many lives, then we have a computer wizard, a mathematical genius, a great musician. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart were all child prodigies and geniuses. Rebirth explains the appearance of geniuses and even child prodigies. Can heredity explain? Mr. Judge cites the example of the great musician Bach, "whose direct descendants showed a decrease in musical ability leading to its final disappearance from the family stock." Blind Tom, a negro, displayed great musical ability and skill in playing the piano, although his parents had no knowledge of piano. This bringing back of knowledge is recollection, divisible into physical and mental memory. Rebirth and Karma explain the coming of idiots or vicious children to parents who are good, pure or highly intellectual.

If we have lived before, why do we not remember our past lives? This objection is countered by the argument that we do not remember many things from our childhood period. Do we remember what we ate for breakfast three days ago? But this does not impair our sense of identity or make us feel that we did not go through those experiences. Mr. Judge explains our inability to remember past lives, thus:

The brain is the instrument for the memory of the soul, and, being new in each life with but a certain capacity, the Ego is only able to use it for the new life up to its capacity...By living according to the dictates of the soul the brain may at last be made porous to the soul's recollections.... (The Ocean of Theosophy, pp. 81-82)

There are instances of people who have remembered their past lives. But that is not the conclusive proof of re-birth. In The Key to Theosophy, H.P.B. writes: "To get convinced of the fact of reincarnation and past lives, one must put oneself in rapport with one's real permanent Ego, not one's evanescent memory."

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the wicked go scot-free? Nothing happens by chance. We are not able to explain suffering at times on the basis of actions in this life alone. We are not able to trace the effect back to its cause, which may lie in some previous life. But at a certain stage in the spiritual life the disciple is taught "unerring discernment of phala." We can never dodge Karma but must reap the consequences sooner or later. As The Light of Asia says, "Tomorrow it will judge or after many days."

We are born in the company of the souls we loved or hated. How explain sudden affinity or sudden aversion for a person at the first meeting? What could explain the fact that some people help us even when we do nothing in return, and some keep hindering us no matter how good we are to them? As Mr. Judge writes, no man becomes our enemy or friend by reason of our present acts alone. Every time we show charity and kindness to a person who may be inimical to us in this life, the tendency to enmity will be one-third lessened in every succeeding life. But if we persist in being inimical to him then this tendency is carried forward for three more lives. What shall we have in future—friends or enemies?

Rebirth explains disparities. Why is one person born with all the advantages of life and another in poor and adverse surroundings? How can we explain congenital blindness, handicaps and diseases? Either we have to believe in a God who is fanciful, or take these as karmic settlement of deeds of our past lives. If we believe in a just and compassionate God, then the only answer is—Karma and Rebirth.

It is the knowledge that our own comes back to us, if not in this life then in some other life, that can make people live ethically. They would think twice before doing anything wrong. Knowledge of rebirth takes from us the dread of death. It changes the very outlook on life. Truly, "For logic, consistency, profound philosophy, divine mercy and equity, this doctrine of Reincarnation has not its equal on earth." (The Key to Theosophy, p. 152)

(Concluded)

One of two things will happen when you socialize with others. You either become like your companions, or you bring them over to your own ways. Just as when a dead coal contacts a live one, either the first will extinguish the last, or the last kindle the first. Great is the danger; so be circumspect on entering into personal associations, even and especially light-hearted ones.

Most of us do not possess sufficiently developed stead-fastness to steer our companions to our own purpose, so we end up being carried along by the crowd. Our own values and ideals become fuzzy and tainted; our resolve is destabilized.

It's hard to resist when friends or associates start speaking brashly. Caught off guard when our associates broach ignoble subjects, we are swept along by the social momentum. It is the nature of conversation that its multiple meanings, innuendoes, and personal motivations move along at such a fast clip they can instantly shift in unwholesome directions, sullying everyone involved. So until wise sentiments are fixed into you as if they were instinct and you have thus acquired some power of self-defense, choose your associations with care and monitor the thrust of the conversations in which you find yourself.

—Epictetus