Philosophy:Jatismara

Short description: Sanskrit term for recollecting a former existence

Jātismara (Sanskrit: जातिस्मर) is a Sanskrit term meaning the recollection of a former existence or birth. Such recollection is believed to be an ability that great saints possessed or cultivated.

Literature

In the Buddhist Nikāya and Āgama literature there is reference to jātismara as first of the three vidyās ('sciences'), as the fourth of the five abhijñās ('superknowledges') and as the eighth of the ten tathagātadaśabala (powers of a tathagata); it is listed as a faculty connected with the higher stages of meditation as a yogic attainment through control of the body and purity of body and conduct, as the result of abiding in a particular samādhi. The Mahayāna Buddhist literature refers to jātismara not as an individual's meditational development but as effected by a Bodhisattva for improving religious life, or as a religious gain, as an anuśamsa ('blessing') through a third kind of non-meditational activity but connected with the sacred texts and with dhāranīs.

According to the Naradiya Purana observance of Ekadashi Vrata ('fast') can make a sinless person a Jātismara. The Jātismara Vrata requires the fasting person to remain silent until the moon rises. The Vishnu Purana speaks of Shavya, who was born a jātismara-daughter of the king of Kāshi.

The Bhagavata Purana (III.xxvi.30) states that memory is a characteristic of intelligence, that maya clouds intelligence and causes false identification (III.xxxi.20), that a person when born is bereft of memory (III.xxxi.23) when all wisdom gained in the past birth(s) is lost (III.xxxi.24). The Mahabharata states that bathing at the place the four seas meet allows one to have immunity from misfortune; bathing at such a site with a "pure mind and senses" allows one to acquire recollections of their former life.