Talk:Emotions in the Newborn
Children learn to show emotions like fear, hate, love, grief, anger, etc. only after observing these and learning them from others. Therefore, newborn children who have not been exposed to these emotions cannot exhibit them.
“A newborn child manifests marks of joy, fear, and grief. This is inexplicable unless we suppose that the child, perceiving certain things in this life, remembers the corresponding things of the past life. The things which used to excite joy, fear, and grief in the past life, continue to do so in this life. The memory of the past proves the previous birth, as well as the existence of the soul.”[1]
A newborn baby exhibits feelings of joy, fear, and grief. This can only result from recollection of incidents in his past lives. Nyāya Sūtra 3.1.19
Sucking milk from his mother the newborn without having been taught is another proof of a learned skill from a previous life-
“A child, just born, drinks the breast of its mother through the remembrance that it did so in the previous life, as a means of satisfying hunger. The child’s desire for milk in this life is caused by the remembrance of its experience in the previous life. This proves that the child’s soul, though it has abandoned a previous body and has taken on a new one, remembers the experiences of the previous body. You do not come into the world in total forgetfulness and in utter darkness. You are born with certain memories and habits acquired in the previous birth. Desires take their origin from previous experiences. We find that one is born without desire. Every being is born with some desires which are associated with the things enjoyed by him in the past life. The desires prove the existence of his soul in previous lives.”[2]