Why do we not remember the pact (the promise that all the souls gave to God when they had been asked “am I not your Lord?”)?

Why do we not remember the pact (the promise that all the souls gave to God when they had been asked “am I not your Lord?”)?

Dear Brother / Sister,

The spirit is placed into man’s body when he is four months old in their mothers’ womb. The soul has no information about that body it is going to stay for the next five months. Moreover, it is neither aware that it is a soul nor has it been equipped with capabilities of senses like seeing and hearing, nor intangible assets like mind, memory and imagination. When it is born to this world, it does not have any information about this world either. It undergoes childhood, grows up and becomes an adolescent. It turns into an exceptional being that sets its mind to work, analyzes itself and the world it lives in, comes up with questions of its own and tries to find answers to those questions. Even in that state of questioning, it does not remember its infancy and especially the phases it experienced in the mother’s womb. Then, it questions, “Why do I not remember the divine pact?”  

I will approach this question from two aspects:

First:

Our Lord imposes limitations on us and we benefit from all those limitations. For example, he has limited our sight and hence we cannot see everything. If we were able to see atoms’ giddy movements, we would lose our balance and maybe it would not be possible for us to live in this world. If we were able to see all the bacteria on the ground, we would not be able to walk easily. 

That is the case in our hearing too. If we were able to hear the footsteps of all insects while we were resting on the grass, we would not be able to rest. If we were able to hear high pitched sounds, we would be disturbed and maybe lose our hearing ability. We can only hear a specific range of frequencies and that is the most beneficial to us.

Our Lord, who set those constraints, has put limitations on our memory as well. We do not remember our infancy, what we have experienced in that period and anything before that, that is the period in the mother’s womb. One of the incidents we encountered in the womb but are not able to remember later is the “pact issue”. If we could remember the pact, then everyone would believe in Allah (God) and there would be no point of being tested for our belief.

The other aspect:

We often read through the Prophet’s miracles: An animal speaks and affirms the prophethood of the messenger of Allah God) (pbuh). Then, the animal goes back to its normal state (being a non-speaking animal) and resumes without being aware of anything.

Miracles related to the talking of the trees are exactly the same.

If God, the Supreme Being, granted consciousness to an apple tree for a moment and asked the tree “is it not me, who forms you in a way that you can produce apples?”, or asked a honeybee, “is it not me, who forms you in a way that you can produce honey?”, their answer to those and similar questions would be “yes, it is you who forms us in every way”.

The same question can be proposed to the human soul:

“Is it not me, who forms you to be a human soul, makes you capable of many sciences and skills by equipping you with physical and spiritual assets?”

The human soul would answer “Yes, it is you who forms me in every way”.

As a matter of fact, this question had been asked and the souls replied that Divine addressing by saying “Yes, you are our Lord”.

Please click on the links given below;

What does Mithaq, that is the ‘covenant’ in qalu bala, mean? Why do we not remember the promise we made in the realm of the souls? Will it make us free of responsibility not to remember that promise?

How did it occur that spirits promised to Allah (SWT) in pre-eternity? Is it something symbolic?

Questions on Islam