The Theosophical Society,
Memories Of Past Lives
By
Annie Besant (1847 - 1933)
First published in 1932
Annie
Besant was active in Theosophical circles and a collaborator with
Archbishop
C. W. Leadbeater.
THERE
is probably no man now living in the scientific world who does not regard the
theory of physical evolution as beyond dispute; there may be many varieties of
opinion with regard to details and methods of evolution, but on the fundamental
fact, that forms have proceeded from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous,
there is complete harmony of educated opinion. Moreover, the evolutionary idea
dominates all departments of thought, and is applied to society as much as to
the individual. In history it is used as the master-key wherewith to unlock the
problems of the growth of nations, and, in sociology, of the progress of civilisations. The rise, the decay, the fall of races are
illuminated by this all-pervading idea, and it is difficult now for anyone to
throw himself in thought back into the time when law gave way to miracle, and
order was replaced by fortuitous irregularity.
In
working up to the hypothesis of evolution small indications were searched
for, as much as long successions were observed.
Things apparently trifling were
placed on record, and phenomena apparently trivial
were noted with meticulous
care. Above all, any incident which seemed to
conflict with a recognised law of
nature was minutely observed and repeatedly scrutinised, since it might be the
indication of some force as yet undiscovered, of some
hidden law working along lines as yet unknown. Every fact was observed and
recorded, challenged and discussed, and each contributed something to the great
pyramid of reasons which pointed to evolution as the best hypothesis for
explanation of the phenomena of nature. Your dog turned round and round on the
hearthrug before composing himself to sleep ; was he
not governed by an unconscious memory from the times when his ancestors thus
prepared a comfortable depression in the jungle for their repose? Your cat
pressed her fore-paws on the ground, pushing outwards repeatedly; was it not an
unconscious memory which dominated her from the need of her larger predecessors
encircled by the tall grass of the forest
hiding-place, to flatten out a
sufficient bed for luxurious rest? Slight, in
truth, are such indications, and yet withal they make
up, in their accumulation,
a massive argument in favour
of unconscious memories of past lives being wrought into the very fabric of the
animal body.
But
there is one line of questions, provocative of thought, that
has not yet
been pursued with industry equal to that bestowed on
the investigation of bodily
movements and habits. The questions remain
unanswered, either by biologist or
psychologist. Evolution has traced
for us the gradual building of our now
complex and highly organised
bodies; it has shown them to us evolving, in the
long course of millions of years, from a fragment of
protoplasm, from a simple
cell, through form after form, until their present
condition has been reached,
thus demonstrating a continuity of forms, advancing
into greater perfection as
organisms! But so far science has not traced a
correlative continuity of
consciousness - a golden thread on
which the innumerable separated bodies might be threaded — a consciousness
inhabiting and functioning through this succession of forms. It has not been
able to prove — nay, it has not even recognised' the likelihood
of the possibility - that consciousness passes on unbroken from body to body,
carrying with it an ever-increasing content, the accumulated harvest of innumerable
experiences, transmuted into capacities, into powers.
Scientists
have directed our attention to the splendid inheritance that has come
down to us from the past. They have shown us how
generation after generation has contributed something to the sum of human
knowledge, and how cycle after cycle manifests a growth of average humanity in
intellectual power, in extent of
consciousness, in fineness and beauty
of emotion. But if we ask them to explain
the conditions of this growth, to describe the
passing on of the content of one
consciousness
to another ; if we ask for some method, comparable to
the methods observed in the physical world, whereby we may trace this transmission
of the treasures of consciousness, may explain how it made its habits and
accumulates experiences which it transforms into mental and moral capacities,
then science returns us no answers, but fails to show us the means and the
methods of the evolution of consciousness in man.
When, in dealing with animals, science points to
the so-called inherited instincts, it does not offer any explanation of the
means whereby an intangible self-preserving instinct can be transmitted by an
animal to its offspring. That there is some purposive and effective action, apart
from any possibility of physical experience having been gained as its
instigator, performed by the young of an animal, we can observe over and over
again. Of the fact there can be no question. The young of animals, immediately
after coming into the world, are
seen to play some trick whereby they save themselves
from some threatening
danger. But science does not tell us how this
intangible consciousness of danger
can be transmitted by the parent, who has not
experienced it, to the offspring
who has never known it. If the life-preserving
instinct is transmissible through
the physical body of the parent, how did the parent
come to possess it ? If the
chicken just out of the shell runs for
protection to the mother-hen when the
shadow of a hawk hovering above it is seen, science
tells us that it is prompted
by the life-preserving instinct, the result of the
experience of the danger of
the hovering hawk, so many having thus perished that
the seeking of protection
from the bird of prey is transmitted as an instinct.
But the difficulty of
accepting this explanation lies in the fact that
the experience necessary to
evolve the instinct can only have been gained by the
cocks and hens who were
killed by birds of prey; these had no chance
thereafter of producing eggs, and
so could not transmit their valuable experience,
while all the chicks come from
eggs belonging to parents who had not experienced
the danger, and hence could
not have developed the instinct. (I am assuming
that the result of such
experiences in transmissible as an instinct an
assumption which is quite
unwarranted.) The only way of making the experiences
of slaughtered animals
reappear later as a life-preserving instinct is
for the record of the experience
to be preserved by some means, and transmitted as
an instinct to those belonging to the same type.
The
Theosophist points to the existence of matter finer than the physical, which vibrates
in correspondence with any mood of consciousness in this case the shock of
sudden death. That vibration tends to repeat itself, and that tendency remains,
and is reinforced by similar experiences of other slaughtered poultry; this,
recorded in the "group-soul", passes as a tendency into all the
poultry race, and shows itself in the newly hatched chick the moment the danger
threatens the new form. Instinct is " unconscious
memory", "inherited experience", but, each one who possesses it
takes it from a continuing consciousness, from which his separate lower
consciousness is derived. How else can it have originated, how else have been transmitted ?
Can
it be said that animals learn of danger by the observation of others who
perish ? That would not explain the unconscious
memory in our newly-hatched
chicken, who can have observed nothing. But
apart from this, it is clear that
animals are curiously slow either to observe, or
to learn the application to
themselves of the actions, the perils, of others.
How
often do we see a motherly hen running along the side of a pond, clucking
desperately to her brood of ducklings that have plunged into the water to the
manifest discomposure of the non-swimming hen; but she does the same thing
brood after brood; she never learns that the ducklings are able to swim and
that there is no danger to be apprehended when they plunge into the water. She
calls them as vigorously after ten years of experience as she did after the
first brood, so that it does not look as if instinct originated in careful
observation of petty movements by animals who then
transmit the results of their observations to their offspring.
The
whole question of the continuity of consciousness — a continuity necessary
to explain the evolution of instinct as much as
that of intelligence — is
insoluble by science, but has been readily solved
by religion. All the great
religions of the past and present have realised the eternity of the Spirit: "
God,"
it is written in a Hebrew Scripture, " created
man to be the image of His
own Eternity", and in that eternal nature of
the Spirit lies the explanation alike of instinct and of intelligence. In the
intellect-aspect of this Spirit all the harvests of the experiences of
successive lives are stored, and from the treasures of the spiritual memory are
sent down assimilated experiences, appearing as instincts, as unconscious
memories of past lives, in the new-born form. Every improved form receives as
instincts and as innate ideas this wealth of reminiscence: every intellectual
and moral faculty is a store of reminiscences, and education is but the
awakening of memory.
Thus
religion illuminate that which science leaves obscure, and gives us a
rational, an intelligible theory of the growth of
instinct and of intellect; it
shows us a continuity of a consciousness ever
increasing in content, embodying
itself in forms ever increasing in complexity. The view . that man consists not
only of bodies in which the working of the law of
heredity may be traced, but
also is a living consciousness, growing, unfolding,
evolving, by the
assimilation of the food of
experience — this theory is an inevitable pendant to
the theory of physical evolution, for the latter remains
unintelligible without
the former. Special creation, rejected from the
physical world, cannot much
longer be accepted in the psychical, nor be held to
explain satisfactorily the
differences between the genius and the dolt, between
the congenital saint and
the congenital criminal. Unvarying law, the
knowledge of which is making man the master of the physical world, must be recognised as prevailing equally in the
psychical. The improving bodies must be recognised as instruments to be used for the gaining of
further experiences by the ever-unfolding consciousness.
A
definite opinion on this, matter can only be gained by personal study,
investigation and research. Knowledge
of the great truths of nature is not a
gift, but a prize to be won by merit. Every human
being must form his own
opinions by his own strenuous efforts to discover
truth, by the exercise of his
own reasoning faculties, by the experiences of his
own consciousness. Writers
who garb their readers in second-hand opinions, as a
dealer in second-hand
clothes dresses his customers, will never turn
out a decently costumed set of
thinkers; they will be clad in misfits. But there
are lines of research to be
followed, experiences to be gone through and analysed, by those who would arrive at truth — research
which has led others to knowledge, experiences which have been found fruitful
in results. To these a writer may point his readers, and
they, if they will, may follow along such lines for
themselves.
I
think we may find in our consciousness — in our intelligence and our
emotional nature — distinct traces from the past
which point to the evolution of our consciousness, as the recurrent laryngeal
nerve and the embryonic reptilian
heart point to the ancestral line of evolution of our
body. I think there are
memories forming part of our consciousness which
justify belief in previous
existences, and point the way to a more intelligent
understanding of human life.
I
think that, by careful observation, we may find memories in ourselves, not
only of past events, but of the past training and
discipline which have made us
what we are, memories which are embedded in, which
form even the very fabric of our consciousness, which emerge more clearly as we
study them, and become more intelligible the more carefully we observe and analyse them.
But
for a moment we must pause on the theory of Reincarnation, on the broad
principle of consciousness in evolution.
This
theory posits a Spirit, a seed or germ of consciousness planted in matter,
and ultimately, after long ages of growth, becoming
ready to enter an
undeveloped human body, connected by its material
with three worlds, the worlds of mind, of desire and of action, otherwise
called the heavenly, intermediate and physical worlds. In the physical world
this growing Spirit gathers experiences of varied kinds, feels pleasures and
pains, joys and sorrows, health and illness, successes and disappointments, the
many changing conditions which make up our mortal life. He carries these on
with him through death, and in the intermediate world experiences the
inevitable results of desires which clashed with the laws of nature, reaping in
suffering the harvest of his blundering
ignorance.
Thus
he shapes the beginnings of a conscience, the recognition of an external law of
conduct. Passing on to the heavenly world, be builds his mental
experiences into mental faculties until, all the
food of experience being
assimilated, he begins again to hunger, and so
returns to earth with the elements of a character, still enveloped in
many-folded ignorance, but starting with a little more content of consciousness
than he had in his previous life.
Such
is his cycle of growth, the passing through the three worlds over and over
again, ever accumulating experience, ever transmuting
it into power. That cycle
is repeated over and over again, until the savage
grows into the average man of
our time, from the average man, to the man of
talent, of noble character; then
onwards to the genius, to the saint, to the
hero; onwards still to the Perfect
Man;
onwards yet, through ever-increasing, unimaginable splendours,
vanishing
into blinding radiance which veils his further
progress from our dazzled eyes.
Thus
every man builds himself, shapes his own destiny, is verily self-created ;
no one of us is what we are save as we have
wrought out our own being ; our
future is not imposed on us by an arbitrary will or a
soulless necessity, but is
ours to fashion, to create. There is nothing we
cannot accomplish if we are
given time, and time is endless. We, the living
consciousnesses, we pass from
body to body, and each new body takes the impress
made upon it by its tenant,
the ever-young and immortal Spirit.
I
have spoken of the three stages of the life-cycle, each belonging to a
definite world; it must be noted that in the
physical stage of the life-period,
we are living in all the three worlds, for we are
thinking and desiring as well
as acting, and our body, the vehicle of
consciousness, is triple. We lose the
physical part of the body at death, and the
desire-part at a later period, and
live in the mental body — in which all good thoughts
and pure emotions have
their habitat — while in the heavenly world. When the
heaven life is over, the
mental body also disintegrates, and there remains but
the spiritual body whereof
S.
Paul speaks, "eternal in the heavens".. Into
that, the lasting clothing of
the Spirit, are woven all the pure results of
experiences gathered in the lower
worlds. In the building of the new triple body for the
new life-cycle in the
lower worlds, a new apparatus comes into existence
for the use of the spiritual
consciousness and the spiritual body;
and the latter, retaining within itself
the conscious memory of past events, imprints on
the lower — its instruments for gathering fresh experience — only the results
of the past, as faculties, mental
and emotional, with many traces of past experiences
which have been outgrown and remain normally in the sub-consciousness. The
conscious memory of past events being present only in the spiritual body, the
consciousness must be functioning in that in order to "remember"; and
such functioning is possible through a system of training and discipline — yoga
— which may be studied by anyone who has perseverance, and a certain amount of
innate ability for this special kind of work.
But
in addition to this there are many unconscious memories, manifesting in
faculty, in emotion, in power, traces of the
past imprinted on the present, and
discoverable by observations on
our-selves and others. Hence, memories of the
past may be clear and definite, obtained by the
practice of yoga, or unconscious
but shown by results, and closely allied in many
ways to what are called
instincts, by which you do certain things, think
along certain lines, exercise
certain functions, and possess certain knowledge
without having consciously
acquired it. Among the Greeks, and the ancients
generally, much stress was laid
upon this form of memory. Plato's phrase: "All
knowledge is reminiscence", will
be remembered. In the researches of psychology
today, many surges of feeling,
driving a man to hasty, unpremeditated action,
are ascribed to the
sub-consciousness, i.e., the
consciousness which shows itself in involuntary
thoughts, feelings and actions; these come to us
out of the far-off past,
without our volition or our conscious creation.
How do these come, unless there
be continuity of consciousness ?
Any
who study modern psychology will see how great a part unconscious memory plays
in our lives, how it is said to be stronger than our reason, how it conjures up
pathetic scenes uncalled-for, how at night it throws us into causeless panics.
These, we are told, are due to memories of dangers surrounding savages, who
must ever be on the alert to guard themselves against sudden attacks, whether
of man or beast, breaking into the hours of repose, killing the men and women
as they slept. These past experiences are said to have left records in
consciousness, records which lie below the threshold of waking consciousness
but are ever present within us. And some say that this is the most important
part of our consciousness, though out of sight for the ordinary mind.
We
cannot deny to these the name of memory, these experiences out of the past
that assert themselves in the present. Study these
traces, and see whether they
are explicable save by the continuity of
consciousness, making the Self of the
savage the Self which is yourself today, seeing the
persistence of the
Individual
throughout human evolution, growing, expanding, developing, but a
fragment of the eternal "I am".
May
we not regard instincts as memories buried in the sub-conscious, influencing our
actions, determining our "choices" ? Is not
the moral instinct Conscience, a mass of interwoven memories of past
experiences, speaking with the authoritative utterance of all instincts, and
deciding on " right" and " wrong " without argument,
without reasoning? It speaks clearly when we are walking on
well-trodden ways, warning us of
dangers experienced in the past, and we shun
them at sight as the chicken shuns the down rush of
the hawk hovering above it.
But
as that same chicken has no instinct as regards the rush of a motor-car, so
have we no "voice of Conscience" to warn
us of the pitfalls in ways hitherto
unknown.
Again,
innate faculty — what is it but an unconscious memory of subjects
mastered in the past ? A subject, literary,
scientific, artistic, what we will,
is taken up by one person and mastered with
extraordinary ease; he seizes at
sight the main points in the study, taking it up as
new, apparently, but so
rapidly grasping it that it is obviously an old
subject remembered, not a new
subject mastered. A second person, by no means
intellectually inferior, is
observed to be quite dense along this particular
line of study ; reads a book on
it, but keeps little trace of it in his mind;
addresses himself to its
understanding, but it evades his grasp.
He stumbles along feebly, where the
other ran unshackled and at ease. To what can such
difference be due save to the unconscious memory which science is beginning to recognise ?
One student has known the subject and is merely remembering it; the other takes
it up for the
first time, and finds it difficult and obscure.
As
an example, we may take H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, a difficult book;
it is said to be obscure, diffuse, the style to be
often unattractive, the
matter very difficult to follow. I have known some of
my friends take up these
volumes and study them year after year, men and
women, intelligent, quite alert
in mind ; yet after years of study they cannot
grasp its main points nor very
often follow its obscure arguments. Let me put
against that my own experience of that book. I had not read anything of the
subject with which it deals from the
standpoint of the Theosophist; it was the first
Theosophical book I had read —
except The Occult World — and it came into my hands, apparently
by chance, given to me to review by Mr. Stead, then Editor of the Pall Mall
Gazette. When I began to read that book, I read it right through day after day,
and the whole of it
was so familiar as I read, that I sat down and
wrote a review which anyone may
read in the Pall Mall Gazette of, I think, February
or March, 1889; and anyone
who reads that review will find that I had taken
the heart out of the book and
presented it intelligently to the ordinary
newspaper reader. That certainly was
not from any special genius on my part.
If
I had been given a book of some other kind, I might have stumbled over it and
made nothing of it at all; but as I read I remembered, and the whole philosophy
fell into order before me, although to this brain and in this body it came
before me for the first time. I allege that in cases like that we have a proof
of the accuracy of Plato's idea, mentioned already, that all knowledge is
reminiscence; where we have known before we do really remember, and so master
without any effort that which another, without a similar experience, may find
abstruse, difficult and obscure.
We
may apply this to any new subject that anyone may take up. If he has learned it
before, he will remember and master the subject easily; if not, taken as a new
thing, he must learn step by step, and gradually understand the relation
between the phenomena studied, working it out laboriously because unknown.
Let
us now apply that same idea of memory to genius, say to musical genius. How can
we explain, except by previous knowledge existing as memory, the mystery of a
little child who sits down to a piano and with little teaching, or with none, outstrips
many who have given years of labour to the art ? It is
not only that we marvel over children like the child Mozart in the past, but in
our own day we have seen a number of these infant prodigies, the limit of whose
power was the smallness of the child hand, and even with that deficient
instrument, they
showed a mastery of the instrument that left behind
those who had studied music for many years. Do we not see in such child genius
the mark of past knowledge, of past power of memory, rather than of learning ?
Or
let us take the Cherniowsky family; three brothers in
it have been before the
public for eleven years, drawing huge audiences by
their wonderful music; the
youngest is now only eighteen, the oldest
twenty-two; they have not been taught,
but have taught themselves, i.e., they have
unconsciously remembered. A little
sister of theirs, now five years old, already plays
the violin, and since she
was a baby the violin has been the one instrument
she has loved. Why, if she has
no memory ?
This
precocious genius, this faculty which accomplishes with ease that which
others perform with toil and difficulty, is found not
only in music. We recall
the boy Giotto, on the
hill-side with his sheep. Nor is it found only in art.
Let
us take that marvelous genius, Dr. Brown, who as a little child, when he was
only five or six years old, had been able to master
dead languages; who, as he
grew older, picked up science after science, as
other children pick up toys with
which they are amused; who carried an ever-increasing
burden of knowledge "
lightly as a flower" and became one of the
most splendid of scientific geniuses,
dealing with problems that baffled others but
that he easily solved, and standing as a monument of vast constructive
scientific power. We find him, according to his father's account, learning at
the age when others are but babies, and using those extraordinary powers —
memories of the past persisting into the present.
But
let us take an altogether other class of memory. We meet someone for the
first time. We feel strongly attracted. There is no
outward reason for the
attraction ; we know nothing of his
character, of his past; nothing of his
ability, of his worth; but an overpowering
attraction draws us together, and a
life-long, intimate friendship dates from the
first meeting, an instantaneous
attraction, a recognition of one supremely worthy
to be a friend. Many of us
have had experiences of that kind. Whence come they ? We may have had an equally strong repulsion, perhaps
quite as much outside reason, quite as much apart from experience.
One
attracts and we love; the other repels and we shrink away. We have no reason
for either love or repulsion. Whence comes it save as a memory
from the past? A moment's thought shows how such
cases are explained from the standpoint of reincarnation. We have met before,
have known each other before. In the case of a sudden attraction, it is the
soul recognising an ancient friend and comrade across
the veil of flesh, the veil of the new body. In the case of repulsion it is the
same soul recognising an ancient enemy, one who
wronged us bitterly, or whom we have wronged; the soul warns us of danger, the
soul warns us of peril, in contact with that ancient foe, and tries to drag
away the unconscious body that does not recognise its
enemy, the one whom the soul knows from past experience to be a peril in the
present. "Instinct" we say; yes, for, as we have seen, instinct is
unconscious, or sub-conscious, memory. A wise man obeys such attractions and
such repulsions; he does not laugh at them as irrational, nor cast them aside
as superstition, as folly; he realises that it is far
better for him to keep out of the way of the man concerning whom the inner
warning has arisen, to obey the repulsion that drives him away from him. For
that repulsion indicates the memory of an ancient wrong, and he is safer out of
touch of that man against whom he feels the repulsion.
Do
we want to eradicate the past wrong, to get rid of the danger? We can do it
better apart than together. If to that man against
whom we feel repulsion we
send day after day thoughts of pardon and of
goodwill; if deliberately,
consciously, we send messages of love to the ancient
enemy, wishing him good,
wishing him well, in spite of the repulsion that
we feel, slowly and gradually
the pardon and love of the present will erase the
memory of the ancient wrong,
and later we may meet with indifference, or even
may become friends, when, by
using the power of thought, we have wiped out the
ancient injury and have made
instead a bond of brotherhood by thoughts and
wishes of good. That is one of the ways we may utilise
the unconscious memories coming to us out of our past.
Again,
sometimes we find in such a first meeting with an ancient friend that we
talk more intimately to the stranger of an hour ago
than we talk to brothers or
sisters with whom we have been brought up during
all our life.
There
must be some explanation of those strange psychological happenings, traces — I
put it no more strongly than that — worthy of our observation, worthy of our study;
for it is these small things in psychology that point the way to discoveries of
the problems that confront us in that science. Many of us might add to
psychological science by carefully observing, carefully recording,
carefully working out, all these instinctive
impulses, trying to trace out
afterwards the results in the present and in the
future, and thus gather
together a mass of evidence which may help us to
a great extent to understand
ourselves.
What
is the real explanation of the law of memory of events, and this
persistence in consciousness of attraction or
repulsion? The explanation lies in
that fact of our constitution; the bodies are new,
and can only act in
conformity with past experiences by receiving an
impulse from the indwelling
soul in which the memory of those experiences
resides. Just as our children are
born with a certain developed conscience, which is a
moral instinct, just as the
child of the savage has not the conscience that our
children possess previous to
experience in this life, previous to moral
instruction, so is it with these
instincts, or memories, of the intelligence,
which, like the innate moral
instinct that we call conscience, are based on
experience in the past, and hence
are different in people at different stages of
evolution.
A
conscience with a long past behind it is far more evolved, far more ready to
understand moral differences, than the conscience
of a less well evolved
neighbour. Conscience is not a
miraculous implanting; it is the slow growth of
moral instinct, growing out of experience, built by
experience, and becoming
more and more highly evolved as more and more
experience lies behind. And on
this all true theories of education must be based.
We often deal with children
as though they came into our hands to be moulded at our will. Our lack of
realisation of the fact that the
intelligence of the child, the consciousness of
the child, is bringing with it the results of past
knowledge, both along
intellectual and moral lines, is a
fatal blunder in the education of today. It
is not a "drawing-out", as the name
implies — for the name was given by the
wiser people of the past.
Education
in these modern days is entirely a pouring in, and therefore it largely fails
in its object. When our teachers realise the fact of
reincarnation, when they see in a child an entity with memories to be aroused
and faculties to be drawn out, then we shall deal with the child as an individual,
and not as though children were turned out by the dozen or the score from some
mould into which they are supposed to have been poured. Then our education will
begin to be individual; we shall study the child before we begin to educate it,
instead of educating it without any study of its faculties.
It
is only by the recognition of its past that we shall realise
that we have in the
child a soul full of experience, traveling along his
own line. Only when we
recognise that, and instead of
the class of thirty or forty, we have the small
class, where each child is treated individually, only
then will education become
a reality among us, and the men of the future
will grow out of the wiser
education thus given to the children. For the
subject is profoundly practical
when you realise the
potencies of daily life. .
Much
light may be thrown on the question of unconscious memories by the study of memory
under trance conditions. All people remember something of their childhood, but
all do not know that in the mesmeric trance a person remembers much more than
he does in the waking consciousness. Memories of events have sunk below the
threshold of the waking consciousness, but they have not been annihilated, when
the consciousness of the external world is stilled, that of the internal world
can assert itself, as low music, drowned in the rattle of the streets, becomes
audible in the stillness of the night. In the depths of our consciousness, the
music of the past is ever playing, and when surface
agitations are smoothed away, the notes reach our
ears. And so in trance we know that which escapes us when awake. But with
regard to childhood there is a thread of memory sufficient to enable anyone to
feel that he, the mature individual, is identical with the playing and studying
child. That thread is lacking where past lives are concerned, and the feeling
of identity, which depends on memory, does not arise.
Colonel
de Rochas once told me how he had succeeded, with mesmerised patients, in recovering the memory of babyhood,
and gave me a number of instances in which he had thus pursued memory back into
infantile recesses. Nor is the memory only that of events, for a mesmerised woman, thrown back in memory into childhood and asked
to write, wrote her old childish hand. Interested in this investigation, I asked
Colonel de Rochas to see if he could pass backward
through birth to the previous death, and evoke memory across the gulf which
separates life-period from life-period.
Some
months later he sent me a number of experiments, since published by him, which
had convinced him of the fact of reincarnation. It seems possible that, along
this line, proofs may be gradually accumulated, but much testing and repetition
will be needed, arid a careful shutting out of all external influences.
There
are also cases in which, without the inducing of trance, memories of the
past survive, and these are found in the cases of
children more often than among
grown-up people. The brain of the child, being
more plastic and impressionable,
is more easily affected by the soul than when it
is mature. Let us take a few
cases of such memories. There was a little lad who
showed considerable talent in drawing and modeling, though otherwise a somewhat
dull child. He was taken one day by his mother to the
his mother: "O mother, those are the things I
used to make". She laughed at him,
of course, as foolish people laugh at children,
not realising that the unusual
should be studied and not ridiculed. I do not mean
when you were my mother," he answered. "It was when I had another
mother". This was but a sudden flash of memory, awakened by an outside
stimulus; but still it has its value.
We
may take an instance from
frequently found than in the West, probably because
there is not the same
predisposition to regard them as
ridiculous. This, like the preceding, came to
me from the elder person concerned. He had a
little nephew, some five or six
years of age, and one day, sitting on his uncle's
knee, the child began to
prattle about his mother in the village, and
told of a little stream at the end
of
his garden, and how, one day when he had been playing and made himself dirty, his
mother sent him to wash in the stream; he went in too far and — woke up elsewhere.
The uncle's curiosity was aroused, and he coaxed details about the village from
the child, and thought he recognised it.
One
day he drove with the child through this village, not telling the child
anything, but the little boy jumped up excitedly and cried out". Oh I this
is my village where I lived, and where I tumbled into the water, and where my
mother lived." He told his uncle where to drive to his cottage, and
running in, cried to a woman therein as his mother. The woman naturally knew
nothing of the child, but asked by the uncle if she had lost a child, she told
him that her little son had been drowned in the stream running by the garden.
There we have a more definite memory, verified by the elder people concerned.
Not
long ago, one of the members of the Theosophical Society, Minister in an
collect and investigate cases of memory of the
past in persons living in his own
neighbourhood. He found and recorded
several cases, investigating each
carefully, and satisfying himself that the
memories were real memories which
could be tested. One of them I will mention here
because it was curious, and
came into a court of law. It was a case of a man who
bad been killed by a
neighbour who was still living in
the village. The accusation of murder was
brought by the murdered man in his new body! It
actually went to trial, and so
the thing was investigated, and finally the murder
was proved to the
satisfaction of the judge. But
judgment was reserved on the ground that the man
could not bring an action for being murdered, as he
was still alive, and the
case depended upon his testimony alone; so the whole
thing fell through.
Memory
of the past can be evolved by gradually sinking down into the depths of
consciousness by a process deliberately
and patiently practised.
Our
mind working in our physical brain is constantly active, and is engaged in
observing the world outside the body. On these observations it reflects and reasons, and the whole of our normal mental processes have
to do with these daily activities which fill our lives. It is not in this busy
region that the memories of the past can be evoked.
Anyone
who would unveil these must learn so to control his mind as to be able, at
will, to withdraw it from outer objects and from thoughts connected with them,
so as to be able to hold the mind still and empty. It must be wide awake,
alert, and yet utterly quiet and unoccupied. Then, slowly and gradually, within
that mind, emptied of present thought, there arises a fuller, stronger, deeper
consciousness, more vivid, more intensely alive, and this is realised as oneself; the mind is seen to be only an
instrument of this, a tool to be used at will. When the mind is thus mastered,
when it is made subservient to the higher
consciousness, then we feel that this
new consciousness is the permanent one, in which our past remains as a memory
of events and not only as results in faculty.
We
find that being quiet in the presence of that higher consciousness, asking it
of its past, it will gradually unroll before us the panorama through which it
has itself passed, life after life, and thus enable us to review that past and
to realise it as our own. We find ourselves to be
that consciousness; we rise out of the passing into the permanent, and look
back upon our own long past, as before upon the memory of our childhood. We do
not keep its memories always in mind, but can recover them at will. It is not
an ever-present memory, but on turning our attention to it we can always find it,
and we find in that past others who are the friends of today.
If
we find, as people invariably do find, that the people most closely knit to us
today have been most closely knit to us in the far-off past also, then one
after another we may gather our memories, we may compare them side by side, we
may test them by each other's rememberings, as men of
mature age remember their school-fellows and the incidents of their boyhood and
compare those memories which are common to them both; in that way we gradually
learn how we built up our character, how we have moulded
the later lives through which we have passed. That is within the reach of any
one of us who will take the trouble.
I
grant that it takes years, but it can be done. There is, so far as I know, no
other way to the definite recovery of memory. A person may have flashes of
memory from time to time, like the boy with the statues; he may get significant
dreams occasionally, in which some trace of the past may emerge; but to have it
under control, to be able to turn our attention to the past at will and to
remember — that needs effort, long, prolonged, patient, persevering; but
inasmuch as every one is a living soul, that memory is within every one, and it
is within our power to awaken it.
No
one need fear that the above practice will weaken the mind, or cause the
student to become dreamy or less useful in the
"practical world". On the
contrary, such mastery of the mind much
strengthens mental grasp and mental
power, and makes one more effective in the ordinary
life of the world. It is not
only that strength is gained, but the waste of
strength is prevented. The mind
does not "race," as does a machine which
continues to go without the resistance
of the material on which it should work; for when
it has nothing useful to do,
it stops its activity. Worry is to the mind what
racing is to the machine, and
it wears the mind out where work does not. To
control the mind is to have a keen instrument in good condition, always ready
for work. Note how slow many people are in grasping an idea, how confused, how
uncertain. An average man who has trained his mind to obedience is more
effective than a comparatively clever one who knows naught of such control.
Further,
the conviction, which will gradually arise in the student who studies
these memories of the past, of the truth of his
permanent Self, will
revolutionise the whole life, both
individual and social. If we know ourselves
to be permanent living beings, we become strong
where now we are weak, wise
where now we are foolish, patient where now we are
discontented. Not only does it make us strong as individuals, but when we come
to deal with social problems we find ourselves able to solve them. We know how
to deal with our criminals, who are only young souls, and instead of degrading
them when they come into the grasp of the law, we treat them as children
needing education, needing training — not needing the liberty they do not know
how to use, but as children to be patiently educated — helping them to evolve
more rapidly because they have come into our hands.
We
shall treat them with sympathy and not with anger, with gentleness and not with
harshness. I do not mean with a foolish sentimentality which would give them a
liberty they would only abuse to the harming of society ; I mean a steady
discipline which will evolve and strengthen, but has in it nothing brutal,
nothing needlessly painful, an education for the child souls which will help
them to grow.
I
have said how this knowledge would affect the education of children. It would
also change our politics and sociology, by giving us time to build on a
foundation so that the building will be secure.
There
is nothing which so changes our view of life as a knowledge of the past of
which the present is the outcome, a knowledge how to
build so that the building
may endure in the future. Because things are dark
around us and the prospects of society are gloomy ;
because there is war where social prosperity demands peace, and hatred where
mutual assistance ought to be found; because society is a chaos and not an
organism; I find the necessity for pressing this truth of past lives on the
attention of the thoughtful, of those willing to study, willing to
investigate. Realising
reincarnation as a fact, we can work for brotherhood,
work for improvement. We realise
that every living human being has a right to an
environment where he can develop his abilities and
grow to the utmost of the
faculties he has brought with him. We understand
that society as a whole should
be as a father and a mother to all those whom it
embrace? as its children; that
the most advanced have duties, have
responsibilities, which to a great extent
they are neglecting today; and that only by
understanding, by brotherly love, by
willing sacrifice, can we emerge from struggle
into peace, from poverty into
well-being, from misery and hatred into love and prosperity.
The Theosophical Society,