Today, we will revisit the topic of past lives and our memory, or lack thereof, of them. A look at the diagram showing the cycle of a soul into and out of physical incarnation should be enough to explain why the physical brain cannot normally remember past lives. It’s obvious that the physical envelope cannot have a memory or record of a past incarnation in which it did not participate. This also applies to the emotional and mental bodies, as they are new for each incarnation.
This means that the only level at which we can hope to get reliable information about past lives is the causal envelope, as it is the only one that persists from one incarnation to another. The soul in the causal envelope was present in past lives, so it is an actual witness. The lower vehicles can only report what they receive from the soul, and the communication between the soul and the personality is often imperfect, making second or third-hand testimony unreliable.
While the emotional and mental bodies may sometimes provide isolated pictures of events in a person’s past life, we cannot provide a sequential and coherent account of them. These pictures are just reflections from the causal envelope, and they are likely to be very dim and blurred reflections that occasionally find their way through to the lower consciousness.
In order to accurately read past lives, it is necessary to first develop the faculties of the causal envelope. Although this could be done at lower levels through Psychometrisation of the permanent atoms, it would be a much more difficult feat than unfolding the senses of the causal envelope and is not likely to be attempted successfully. There are four methods of reading past lives, including the method just mentioned.
- Psychometrisation of the permanent atoms in each envelope
2. To access the soul’s own memory of past events
3. To psychometrise the soul, or rather its causal envelope, and see for ourselves the experiences through which it has passed. This method is safer than [2] because even a soul, having seen things through a past personality, may have imperfect or prejudiced impressions of them.
4. To use the buddhic faculties (46), becoming completely one with the soul under investigation, and to read its experiences as though they were our own, i.e., from within, instead of from without. This method obviously demands much higher development.
The series of incarnations described in the publication The Theosophist, the journal of the Theosophical Society, have employed methods [3] and [4]. Some of these have also been published in book form. The investigators received the intelligent cooperation of the soul whose incarnations were being described.
It’s advantageous to have the physical presence of the subject whose lives are being read, but not necessary. The subject is helpful as long as they can keep themselves calm. If they become excited, it can disrupt the process. The surroundings are not particularly important, but quiet is essential for clear impressions to come through. The physical brain must remain calm. It’s crucial to completely eliminate all prejudices, as they can colour everything seen through them and lead to a false impression. Two possible sources of error are personal bias and limited views.
Given the fundamental differences in temperament, individuals are likely to be influenced by their personal biases when considering other perspectives. Those below the level of an Adept (45) are particularly susceptible to this influence. For instance, individuals focused on worldly matters tend to emphasise insignificant details while overlooking important aspects due to their daily habits. Conversely, those embarking on a spiritual path may temporarily lose touch with ordinary human life in their enthusiasm. However, they have an advantage, as those who perceive the essence of things are closer to the truth than those who only see the surface. It is worth mentioning here that the ray the soul is functioning on will greatly influence how events are perceived and then processed. To minimise these errors, it is common for individuals of different ray-types to collaborate on these investigations.
The second risk mentioned is the tendency to have a limited perspective and to generalise from a partial view. For example, one might observe a small segment of a community and apply those observations to the community as a whole, falling into the common error of generalising based on insufficient observation.
There is, however, a general aura of a time or a country which usually prevents any great mistakes of this sort. A psychic who has not been trained to sense this general aura is often unconscious of it and may thus fall into many errors. Long-continued observation shows that all untrained psychics are sometimes reliable and sometimes unreliable, and those who consult them, therefore, run the risk of being misled.
When looking at past lives, it is safer to retain full physical consciousness. This allows one to make a note of everything while it is being observed, rather than to leave the physical envelope during the observations and trust to memory for their reproduction. This latter plan, however, has to be adopted when the student, though able to use the causal envelope, can do so only while the physical envelope is asleep.
The identification of souls is sometimes difficult because souls naturally change considerably over the course of thousands of years. Some investigators feel an intuition as to the identity of a particular soul, and although such an intuition may often be right, it may certainly also sometimes be wrong. The safer but more laborious method of identification is to pass the records rapidly in review and trace the souls concerned through them until they are found in the present day.
In some cases, the souls of ordinary people are instantly recognisable even after thousands of years. That does not speak particularly well of the people concerned because it means that they have made very little progress. To recognise, twenty thousand years ago, someone whom one knows in the present day is like meeting as an adult someone whom one knew long ago as a child. Sometimes, recognition is possible; sometimes, the change has been too great.
Individuals who have attained mastery are easily recognisable, even across thousands of years. When the lower vehicles are in complete harmony with the soul, they take on the likeness of the Augoeides and change little from one life to another. Similarly, as the soul becomes a perfect reflection of the Monad, it also changes little, though it gradually grows. This makes the soul readily identifiable. The Akashic Records, which have been previously described in the series on The Mental Envelope, will be briefly described. When examining a past life, it is easiest to let the record unfold naturally, but it is also possible to speed up or slow down the passage of events as needed.
The unrolling of the record is not an actual movement of the record but rather a shift in the consciousness of the observer. It creates the impression that the record itself is unrolling. The records are stacked on top of each other like layers, with the most recent on top and the older ones behind. However, this analogy is misleading because it implies thickness, whereas the records take up no more space than a reflection on the surface of a mirror. The consciousness does not physically move in space but instead envelops itself in one of the layers of the record, finding itself amidst the action of the story.
The method for determining dates has been described in the series on the Mental Envelope. It is generally easier to read lives forward than backward, as this aligns with the natural flow of time.
The languages used are usually unintelligible to the investigator, but since the thoughts behind the words are accessible, this is not a significant issue. Investigators have, at times, transcribed public inscriptions they couldn’t understand and later had them translated on the physical plane by someone familiar with the ancient language.
The records should not be considered as originally existing within any matter, although they are reflected in it. To read them, it’s unnecessary to directly touch any specific grouping of matter, as they can be read from any distance once a connection has been established.
However, each atom contains the record or perhaps possesses the ability to connect a clairvoyant with the record of everything that has ever occurred within its view. This phenomenon is what makes psychometry possible. But it has an interesting limitation: The psychometrist sees through it only what they would have seen if they had been standing at the spot from which the psychometric object has been taken. For example, if a person psychometrises a pebble that has been lying in a valley for ages, they will only see what has transpired during those ages in that valley. The viewer’s vision will be restricted by the surrounding hills, just as if they had stood where the stone lay for all those ages and had witnessed all those things.
There are ways to extend our understanding of our surroundings and history. By developing our inner faculties, we can perceive the thoughts, emotions, and physical forms of those around us. We can also use this ability as a starting point to explore further, gaining insight into what lies beyond our immediate surroundings and even events that occurred before our time. Eventually, we may even reach a point where we no longer need external aids to access this knowledge.
When we tap into the senses of our causal envelope, we can observe that every object emits images from the past. As our inner faculties develop, life becomes a continuous experience. We can not only access our own consciousness but also travel back in time, even to the perspective of animal group souls, offering a vastly different outlook on the world. Without this continuous consciousness, we lack detailed memories of the past, but we often recognise and accept what we have known before when it is presented to us in the present. The truth of reincarnation can be understood intellectually, but actual proof can only be obtained in the causal envelope, where the soul is aware of their past.
When people remember all their past lives using the consciousness of their causal envelope, they can consciously direct the various aspects of themselves as they progress. Even when a person is not yet fully capable of this, the soul can still impress its purpose upon the personality’s permanent atoms so that the purpose will be carried over from life to life. This knowledge will not be inherent in the person, but the moment it comes before them in their next incarnation, they will immediately recognise its truth and act accordingly.
In the case of a quick rebirth, the possibility of recovering the memory of the past incarnation is increased. The atoms and molecules in the old mental and emotional bodies, which have an affinity with the mental unit and emotional permanent atom, can be used in building the new mental and emotional bodies. With their assistance, the memory of the last incarnation should be more easily attained than in cases where there has been a long interval between lives, and the old materials have all been dissipated and spread through the various planes.
We do not yet understand the laws that govern the ability to transfer detailed knowledge from one life to the next. The evidence available suggests that specific details are often forgotten, but the new mind recognises fundamental principles as self-evident. This is how Hylozoics is remembered anew, as Laurency would say. It is a common experience to feel that truth is familiar when hearing it for the first time, even though one has never been able to express it in words. In some cases, there is hardly any memory at all, yet when a new truth is presented, it is immediately recognised as valid.
If we assume the truth of tradition, even the Buddha Himself, who took on a new envelope with the clear intention of helping the world, did not have a clear understanding of His mission after entering His new envelope. He only regained full knowledge after years of searching for it. He could have had this knowledge from the beginning, but He chose not to, submitting Himself to what seems to be the common experience. On the other hand, the Buddha may not have inhabited the envelope of Prince Siddartha from birth but only entered it after it fainted following years of seeking truth through rigorous ascetic practices. If this is the case, there would be no memory because the being in the envelope was not the Buddha, but someone else. Regardless, we can be certain that the soul, the true self, always retains what it has learned, but it may not always be able to remember it without some external prompting.
It is a consistent principle that someone who has embraced esoteric knowledge in one lifetime will reencounter it in the next, thereby reawakening their latent memory. We might suggest that the chance to rediscover this truth directly results from having accepted it and sincerely attempted to live by it in the previous incarnation.
The next topic up for discussion is the soul on its own plane. See you in the following presentation.