THE chief objection to reincarnation is that we do not remem- ber our past lives, as we ought to do if our "I am I" is a permanent center of consciousness, and merely passes from body to body upon the death of these. This at first sight seems a valid objection, for memory seems a necessary link in constituting true self-consciousness. One chief argument advanced in proof of the existence of a soul is that there is a central something which binds states of consciousness into a continuous and connected unity, and without which unifying center they would of necessity remain simply states of consciousness; those present having no memcry of nor hold upon those past, nor anticipation of those in the future. Therefore, we ought to remember our past if that past has been really continuous; and the objection is fital unless the loss of the memory of our various personalities is fully explained.

This explanation is found in the compound nature of man. We have seen that the Higher Ego is only incarnated in a human - animal body for the purpose of descending to this plane of molecular consciousness; that there are really three evolutionary processes going on simultaneously in man - a physical, or that of form, an intellectual or manasic, and a spiritual or monadic. With this third process the divine Monad is alone concerned. The second, or intellectual, evolution, is that of the Higher Ego. The third appertains to the Lower Quaternary. While in man these three distinct streams of evolution are inextricably interblended, because to a greater or lesser degree each process is a factor in both the others; still, they are distinct enough without being separate to fully account for non-remembrance of the one upon the plane of the other. Memory has been variously divided and classified by psychologists, which divisions do not require analysis here. The one essential in any act of memory is the recording of a conscious experience. This record will and must differ with each plane of consciousness. The manasic plane being that of true self- consciousness, it takes here the self-conscious form; upon the physical, it records itself in other changes, which are physical rather than mental.

None the less, however, are these changes the records of memory because below the self-conscious plane. The physical form and psychic characteristics, which represent the infinite variations in the entities upon the material plane of the Universe, constitute the memory of the conscious experiences of each entity recorded in these physical modifications. In the physical body of man is thus recorded each conscious experience undergone since he occupied that mass of jelly-like substance which we have reason to suspect was his first body, although the great mass of these experiences have of necessity been below the self-conscious plane.

Here, then, lies the secret of our not remembering our past lives. They have been and are entirely too much upon the physical plane to find other record than in those physical and lower psychic modifications of form and passional characteristics which lie too far below it to have any record upon the plane of manasic or true self-consciousness. The most of our conscious experiences are almost purely animal; and while they are temporarily recorded as separate experiences upon the brain cells of each body, this record is of necessity destroyed as a self-conscious register at death, and is only preserved upon the corresponding register of its own plane - that of evolutionary modification. The record is destroyed as a self - conscious register for the reason that the personality has no true self-consciousness. The feeling of "I am I" of our ordinary conscious experiences is reflected there by the Higher Ego, as was explained in the chapter dealing with that portion of the subject, and passes away entirely either at or briefly following death.

All those ambitions, "successes," and even intellectual achievements, no matter how colossal they appear, if only intellectual, and not spiritualized, fall within the fatal line of non-permanency. The life of a Napoleon, or of a Bacon, represents only the lower animal faculties - intensely intellectualized, to be sure, but having no greater claim to the spiritual remembrance of the Higher Ego than the humblest events in the life of a clodhopper. One must live upon the plane of the Higher Manas to have a truly self-conscious memory; otherwise, he can and ought to expect the obliteration of his personal memory after devachanic existence ceases and his next reincarnation occurs. And just in proportion as one does live in his higher Principles will each personality live in the memory of the Higher Ego; and, also, in proportion to his ability to reach this divine plane of truly continuous self-consciousness while in the body will he remember his past lives.

Those conscious experiences which represent the borderland, as it were, between the higher and lower Manas, or between the Individuality and Personality, are carried forward as devachanic memories; but, being semi-spiritual only, they are lost as self- conscious experiences upon reincarnation. They have all the permanence to which their mixed nature entitles them in the illusory but very happy recalling of them while in this subjective state. For the chief happiness of this condition lies in the power of the soul to take an earth memory or desire and make it the text, so to speak, upon which a series of thought pictures are constructed and which carry the unrealized desire or interrupted happiness to its highest ideal termination. The whole of Devachan is thus largely composed of these dramatized realizations of desires arising out of conscious experiences while in the body. It is only necessary that they should rise above the plane of gross animality for them to become the objects of this devachanic dramatization and realization.

That man's conscious experiences upon earth are so largely recorded upon the physical plane and in these karmic modifications of physical heredity, is a most beneficent provision of nature. So full of mistakes, errors, sins, and crimes is the past of, perhaps, every one of us, that the actual memory of it all carried forward in detail to each new life would overwhelm the soul with despair at the very outset. Nor is it essential to the conviction of our having lived before that we should remember each incident in our past lives, or even that we have lived before at all. Who remembers the first two or three years of his infancy ? The fact that we were the same individual during this period of forgotten existence that we are now, none of us doubt, yet we would be sorely put about if we were required to furnish proof of this from memory. And even after this portion, how much do we remember of our life history if we attempt to recall it day by day, in all its trifling minutiae? Of the three-score years and ten of human existence in the body, few can accurately recall the events of as many days nay, hardly of as many minutes. All, except prodigies of memory, have practically forgotten nine hundred and ninety-nine of every thousand incidents of all their past.