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CHAPTER XIV
RENOVATION OF THE MEMORY
In the preceding pages we have given the logical reasons which militate in favor of the doctrines of
successive lives. We consecrate this chapter and the following to a refutation of the objections of those who
contradict the idea. We begin with a collection of scientific proofs which every day increase. The most
common objection is this: If a man has already lived, why does he not remember his past existences? We have
already given a summary of the cause of forgetfulness. It is the rebirth itself - the act of re-clothing a new
organism, a material envelope, which in its turn plays the part of an extinguisher. By the divination of its
vibratory state the spirit, each time it takes possession of a new body, of a virgin brain devoid of all images,
finds itself incapable of expressing the memories accumulated in anterior lives. Its antecedents, it is true,
reveal themselves in its tasks, its virtues, and its faults.
But all the detail of facts, the events which constituted its past, remain during earth life in the profound
depths of the consciousness. The spirit in its waking state can only express the impressions registered by the
material brain; memory is a chain, an association of ideas, facts, and knowledge. As soon as this association
disappears, soon as the thread of memories is broken, the past seems to be effaced for us. But that is only an
appearance. Professor Charles Richet said in an address, on 6th February 1905, at the Academy of Medicine:
‘Memory is an implacable faculty of our intelligence, for no one of our perceptions is ever forgotten. As soon
as a fact has struck our sense, then in a manner irremediable it is fixed in the memory. Little matters it that we
may guard the consciousness from this souvenir. It exists, it is indelible.’ Let us add that it can be reborn. The
awakening of memory is but the effect of vibration produced by the action of the will upon the brain cells. To
revive the memories anterior to rebirth, we must put ourselves in harmony with the vibrations of the state
which was ours at the epoch when those perceptions were established. The brain which registered those
perceptions no longer exists, and we must seek them in the depth of consciousness. They remain mute as long
as the spirit is prisoned in the flesh. It must go out of the body to recover the plenitude of its vibrations and
again seize the hidden memories; then it perceives its past and can reconstruct its smallest wants. That is what
is done in the phenomenon of somnambulism and trance.
There are in us profound mysteries which have been slowly placed there through the ages, the
sediments of lives of strife, study, and travel. There are engraved all the incidents and the vicissitudes of the
obscure past. It is like an ocean of sleeping things, where rock the waves of destiny; a powerful call of the will
revives them. The light of the spirit descends into them at moments of clairvoyance, as at times the radiation of
a glittering star penetrates the somber depths of the sea.
Let us here recall the essential points of the theory of the ME, to which are attached all the problems of
memory and consciousness. The identity of the personality of ME is only maintained by memory and
consciousness. There exists in the intelligence a continuity, a succession of causes and effects which we must
reconstruct in their ensemble to possess the integral acquaintance of the ME. That is impossible in material
life, since the incorporation leads to a temporary effacement of the states of consciousness which formed their
continuous ensemble. As the physical life is submitted to alternatives of night and day, so a phenomenon
analogous is produced in the life of the spirit. Our memory traverses alternately periods of eclipse or
brilliancy, shadow or light, in the state celestial or terrestrial, and even on this last plane during waking hours
or different states of sleep.
As there are degrees of eclipse, there are also degrees of light. Many dreams leave no trance on
waking, any more than do somnambulic impressions. All the magnetizers know this. But as soon as the subject
is again placed in sleep, and finds the dynamic conditions permitting the renewal of memories, they awake.
The subject recalls what he has said, done, seen, and experienced in all epochs of his existence. We can then
easily comprehend the momentary forgetfulness of past lives. The vibratory movement of the etheric
envelopes effected by the material matter in actual life is much too weak for the degree of intensity and
duration necessary to the renovation of memories. In reality, the memory is but a mood of consciousness. A
recollection is often hidden in the subconsciousness: we do not conserve the memories of our first years, which
are nevertheless engraved in us, like all the states traversed in the course of our history. But a mental effort is
necessary to awaken the memories of normal life - those most familiar to us - a thousand things studied,
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