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learned, forgotten, because they descend into the profound recesses of memory. To recall these things requires
first of all an effort of will. Many spirits even in the life in space, because of dogmatic prejudice, neglect all
research, and remain ignorant of the past which sleeps in them.
With them, as with us, suggestion is necessary. We see the law of suggestion manifested everywhere
under all forms. We submit to it every moment of the day. For instance, near us a song sounds, and a word, a
name, an image strikes us, a whole chain of recollections, thanks to the association of ideas. Memories
confused, almost forgotten, from the depths of consciousness, arise and unfold. Dr. Pitre Doyen, of the Faculty
of Medicine at Bordeaux, in his book on Hypnotism, cites a case where he demonstrates that all the facts
registered in us from infancy can be reborn. His subject, a young girl of seventeen, had forgotten the Gascon
dialect, and from her fifth year spoke only French. Put into hypnotic sleep and given the suggestion of five
years of age, she forgot her French and spoke the Gascon dialect. She related all the minute details of her
infantile life, but she was unable to reply to any question asked in French. She forgot utterly her life from five
to seventeen. Dr. Durat made similar experiments with identical results. Jeanne, his subject, related
experiences at various periods of her life with precision, forgetting all other periods. The facts which these
subjects related regarding their past lives were investigated and found to be true in every particular.
Numberless cases of this nature are on record, proving how all things are registered in the depths of the mind.
All studies of earthly man furnish us with proof that there exist distinct states of consciousness and personality.
We have seen in the early part of this book the co-existence in us of a mental double, of which the two parts
join and fuse at death. This is attested by experimental hypnotism and by all psychic evolution. The fact alone
of this dual intellectuality considered in its bearings to reincarnation explains to us how part of the ME, with
its immense cortège of impressions and old memories, can remain plunged in obscurity during actual life.
Telepathy, clairvoyance, and foreseeing the future are powers belonging to this profound and hidden ME.
Suggestion, which is an appeal to the will, releases them from their prison temporarily, and enables the soul to
enter into possession of its riches for the time being. Frederick Myers in his Human Personality speaks of the
‘subliminal faculty,’ which evokes the past. This fact, he says, is frequently encountered in artists of highly
emotional temperaments.
There are many instances on record of people who in the moment of sudden accident recall every
incident of their past lives. Thomas Ribot mentions a number of these cases in his book Maladies of Memory.
Admiral Beaufort, in the Journal of Medicine, relates how in two moments of time, having fallen into the sea,
his transcendental consciousness recalled all his earth life with prodigious clearness. In these cases the
subconscious unites with the normal consciousness and reconstructs the entire memory. For an instant the
association of ideas and facts is reformed, the chain of memories united. The same result can be obtained by
experimentation with a hypnotic subject. When there is a superior will in control to stimulate its efforts, the
two wills combined acquire an intensity of vibration which put in motion the hidden layers of the
subconscious.
Another essential point should receive our attention: it is the fact established by all psychological
science, that there exists a close correlation between the mental and physical man. Every physical action
corresponds to a psychic act, and vice versa. All is registered at once in the subconscious memory in such a
manner that one cannot be evoked without the other awakening also. This concordance applies to the least
facts of our entire existence, and the present, and the far removed past.
The understanding of all these phases of phenomena, scarcely intelligible to materialists, is made easy
for those who know of the etheric envelope of the soul. It is in that and not in the physical organism in which
are engraved all these impressions. The etheric body is the instrument which with precision and fidelity notes
the least variations of the personality. All our thoughts and acts have there their reproductions; their
movements, their vibratory states leave there their successive traces. Certain experimenters have compared this
mode of registration to a living cinematograph, upon which is fixed successively our acquisitions and our
memories. It un-rolls, either by the suggestion of another will, by autosuggestion, or by a sudden accident, as
we have related. The influence of thought on the body is revealed to us by occurrences observable about us
every moment. Fear paralyses the movements; astonishment, shame, and terror provoke pallor of color;
anguish affects the heart action; grief causes tears to flow, and long continued produces lowering of vital
forces. These are all proofs of the powerful action of the mind on the material envelope.
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