PDF version - Geae

inclined to regard these childish utterances with inquietude, and to silence them. Science in this way loses
valuable material. If the child, trying to translate in its confused language the fugitive vibrations of its psychic
brain, were encouraged and questioned, one could obtain interesting indications of past lives. In the Orient this
is done frequently. In the Daily Mail London, copied into the Matin, 8th July 1903, a case is related of a child
at Simla who remembered that he was assassinated in 1814. His name was Mr. Tucker, and he was
Superintendent of the Council. The child recalled even small incidents of that life and, taken to the place where
the assassination occurred, was terror-stricken. In 1880 at Vera Cruz, a seven-year-old child possessed the
power to heal. Several people were healed by vegetable remedies prescribed by the child. When asked how he
knew theses things, he said he was once a great doctor, and his name was Jules Alpherese. This surprising
faculty developed in him at the age of four. When alone with his parents he said: ‘Father, you must not think I
will stay long with you. I am only here for a little while, then I must go away.’ When asked where he would
go, he replied, “Far away where it is much better.’ He died a few years later.
These cases of children who recall past lives could be enumerated indefinitely. The magazine Filosofia
della Scienze, published in Palermo, January 1911, an interesting case, and the Annals of Psychical Science of
July 1913 have another.
Meantime, memory of the past lives does not seem desirable for the majority of men: on the contrary,
it seems indispensable to their advancement that former existences should be effaced from their memory
momentarily. The persistence of such memories would lead to the persistence of erroneous ideas and
prejudices of caste, of former times and environments - in a word, of all mental heritage which would be the
more difficult to modify and transform if still living in us.
Forgetfulness permits us to profit by the different conditions we find in a new life, and aids us to
construct our personality on a better plan, while our faculties gain in depth and extent by our experiences.
Then, too, the recollection of a past soiled and sinful, as must be the case with most of us, would be a heavy
burden to carry. The will must be well tempered before we can see without giddiness a long series of faults
and follies, and even crimes, unroll before us, with all their consequences. The memories of past lives are only
profitable to a spirit sufficiently evolved, sufficiently master of itself, to bear the burden without weakening,
and sufficiently detached from earthly things to contemplate with serenity the spectacle of its history: to
relieve the pains endured, the injustice suffered, and the anguish of betrayal by those if loved. It is a sorrowful
privilege to know a vanished past of tears and blood: it is a cause of moral torture and interior wounds. If our
former lives have been happy, the comparison with our often bitter present conditions would be almost
insupportable.
How many things would we not now efface from our actual lives which are obstacle to our interior
peace and hindrances to our liberty! Why add to these the perspective of centuries? All that is important to
carry with us are the fruits of the past - that is, the capacities acquired. They are the instruments of labor; the
means of action for the spirit. It is all which constitutes character, this ensemble of virtues and faults - of tastes
and aspirations; all this which flows from the subconsciousness to the normal consciousness. The recollection
of vanished lives would present formidable inconveniences, not only to individuals but to collective society. It
would introduce discord and ferment hate and hinder progress. All the criminals of history, reincarnated for
expiation, would be unmasked! The terrors and iniquities of past centuries would be newly spread before our
eyes. The accusing past would again cause profound, keen suffering. Man has come back to earth to develop
his faculties and to conquer new merits, and he should look ahead, not behind. The future opens before him
full of promise, and the great law commands him to advance resolutely; to render the journey easier, and to
free him from all restraint, it casts a veil upon his past. Let us thank the infinite powers which, by lifting the
crushing load of memories, has made the ascension easier and the reparation less bitter.
Sometimes the objection is made that it is unjust to punish a man for a forgotten error. One said to me,
‘The justice which moves in secret, and does not permit us to judge ourselves, should be considered an
iniquity’. But is not all life a secret to us? The grass which sprouts, the wind that blows, the life which stirs, the
stars that glisten in the night silently, all, all are mysteries. If we can only believe in the things we understand,
in what will we believe? If a criminal condemned by human laws falls ill and loses his memory, does it follow
that all consequences of his acts and all his responsibility vanish at the same time with his memory? No power
could wipe away his past actions. All that we need to know here is the aim of life, and that divine justice
governs the world. Each one is in the place he has made for himself, and nothing happens that is not merited.
75