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<title>-041_The Past Lives and the Psychic Being.htm</title>
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<p class="paracenter">PAST LIVES AND THE PSYCHIC BEING
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<p class="para">Most people are not at all conscious of what 
is happening in them. Their consciousness or being is a mixture of 
mental, vital and physical elements, a kind of hotchpotch. There are a 
few, very few indeed, who are conscious— conscious of what is beyond the
 three, viz. their psychic being. For it is only that element which 
endures, continues through successive lives. Certain people have known 
or learnt some rudiments of the matter—who believe in rebirth, but 
conceive it in the most childish manner. Their idea is as if the person 
changed his body like a robe. There are persons even who have written 
books describing seriously all the lives they passed through since the 
time they were monkeys! As I have said, it is the psychic element alone 
that persists after death, all the rest gets dissolved. And in 999 cases
 out of 1,000, the psychic is a very small formation lying behind and 
taking little part in the actual life of the person. I speak of the 
average man, not of the Yogi, that is to say, one who has a developed 
psychic being to the extent that it is capable of controlling and 
guiding the outer life. How often does an ordinary man get in contact 
with his psychic being! Years and years pass for many or most to have 
just a passing taste of this movement. It is this moment that abides and
 is carried over to the next life, all other things are simply effaced. 
At
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-157</p>
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<p class="para">a given point of our life, there comes a special 
circumstance, there is a call within, an absolute inner necessity that 
brings forward the psychic and the contact is made perhaps for an 
instant. That experience is preserved in the psychic memory. More than 
the outer circumstances and the physical events, however, what is 
cherished in the consciousness is the intimate emotion, the vibration 
that accompanied the perception at the time. At the most, a word said, a
 phrase heard, just a passing scene is all that is stored, net and 
clear, engraved as it were. But above all it is the soul's state that is
 the most important thing. It is these scattered elements that serve as 
stepping-stones or signposts on the soul's forward journey. They are the
 constants that build up the personality of a man. On rare occasions 
there is a larger clearing, the circumstances preserved are sufficiently
 definite to point to a date and a historical person. Usually, however, 
one cannot say, "I was such a person, I lived in such a country or did 
such things." These psychic flashes, more in some cases, less in others,
 are the only genuine and authentic records of the story of a person's 
lives.
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<p class="para">
It is a being who is completely identified with his 
psychic, who has organised his whole person, in all its parts, around 
this centre, in fact, a being of one piece, entirely and solely turned 
to the Divine that can alone remember or hold in his consciousness 
something like a totality of his personal history. For in his case even 
when the body drops, the other parts being integrated and taken up into 
the soul substance maintain their
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-158</p>
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<p class="para">individual existence; the personality formed around 
the psychic continues with its memory intact: even it can pass from one 
life to another without losing the consciousness.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para">
A psychic memory has a very definite character; it 
has a wonderful intensity. It stores the unforgettable moments of life, 
those when the consciousness was most luminous, most powerful, most 
active. They are the happiest and the most fortunate moments of life. 
But they cannot be spoken about.
</p>
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<p class="para">
There are people who say and perhaps believe too 
that they were such and such persons and even give a detailed 
description of their past lives. There are also the well-known spirit 
communications through a medium at <i>spirit sittings. </i>
Someone comes and tells you 
he was Napoleon, another was Shakespeare and so on. How many Shakespeare 
and Napoleons and Caesars have manifested in this way, there is no counting! 
There are spirits who are extremely talkative and bewitch you with extraordinary 
stories, many that seem so true and genuine on the face, many others, of course,
full 
of the grossest self-contradictions. The 
fact, however, is that usually these spirits are small beings of the vital, 
often remnants of a dead person, broken bits of his decomposed personality, 
desires that have persisted, coagulated imaginations set free that move about 
and seek to possess and settle upon a living person. The small spirits of the 
vital are often not of good disposition; they amuse themselves at the cost of 
the gullible human being, making a fool of</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-159</p>
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<p class="para">him. In that world it is easy to read the mind of 
others: the spirit sees clearly what is there in your head even if you 
do not speak it out. That is how it reveals secrets known to you alone, 
even secrets you have totally forgotten. They can imitate other 
personalities. They know many other small tricks to confuse or astound 
you.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-160</p>
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