7rcTIX1xP

A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga858
is not compiled to return unless its own desires bring it back. Desire is the
key note of Metempsychosis, although up to a certain stage it may operate
unconsciously. The sum of the desires of a soul regulate its re-birth. Those
who have become sickened of all that earth has for them at this stage of its
evolution, may, and do, rest in states of existence far removed from earth
scenes, until the race progresses far enough to afford the resting soul the
opportunities and environments that it so earnestly craves.
And more than this, when Man reaches a certain stage, the process of
Metempsychosis no longer remains unconscious, but he enters into a
conscious knowing, willing passage from one life to another. And when
that stage is reached a full memory of the past lives is unfolded, and life
to such a soul becomes as the life of a day, succeeded by a night, and then
the awakening into another day with full knowledge and recollection of the
events of the day before. We are in merely the babyhood of the race now,
and the fuller life of the conscious soul lies before us. Yea, even now it is being
entered into by the few of the race that have progressed sufficiently far on
the Path. And you, student, who feel within you that craving for conscious
re-birth and future spiritual evolution, and the distaste for, and horror of,
a further blind, unconscious re-plunge into the earth-life—know you, that
this longing on your part is but an indication of what lies before you. It is
the strange, subtle, awakening of the nature within you, which betokens the
higher state. Just as the young person feels within his or her body strange
emotions, longings and stirrings, which betoken the passage from the child
state into that of manhood or womanhood, so do these spiritual longings,
desires and cravings betoken the passage from unconscious re-birth into
conscious knowing Metempsychosis, when you have passed from the scene
of your present labors.
In our next lesson we shall consider the history of the race as its souls
passed on from the savage tribes to the man of to-day. It is the history of the
race—the history of the individual—your own history, student—the record
of that through which you have passed to become that which you now are.