“The Yogi Philosophy teaches that YOU who are reading these lines, have lived many, many lives. You have lived in the lower forms of life, working your way up gradually in the scale. After you passed into the human phase of existence you lived as the caveman, the cliff dweller, the savage, the barbarian; the warrior, the knight; the priest; the scholar of the Middle Ages; – now in Europe; now in India; now in Persia; now in the East; now in the West. In all ages, – in all climes – among all peoples – of all races – have you lived, had your existence, played your part, and died.
In each life have you gained experiences; learned your lessons; profited by your mistakes; grown, developed, and unfolded. And when you passed out of the body, and entered into the period of rest between incarnations, your memory of the past life gradually faded away, but left its place the result of the experiences you had gained from it. After each life, there is sort of a boiling down of the experiences, and the result – the real result of the experience – goes to make up a part of the new self – the improved self – which will after a while seek a new body into which to reincarnate.
Those who have not awakened to the truth of rebirth, cannot have it forced upon them by argument, and those who ‘feel’ the truth of it do not need the argument. So we have not attempted to argue the matter in this short presentation of the theory. Those who are reading this lesson are attracted toward the subject by reason of interest awakened in some past life, and they really feel there must be some truth in it, although they may not as yet have arrived at a point where they can fully assimilate it.”
Fourteen Lessons In Yogi Philosophy, Yogi Ramacharaka, p. 232 – 237.
