“IF OUR past existences are of service to us, it cannot, therefore, be owing to any conscious recollection of the mistakes which we have made in them. We gain rather through these past lives in a more indirect manner. When the consequences of our mistakes have taught us a lesson which in a preceding life has been built up into our character, and has in this way been made part and parcel of our real selves, we can carry over to a future existence the quality acquired, whether such quality be in the nature of self-restraint in the face of temptation, or of a more active kind, such as the capacity for acquiring any specific kind of knowledge or the more general power of surmounting difficulties and obstacles in life.

We may not remember the struggles we have been through, but we may inherit in the hour of our need that force of character, that ‘backbone’ as the phrase goes, which our ancestral selves have built up. Again, the man who has mastered his trade, the artist who has developed his artistic abilities in a previous life, starts a rung higher in the ladder in his next incarnation; and this, none the less surely, though he remembers nothing of the efforts which have made his powers what they are in the present life, nay, even though he may attribute those powers to the caprice of a deity who bestows on his children gifts of varying degree, like the fairy godmother of nursery romance.

“When will mankind learn that there is no possession that is not valueless, which has not been earned by the sweat of the brow of him who possesses it? That the gift which is not bought with the heart’s blood of its possessor, is an evanescent illusion which will melt away beneath the sunshine of reality in the hands of him who holds it? Whence do a man’s powers, his vices, his virtues, all the qualities that go to make up his real self, proceed, unless from what he has been, from which he has suffered, and from what he has accomplished in past existences? The question surely provides its own answer, except to those who are wilfully blind.

“There is one alternative, and one only, to this hypothesis—the belief in a God of pure caprice, and the necessary corollary to this belief, the denial of all law and order in the universe. The man who maintains that his life commences here, and here only, by this very admission avows his faith in an irresponsible deity, creating isolated individuals of his own freewill and pleasure and endowing them, without rhyme or reason, with qualities which they are in no way entitled to have, and therefore, which, in reality, if the word reality has any meaning whatever, they do not actually possess. This man, even though he be the first scientific authority of his generation, believes in the deity who created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and who is still at the same old childish occupation in this present twentieth century. For such a man, evolution is a meaningless term, and the laws of nature merely a phrase used to tabulate for convenience, sake the monstrous chaos of the universe.

“A somewhat curious and subtle question arises for those who accept the doctrine of immortality but reject pre-existence. If no man existed before the formation of his present body, we are confronted with the problem how he became connected with a body of such a kind that his character, as it usually does, resembles the character of the ancestors of the body.

“From the materialist’s point of view there is a simple answer. The character of the person born is the product of the body. This hypothesis assumes that the parents create the new being in generating the body. But from the point of view of all religion, Christian or otherwise, there is something positively blasphemous in this assumption.

“If we adopt the alternative hypothesis, we have here again to deny the reign of law in the universe, and to invoke in each case the absurd theory of a special act of divine interposition. If, however, we accept pre-existence, and postulate the descent into generation of previously existing human monads, we may assume a law of attraction on parallel lines to that of chemical affinity, by means of which the ego is drawn to the parents most qualified to provide it with the most fitting vehicle for its self-expression.

“On this supposition the soul may select its own parents, not so much consciously as by some law of affinity and instinctive attraction which determines the choice. A man’s character, in this case, would be decided by his previous life history, and not by the character of the ancestors of his new body. But it would be the character of the ancestors of the new body and their similarity to his character which would determine the fact that he was reborn in that body rather than in another.”

“The past, then, if these arguments are valid, is not necessarily preserved separately in the memory, but it nevertheless exists in a concentrated form, in the present life, where all that was before a mass of hard-earned acquisitions, has been merged in the unity of a developed character.”—From an Editorial by Ralph Shirley in an old issue of The Occult Review, London.

THE Will to do or Will-Power is to me the most necessary quality for success in any phase of life. It raises me above the mass thinking—the great inertia. It is Life—Living—all that is healthy, normal and balanced.

My only weakness has been a “not-doing” most of my life. Will Power is simply “doing” and applying what I know. Knowing that His Will is the only Power there is—and knowing it is available at all times for anyone to use—makes it seem simple; for it then but remains for one to USE it.

We can pray for it, yet until we start using it, it is not ours. It is strange and wonderful—when I am using Will Power in all my living! And how dead I seem when I am not using it— I simply drift along towards nowhere, until I go as far as I can stand it; then I turn around, begin to use the Will-to-do, and every area in my life suddenly wakes up and becomes useful and worth- while. I become positive. I see only the good and true. Nothing is too much trouble. I am happier and more loving, and accomplish what I set out to do; that is, whatever is for me to do.

I have found that if I ask for it I will receive it—but not until I start to use it. When I am using Will Power, I am living up to the highest in me, no matter on what plane I am working.

At least, that is the way I feel, but very poorly and inadequately expressed. —D. S.

HE GAVE them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases. The sick shall be healed and devils cast out.

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