“Mr. Burrows: When does the memory come in of all the previous incarnations?
Mme. Blavatsky: To have a memory you have to live. You can have the memory of what? If you have never been anything, you cannot have a memory. You must have a memory of something.
Mr. Kingsland: Mr. Burrows asked at one point it came on.
Mme. Blavatsky: Every life is a peg on which you hang that memory.
Mr. Burrows: When does the universal memory come in?
Mme. Blavatsky: That is a thing which is during the whole Manvantara; it is the Mahat, as they call it. It is the universal intelligence, and all these incarnating egos are simply rays of that.
Mr. Keightley: When the ray has succeeded in merging itself into the universal mind, it then recovers the knowledge.
Mme. Blavatsky: When there is an end of all, there is the Maha-Pralaya – not what will come after our little earth is destroyed. Then Maha itself disappears and is merged in Parabrahm, and is merged in the All.
Mr. Burrows: Then does reincarnation go on again in the higher plane?
Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. You see, the butterfly will never become the chrysalis and the grub again. It goes on, and nature never goes back, but always goes progressing higher and higher. It may become, for instance, mentally, and in its acts, a thousand times worse than it was before, but it will be higher on the plane of physical manifestation – physically.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 