Category: The Key To Theosophy (1889): H. P. Blavatsky

"Why Do We Not Remember Our Past Lives?"   "Enq:  You just said that the SPIRITUAL EGO was omniscient. Where, then, is that vaunted omniscience during the Devachanic life, as you call it?   Theo:  During that time it is latent and potential, because, first of all, the Spiritual Ego (the compound of Buddhi-Manas) is [...]

"Why Do We Not Remember Our Past Lives?"   "Enq:  Still there ought to be exceptions, and some ought to remember.   Theo:  And so there are. But who believes in their report? Such sensitives are generally regarded as hallucinated hysteriacs, as crack-brained enthusiasts, or humbugs, by modern materialism.   Let them read, however, works [...]

"Why Do We Not Remember Our Past Lives?"   "Enq:  Do you mean to infer that that which survives is only the Soul-memory, as you call it, that Soul or Ego being one and the same, while nothing of the personality remains?   Theo:  Not quite; something of each personality, unless the latter was an [...]

"Why Do We Not Remember Our Past Lives?"   "Enq:  But how can people believe in that which they do not know, nor have ever seen, far less put themselves in rapport with it?   Theo:  If people, and the most learned, will believe in the Gravity, Ether, Force, and what not of Science, abstractions [...]

"Why Do We Not Remember Our Past Lives?"   "Enq:  You have given me a bird's eye view of the seven "principles"; now how do they account for our complete loss of any recollection of having lived before?   Theo:  Very easily. Since those "principles" which we call physical, and none of which is denied [...]

"What is Memory According to Theosophical Teaching   Enq:  But don't you think that these are too fine distinctions to be accepted by the majority of mortals?   Theo:  Say rather by the majority of the materialists. And to them we say, behold: even in the short span of ordinary existence, memory is too weak [...]

"What is Memory According to Theosophical Teaching   Enq: If it is on this kind of memory - poetry and abnormal fancies, on your own confession - that you base your doctrine, then you will convince very few, I am afraid.   Theo: I did not "confess" it was a fancy. I simply said that [...]

"What is Memory According to Theosophical Teaching   Enq:  Yet, all these are only synonyms.   Theo:  Indeed, they are not - not in philosophy, at all events.  Memory is simply an innate power in thinking beings, and even in animals, of reproducing past impressions by an association of ideas principally suggested by objective things [...]

"What is Memory According to Theosophical Teaching   Enq:  The most difficult thing for you to do, will be to explain and give reasonable grounds for such a belief. No Theosophist has ever yet succeeded in bringing forward a single valid proof to shake my skepticism.   First of all, you have against this theory [...]

"Enq:  But what is it that reincarnates, in your belief?   Theo:  The Spiritual thinking Ego, the permanent principle in man, or that which is the seat of Manas.   It is not Atma, or even Atma-Buddhi, regarded as the dual Monad, which is the individual, or divine man, but Manas; for Atman is the [...]