Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

MOST people are not at all conscious of what is happening in them. Their consciousness or being is a mixture of mental, vital and physical elements, a kind of hotchpotch. There are a few, very few indeed, who are conscious – conscious of what is beyond the three, viz, their psychic being. For it is only that element which endures, persists through successive lives. Certain people have known or learnt some rudiments of the matter – who believe in rebirth, but conceive it in the most childish manner. Their idea is as if the person changed his body like a robe. There are persons even who have written books describing seriously all the lives they had passed through since the time they were monkeys! As I have said, it is the psychic element alone that persists after death, all the rest gets dissolved. And in 999 cases out of 1,000, the psychic is a very small formation lying behind and taking little part in the actual life of the person. I speak of the average man, not of the Yogi, that is to say, one who has a developed psychic being to the extent that it is capable of controlling and guiding the outer life. How often does an ordinary man get in contact with his psychic being? Years and years pass for many or most to have just a passing taste of this movement. It is this moment that abides and is carried over to the next life, all other things are simply effaced. At a given point of our life, there comes a special circumstance, there is a call within, an absolute inner necessity that brings forward the psychic and the contact is made perhaps for an instant. That experience is preserved in the psychic memory. More than the outer circumstances and the physical events, however, what is cherished in the consciousness is the intimate emotion, the vibration that accompanied the perception at the time. At themost,

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a word said, a phrase heard, just a passing scene is all that is stored, net and clear, engraved as it were. But above all it is the soul's state that is the most important thing. I t is these scattered elements that serve as stepping-stones or sign-posts on the soul's forward journey. They are the constants that build up the personality of a man. On rare occasions there is a larger clearing, the circumstances preserved are sufficiently definite to point to a date and a historical person. Usually, however, one cannot say, "I was such a person, I lived in such a country or did such things." These psychic flashes, more in some cases, less in others, are the only genuine and authentic records of the story of a person's lives.

It is a being who is completely identified with his psychic, who has organised his whole person, in all its parts, around this centre, in fact, a being of one piece, entirely and solely turned to the Divine that can alone remember or hold in his consciousness something like a totality of his personal history. For in his case even when the body drops, the other parts being integrated and taken up into the soul substance main­tain their individual existence; the personality formed around the psychic continues to exist with its memory intact: even it can pass from one life to another without losing the conscious­ness.

A psychic memory has a very definite character; it has a wonderful intensity. It stores the unforgettable moments of life, those when the consciousness was most luminous, most powerful, most active. They are the happiest and the most fortunate moments of life. But they cannot be spoken about.

There are people who say and perhaps believe too that they were such and such persons and even give a detailed description of their past lives. There are also the well-known sprit communications through a medium at spirit sitting. Some­one comes and tells you he was Napoleon, another was Shakes­peare and so on. How many Shakespeares and Napoleons and Caesars have manifested in this way, there is no counting! There are spirits who are extremely talkative and bewitch you with extraordinary stories, many that seem so true and genuine on the face, many others, of course, full of the grossest self-contradictions. The fact, however, is that usually these spirits are small beings of the vital, often remnants of a dead

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person, broken bits of his decomposed personality, desires that have persisted, coagulated imaginations set free that move about and seek to possess and settle upon a living person. The small spirits of the vital are often not of good disposition; they amuse themselves at the cost of the gullible human being, making a fool of him. In that world it is easy to read the mind of others: the spirit sees clearly what is there in your head even if you do not speak it out. That is how it reveals secrets known to you alone, even secrets you have totally forgotten. They can imitate other personalities. They know many other small tricks to confuse or astound you.

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