e who knew was
showing me some pictures of my last incarnation, I discovered that
this persistent dream had been in reality a partial recollection, and
that the house which I knew so well was the one in which I was born
more than two thousand years ago.

But although there are several cases on record in which some
well-remembered scene has thus come through from one life to another,
a considerable development of occult faculty is necessary before an
investigator can definitely trace a line of incarnations, whether they
be his own or another man's. This will be obvious if we remember the
conditions of the problem which has to be worked out. To follow a
person from this life to the one preceding it, it is necessary first
of all to trace his present life backwards to his birth and then to
follow up in reverse order the stages by which the Ego descended into
incarnation.

This will obviously take us back eventually to the condition of the
Ego upon the higher levels of the mental plane; so it will be seen
that to perform this task effectually the investigator must be able to
use the sense corresponding to that exalted level while awake in his
physical body--in other words, his consciousness must be centred in
the reincarnating Ego itself, and no longer in the lower personality.
In that case, the memory of the Ego being aroused, his own past
incarnations will be spread out before him like an open book, and he
would be able, if he wished, to examine the conditions of another Ego
upon that level and trace him backwards through the lower mental and
astral lives which led up to it, until he came to the last physical
death of that Ego, and through it to his previous life.

There is no way but this in which the chain of lives can be followed
through with absolute certainty: and consequently we may at once put
aside as conscious or unconscious impostors those people who advertise
that they are able to trace out anyone's past incarnations for so many
shillings a head. Needless to say, the true occultist does not
advertise, and never under any circumstances accepts money for any
exhibition of his powers.

Assuredly the student who wishes to acquire the power of following up
a line of incarnations can do so only by learning from a qualified
teacher how the work is to be done. There have been those who
persistently asserted that it was only necessary for a man to feel
good and devotional and "brotherly," and all the wisdom of the a