facts of the past year
have mostly vanished from his mind, and when he comes to the end of
the journey, mere fragments of the story of his life are all that is
left. For all that, he has all the time retained the notion of the
identity of his "I"; he has the same body, the same senses, and the
same brain; his environment is the same; everything is there to bring
about association of ideas, to awaken memory. On the other hand,
centuries have elapsed before Rebirth takes place; the human being has
undergone the most radical changes and modifications; everything in
him that was perishable has disappeared, and is preserved only in a
germinal state. The visible bodily sheath has had its atoms scattered
to the four elements; the etheric body[263] has become separated from
the physical molecules whose vital support it formed; the body of
passions and desires (_astral body_) has lived for a few years in what
Catholics call _Purgatory_, Greeks, _Hades_, and Hindus, _Kamaloka_;
after which, only germs have been left behind; then the intelligence
(_mental body_) has been dispersed in turn and endures only in a
germinal state. Almost everything that made up the man of bygone times
has disappeared, and is now concentrated in a complex germ hidden away
in the causal body and destined to develop a new personality later
on,[264] heir to the former one, though it will not be capable of
remembering events in which it took no part.

This is the explanation of the myth of Lethe.

The soul, in the causal body, drinks of the river of Life, and from
its sleep-giving draught forms the sheaths of the new incarnation, the
new bodies that altogether blot out the memory of the past; it is, in
very truth, a new-born babe who appears on earth.

The Root-Being,[265] however, survives the successive wrecks of
fleeting personalities, remaining in the new man as a guide, as the
"Voice of Conscience." He is the Watcher who strings, as on a thread,
the numberless pearls (_personalities_) which form the inevitable
cycle of human evolution, and is able, when fully developed, to summon
up the distant panorama of past lives. For him, nothing is lost.

The pioneers of the race have obtained direct proof of successive
incarnations, but apart from these rare and special instances,
ordinary individuals frequently have reminiscences and distinct
memories which are not investigated, either because they are
fragmentary in their nature or are related by children