be true. How many have found that when they would take up some new
study, it is almost like recalling something already learned. Do you
student, who are now reading these lines take your own case. Does not
all this Teaching seem to you like the repetition of some lesson
learned long ago? Is it not like remembering something already learned,
rather than the learning of some new truth? Were you not attracted to
these studies, in the first place, by a feeling that you had known it
all before, somewhere, somehow? Does not your mind leap ahead of the
lesson, and see what is coming next, long before you have turned the
pages? These inward evidences of the fact of pre-existence are so
strong that they outweigh the most skillful appeal to the intellect.

This intuitive knowledge of the truth of Metempsychosis explains why
the belief in it is sweeping over the Western world at such a rapid
rate. The mere mention of the idea, to many people who have never
before heard of it, is sufficient to cause them to recognize its truth.
And though they may not understand the laws of its operation, yet deep
down in their consciousness they find a something that convinces them
of its truth. In spite of the objections that are urged against the
teaching, it is making steady headway and progress.

The progress of the belief in Metempsychosis however has been greatly
retarded by the many theories and dogmas attached to it by some of the
teachers. Not to speak of the degrading ideas of re-birth into the
bodies of animals, etc., which have polluted the spring of Truth, there
are to be found many other features of teaching and theory which repel
people, and cause them to try to kill out of the minds the glimmer of
Truth that they find there. The human soul instinctively revolts
against the teaching that it is bound to the wheel or re-birth,
_willy-nilly_, compulsorily, without choice--compelled to live in body
after body until great cycles are past. The soul, perhaps already sick
of earth-life, and longing to pass on to higher planes of existence,
fights against such teaching. And it does well to so fight, for the
truth is nearer to its hearts desire. There is no soul longing that
does not carry with it the prophecy of its own fulfillment, and so it
is in this case. It is true that the soul of one filled with earthly
desires, and craving for material things, will by the very force of
those desires be drawn back to earthly re-birth in a body best s