uited
for the gratification of the longings, desires and cravings that it
finds within itself. But it is likewise true that the earth-sick soul
is not compiled to return unless its own desires bring it back. Desire
is the key note of Metempsychosis, although up to a certain stage it
may operate unconsciously. The sum of the desires of a soul regulate
its re-birth. Those who have become sickened of all that earth has for
them at this stage of its evolution, may, and do, rest in states of
existence far removed from earth scenes, until the race progresses far
enough to afford the resting soul the opportunities and environments
that it so earnestly craves.

And more than this, when Man reaches a certain stage, the process of
Metempsychosis no longer remains unconscious, but he enters into a
conscious knowing, willing passage from one life to another. And when
that stage is reached a full memory of the past lives is unfolded, and
life to such a soul becomes as the life of a day, succeeded by a night,
and then the awakening into another day with full knowledge and
recollection of the events of the day before. We are in merely the
babyhood of the race now, and the fuller life of the conscious soul
lies before us. Yea, even now it is being entered into by the few of
the race that have progressed sufficiently far on the Path. And you,
student, who feel within you that craving for conscious re-birth and
future spiritual evolution, and the distaste for, and horror of, a
further blind, unconscious re-plunge into the earth-life--know you,
that this longing on your part is but an indication of what lies before
you. It is the strange, subtle, awakening of the nature within you,
which betokens the higher state. Just as the young person feels within
his or her body strange emotions, longings and stirrings, which betoken
the passage from the child state into that of manhood or womanhood, so
do these spiritual longings, desires and cravings betoken the passage
from unconscious re-birth into conscious knowing Metempsychosis, when
you have passed from the scene of your present labors.

In our next lesson we shall consider the history of the race as its
souls passed on from the savage tribes to the man of to-day. It is the
history of the race--the history of the individual--your own history,
student--the record of that through which you have passed to become
that which you now are. And as you have climbed step after step up the
arduous pat