“If it were true that a bad man must always remain bad, where would the hope be for mankind? But in the perfect wisdom of the Infinite Mind, human lives are so arranged that the bad man will go on garnering the untoward results of his deeds until his mind, first subconsciously but later consciously, perceives the logical and causal connection between his act and his suffering and begins the attempt to control his evil tendencies. Both this education and this effort will continue through many births for a single one would be too short in time, too poor in opportunity, for such a total reformation to be achieved.”

“If it were true that men gained nothing from self-earned suffering and learned nothing from it, that they went on making the same errors and committing the same sins again and again, then they would not be men but the lowest of the lower animals. The capacity to think distinguishes men from these creatures. It may be very feebly and most imperfectly used, but this capacity is still being used in some way. Such mental activity may lead to wrong results or to little results, but it cannot lead to no result at all. The conclusion is that if men do not learn from experience today—that is, in one lifetime—they will inevitably do so tomorrow—that is, in another and a later lifetime.”

“The awful fact of innate evil, the hideous mystery of innate sin, must be recognized and faced. We cannot make bad men into good men; but Nature, Life, with millions of years at her disposal, can.”

 “At the present stage of human existence, there is no other way to durable spiritual development than through physical embodiments. The total sum of its varied experiences offer us the chance at first to learn and thus to progress, and later to overcome ourselves and thus to attain spiritual awareness.”

 “We have to become in actuality what we are in potentiality; all our rebirths are engaged in this process.”

“The life that is in us goes at death into the life that is in the universe. It is as secure there as it was in us. It is not lost. Thereafter it reappears in another form, another body.”

 “We travel from one body to another, with suitable and necessary rest-periods in between them.”

“All men come back to bodily life again if they leave a residue of karma. All karma that is not brought to an end by bringing the mind’s bondage to the ego-thought to an end, makes reincarnation inescapable.”

“The sense of time between incarnations varies. Five minutes to one is a hundred years to another.”

“The difference between life as we ordinarily know it and as it appears between incarnations is that here we have an apparent mixture of two worlds, the mental and the phenomenal, whereas there only the former exists.”

“Every person maintains his or her individuality during and after the perishing of the body-thought.”

“Heredity can answer for a man’s face and form and nervous type but it cannot answer for his genius. Here it is necessary to bring in something quite different—the development of his talent through repeated earth lives.”

“His experiences in this life were largely decided for him in a previous life on earth.”

 “You must remember that everyone without exception stands in life just where the evolutionary flow has brought him and that his outward life is the result of all those previous experiences in many, many incarnations.”

“How old is the series of experiences through which we moved unknowingly towards our present evolutionary position! How lofty is the level toward which we have yet to climb!”

 “If he does not forget the final purpose of all this worldly activity, that through the body’s life and the mind’s existence he may seek and find his true self, the Overself, the inner failure and superficiality of so many lives will be avoided.”

 “The clinging to the ‘I’ or the aggressive assertion of it, is something which will yield only to the intermittent batterings of constant frustrations, repeated disappointments, and frequent misfortunes—that is to say, to the experience of hundreds, if not thousands, of earthly incarnations.”

 “If we have all had many many previous lives on earth, we have also had many many previous deaths on earth. The actual experience of dying must leave some residual lesson or meaning or message behind in the subconscious.”

 “Only when the lessons of birth after birth etch themselves deeply and unmistakably into his conscious mind through dreadful repetition can he accept them co-operatively, resignedly, and thus put a stop to the needless sufferings of desire, passion, and attachment.”

“The experiences of life will in the end overcome these inner resistances. The silent instruction multiplied during the re-embodiments will defeat the psychological defense mechanisms set up against unpalatable truths or new ideas. It is the repetition and deepening of all these lessons through the accumulating rebirths that enables wisdom to penetrate consciousness completely and effectively.”

 “The actual finding of Truth, which is the same as Nirvana, Self-Knowledge, Liberation, is really a work of brief duration—perhaps a matter of minutes—whereas the preparation and equipment of oneself to find it must take many incarnations…”

“Coaxed by pleasure in some incarnations and driven by pain in others, man slowly learns to use his faculties and powers aright.”

 “To become Man as evolution intends him to be, he must draw out all his latent resources, fill out a wide experience. This is why so many reincarnations on earth are needed. Until then, his realization as Man will be an incomplete one.”

“If man is inwardly already godlike, pure Spirit, only the development and evolution which are gained from experience—that is, time—can bring him to conscious realization of the fact.”

 “The ripe wisdom of a sage could not possibly be the fruit of a single lifetime, but only of many lifetimes.”