A Further Record

MR. O. Recurrence is in eternity. It is not the same life. This life ends and time ends. There is a theory—and this system admits this theory—that time can be prolonged. I have no evidence. If you think about time, how many attempts were made by spiritualists and others—but there is no evidence.

The study of recurrence must begin with the study of children’s minds, and particularly before they begin to speak. If they could remember this time they could remember very interesting things.

But unfortunately, when they begin to speak they become real children and they forget after six months or a year. It is very seldom that people remember what they thought before that, at a very early age. They would remember themselves such as they were grown-up. They are not children at all. Then later they become children. If they remember their mentality it is the same mentality as grown-up people have. That is what is interesting.

Q. Do you know why a child should remember its grown-up mind and not its previous child’s mind?

MR. O. We have so little material to judge about it. I speak only about the way it can be studied. Suppose we try to remember our own—suppose we find it was one or another— trying not to let imagination come in—if we find something, that would be material.

In literature you find very little, because people don’t understand how to study it. But with my own experience, I met with some very interesting things. Some people I knew had very interesting recollections of first years of life, and they all had the same impression, which was that the mentality was not a child’s mentality—how they took people, how they recognized people—it was not a child’s psychology. But most people don’t remember that at all. You see what I mean. They had a ready mind, such that you cannot imagine this ready mind with quite grown-up reactions could be formed in six months of unconscious life. It had to be before if it is really so, but as I say, it is very difficult to find material.

Q. Why should it disappear when the child learns to talk?

MR. O. It begins to imitate children and do exactly what grown-up people expect from him. They expect him to be a stupid child and he becomes a stupid child.

Q. How could recurrence be of advantage to man?

MR. O. If one begins to remember and if one begins to change and not go by the same circle each time, but do what one wants and what one thinks better; and if one doesn’t know about it or even if one knows and doesn’t do anything, then there is no advantage in it at all. It is generally the same things repeated and repeated.

Q. Having met the system in one recurrence, will one meet it again in the next?

MR. O. It depends what one did with the system. One could meet die system and say: ‘What nonsense these people talk!’ It depends how much effort one makes. If one made efforts one could acquire something, and that may remain, if it was not only in surface personality—if it wasn’t only formatory.

Q. Does one necessarily follow some line of action in each recurrence?

MR. O. The law about it is that all acquired tendencies repeat themselves. One person acquires a tendency to study or be interested in certain things. He will be interested again. Another acquires a tendency to run away from certain things. Then he will run away again.

Q. Do these tendencies grow stronger?

MR. O. They may, or they may grow in a different direction.

There is no guarantee—until one reaches some kind of conscious action, when one has a certain possibility to trust oneself.

Q. Does the parallel time mean that all moments continually exist?

MR. O. Yes. It is very difficult to think about it. Certainly it means eternity of the moment, but our minds cannot think in that way. Our mind is a very limited machine. We must think in the easiest way and make allowances for it. It is easier to think of repetition than of the eternal existence of the moment.