Among the older civilizations of our planet a knowledge of this truth and of the significance of the Karma are so incorporated with all that concerns their existence that their every thought and act are shaped thereby, and it is but a question of time when the western peoples will receive and retain the impress of their forcefulness.
Yes, I am aware that by most of your thinkers the law of heredity is thought to be accountable for the great diversity of forms, features and mental characteristics of families, and to a degree they are correct, but only to a degree. For instance, you are one of ten children (not including Inez and Emma, whose growth has been on the Spirit Side) of the same parents, subjected to nearly the same antenatal influences and after environments, yet in physical likeness, temperament and mentality, you were so unlike your brothers and sisters as to be regarded as somewhat uncanny. We know that heredity only partly covers your case.
As another illustration, we will select a not exceptional instance of a low type of parents, whose ancestors may or may not have been below their own level, but certainly not above it. To these parents are born a number of children who may more or less closely resemble them, but among the brood is one so entirely unlike any of the others as to perhaps arouse suspicion as to his or her paternity. Though the other children possess very ordinary mentality, and physically are uncouth, the exceptional child is unusually intelligent, straight of limb, erect of head, open eyed, handsome featured, and with a certain grace of bearing which sets him or her quite apart, not only from the other children, but from the parents to whom he or she ever is as much a stranger as though of another family. Does the law of heredity satisfactorily account for an instance of this kind? And it is not an isolated one.
Your scientists assert that not only through successive, but intermittent generations, mental and physical traits are transmitted, and I admit the fact; on the other hand I assert that it is not possible through heredity or fortuitous circumstances to, through a low type of parentage, produce a type possessing the very best characteristics of the human. One does not gather figs off thistles or roses from noxious weeds. Believe me, Gentola̤, entertaining Angels unawares is of common occurrence, and Angels are Spirits who, through repeated embodiments, have attained to more or less exalted states of Being.
Yes, very exalted Spirits, desiring to compass certain ends, on our or other planets, are, so to say, reborn, and generally into lowly conditions. If you will acquaint yourself with the mortal origin of the Saviors of our Planet, the men and women who, during the crises of humanity's upheavals, have come to the front as leaders or teachers, you will learn that as a rule it has been, not the nobly born, but the lowly born, who have been the champions, the deliverers of the people, whom "in the fullness of time" they came to serve, perchance to save.
To return to your own case. You are aware that your parents were very upright, very pious and intelligent persons; these and other characteristics fitted them for parentage of more than average merit. Your father was strong physically and mentally, and of a most generous nature, which impelled him to assist all who came his way. At the same time he exhibited a certain ruggedness of character, amounting to brusqueness. Your mother, frail physically, but with high Spiritual development which afforded her fine intuition, formed with your father a combination through whom Spirits well advanced might return to further fulfill the Law of their Being. Physically, you are somewhat like your father, and also your mentality possesses a coloring of his positive, unswerving honesty of purpose, but largely it is through your mother's Spirituality that you possess a free entrance into the Realm of Intuition. So much and more I yield to the law of heredity. Then again arises the question, all having been born of the same parents and under like conditions and environments, why are not you and your brothers and sisters more alike? When you return to our side of life you will be better able to reply to this question.
You desire that I shall tell you something of your embodiment preceding your present one. You were an Oriental, your parents being Egyptians, dwelling in Alexandria. Your father was a dealer in rich stuffs and jewels. A man of stern character, yet withal of a rare tenderness of nature. Your mother, a woman of great beauty and fine intelligence, gave you birth, and almost immediately passed to the World of Spirits. Toward the close of eleven years of Earth life you joined your mother who had guarded and guided you until you were released. Yes, previous to your present Embodiment you clearly understood that you were to be the Special Instrument for the accomplishment of this Mission, and gladly you re-entered the mortal plane that thus you might further fulfill the Law of Love. Throughout your present Embodiment you have shown decidedly Oriental tendencies. Your love of light, of high temperature, of rich colors, of flowers and fruits, and your equally strong dislike of darkness, of cold and of animal food, indicates a sort of overlapping of the tendencies of your previous Earthly existence.
For some time I have had it in my thoughts to answer some of the unasked questions agitating your mind, but until now no opportunity has presented itself. I am quite aware of the inadequacy of my replies, and of my inability to verify such statements as I have made, nevertheless they are as true as Truth.
Gentola—I thank you for your patient endeavor to instruct me, and I earnestly desire that I may grow into a knowledge of all that is true.
De L'Ester—We better than yourself comprehend why you so revolt against the idea of Re-embodiment. Your nature is very pitiful, very sympathetic, and it is not so much your personal sorrows as your consciousness of the fact that on our Planet ignorance, injustice, cruelty and poverty so prevail as to render life undesirable, that occasions you to shrink away from further mortal experiences.