What is the purpose of this thing we call memory, and why do we remember at all? Memory lives in our unconscious. When we remember, we somehow open the door to this other part of ourselves and pull out information on anything we may wish. We do not have to stop and think about remembering; we just remember.

We have all experienced times when for some reason we could not pull out what we desired. What happened then? It could be that for some reason we actually closed the door to our memory, or rather some part of us closed that door. This can happen for many reasons, among them the fact that remembering sometimes causes us pain. How many times have you remembered when someone hurt you or when something happened that was not pleasure but pain? When the hurt becomes so great that we cannot stand to remember, something deep in our minds allows us to forget.

On other occasions, we do not remember because we did not take the time to put what we wanted to remember into our minds in such a form that we could extract it easily. In order to remember, we must train ourselves to do just that.

There are other kinds of memory – for instance, the memory of another life, of being someone else. Somewhere deep in our minds lays a record of everything we have done in our former lives: not one life, not this life, but all our lives over endless centuries. There is a great deal of research being done by psychologists into the possibility that everyone might actually remember having lived before. Many masters actually know who they were and what they did in many of their previous lives.

This knowledge comes naturally to many as they advance along their paths – it may actually aid them in understanding why they live as they do and the real meaning of many experiences that come to them. On the other hand, it may very well be that knowledge of a previous life carries with it certain pain and suffering. Not all of us have lived good lives. Many of us committed some error or perhaps actual crime against our fellow man or society. All life is not bliss – there may be times of sorrow. The master within us knows who we are, who we have been and who we will become. There is no hiding from these three since they are all one.

Each of us has some special task or job he must accomplish in this lifetime if he is to advance and make genuine progress in the next life. We were born to live this special life and to do that special something. The problem is that most of us never really understand what it is we must do. Things would be so much easier for all of us if each understood his or her place in this lifetime and worked toward that understanding. To know would give us a real sense of belonging and being part of the great wholeness of life without fear of fitting in, a feeling that many of us have as we travel along a path.

Memory proves its mastery of us by providing us with a means to grow. Thus if the nature of every moment is growth, then the nature of memory itself be likewise. To grow means to enlarge and go forward. If we are not growing in this way, we are not making progress. If we are not making progress, then we are not fulfilling the reason for our being here in the first place. We were born to know and grow. To do otherwise is a failure to ourselves and to our creator. We must use this thing called memory. We must give it ample opportunity to work for us, to guide us toward the thing we need. If we allow it to work, it will work for us.

A master of memory, reincarnationist Joan Grant …

In 1937, one of the most highly praised books ever written about reincarnation came into public view. The book was titled Winged Pharaoh and the author was Joan Grant. In this masterpiece, Grant wrote about her past life in Egypt where she lived as a priest-pharaoh who had been trained in a secret technique that would allow her to implement the ability to tune into and remember past lives in great detail. In that lifetime as "Sekeeta" (a pharaoh's daughter), she spent ten years in an Egyptian temple learning the technique. Her mystical training required that she and the other trainees remember at least ten of their own past life deaths. The trainees were further required to pass a final examination whereby they were to undergo seven ordeals while shut away in a tomb for four days and nights. Sekeeta passed the test and brought the ability known as "far memory" into the twentieth century via the incarnation as Joan Grant.

Joan experienced "far memory" her entire life. She was highly psychic and experienced precognitive and prophetic dreams. As a young girl she had a tendency to keep her "secrets" to herself. Joan was born into a wealthy family as the daughter of Jack and Blanche Marshall. Famous people often frequented the Marshall home. One of them was writer H.G. Wells who Joan met when she was sixteen years old. Joan felt comfortable enough with Wells to tell him some of her "secrets." Sympathizing with the young girl, Wells told her, "It is important that you become a writer." He further told her that she should continue to keep her secrets to herself until she was, "... strong enough to bear being laughed at by fools." There is an amusing story recalled by Grant in a biography about meeting Aleister Crowley while visiting America in 1914 when she was seven years old. It seems Crowley came to call on the family but was ordered to leave by Joan's mother after he made inappropriate gestures and threats to Joan's older stepsister whom he fancied. Joan's description of Crowley was that he looked like a "human toad."

Joan was able to recall in exact detail several other lives in Egypt, one as Ra-ab Hotep whose story appeared in two more books, Eye of Horus and Lord of the Horizon and another as a contemporary of Ramesses II. She also recalled lives in Greece in the second century BC, medieval England, and 16th century Italy as Carola di Ludovici a troupe singer who died at age 27. She remembered being burned as a witch, bleeding to death after ordering a court physician in early Rome to cut her wrists, dying from a severe wound to her eye during a joust, breaking her neck in a diving accident, committing suicide twice, dying from snake bites twice, dying from an infection following an insect bite and breaking her back after falling from a horse as a girl named Lavinia. Joan also made links between people she currently knew and people from the past. A family friend by the name of Daisy Sartorius was discovered to be Sekeeta's mother in the Egyptian lifetime which took place in the First Dynasty of Egypt about 3000 BC. Her third husband Denys Kelsey, a physician and psychiatrist, was the Roman physician who cut her wrists in the Roman era. Denys and Joan later shared a life as husband and wife in 18th century England. Denys Kelsey was inexplicably drawn to meet Joan Grant after reading Winged Pharaoh.

Before Joan met Denys Kelsey, she had received extensive psychiatric training working with a psychiatrist during the war years. This knowledge would become invaluable to Denys Kelsey who had begun to use hypnosis as healing tool. He believed that the use of hypnosis combined with Joan's knowledge of reincarnation and ability to resonate with the past lives of others would be invaluable in curing those who suffered from trauma induced fears and phobias. Joan knew from her own experience that many irrational fears were based on emotions that were "throwbacks" to previous lifetimes. Together they surmised that once the cause of fears and anxieties were identified and understood from the past life perspective they could be brought into consciousness where they could be integrated and thus diffused. Since Joan was able to psychically "tap in" to others so it was unnecessary for the patient to relive former traumatic experiences which made recovery much easier. Together they helped many people but at the same time were in full cognizance that the procedure, "...wasn't for everyone." Together they collaborated on the book Many Lifetimes. Other books written by Joan Grant are Far Memory, Time Out of Mind, Life as Carola, Scarlet Feather, Return to Elysium, So Moses was Born, Many Times, Vague Vacation (travel), A Lot to Remember (travel), The Scarlet Fish (children's book), Redskin Morning (children's book), and The Laird and the Lady (fiction).

An ancient exercise …

This is an ancient exercise used by the masters to develop a near-photographic memory.

Each evening when you are relaxed and ready to go to sleep, close your eyes, breathe as you have been taught (in and out slowly through your nose) and begin to see in your mind’s eye exactly what you did just before you retired for the evening. Mentally begin to see each event, going backward to the first moment of your rising in the morning. Certain events will be remembered more easily than others. When you come to these, ask yourself why you have remembered them and what particular lesson is to be learned.

Italicized script from Zolar, A Compendium Of The Occult

Brief on Joan Grant  from The Galaxy Express