She knew that no one had taught me this art, that my parents would forbid me, that it did not become my social position and yet she said: ‘Who taught you that?’

‘No one’, I said, ‘I can do it!’

The statue was of one of his family members, who had died long ago.

It had the Egyptian and Hellenic style.

I kept feeling more and more, one feeling followed another.

Yet what now came to me was almost incredible.

For I felt that I had something to do with that statue, because I saw myself passing into that statue.

I felt myself in that old style.

My first masters had had to teach me not to use that style and did not understand where I had got it from.

However, if this was true, perhaps the mystery would be solved for me, where my feeling for art came from which I already had during my childhood.

I was faced with a great human problem which I did not understand, but which had occupied me during all of my previous life.

‘Well, then we will connect ourselves.’

I now felt that I passed over completely and was walking in the streets of Memphis.

It was amazing, because I felt as if I had never been away from here and still lived here.

My past life came back to me, I passed over into it consciously.

How great spiritual powers were!

I entered a beautiful palace.

Before me I saw fine art, and could I call that art mine?

I had to accept it, because I was connected to it and felt myself in those stone statues.

Nothing could show me more clearly that I was dealing with the truth here.

How deep everything was!

My art was amazingly beautiful.

In Rome I could not have reached that height.

Now I knew this for the first time since I felt it and perceived it.

In that life - I understood - I had lived a full life.

Then I knelt down and thanked God for everything which I had received up until now.

I sent my first prayer to God in childlike simplicity.

I continued to thank God for a long time.

I had lived here and mastered my art.

Man was deep, very deep.

I descended deeper and deeper into my own life and I could still not perceive the deepest secrets of the soul, because then there would be no end.

You most certainly took part in art in one life and probably in many other lives.

If the longing for art has reached consciousness in one life, so that we are dominated by it – therefore feelings, which suppress the other characteristics – then that life is devoted to art, because the soul cannot become released from it.

These emotional powers are already expressed as a child and reach full development at a later age, which applies to you on earth as a talent.

This born talent is experienced by all arts and sciences.

Anyone who has talent can achieve something on earth.

However, with this we enter the grades for the earthly art.

After all, one person achieves something; another does his best and goes to pieces up against art.

We now get to know the inferior brothers and sisters, who represent an own grade in art for themselves, the lower and higher orders, which are the grades of feeling for you as a human being.

It must not be so difficult now for you to understand why one person achieves something and really gets it for nothing, for which another person has to slave for, to finally succumb, and to have to accept that the feeling for it has not yet been reached.

One person becomes an artist, another person will never become one!

The feeling shows how far you have come for art.

For this purpose, the soul has probably had to discard hundreds of lives, therefore experience them, in order to reach that height in feeling.

And it is only now, in this life, that the feeling for art reveals itself; the priests in the East experienced this in the mystics, in the occult laws.

In this way, one person has tuned into occultism, another person into science or art or social functions, each possibility is laid aside for you as a human being, because you can accept the new life.

I have here: ‘Dear Mr Rulof, may I ask you,’ what is this?

‘An undeveloped child which has never learned languages before, spoke a foreign language; does not want anything to do with it, and yet it keeps coming back.’

But I assume that the subconscious, the past life of this personality is speaking.

And now those gifts.

From the personality ...

We all know French, German and English, we know all the languages on earth, Chinese, Japanese and everything.

But those languages live in us.

From the beginning when our eyes opened, reincarnation, the last one, left us.

People with a gift for languages, people with a hobby for languages, they learn languages.

A boy in our street, when I was still a chauffeur, a son of a butcher started to learn languages, within four, five years he could speak sixteen languages; and he could cope with them, because he remained with both feet on the ground.

Sixteen languages in five years.

A son of the butcher.

The butcher said: ‘That boy of mine has a gift for languages.’

‘Is it also possible, Alcar, that qualities manifest themselves in this life, which we have acquired in an other life?’

‘Yes, certainly, but all those qualities passed on into our feeling, a condition of consciousness.

Do you feel what I mean?’

‘Yes, Alcar, I understand.

Can these feelings be recognized?’

‘That is also possible, for instance, feeling for some kind of art.

I told you about that.

This is most clearly seen in children.

Sometimes such feelings manifest themselves at an early age, whereas these phenomena cannot be observed in other children.

On earth, these feelings are referred to as talent, intellect, but that is not the truth.

The soul has acquired these qualities in the previous life, or perhaps many lives ago.

It is at any rate a fact, when such feelings arise, that they emanate from the depth of the soul.’