Now the Buddha-knowledge is no supernatural illumination, but consists simply of a clear insight into the nature of my own existence--or rather, in the removal of a false conception as to myself, the conception of the “_I_” as an identity. To attain to this insight, all that is needed is reflection and instruction. This seemingly supernatural character of the faculty of remembering previous existences is thus “supernatural” only in the sense that the telephone or the Röntgen ray or wireless telegraphy is supernatural to untutored savages. We are merely lacking in the prerequisite conditions as respects cognition, and in the intellectual technique. This much safely may be said, that the biological possibility of memory of the distant past can only be brought to bear upon the several existences in so far as these themselves have run their course in touch with the power of memory, in touch with consciousness. To try to make this faculty extend over the embryonal periods also, would be absurd, since here the organic possibilities of such memory--the sense-organs, namely--are not developed, and so there is nothing there for one to remember. Hence, when he speaks of his previous existences the Buddha says, not, “I remember having left such and such a womb,” but, “I remember having been of such a name, such a family, such a rank, such a calling; having experienced such and such weal and woe, and such a departure from life.” Here what is meant by the constantly recurring phrase “_evam āyupariyanto_”--“thus was the term, the end of my life”--is not physical death, but the ending of that section of the individuality which runs its course self-illuminated, under the designation of consciousness. This end may indeed synchronize with the physical end, death, but it may also precede it by a longer or shorter period of time. In corresponding terms the Buddha goes on to say, “Departing thence, elsewhere I appeared anew. There now I was, bore such a name,” and so on. The memories of the past adhere only to those phases of existence that are illumined by consciousness. It may be asked, “By what means is it possible to acquire such a faculty of remembering the distant past?” I reply, “I do not know.” I can only suggest an analogy. One must extinguish one’s own light in order to see the light that shines through the chink in a neighbouring room. In somewhat the same fashion, a man must have extinguished his own light--the notion of an _I_-identity--and won to the Buddha-knowledge, in order to see himself emerge recurrently as a something luminous in consciousness further and yet further away in the “dark backward and abysm of time,”--one lucent phase, ever and again revealing itself, anterior to the other, until the last faint glimmer is lost in the dim dusk teeming with life, of the beginningless infinitudes.