Conditions for release of memory: The resurrection of the memory of past lives can be faced without confusion or loss of balance only when the person has become desireless and has lost all feeling of “mine” and “thine.” Those whom he once looked upon as belonging to him might be seen in the present life belonging to someone else. And if he were to continue his attachments and supposed claims, he would create untold complications, misery, and confusion for himself and others. Possessiveness of all types has to be purged from the mind if the aspirant is to be spiritually prepared to withstand the disturbing influence of memories from past lives.
Spiritual preparation: When an individual is spiritually prepared, he is completely desireless and full of impersonal love. All entanglements of the personal ego have disappeared from his mind. He can look upon his old friends and enemies with the same equanimity. He is so lifted out of his limitations that he is the same to relations and nonrelations from his past and present lives. He is free from the idea of any pressing claims and counterclaims on his part against others, or of others against himself, because he has realized the deeper truth of the unity of all life and the illusoriness of mundane happenings.
Wise use of resurrected memory: It is only when a person is thus spiritually prepared that he is unaffected by the revived memory of past lives. Only then is it worthwhile for him to have access to it. For he can then have that cool andunerring judgment and pure, incorruptible love that enable him to make right and wise use of the new knowledgegathered through the resurrected memory of past lives. This knowledge opens to him a great deal of information about his own incarnations and those of others connected with him in past lives. It not only enables him to advance further on the spiritual path by conscious karmic adjustments but also to help others on the path by directing them in the light of their past lives.
-Discourses 7th Ed., p316