When the good karma of past lives has secured for the aspirant the benefit of having a Master, the best thing that he can do is to surrender himself to the Master and to serve him. Through surrenderance the aspirant throws the burden of his karma on the Master, who has to find ways and means of freeing him from it. Through serving the Master he wins an opportunity to get clear of his karmic entanglements. The relationship between the Master and the disciple is often carried on from one life to another for several reincarnations. Those who have been connected with a Master in past lives are drawn to him by an unconscious magnetism, not knowing why they are thus drawn. There is usually a long history to the apparently unaccountable devotion that the disciple feels for his Master. The disciple is often beginning where he had left off in the last incarnation.
–Discourses 7th Ed., p335