As you grow spiritually, you become more aware of the parts of Life that exist beyond your current self, including your connection with others and to your past lives.
The Book of the Law calls this, "the consciousness of the continuity of existence."
Anyone can learn to consciously tap into greater awareness; programs like ours help you do that in a couple ways:
1) Your extrasensory perceptive abilities (ESP or "psychic senses") become more attuned through regular practices that quiet your mind (which is a big part of our teachings).
2) Being part of a group consciousness also increases your awareness, as you become able to discern which thoughts in your mind didn't come from you. And if you know the other members of the group as well as we know our fellow students, you might recognize the "voice" of those thoughts and be able to discern whose thoughts they are.
Here in physical 3D consciousness, it takes significant effort to hold a point of focus that lets you tune into other aspects of consciousness, including past lives. That's because the energy here is dense and you probably have a lot of distractions. One way that you can get better at this is by practicing it in your dreams, where the energy is lighter and there are fewer distractions. (Dreamwork is also something we do in our program.)
Why do past lives matter? No one says they have to, but here's something to consider: Who you are right now in this life is an aggregate of the energies and memories you brought into this life from past lives PLUS the energies and memories that you've had so far in this life. You've moved from life to life with the goal of experiencing the greatest joy possible in each one, and increasing that experience from one life to the next.
If you can't get clear about a block or a trigger that you're experiencing in this life, sometimes you can achieve a clearer perspective of it by looking back into a previous life to get more information. The better you get at quieting your mind, the easier it'll be for you to do this. There are also many techniques you can learn from various sources, and a professional intuitive (or a trusted friend with these skills) can be a connector / translator for you.