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A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga850
“something in the past,” not to speak of the flashes of memory, and feeling
of former acquaintance with the subject, then, and then only, does he begin
to believe.
Many people have had “peculiar experiences” that are accountable only
upon the hypothesis of Metempsychosis. Who has not experienced the
consciousness of having felt the thing before—having thought it some time
in the dim past? Who has not witnessed new scenes that appear old, very
old? Who has not met persons for the first time, whose presence awakened
memories of a past lying far back in the misty ages of long ago? Who has
not been seized at times with the consciousness of a mighty “oldness” of soul?
Who has not heard music, often entirely new compositions, which somehow
awakens memories of similar strains, scenes, places, faces, voices, lands,
associations and events, sounding dimly on the strings of memory as the
breezes of the harmony floats over them? Who has not gazed at some old
painting, or piece of statuary, with the sense of having seen it all before? Who
has not lived through events, which brought with them a certainty of being
merely a repetition of some shadowy occurrences away back in lives lived
long ago? Who has not felt the influence of the mountain, the sea, the desert,
coming to them when they are far from such scenes—coming so vividly as to
cause the actual scene of the present to fade into comparative unreality. Who
has not had these experiences—we ask?
Writers, poets, and others who carry messages to the world, have testified
to these things—and nearly every man or woman who hears the message
recognizes it as something having correspondence in his or her own life. Sir
Walter Scott tells us in his diary: “I cannot, I am sure, tell if it is worth marking
down, that yesterday, at dinner time, I was strangely haunted by what I
would call the sense of preexistence, viz., a confused idea that nothing that
passed was said for the first time; that the same topics had been discussed
and the same persons had stated the same opinions on them. The sensation
was so strong as to resemble what is called the mirage in the desert and
a calenture on board ship.” The same writer, in one of his novels, “Guy