having been his own in his
previous life. Other facts about the former location of places in the
village were verified by the old men. Finally, while walking around the
ruins, the man said: "There should be a pot of silver buried there--I
hid it there when I lived here." The people rapidly uncovered the ground
indicated, and brought to light an old pot containing a few pieces of
silver coin of a date corresponding to the lifetime of the former
occupant of the house. Our informant told us that he had personal
knowledge of a number of similar cases, none of which, however, were
quite as complete in detail as the one mentioned. He also informed us
that he himself, and a number of his acquaintances who had attained
certain degrees of occult unfoldment, were fully aware of their past
lives for several incarnations back.

Another instance came under our personal observation, in which an
American who had never been to India, when taken into a room in which a
Hindu priest who was visiting America had erected a shrine or altar
before which he performed his religious services, readily recognized the
arrangement of the details of worship, ritual, ceremony, etc., and was
conscious of having seen, or at least dreamed of seeing, a similar
shrine at some time in the past, and as having had some connection with
the same. The Hindu priest, upon hearing the American's remarks, stated
that his knowledge of the details of the shrine, as then expressed,
indicated a knowledge possible only to one who had served at a Hindu
altar in some capacity.

We know of another case in which an acquaintance, a prominent attorney
in the West, told us that when undergoing his initiation in the Masonic
order he had a full recollection of having undergone the same before,
and he actually anticipated each successive step. This knowledge,
however, ceased after he had passed beyond the first three degrees which
took him to the place where he was a full Master Mason, the higher
degrees being entirely new to him, and having been apparently not
experienced before. This man was not a believer in any doctrine of
Reincarnation, and related the incident merely as "one of those things
that no man can explain."

We know of another case, in which a student of Hindu Philosophy and
Oriental Occultism found that he could anticipate each step of the
teaching and doctrine, and each bit of knowledge gained by him seemed
merely a recollection of something known long since. S