HAVE WE LIVED BEFORE?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5081, 28 January 1927, Page 1

HAVE WE LIVED BEFORE?

DOES YOUR MEMORY GO BACK ? SOME PECULIAR INSTANCES. Do we return to earth ? Have we lived here before ? Is it in the scheme of things that after we have lived once on this planet, w'e should, at some later, time, return, and in a new body have a second span of earthly life ? Many people, perfectly normal and sane, have a feeling—so strong and so persistent that they cannot rid themselves of it—that they have been here before. It is not that they have toyed with the idea .and thus developed the feeling. It is. in them, and they have had no more to do with creating it than they have, with the virtues or vices which heredity has implanted in them, writes Tit-Bits. Colonel Sir William Serjeant,, C. 8.. stated recently : “In Burma it is not uncommon tor children up to 12 or 14 years to remcmoer their former incarnations, and many a.if’entie, well-verified cases are known and recorded. the details of which are beyond question.” A few summers ago an English girl df 15 went with her father to see an old fourteenth century ch •• ch in a Warwickshire village in England. She had never been in the country before. When she was walking through the porch she became faint and had to rest for a 'few mintues. Recovering, she entered the church, looked round startled, and cried: “Oh I’ve been here before !” " Her father’s comment was : “Impossible my dear.” Just then sjre .added, “And —I used to come in thereand pointed to a spot on the blank north wall, he laughed. The girl, however, persisted in her statement. They walked round the building outside, and exactly at the point she had indicated he saw that an ancient deerway had been filled in and, bricked up! Inside there was no evidence of it. What is the explanation ?

In 1880 a young woman, as the result df a confused dream, felt that she, mus.t go to an old churchyard in Dorset. The place seemed familiar, and as she wandered restlessly about among the bramble-covered and messed tombstones she suddenly halted and stared. On a stone, barely legible, was her own name, with “Dyed in Ye 21st Year.e df Her Age, An. Dom.. 1726.”

Later she found that her ancestors had lived in the parish. Her surname was as theirs, and her Christian name—the unusual one l of Chloe —had always been used ‘for the eldest daughters. Was she looking at the stone which, 150' years previously, had. been erected to her memory ? And what is the explanation cf the following ? An English soldier was drafted to Egypt. In W than five weeks he could talk Arabic 1-ke a native! Mozart composed music when he was five ; Jeremy Bentham read French books, when he was seven, and had but three lessons in elementary French. A French colonel corrected, for the first time, some df the inner history o’f the French Revolution. He claimed to have, been one of those guillotined. His ; corrections were found to be true.

A man, known to the writer, went to Ybrk in 1914. As those who know the ancient city will bear out, York is a place of narrow streets, with queer twistings and turnings, most of them as they were 300 1 years ago. The man, to' use his own words, “felt funny” when he got into the heart of the city, near, the Minster, and exclaimed suddenly, “Why, I know my way about here, although I’ve never been here before!”

Thinking it a joke, his friend told him to close his eyes while he walked him into the oldest part of the city. “Now,” he said, “to the west door of t h e Minster.” With no hesitation he twisted through the old streets unerringly I Once he halted, puckered his forehead, and said, “There was an inn here once, I’m sure.” Research a day or so later in old maps proved that tr.ue. Was that man treading the streets Of York for a second time ? It was not a case of ,a scene or a view being recognised as familiar.

Mrs Ella Wheele. 'Wilcox, the poet, claimed that she and her husband had had previous existences, and in, those existences had always been lovers. Her chief remembrance was that of the lost continent of Atlantis. Her husband was captain o‘f the royal bodyguard, she was the king’s daughter. The touch of romance in that may incline one to be sceptical. Charles Dickens wrote the! passage quoted below in “David Copperfield” : “We have all some, experience of a feeling that comes over us occasionally of what we are saying and doing having befin said and done before, in a remote time; or our having been surrounded dim ages ago by the same faces, objects, and circumstances.” A London business man, clear-head-ed and with no eccentricity of thought or belief, was coming out Of a theatre and saw a man he. had never seen before.. Suddenly the dormant “line” c 'f a 2000-year-old memory acted. He st ! ode over to the man and said. “I Id led you once..’-

“Y'Qs,” said the other, returning his intent look. “It was in a. chariot race at Rome.” And the first man agreed that was correct. Both icmembeied it!