A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga: The Yoga of WisdomAtkinson, William Walker
Religion
A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga: The Yoga of Wisdom
Atkinson, William Walker
Yoga, Jñana
While comparatively few among the Western races are able to remember
more than fragments of their past lives, in India it is quite common
for a man well developed spiritually to clearly remember the incidents
and details of former incarnations, and the evidence of the awakening
of such power causes little more than passing interest among his
people. There is, as we shall see later, a movement toward conscious
Metempsychosis, and many of the race are just moving on to that plane.
In India the highly developed individuals grow into a clear
recollection of their past lives when they reach the age of puberty,
and when their brains are developed sufficiently to grasp the knowledge
locked up in the depths of the soul. In the meantime the individual's
memory of the past is locked away in the recesses of his mind, just as
are many facts and incidents of his present life so locked away, to be
remembered only when some one mentions the subject, or some
circumstance serves to supply the associative link to the apparently
forgotten matter.
Regarding the faculty of memory in our present lives, we would quote
the following from the pen of Prof. William Knight, printed in the
Fortnightly Review. He says: "Memory of the details of the past is
absolutely impossible. The power of the conservative faculty, though
relatively great, is extremely limited. We forget the larger portion of
experience soon after we have passed through it, and we should be able
to recall the particulars of our past years, filling all the missing
links of consciousness since we entered on the present life, before we
were in a position to remember our ante-natal experience. Birth must
necessarily be preceded by crossing the river of oblivion, while the
capacity for fresh acquisition survives, and the garnered wealth of old
experience determines the amount and character of the new."
Another startling evidence of the proof of Metempsychosis is afforded
us in the cases of "infant prodigies," etc., which defy any other
explanation. Take the cases of the manifestation of musical talent in
certain children at an early age, for instance. Take the case of Mozart
who at the age of four was able to not only perform difficult pieces on
the piano, but actually composed original works of merit. Not only did
he manifest the highest faculty of sound and note, but also an
instinctive ability to compose and arrange music, which ability was
superior to that of many men who had devoted years of their life to
study and practice. The laws of harmony--the science of commingling
tones, was to him not the work of years, but a faculty born in him.
There are many similar cases of record.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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