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I've spent a fair amount of time reading and thinking about all that mystical hooha, and my current point of view is close to what clod said, that we can convince ourselves of some pretty amazing stuff. As much fun as it is to believe in dreams, past lives, astral projection, deja vu, etc., I require proof.
Now, if someone could PROVE they "remembered" something despite never having been there in this life, I might believe it. Say, there's some secret cache hidden behind a brick in the home where that person lived in a past life, so he hops on a plane from Texas to some little town in France and digs it up - saying exactly what was in the box before moving the brick -- ta-da! (And a really cool story idea, too.) But just to pop over and say "gosh, this looks so familiar!" Nope.
The trouble with memories is that we often can't remember how we acquired them. I may have read a book 20 years ago about something, then come into contact with it tomorrow and since I couldn't remember reading the book, believe I've *been there.*
My philosophy teacher spoke of a similar example in lecture last week. He said he was driving in the car with his wife, and suddenly it popped into his head to say "whatever happened to..." some celebrity that had dropped off the radar for a dozen years or so. And the next day he read in the newspaper that she had died. Ooh, was that some kind of psychic event he had? No, probably he heard a little blurb on the news but wasn't paying attention enough for it to register consciously. He also spoke of a really vivid childhood memory he had shared with lots of people, then his father heard his story and confirmed that it never happened that way, it was completely impossible. Memories are not trustworthy things.
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