I had always been intrigued by the story of how the Tibetan Lamas locate and finally pick the children whom they would nurture and eventually install as their Leader; if I may recall correctly, a simple ceremony where the young children were shown a number of objects, some of these were the former Leader’s personal objects (e.g. a robe or a bowl). The children who could pick out the objects correctly then forms the shortlist.
I’ve always found this story rather unbelievable, however after what little that I have read, I realize that they were exploiting the existence of the seeds in the child’s mind. If the child had never seen or use the object in their previous life (a Buddist belief), then there would be no seed in the child’s mind to recognize the object. It is like we can recognize a pen, but a dog does not have a seed in his mind for a pen, so even though we show and tell the dog that it is a pen, the dog will never be able to recognize it, therefore, in the dog’s mind, it could never accept the object as a pen – which is usually the case and thereby it would treat the pen as a chew toy for which a dog has such a seed in its mind.